Page 101 of Saltwater

Begged.

“Yes. This is the end. I promise.”

“Then you have to let me watch,” she said, stepping away, letting her fingers find the back of her elbows again. “I want to see you kill her.”

Marcus looked between Naomi and Sarah.

“Otherwise, it ends,” she said.

He knew what she meant.The money ends.

“All right.” Marcus ran his hand through his hair, exhaled. “Allright. But not here. Down there.” He pointed to the end of the garden, to the cliffs. Then he hoisted Sarah over his shoulder. Naomi slipped into his wake and followed him past the house, past the pool, to the edge of the patio, where the table sat empty, surrounded by chairs.

Sarah stirred when he put her on the ground, and Naomi had to resist the urge to slap her. This stupid little slut who had ruined everything. Who had come into this family and taken things from her, threatened to expose them all with her ridiculous choices. One life for their three—four, if you counted Helen. It was a fair trade.

Why get married,Naomi thought,if you knew it wouldn’t suit you?People like Sarah didn’t understand those commitments were designed to last a lifetime. They weremeantto be tested. Like her marriage. And look! They had survived. Theywouldsurvive.

Sarah would never have that. She neverwantedthat.

“Can I help?” Naomi asked.

Marcus set the knife on the table and started looking around the garden, pulling back the thick, leafy shrubs, until he found what he was looking for, hefted it in his hand. Naomi recognized what it was without fully seeing it in the darkness—a rock.

He turned back toward Sarah when they both heard it. The sound of the gate to the garden opening, and then Richard’s voice calling out: “Marcus—”

“Fuck,” Marcus said. He set the rock on the ground and looked between Sarah and the house. Neither of them wanted Richard coming down here. If he knew she was alive, he might intervene, call a doctor, and then where would they be?

“You stay here,” Marcus said. He picked up the knife and moved toward the house.

Alone, Naomi watched the boats in the marina below, their lights bobbing slightly left, then right. She chewed on the edge of her fingernail, worked at it, until there was a little bit of blood and it hurt ever so slightly. The taste of iron in her mouth was invigorating. She looked up at the house, where Marcus had disappeared, and picked upthe rock he had left on the ground. It nearly weighed her down, but she used both hands to hold it, cradle it.

She waited until the lights came on upstairs. Then a light in the kitchen, too. Naomi walked toward the pool house, hoping to catch Marcus’s shadow in the window, but he never appeared. Minutes ticked by. Dawn would be here soon.

Out of the corner of her eye, Naomi saw something back at the end of the garden. A movement, a flash of red. Her head turned to see Sarah, now stooped and bent over, but on her feet. She had one hand braced against the low stone wall, another down on the ground, where the blood had begun to pool on the hard stone. As if she were rooting around in it, her own blood, looking forsomething.

Naomi overtook her in four sharp breaths and double that many steps. It was easy, really. She was quiet. And now she stood behind her, the rock still in both hands. She swayed a little from the weight, or from the alcohol and drugs she had downed earlier. She used the movement, that impulsive movement, to hoist the rock. But when Sarah stood, her back to her, Naomi realized she wouldn’t be able to lift the rock high enough to hit her head. And so she dropped it onto the damp grass, where it made no noise at all.

Sarah never even noticed she was there. Not until Naomi’s hands were on her back, shoving Sarah over the low wall. Naomi used so much force that it seemed as if Sarah’s body was pushed fully free of the cliff face, suspended in air. But the unmistakable sound of Sarah connecting with the rocks below—the light scatter of stones, the almost muffled thump—was enough to convince Naomi the fall was unsurvivable. Even so, she listened; she waited. The only sound, the gentle echo of the water lapping at the cliff below.

Afterward, Naomi looked up at the night sky—the smattering of stars, the glow from the other villas on the island. She thought of Helen, her small body tucked into a tiny bed. Marcus’s baby. It always amazed her that Richard never saw it, the way her forehead looked like her father’s, her eyes. Family resemblance, maybe. But Naomi had seen it right away, hadknown itwith the kind of certainty mothers have when their children are switched in the hospital—This is notmine.Except Naomi had seen Helen and thought, right away:This is mine.This is something that has been taken from me.

She only wished she’d been able to see Sarah’s face one last time. She felt robbed that she hadn’t been able to see the look in Sarah’s eyes when she realized it was Naomi pushing her over the edge.

Helen

Now

My father finishes the lastpage ofSaltwater,and the guests begin to chatter. From the small orchestra comes the dull sound of tuning instruments. He scans the audience, searching for a face. For the only possible answer.

“He had to keep this,” he whispers.

Finally, in the crowd of faces, he sees him—Marcus.

I stay at the edge of the garden while my father closes the distance between himself and his brother. He leans down to whisper in his ear. Marcus nods, makes some apologies, and stands. Within minutes, they have rejoined me in the dark eddy of trees and flowering bougainvillea.

My father holds up the pages of my mother’s play and says: “Is this true?”

He’s hoping, still, that it’s fiction. That the only thing she got right was the money. And even that was an accident. But I’m amazed he can’t see it, with the two of us standing here, how strong the similarity is. I feel like an idiot for missing it.

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