Page 7 of Saltwater

“Nothing. Let him wait.”

He’s asking about Sarah.He’s going to do more than ask, Marcus. It’s going to get worse.

I smiled. “Okay. Do you need anything else?”

“No. Thank you. In about fifteen minutes, please tell Stan I need to reschedule.”

Fuck.

“Great. I’ll let him go in fifteen.”

“Thank you, Lorna.” Marcus looked up at me before turning to his phone, tapping it, holding it to his ear.

Fifteen minutes later, I let Stan loose.

“He’s very sorry it didn’t work out today,” I said, walking him to the building exit.

“The fuck he is.”

“He asked if there was a time when we might be able to reschedule?”

“I’m not coming back here. Are you insane? Who needs his money anyway? Tell himIwas looking out forhim.Not the other way around.”

He slammed his way out onto the street. But he was wrong: he did come back.

He couldn’t let them get away with it.

—

We’re off the centralpedestrian street now, on the Via Marino Occhio, a narrow alley that winds precipitously toward the back of the island. Below us is the Marina Piccola. The ferries don’t dock on this side, only yachts do. The crowds are also gone, their chatter replaced by birdsong and a pulsing beat echoing off the water.

It’s only a few minutes of walking before we reach the villa. I recognize it instantly, like I’ve always known it—its Moorish parapet and lush gardens reproduced hundreds of times in magazines and newspapers. A friend of the family, a nameless European aristo who used to pal around with Richard and Marcus’s father, owns the property. But even though it’s not theirs, it will always only be associated with them. With her.

It makes sense now, why they keep coming back. Even though she died here, her body raking the cliffs as she fell. The wooden door that faces the street—a gate, really—is pushed open, and I see the house: white stucco with dark green shutters and rounded archways inlaid with Islamic tile. Curved balconies that face the Mediterranean, dripping with bougainvillea and decorated with intricate latticework. The entrance to the house is a long, columned allée, flanked by stone pines that smell toasted and sharp against the backdrop of fig.

And then the gate swings closed behind us.

I don’t expect it, but a tightness lodges behind my sternum. Spreads to my throat and stomach. Wraps around my sides like a snake, constricting inch by inch.

Helen touches me and I startle. It’s just a hand on my arm. Does she feel it? I try to put her at ease: I smile, I breathe in a way that might loosen the tightness, I keep moving. And with every step, I ignore the voice that whispers:Run.

Helen

Now

Lorna is gone.

Even so, I expect to see her in the hallway or on the stairs. I imagine her waking up in Naples, catching a ferry. Ciro will know. I rub my fingers across my elbow, feel the callused skin.She’ll be back,I tell myself.She didn’t leave me.

Only there’s that familiar embarrassment, like a flush that spreads through my body. An allergic reaction to the truth. I am a fool.

You can only trust the family,my father used to whisper to me. Back when journalists and photographers stalked the house. It was always his mantra:Family, family, family.If other children took two steps back when they saw me walking through the hallway, I would repeat the word to myself:family.

People love to see a family like ours turn against itself, don’t they?my father would say. Then he would wait for me to answer:Yes.

He wasn’t wrong.

But Lorna was different. She understood what it was like to have a family narrative inscribed on your body, a set of invisible instructions you couldn’t disobey.

---