Page 72 of Saltwater

“I’m so sorry,” she said to the women, “I’ll be right back.” She followed Richard, who walked to the edge of the roof. Sarah noticed that here, the limp was gone. It was a reminder only for her.

When Richard turned to face her, he was flushed. Sarah braced herself for a torrent of words, but instead she heard Stan asking:

“Is everything okay?”

He had trailed them. Stan had an uncanny way of tracking her at parties. Sarah noticed how his eyes followed her. Richard made fun of him for this. For how obvious it was.

“Everything is fine,” Sarah said. She squeezed his arm. “Right, Richard?”

Stan looked between the two of them, unconvinced. Eventually, he nodded, left them alone. But Sarah could see him lurking only a few feet away, in case she was lying.

“We were just talking,” she said to her husband, her voice low.

She was already thinking about calling her agent, if she still had one. About how long it would take to get something into production. About how she might reworkSaltwaterand still use it. She could write something entirely new if she had to. She hadoptions.

The relief was immediate.

Options.

Richard rubbed the back of his neck. He held up his hands.

“Look. I get that things are bad between us, but when we go home, we can work on it. We can work onus.I know I haven’t said it, but I’m sorry. Isn’t that what you want to hear? I’m sorry. I overreacted. To the play, to everything. I’m just trying to protect Helen. It’s her name, too. I don’t think you realize how much you’re jeopardizing. You just don’t.”

He had to know it was too late, that he had gone too far, but she hesitated. Because they were still there—the filtered scenes of their life together. The day Helen was born, the three of them clustered around the table in the house, strewn with papers and baby food and plans, the two of them lying together in bed, listening to the chorus of crickets, a half-read book tented on Richard’s chest. Like all marriages, theirs had been happy once.

“Let’s talk about this later,” Sarah said.

She looked over his shoulder to make sure the women were still there.

“All right,” he said. “How about after dinner? I mean it. Sarah, we can fix this.”

Before Sarah could tell him that wasn’t the kind of conversation she wanted to have, the director of the Ronchi Foundation began to clink a knife against his wineglass. Would they all be seated for dinner?

—

After four courses, Sarahfound herself knotted into a group walking back to the town of Capri. Everyone, it seemed, was on the island that week: old school friends and business acquaintances, ex-wives and future mistresses, the professional hanger-on and occasional artistic luminary. People kept joining them for a few minutes before peeling off, heading to a private party at a villa, a yacht, a bar for a nightcap.

When they reached the Piazzetta, the group stalled. Sarah stayed on the fringes. She kissed half a dozen cheeks a dozen times goodbye. She wished it were that easy with Richard. He was there, too. Watching her.

Let’s talk about this later.

She could see it: both of them up all night at the villa, dissecting every aspect of their marriage, of her career. No. On the walk back, she had decided, she wouldn’t go home. She would go to the gardens near the Villa Jovis, where a scrubby little hillside took in the sweep of the Italian coastline. There, she would wait. Wait for the sun to come up, wait for them to leave, wait for her life—the next act, at least—to begin.

There was nothing to talk about. He’d said it all already.

When another large group walked through the Piazzetta, she tucked herself into it and left without a word. She must have been walking for ten minutes when she noticed Richard was behind her. By then, she had worked her way up into the empty, rural streets of the island, where fields of tomatoes and heads of lettuce grew, where they looked like brambles in the moonlight.

Let him follow.

Sarah reached a low point in the stone wall that ringed the gardens and pulled her dress up so she could climb over. The gardens were locked at night, but four years ago, Richard had shown her how to break in. It wasn’t even really a transgression, climbing up the short wall, and Sarah half hoped to find people there, enjoying the way the soft orange cloud of light spread out from the mainland.

“Wait—” Richard called from behind her, but she didn’t. She heard him trot the last few steps to the wall, before the sound of his shoes on the dry pine needles followed. “Sarah,” he tried again.

“Your leg must be feeling better,” she said, slowing.

“The pain medication,” he offered.

Sarah didn’t say anything.

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