Page 63 of Saltwater

“Wonderful idea.” Richard didn’t look up from his plate, only sawed at the white asparagus, the flaky halibut. “But I don’t think you should accept anything long term.”

Sarah waited for him to tell her that he was already planning their return to New York, but instead he said:

“With our travel schedule, you know, Capri, Aspen, Lech”—he waved his hand, the fork still in it—“you wouldn’t want something that you feel obligated to, right?”

But Sarah missed being obligated to things. Desperately.

“They haven’t offered me anything yet.” She kept it light, laughter in her voice.

“Right, but you have to admit it’s kind of nice not having to worry about work anymore.”

Sarah didn’t say anything, because it was complicated—there wasn’t any work for her to go back to. She’d extracted herself from every commitment for Richard. She’d declined every opportunity. In the meantime, she feared her skills had grown rusty and her brain spongy. Shewantedto work, to be needed, but life as a Lingate had nearly convinced her she couldn’t. That she no longer knew how.

“It’s just a meeting,” Marcus said.

At the meeting, the chair of the USC theater department asked her to come back and talk with students, to give a guest lecture, to do some small things, tosee how it went.Afterward, the chair had shaken Marcus’s hand and told him how glad he was that Marcus had let him knowa luminary of contemporary theaterwas in town.

Marcus smiled. “I’m afraid my brother has been keeping her a secret,” he said.

“You won’t be a secret for long,” the chair said to Sarah.

After the meeting, she felt flushed and realized the feeling was hope. She and Marcus descended a set of stairs and walked out onto the flat, grassy campus of USC, crisscrossed with concrete pathways. And as they walked, their shoulders kept rubbing together, as if their bodies were magnetized.

She didn’t try to pull away.

“Thank you for that,” she said, looking up at Marcus.

She had noticed it before, but now she was reminded of how attractive Marcus was. How easily he seemed to exist in the world, in a way that could be attributed to money, but more so to an expansiveness Richard seemed to lack. Or lacked here. Marcus swung an arm around her shoulders.

He led her under a long, darkened loggia. It was empty, and their footsteps echoed off the walls. He stopped in the deepest shade and said, “I don’t think you’ll be going back to the life you had. There willbe too much for him to do here when our father dies. We aren’t the kind of family that you can just leave. So maybe this is a way—”

He looked down at her with a sad smile. He squeezed her close for only a moment before letting go. But she kept her body there, next to his. Sarah liked the way he waited for her reactions, the way he watched her. He was the only one, she thought, in all of Los Angeles who had been paying attention. He brushed some of the hair out of her eyes, tucked it behind her ear. “I think you should find something here that you’re passionate about. A way to occupy your time. It will get easier,” he said. “You just need to find your place.”

He was almost a foot taller, and when she looked up at him—his big, broad, easy face—she couldn’t fight the impulse. She rocked up on her toes and kissed him. Just a light brush of her lips on his. A thank-you, an invitation, a mistake. She didn’t know.

And then, after her feet were back on the ground, he reached a hand behind the back of her neck and kissed her again.

Only this time, there was no mistake.

—

Somewhere around eight,the crowd on the Piazzetta shifted. Sarah and Marcus had outlasted the afternoon coffees and tourists gathered to gawk and were now joined by people who would spend the night on the island. People who had slipped out of their villas and off their sailboats to dip into their first aperitif of the evening—the scents tangy and fruity and distinctive.

Sarah ordered them both Campari and sodas before Marcus could object.

“We need to go back soon,” he said. “The party—”

“It’s not till ten,” she said, pushing a glass at him. That, and she wanted to spend as little time with Richard as possible. They would leave on Monday, and she could spend tomorrow in the flurry of packing and folding and preparing.

“You know,” he said, “I still don’t know what the play was about. I have no idea what Richard found so objectionable.”

Sarah laughed. “You didn’t read it?”

He shrugged. “I let the attorneys do the reading.”

“Just like Richard, then. I don’t even think he managed to finish it.” Sarah paused. “It was about a family,” she finally said.

“Our family?”

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