Page 105 of Saltwater

“I’ll go ask,” I say to Ciro.

I leave him at the edge of the garden and work my way toward Naomi. Up close, she looks worse. Her eyes are red and her makeup is smeared. There is a stain on her dress from a drink or her own tears.

“Would you like to leave?” I ask her.

She looks like she wants to say something, but when she opens her mouth, no sound comes out.

“I think we should go,” I say. I place a hand on her arm. I try to do what’s right for her because it’s what they never did for me.

We take a golf cart down to the marina, and Ciro helps us onto the boat. He makes Naomi sit next to him, just to be sure she’s within eyeshot. So she can’t stand up, be tossed around, topple over. And as he pulls us out into the dark night on the Mediterranean, I watch Gallo Lungo recede behind us, growing smaller and smaller. I imagine my father in handcuffs, my uncle on the rocks. Just, I imagine, as they left the island of Capri thirty years ago thinking about my mother.

Helen

Now

I spend the next morning waitingfor our attorney and hiding from the photographers who roam the streets outside the villa. When Bud does arrive, he tells me my father has declined to retain an attorney, he intends to plead guilty.

It’s a surprise. I had expected him to fight the allegations that he killed Marcus and my mother. But Bud tells me my father is looking forward to the jail time, that he will write to me, that he knows we couldn’t have won the case. Not with a party of witnesses on hand. It’s his use ofwethat trips me up. As ifweare still a family, a team.

Everything, Bud explains, is mine. My father has signed over a modest bank account and made it clear that the contents of the house in Bel Air should go to me. The house itself, however, like everything else of significant value, is in Naomi’s name. Naomi, who is still asleep when Bud leaves for New York.

Since last night, she has been keeping herself nearly comatose and confined to her room. Even when the police came, no one could roust her for questioning. Even when Freddy arrives to take me to dinner, she stays in bed. I don’t mind; it’s easier this way.

Freddy has heard about my uncle, my father, the closing of Lorna’s case. Has heard about it because it has been front-page news without my family to bury it. Freddy, I’m sure, is sad he wasn’t there for the main event.

He takes us back to Da Paolino, where we sit under the lemontrees, just as we did five days ago. Now there are only two of us and six paparazzi at the entrance. Over a bottle of wine, after we’ve exhausted all the easy conversation, Freddy says:

“I hope, someday, we can move on from this.”

Only I don’t know what he means bythisor what I want. I order the tuna.

“This isn’t something people just move on from,” I say, even though I’m not sure if that’s true. I’ve already moved on more quickly than I expected. It’s as if a curtain has been dropped over last night.

Fin.

Freddy reaches for my hand and I let him.

“When we get home,” he says, “you’ll realize I’m right.”

When we get home.

“I’m not ready to go home,” I say.

I don’t add that I don’thavea home right now. That it depends on Naomi, of course. On her continuing generosity. Maybe, even, her guilt.

“Should we stay here?” he asks.

I want to tell Freddy thatIdo, but I don’t wanthimto. That I don’t need him to. But then the waiter brings our dinner, so instead I say: “What about work?”

He waves a hand.

“They’ll understand.”

He smiles.

It’s Freddy’s particular skill, the way he can glide past, slip over, the unpleasantries in life. Can simply decide that he doesn’t care about Ciro. About Lorna. That news of Marcus’s death and my father’s arrest is simply a passing bit of flotsam, a troubling fact in the moment, maybe, but easily forgotten.

We are eating now, a fork in my hand, but he grabs it anyway and says: “I want you to know that I’m here for you, Helen.”

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