Page 16 of Saltwater

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I already signed the fucking papers,” she said. “What was I going to do? Sue my own father?”

“Some children would.”

“It would only get worse.”

She was probably right. I’d seen the way Marcus dealt with enemies in the office. He piled on lawyers and gag orders and damages until his opponent was entirely underwater. I doubted they would resist doing the same to their own if they felt there was a risk of scandal.

“So what now?” I asked.

She pulled down the brim of her hat and focused on the ground in front of her. We had transitioned to dirt, and the rocks crunched under our feet.

“I want to get out, Lorna. I want to get out. But I need to get out with something.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

Lorna

Hours before Lorna’s disappearance:29

The maître d’ leads usto a table overlooking the Marina Grande, the restaurant full of laughing guests and tinkling silverware. Richard pulls out my chair and sits next to me. Helen is on my other side, Naomi directly across. I crack the menu, but before I can begin to read, the waiter arrives with a tray of red and orange aperitifs.

Naomi cradles a drink and points at a bottle of wine on the menu. The waiter nods. She drinks, I’ve noticed, a lot. Maybe I’ve seen her drink in the past, but it’s pronounced here. Drinks on the plane, on the boat, at the house, a handful of empties already by her bed. There’s the smallest, reptilian slur on hers’s. It’s a sound I never want to hear again.

It’s a vacation,I remind myself.

Freddy slaps his menu closed and sets it on the table.“Chitarra alla Paolino,”he says.

After our moment in the hallway, everything about Freddy is back to being easy, casual. Like it never happened. But the lights overhead cast shadows on his face, and for an instant, I can see it, hovering above mine only weeks ago. His eyes dark, his breath sour. I look away. Try to peel the memory off. The others follow him quickly. They’ve eaten here dozens of times. There’s no mystery to this menu.Paccheriortubettoni,it doesn’t matter. Maybe in time, I’ll slap my menu closed too, pronouncechitarrawith confidence.

“Marcus tells me this is your first trip to Italy,” Naomi says in such a way that implies ayeswould be unbelievable.

“That’s true,” I say, unsure if I should also thank her for the largesse. That’s the worst part about rich people: they want to give you things, but only so you can acknowledge their generosity. Every kindness a reminder that you exist in their world out of pity or usefulness. There was a period of time when I thought working for Marcus would be different from the other kind of work I’d done for people like him. But it’s all the same.

They’reall the same.

“I told Lorna that we should go to Rome when we’re done here,” Helen says.

We’ve talked about it in hypotheticals.What if we…But we’ve held off on making a decision. We’re both waiting, hedging. Holding out until we see how this goes. It’s okay, I understand. I’m not sure I want to go to Rome with her, either, if this all falls apart.

“During the summer?” Naomi says.

“Why not?” Helen says.

“Too crowded.” Naomi seems like she’s already lost interest, her eyes wandering over our heads toward the view. “Rome is a spring city.”

The sleeve of her Pucci dress pools in the dish of olive oil—several thousand dollars ruined in the service of the bread she’s reaching for.

I want to tell her that Capri seems crowded too, and yet she’s still here. Instead, I move the dish of olive oil out of the way. She doesn’t notice. They never do.

“Isn’t that where he lives?” Naomi asks, looking at Helen. “Renata’s son?”

“No,” Marcus intervenes. “He lives in Naples.”

“You two used to be very close,” she says to Helen, a smile leaching across her face. It’s as if she doesn’t notice the rest of us, as if it’s just her and Helen. I wonder what else she took with the drinks earlier. “Do you think the necklace is from him?” Naomi says. “He was like that, wasn’t he? The kind to remember a detail?”

“I don’t think Renata’s son was involved,” Marcus says, setting ahand on his wife’s arm. He dabs at the oil stain on the sleeve of her dress and tops off her glass. She is not aware of any of it. But I am. He’s tender with her.

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