Page 60 of Saltwater

But it’s Naomi. I can tell from the size and hair.

“Naomi,” I whisper.

There’s a version of this week, I know, where I might have confided in Naomi, not Stan. She’s the only one who ever tried to show me a world outside of the family. It was Naomi who advocated for me when I wanted to go to Rome. Naomi who said the driver was unnecessary. Naomi who encouraged my father to give me more freedom with Freddy. Naomi who always suggests we go instead to Sicily, Minorca, Cap Ferrat.

They always say no.

There’s an empty wineglass next to her and a handful of loose pills scattered in the direction of the lamp on the marble surface of the side table. I scoop them up—half are small and oblong, the others round like aspirin—and slip them into a glass that I set on the bar cart, tucked behind the rarely used bitters and mixers. If I leave them in the trash, she’ll find them, and if I flush them and she genuinely needs them, it will be impossible to explain myself. Best, I think, to set them aside for now. Best, I think, to talk about her growing dependence on them at home. Where it’s safe.

She’s breathing steadily, like she has slipped into the kind of sleep that will allow her to stay awake all night. The kind of sleep everyone on this island needs.

On a sailing trip in Greece two years ago, I tried to ask Naomi about the week my mother died. She was more lucid that day; there were no pills, just glasses of wine. But when she started to talk to me about it, her eyes welled up so quickly that I changed the subject. I patted her hand. I didn’t want to causeherdistress. I had been trained not to causeany of themdistress.

“Your uncle isn’t always an easy man to live with,” she said. “Yourfather knows that, too. But that was the hardest week of my life. Of our lives.” And then she laughed, wiping her fingers under her eyes. “But we’re stronger now. All of us. It’s strange, but we’re closer.”

They’d been together so long; she’d been a part ofour familyfor so long. We left it at that. Capri is always hard on Naomi. Life, sometimes, seems hard on Naomi. I don’t begrudge her the pills.

I check the rest of the house for my family but can’t find my father or uncle. I slip into the garden and see Freddy and Ciro seated around a table by the pool, Freddy’s swim trunks slicked to his legs like he just hoisted himself out of the water. Ciro, finishing a small white cup of espresso. The unwelcome sight of the two of them together temporarily replaces Lorna’s body in my mind. But it comes back, uninvited.Click.I hear the sound of her body slapping against the hull.

The housekeeper adjusts the tilt of the umbrella above them to make the shade deeper. She squeezes Ciro’s arm before she leaves, and I follow the gesture to his hand. I want to grab it and see how ragged the edges of the cut are. But I can’t. Not with Freddy here.

I join them and ask: “Have you seen my father?”

There’s a moment in which Freddy is swallowing his champagne and it seems to catch in his throat, like he doesn’t want to tell me something, but the moment passes.

“They went out,” Freddy says. “Apparently Bud Smidge is on the island.”

Bud, the family lawyer. It must have been Bud who supplied the cash two nights ago. Bud who they called when the necklace arrived. Bud who is now on hand for the cleanup.

I sit down in a chair across from the two of them, and the housekeeper offers me a glass for champagne but I wave her off.

“Have you seen the paper yet?” Freddy asks, sipping.

“No,” I say.

He nods.

Ciro looks at me, and I feel like he’s trying to tell me something, only I’m not sure I want to know what it is. Both of them are vibrating with some news I don’t know. And I can’t help it, my first thought is that they’ve been talking about me. That in so doing they mighthave learned they have me in common. Maybe it would be easier if they had. It’s difficult, after all, to constantly skirt disaster. It makes you long for the moment when it finally happens. And right now seems like the moment for awful things.

Ciro stands and walks to a sideboard that sits in the shade under an awning. He picks up the paper and brings it back to me.

“Fourth page,” he says.

When I don’t open it, Freddy says:

“I think you should.”

But I don’t want to look. I imagine the news of Lorna’s death splashed across the insides of the paper. The thought of it in print reminds me of my mother. All the articles, the never-ending beat of set type, speculation, death. My fingers play at the edges, and Freddy takes the paper from me, opens it, folds it, and sets it back down in front of me. I scan the headlines for Lorna’s name but see nothing. It’s too soon.

Finally, Ciro points at a small block of copy in the corner. And I can see it on his palm, the place where the cut has scabbed over.

I can’t even finish the headline—Investigation into Sarah Lingate’s Death Reopened—before I realize they must have pushed for this placement, my father and uncle. Because otherwise it would have been on the front page, above the fold.They knew.They knew it was coming. They still have chits left to call in. I push the paper away, but I can’t hear the way it slides across the glass table, or the birds, or even the music from the marina, I can’t hear it because I feel as if I am underwater. Everything thick and cottony.

Click.I see Lorna’s body tangled in the net.

Click.My mother’s face in black and white.

Click.Ciro’s hand.

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