Page 80 of Saltwater

I am desperate for things that are real right now. Even if I always feared this. That the hallmarks on the back might have been faked. That this is one more cruel joke to add to the list—anonymous callers claiming to be my mother, ransom letters twenty years later, so-called secret letters written by my mother to her lover. Only this hoax pushed my family—pushedme—to extreme measures. It isn’t just the weight of the necklace I feel in that moment, it’s Lorna’s death.

Freddy can tell the tone of the appointment has shifted. He transitions into a lightly worn pout. He wants to talk about rings, not necklaces. And I wonder if I should let him, if I should just give in, let myself float along with the current that seems to buoy my family. It’s what, I realize, Naomi has always done.

I won’t let it happen to me, too.

Tomasso nods and passes me back the necklace, begins to collect the loose stones on the table and return them to their miniature cubbies. When he gets to the ring he has just brought out, he holds it up to me.

“You like antique?” he says. And then he points at the necklace.“Antica.”

“It’s just a fake,” I say. “A copy.”

He shrugs.

“Forse ma,it’s old.Antica.”

That might make it worse, that someone has found and sent me an old replica of my mother’s necklace. That theysought it out.

“Here,” he says, holding out his hands for the necklace. “Pinchbeck,” he says.

I have no idea what he means bypinchbeck,but I pass it back to him. He flips it over and opens the collar, reveals its clasp. Then he points a craggy finger to a cluster of markings where a faded star is visible.

“It was…” He makes a gesture with his hand, as if he’s running the Italian words through a rock tumbler, waiting until they polish into English. “A reproduction,” he finally settles on. “But”—he holds up his hand—“from the 1800s. Old,” he reiterates.

Antica.

Even so, he’s right—it isn’t the genuine article.

I nod, slip the necklace back into my bag; he scribbles the wordpinchbeckonto a notepad for me and pats my hand. It feels like an apology for the fact we’re not leaving with a ring.

Helen

Now

When we get back tothe villa, I can hear their voices from the street. They are high-pitched, strained. I hear my father say, in protest: “You can clearly see that isn’t me! Look at the hair! Look at the build. There’s no way you can think this is me.”

We find them clustered in the foyer, where the oversize floral arrangement, filled with dusky green olive branches and pink peonies, is at odds with the mood of the room. But several of the flowers have begun to wilt, their petals wrinkling and decaying, dragging pollen across the marble table. My father holds a piece of paper in his hands. I can only make out the gray scale, nothing else. Whatever it depicts is out of focus.

The officer who led the questioning yesterday is now flanked by two new carabinieri, who are more formally dressed. There are no shirtsleeves anymore, only handcuffs and starched, thick uniforms, despite the heat. They stand with their hands clasped behind their backs.

“I told you,” my uncle says, “we have nothing to say without our attorney present.”

My father passes the photograph back to the officer, who hands it to Freddy.

“Is this familiar to you?” the officer says.

I look over his shoulder while he reviews the image on the piece of paper—it’s grainy, taken at a distance, but it shows Lorna, her armswrapped around her body, and a man walking alongside her. He’s gesturing, his hands open in front of them. But the faces are scrubbed, even the shape of the heads—it’s only Lorna’s legs that give her away, long and limber.

“What is it?” Freddy says.

He’s good at this.

The officer is impatient. He points a finger at Lorna, then at the man. “This,” he says, “is security footage from a bank in the Marina Grande. From the night she died. You can see that she is walking with a man.” The officer gestures around the foyer to include everyone present, except for Naomi and me. “Does he look familiar to you?”

The man wears a collared shirt and shorts. Loafers. But they all do. Someone must have photos from that night. Giulia or Sasha. Maybe Martina. I think of the crowds clustered around the dance floor, the flash of the cameras in the darkness. Somewhere there is a record of the man who wore this outfit. Unless, of course, it isn’t someone from the club at all, but a stranger.

“I’m sorry,” Freddy says, passing the photo back to the officer. “Do you have any other footage? Maybe if we could see another angle—”

Am I imagining it, or is there an edge in his voice? A sliver of concern slithers from my wrists to the back of my neck and coils itself there. He’s asking if there’s another angle to reassure himself they don’t have it.

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