Page 47 of Saltwater

“He says we’re more likely to catch something with nets,” Sarah translated.

They had all been fishing together—in Baja and off the coast of Florida—sometimes from a boat, sometimes in the water. But that had been before. When the pretending came more easily. Now there was something about free diving with a speargun that matched the primal anger that curdled in Sarah’s stomach. The combination heady, making her feel nearly drunk in the sun with the rocking boat.

Sarah followed Richard into the water. Naomi came last, slipping over the gunwale. The first dip was bracing and briny.

The three of them swam toward the cliffs, a pod of snorkels. Sarah only paused to look back at the boat once. They were alone.

In the Med, there were no dramatic coral formations or colorful schools of fish. But there were sneakier surprises—small darts of silver and, occasionally, the shadow of something thick and menacing just outside of their vision. A tuna. A shark. Sarah kicked slowly behind Richard, letting the distance increase and allowing herself onedelicious image of something pulling him into the blue depths. To take so much, and then take even more. It would have been unconscionable to anyone but a Lingate.

Sarah loved the wildness of Capri, the gradual familiarity she had built with the island, with the villa, with the person she had become who vacationed here. Capri may have seemed civilized to the countless visitors who traversed the island every day, but it was also a wild tangle of animals and rocks. They all became a feral version of themselves here.

Sarah dropped farther back behind Naomi and Richard. She lingered where the shelf fell away into a dark trench. She let the water bounce her, soothe her. Until she heard a scream, the pitch so high it carried underwater. And when she looked toward where Naomi and Richard should have been, all she could see was a massive silver body—a bluefin tuna. Six hundred pounds. Sarah nearly mistook it for a boat, but then she saw the slice of its tail, its twitchy movements.

Her heart in her throat, she pulled around her speargun and aimed. As soon as her finger found the trigger, she released it, shooting for the broadside of the fish. The spear arced through the water, a delicate stream of bubbles following its path. But before the spear could reach its target, the tuna moved, its body sending a shock wave through the water as it slipped back into the dark of the Med.

Richard’s cry came only seconds later. The spear had missed the tuna and lodged itself into the soft tissue of his calf. He had been right there, behind the fish. She hadn’t seen him.

But hadn’t she imagined what it would be like if Richard were—suddenly, inexplicably—gone? She hadfantasizedabout it. Now he was here, in front of her, bleeding. Shemadeit happen. Sarah felt strangely calm as she watched the blood work its way through the water, get picked up by the current. She ran a hand through a thread of it.

It took Naomi’s nails pressing into her arm—a silentWhat the fuck? Help!—for her to come to. They surfaced as a group, and when Richard kicked his leg, he screamed:

“I can’t move it—I need to take it out!”

He ducked his head underwater as if to pull out the spear.

“Don’t!” Sarah called, grabbing his arm to stop him. “It’s barbed!”

She felt him jerk away, felt the accusation in his movement.

“Don’t pull it out,” she repeated, the saltwater filling her mouth in waves she kept having to spit out. If he did, it would only bleed more.

She and Naomi grabbed Richard by his armpits, one of them on each side, and began to drag him toward the boat. Their progress was slow, and Richard wouldn’t stop crying—alternating between a low whine and a whimper. As soon as they were within earshot, Naomi called:

“Aiuto! Aiuto!Help!”

Sarah watched the fisherman pull in his line and Marcus sit up, holding a hand against the sun.

“The spear—” Richard said, spitting saltwater out of his mouth now, too. “Sarah shot me!”

“There was a tuna,” Sarah said, but he wouldn’t stop.

“Sheshot me!” he repeated, his voice registering higher and higher the closer they got to the boat.

His accusatory tone calcified, reduced to something caustic. She hadn’t meant it. Dreaming about it wasn’t the same as doing it. But Richard didn’t care about distinctions like that.

“It was an accident,” Sarah said lamely. “I tried for the tuna.” But no one was listening to her.

When they reached the skiff, Sarah pulled herself in and turned to reach for one of Richard’s arms alongside Marcus. The fisherman took Richard’s waist. He slithered into the body of the boat, the spear hitting the hull with a thud. Richard cried, but didn’t touch the metal.

“Shit,” Marcus said.

Sarah could see how much blood there was now, the way it was pumping into the hull of the boat, the edges of the wound ragged and swollen with saltwater. Naomi struggled over the gunwhale.

“Oh god,” Marcus said. Then he touched the spear, an experimental hand, and Richard writhed, clutched his knee.

“Just get me the fuck out of here,” Richard said. “I need a doctor.”

The captain went to the back of the boat and began to pull on thechoke of the motor, but it coughed and refused to start. Richard looked down at his leg, the blood now staining their towels, the gear, his thigh and swim trunks. There was nothing Sarah could do for him. Nothing any of them could do.

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