Page 11 of Saltwater

I have always hated it when anyone other than my mother shortens my first name. But then, Freddy probably doesn’t remember that about me. He was always drunk when he called me Lor anyway. And that was a long time ago. Before he met Helen, before I started working for her uncle. Back when we were on the same circuit. The same houses in the hills, the same drugs. Until four months ago, when we were alone one afternoon and he started calling me Lor again.

“Are we still okay?” he asks. He dabs the back of his hand onto his cheek—there’s no air-conditioning in the villa, just fans, and he’s sweating.

“Of course,” I say, lowering my voice. “We’re fine.” I lean back against the cool wall.

This relieves him. It’s unfair that no one is here to do the same for me—to take the pressure off.

“So we’re going to wait, right?”

“We don’t ever have to tell her,” I say. Because it’s true, we don’t. Sometimes not telling is its own kindness.

“Well…” Freddy starts to say something, then lets it fall away. I watch him muster the courage to try again. “Well, I don’t think this is as bad as some of the other things you’ve done. On the scale, you know.”

I want to laugh, but I’m worried they might hear me.Some of the other things I’ve done.Why do men love to linger on a woman’s bad decisions but find it so easy to absolve themselves of their own?

“Are you trying to say something, Freddy?”

I’m going to make him say it. I’m going to make him fucking say it. But I know he won’t. Freddy just wants to remind me that he was here first. It’s the slightest upper hand. But when it comes to me, who doesn’t have an upper hand? At this point, he can get in line.

“No,” he says, “nothing.” Soothing now, like I’m an animal that might bite when cornered. Because I am. “Just. You know…”

I don’t respond. I stand there, in the hallway, hoping that for once Freddy feels as vulnerable as I always do. Finally, he holds up his soft, manicured hands. His whole body a little looser in places than he might prefer, but then, that’s the thing about money: the padding in your bank account can make up for the padding around your waist. Especially if you’re a man.

“I know I have to tell her,” he says, as if he’s resigned to this thing that will change his life, maybe mine. “But just not this week. We’re on the same page about that, right?”

I hate it, having to beon the same pagewith Freddy. But I’m out of options.

“Yes,” I say. “Now, don’t you think we should—” I gesture at the stairs, let my impatience out of its cage for a minute, knowing I’ll have to lock it back up around the Lingates.

He nods. I follow him down the stairs, out the kitchen door, andalong the garden wall. We pass a door overgrown with ivy, and I think I see movement behind it. Someone shadowing the peephole.

“What is that?” I ask Freddy. He’s been here before. It’s his third trip to the island.

“The guest quarters,” he says. “It’s just a little house. Renata lives there.”

Renata, the caretaker of the villa. The one who was here the day Sarah died. It’s been reported that after the night Sarah died she has refused to see or work for the Lingates.

“Is she there now?”

He shrugs. “Who cares?”

But I don’t like it, the idea that someone might be there, watching us. Watching me.

We keep walking until we reach the main garden. Seeing it sweeps away Renata’s shadow. A manicured lawn, lined with fig and pine trees, dotted with blooming blue lobelias and spiky cacti. It terminates in a terra-cotta patio, shaded by a cypress, overgrown with potted ranunculus, and fenced by a low stone wall, beyond which are the cliffs, the Mediterranean, and the Faraglioni, Capri’s famous fang-like rocks. Somehow, too, there is a pool.

This is why they keep coming back.

The Lingates are arranged around a table covered with a bright floral tablecloth that seems oddly homey. Something from a grandmother’s kitchen, not this villa, not this view. On it are drinks and snacks, a sweating pitcher of water.

“Would you like anything? A glass of wine? An aperitif?”

The housekeeper is behind me, although I haven’t heard her trailing us.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Lorna doesn’t drink,” Freddy says.

I want to say something to him about his own drinking, but I don’t. I don’t because I see the box sitting on the table like a centerpiece. Helen has been waiting for me. For both of us.

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