Page 85 of Saltwater

“I followed her,” Richard said. “But she kept getting ahead of me. Almost like she was trying to lose me. I kept trying to run to keep up. But—”

Richard took a ragged breath, a sip of something. Scotch, probably.

Then Richard’s voice was closer to Naomi.

“You don’t think she can hear us, do you?”

“She’s blacked out,” Marcus replied. “If I carry her upstairs, that’s only more likely to wake her up. Stop being so paranoid. We need to take care of this now. Before morning.”

“Okay.” Another ragged breath. Another sip. “I finally caught up to her. On the stretch of road up to the Villa Jovis. She climbed over the wall into the Parco Astarita—that little garden below the villa, the one that’s just a hill and a few viewing platforms. Without thinking, I hopped over the wall, too. I just wanted to talk to her. To tell her it was just about protecting the family. It wasn’t about being jealous of her. And I—I finally caught up to her. She told me that she didn’t want to talk. She told me that she wanted a divorce. And then—”

There was silence. Naomi forced herself to keep the same wheeze going, the same steady breath that was getting harder and harder to hold on to.

“And then I don’t know how it happened. It seemed like she understood what the divorce would mean. Why the play was so bad. I couldn’t let her leave. Not like that. I just wanted to get the upper hand, I wanted to—”

Someone put something down on the bar cart. A bottle, maybe. Bigger than a glass. There was a muffled sound—swallowing, but the drink snagged in the throat. One of them coughed.

Someone else took a breath. Marcus, she assumed, because he said: “What did you do, Richard?”

She knew that tone. Steady but cold, the same way he had talked to his own father when they fought. A voice that gave no quarter.

In the silence, Naomi could see it. Sarah, the shadows of the stone pines, the light from the moon, the night quiet save for their footsteps on the soft bed of pine needles, her body in that red dress.

“She kept insisting it was over. That she wanted a divorce,” Richard said. “You know we can’t do that. Youknow it.I started to panic. And I pushed her. Or she fell. I—I—don’t know.”

He was trying to tell the story. Really, he was. But Naomi knew he would never finish. He wouldn’t have to. Marcus would take overnow. Richard had always been the weak one. Their father had been right about that, at least.

“And you left her body there?” Marcus asked.

“I—I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe someone would find her and think it was a robbery or something.”

“So you took her jewelry?”

There was silence. Hehadn’ttaken her jewelry. She could see him running. Looking over his shoulder the whole way home, slipping into a doorway as a group of drunks passed him, in an attempt to look casual when he had to walk a handful of steps down the still-busy Via Tragara. He had forgotten the jewelry.The idiot.

“No,” he finally said. “I didn’t.”

Marcus said nothing, but there was the sound of a body slumping against the back of a chair.

“Another mess for me, then, isn’t it?”

Naomi couldn’t help but sense some relief in Marcus. It was over. The drama with Sarah was over. Even if Marcus needed to clean up after Richard, at least this was the end.

“It was a mistake,” Richard said. “Can’t we just say that? It’s the truth.”

Marcus laughed, thin and hard.

“Can’t we just tell the police that you accidentally killed your wife because she wanted a divorce? No, Richard. We cannot tell them that.”

“It’s worse than that, and you know it! It’s not just the divorce, Marcus. Youknowthat.”

“First thing in the morning,” Marcus said, “we will call our attorney and get his advice. But tonight, we call no one. We were at a party. Everyone drank a lot. People enjoyed themselves—”

“But our friends,” Richard said. “They saw Sarah and me together. They watched me follow her.”

“They didn’t witness a murder. Let them tell their side of the story. They also saw how much Sarah drank. Why she might be inclined to wander off into the night alone, right? You need to remember from now on it’s going to be about controlling the narrative wetell.”

Naomi tried to think back to the party, to how much they had drunk. But the early evening seemed so far away, as if it were months ago.

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