Page 41 of Saltwater

“Thanks,” I said.

I passed a wood-paneled room, a study, the door open. There was a desk, dead center, and a handful of books and picture frames, all of which looked like they hadn’t been moved in years. Otherwise, it was bare. Marcus kept an array of rare coins on his desk, a carved jade paperweight, a handful of old, scratched fountain pens. A scattering of objects he picked up, turned over. Threw, on occasion.

Richard’s study was nothing like that.

I paused, then stepped inside to examine the two framed pictures kept on the credenza nearest the door—one was of the family under a lush green canopy, the four of them with a man and a woman I didn’t recognize. It looked like Capri. Naomi wore a white dress pulled off her shoulders. Sandals on the women. Sarah—tan, radiant. The woman next to her was equally bronzed and looked like she could be her sister. Only, I noticed, she was holding a tray. The whole photo had a snapshot quality to it, and when I looked at it again, I realized the man I couldn’t initially identify was Stan. Younger, fresher, but with the same dour expression.

That was how I learned Stanknewthe Lingates. That whatever was going on with Marcus wasn’t a glancing insult. It was personal.

I slipped into the bathroom but found there were no locks. There hadn’t been any on the door to the study, either. Three locks on the front door, but once you were inside, any expectation of personal space dissolved. I ran the water, flushed the toilet, and stared into the mirror until I felt like enough time had passed. And then I found Helen in the kitchen.

“Do you want some water?” she asked.

She was always like this, a hostess. Unfailingly polite. She pulled a bottle of sparkling from the fridge and passed me a glass.

“These are the same glasses Marcus has,” I said, holding it up to the light.

“Mm-hmm,” Helen said. “We also have them at the beach house and the Aspen house. I guess it’s easier.”

“I thought the point of being rich was that you could choose whatever you wanted?”

Helen didn’t flinch. She looked me squarely in the eyes and said:

“Oh no. There’s never a choice.”

—

They arrive as agroup—the three of them, Naomi, Marcus, and Richard—with Marcus carrying a silver tray as wide as his chest, loaded with glasses, two oranges, a can, and a selection of bottles that contain dark liquid. When he sets the tray down, its handles are curved like shells. I recognize the glasses on the tray immediately, Richard has the same ones. I nearly laugh.

“Negronis,” Marcus says, “and anaranciatafor Lorna.”

He cracks the can, pours it into the heavy highball with diagonal etching, and drops in a few ice cubes from the sweating bucket Richard has carried out.

I take a sip of the soda; it’s sweet and bitter all at once, and it wets my dry mouth, which still hasn’t recovered from our swim.

“Have you heard from the shipping company yet?” Marcus asks me. He eyes Helen’s neck, her snakes, while he runs a bit of orange rind around the rim of a glass.

That morning, before the beach club, Marcus had asked me to start an inquiry with the shippers to locate the port of origin for the necklace. I filed it and forgot because I knew what would turn up: a small courier in Naples. No videos, no credit card receipts.

“Let me check.” I pick up my phone from the table and scroll through, trying not to stiffen as I dismiss a missed call from Stan. Marcus begins to mix drinks.

It’s there, the response to my email. It arrived only thirty minutes after I sent the inquiry, and the part of me that works for them, the assistant part of me, kicks my heart rate up a notch. I’ve slowed the system. The job of assistants—good assistants—is to expedite it. Even if the information will ultimately prove fruitless.

“Anything?” Richard asks.

He’s antsy, his eyes moving from Helen’s neck to my phone. The necklace seems to have shaken Richard-the-guru, and Richard-the-suspect is peeking out—jittery and quick-tempered.

“Yes, actually, it came in this morning.” I never lie about timing; Marcus almost always asks for things to be forwarded. “A private outfit in Naples on Via Monteoliveto. No credit card receipt.”

Helen is wearing it, I know, because they hate it. It’s a reminder of her. But they can’t say that, not with me and Freddy here, not if they want to maintain the fiction that it was an accident, a tragic mistake. I can’t help but admire it, how smoothly they pretend. It’s the only thing about them I understand: the pretending. There’s a special kind of theater to it. Only I know it will slip. It already has in the set of Marcus’s jaw, Naomi’s blown pupils, Richard’s fluttering hands.

I reach for the orange sitting on the tray. The juices have spread across the silver, staining the neat stack of cocktail napkins the housekeeper must have organized for them. I can already see it floating in my drink—the perfectly round slice, the real fruit bleeding into fake. I’m holding the knife, sawing through the flesh, when next to me Richard says:

“By the way, we’re going to join Stan on his boat for dinner.”

The knife slips.

“Fuck,” I say, pulling my bloodied thumb away from where it had been holding the fruit at its base. I stick it in my mouth, and the flavor tells me right away the cut is bad.

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