Page 56 of Saltwater

I think aboutSaltwater,about the kind of people my mother knew my family to be. And I realize with a sense of certainty that everyone else has been right about my family, and I—I am the one who has been wrong.

Lorna

Hours before Lorna’s disappearance:1

It’s strange you can’t hearit on the street, Anema e Core, because inside the club, it’s impossible to hear anything else. The music is so loud that it thrums through me, straight down my esophagus, like I’ve swallowed it whole.

But then, you don’t need to hear in here. The bottle service comes without having to ask. There are sparklers that seem like they might catch the filmy thin dresses on fire. All of us are sweating and swaying, and Helen and Freddy are working their way through a second bottle of vodka that I never even saw someone order.

Anema e Core is the kind of place that has made a business out of anticipating desire.

On the dance floor, bodies move with impossible speed in the dim light—arms lifted overhead, hips grinding, chests heaving. Sasha, Martina, and Giulia are out there somewhere—without Stan, I hope, for their sake. But he’s here, somewhere. Circling.

This is the night we planned for. It’s arrived on a platter—the drinking, the late hour, the crowds. But I can’t get Helen’s texting out of my mind. I can’t separate her from her last name, her family. From the reality that people like her don’t think twice about fucking over someone like me. Even with the exit in sight, I feel trapped.

The band plays a song Freddy knows and he sings it, at the top of his voice, his cheeks flushed, and I try to remind myself she isn’t likehim.

It’s almost three in the morning. Naomi, Marcus, and Richard left after we finished the first bottle of champagne. Marcus nodded at me when they left; he’ll be back with the money soon.

“Let’s dance,” Freddy says. He grabs Helen’s wrist, and I watch them make their way to the center of the scrum.

Thirty minutes ago, I watched him do a bump out in the open, between bottle girls. Now Freddy says:You’re gorgeous.I can’t hear him, but I can read his lips. As he says the wordgorgeous,he falls to his knees. It’s ridiculous, but Helen loves it. They’re drunk.

It makes me nervous how drunk she is, because it only means one thing: she’s nervous, too.

Somehow, the room gets smokier, more sparklers, more hash, more cigarettes. But the dancing doesn’t let up. Song after song, Helen and Freddy keep at it. I’m thinking of getting some fresh air when Marcus texts me:I’m on my way back.Simultaneously, Helen checks her phone and walks away from the dance floor, toward the back of the club. Freddy, in ecstasy, fills her absence with other bodies. I can’t help it, I see him as he once was, addicted, partying, absorbing the adulation of dozens of girls who knew his father led one of the largest hedge funds in town.

I was one of them once.

It all feels too familiar—this life, these people, Stan in the shadows. I stand and make my way to the back of the club, passing knots of celebrities. People I recognize. People Freddy held up a hand to, kissed cheeks with, when we entered. I can’t quite make them out through the heat and the haze, and I bet they love that.

Capri is funny that way—a place you come to be seen and a place you come to disappear. So many big names around that you can slip into the background if you want to, or push yourself to the front. Armloads of bags from Hermès or Gucci. Secluded villas or front row on the Piazzetta. Every day a different set of options.

I want to stop and stare—who wouldn’t?—but I keep moving, looking for Helen’s blond hair, her brilliant smile. But when I see her, I don’t understand what’s going on. She’s in the shadows of the club, her body pressed up against a man in a white T-shirt and loose,brightly colored shorts. His skin is tan, and when he looks up, I recognize him immediately from the boat.

Ciro.

I take two steps in her direction. But then I pause. I watch Helen tilt her chin up, and when she does, Ciro grabs the side of her face, his thumb pressed into the satisfying fatty hollow below her cheekbone. Then he kisses her. Her hands are on his face, in his hair. Arms wrapped around his back. If she could pull him into her, she would.

I look at the dance floor, but even if Freddy were looking straight at them, it’s too hazy for him to see what’s going on. And too late for me to understand what this means for us.

It’s all bravado,she told me about Ciro.It’s a bad joke,she said to him.

It would have stayed a joke if I had just listened to her, trusted her. But then, she never told me about Ciro. And it’s startling, the realization that I am not the only one with secrets. That neither of us has fully trusted the other. That she might have a fallback. Like me. I’m as impressed as I am alarmed.

When Helen and Ciro come up for air, I head in the opposite direction, away from Freddy, away from the celebrities and the girls trying to get picked up. I duck into the bathroom, or try to, but the line is out the door.

“Scusa!”calls out the girl at the front of the line, but I hold up my hand.

She’s seen this emergency before.

I push through, desperate to splash water on my face, run it across my wrists. To figure out what all this means for me. I still have Stan. I still have money coming. I think about Martina, Giulia, and Sasha. I still have options. At the sink, I realize I’m gripping the edge of the basin so tightly that my thumb has begun to bleed through its stitches. A little tendril of blood, oozing across the porcelain, mixing with the water, turning it pink.

“Oh fuck, Lorna.”

Helen has come up behind me, and she passes me a fistful of paper towels.

“Did you pop a stitch?”

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