Page 44 of Saltwater

I’m gripped by the inexplicable urge to tell her it’s mine, that Lorna was holding on to it for me. But I can tell that even if I said it, she wouldn’t believe me.

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We’ve picked the bodyof the fish clean; only its unseeing eyes and translucent bones remain. The whole table looks like a still life of expired excess. A reminder of our own mortality.

My uncle pours more wine. He’s like Bacchus, pouring, pouring, pouring, all of us sloshing around in this big sea of liquid. An elixir. A poison. I’ve drunk so much I’m not sure I can tell the difference anymore. They have, too. Concerns about Lorna and the money blunted by the booze and a reassuring conversation with the family attorney earlier.

No one has heard from Lorna, not Marcus or my father. But still, they’re sitting here drinking, laughing. Marcus’s arm draped languorously over Naomi’s chair, my father smoking a Gauloise. None of them seem to feel any sense of urgency. Ten million in the wind and zero cares. About the money. About her.

Before we sat down to dinner, I cornered my father in the kitchen.

“I think we should call the police.” I searched his face as I said it, trying to tell him without words that I might do it myself if they didn’t take this seriously.

“We have people looking into it,” my father said. He didn’t elaborate. “We don’t need the police, Helen.”

He reached toward me, his hand suspended in the air before it came to rest on my shoulder, but only for a second. He withdrew it.As if he realized a moment too late that the gesture was a mistake, made by a foreign limb he couldn’t control.

“Please be patient,” he said. “And in the meantime, let’s keep this to ourselves.”

“Of course,” I said.

“And, Helen?” He paused. “Could you please stop wearing that necklace?”

I am wearing it now. At dinner.

“I saw Werner today,” my uncle says, “ran into him on the patio in front of the Quisisana. He’s invited us to Li Galli. Apparently he restored Massine’s theater there? They’re hosting some production. I don’t remember the name. A ballet, maybe?” He waves a hand, like all private islands are the same, all ballets, too.

Freddy squeezes my shoulder and whispers in my ear: “I’m sure she’s fine.”

And when he saysfine,it feels like there’s an electrical current running along the surface of my skin. Like I’m becoming a conduit for some spectacular lie.It’s fine.She’s fine.Even though he doesn’t have a clue.

The night is loud—full of insects and music and the sound of people finishing dinner at the restaurants up the hill from our villa. I can even hear the water slapping against the boats anchored in the marina. And I know why my skin is electric—I’m being haunted. The necklace, the drone of conversation, the abundance of wine. It must have been just like this, thirty years ago. The same conversation. The same table. Did they wait to call the police for my mother? Worried, like they are now, that the ripples from such a call—the energy—might fly into the night and come back to shock them?

For a minute, I see Renata, Ciro’s mother, making her way from the house across the garden. And then she’s gone. The flicker, so quick, so terrifying, that I start to worry I’m incapable of seeing anyone for who they are.

“Let’s give it until tomorrow,” Freddy says, laying a hand on my arm. “Maybe she’s fallen in love.”

Can he feel the current?

“So what do you think?” my uncle asks.

“About?” Naomi weaves in her chair, enough that her earrings knock gently against her neck.

“Li Galli.Should we go?”

“What are Li Galli?” Freddy asks. But no one answers him.

“Why not?” my father says.

He lets Marcus do most of the talking, but now that he’s come to life, there’s a casualness in his voice that makes me uncomfortable. He’s confident we’ll resolve theLorna problemquickly, out of public view. After all, it would be impossible to go to a place like Li Galli—Capri’s famed private archipelago of rocks—or accept an invite from someone like Werner with news about Lorna in the press.

In fact, the confidence feels outsize. More than an attorney might be capable of instilling. Like heknowswhere she is. Like they all do. I replay the contents of Lorna’s carry-on—receipts, cords—and realize what wasn’t there: her laptop.

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” I say, standing from the table. I walk away before anyone can stop me.

Inside the villa, I take the stairs to Lorna’s room. I sit down next to her carry-on, which I had carefully repacked. And there, inside, is her computer. I don’t even need to power it on. Once opened, it takes me directly to her desktop. No password protection. It’s unusual for a work computer, the laptop issued, I know, by my uncle. But even more unusual is the fact that the entire desktop is empty. No files, no folders. When I click into her inbox, everything has been deleted. Every application I open is empty.

Recently opened—blank.

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