Page 93 of Saltwater

But it gnaws at me: Does he know?

Most brothers—mostfamilies—would fall apart over something like that. Instead, I can see mine closing ranks. If my father found out about Marcus and my mother, he would have forced himself to live with it. To bury it. Killing her would have only brought more attention. More scandal.

But if he doesn’t know—

If he doesn’t, it’s because it might be the one thing Marcus knew he wouldn’t forgive. Which made my mother a liability to my father, mybiologicalfather. My uncle always knew that I was evidence, that the play was evidence. Which means I can use both to push them apart. They’re only strong as long as they stick together.

Maybe it was this that Lorna found out—how to destroy the family from the inside.

—

“Your family looks alot alike,” Lorna once said to me.

She had stopped by my father’s house to drop something off and ended up staying. I could feel it on her, her curiosity. I had learned to spot it in childhood. The way friends’ eyes would begin to roam around the topography of the house, as if constructing a map for future use.

“I saw the photo in the study,” she said by way of explanation.

It was one of the few photos of my mother that my father kept in the communal rooms—six of them on the island a few days before it happened.

“Even your mother looks a little like a Lingate. Don’t you think?”

I knew what she meant. There had always been something uncomfortable about that photo. It had a cultlike quality to it. All their faces pulled in wide, open smiles.Join us. Even Stan and Renata in the background seemed to look like them. It was a photograph that had a magical ability to pool everyone’s features together into a uniform aggregate.

“Maybe that’s why he chose her,” I said to Lorna.

I meant it as a joke, but there was some part of me that wondered if it wasn’t true. They were, after all, the kind of people who spent a great deal of time worrying about things likebloodlinesandlegacies.My grandfather had been one of them. It was, I knew, how they approached me.

“Is the other woman in the photo your aunt?” Lorna asked.

“No. My mother was an only child.”

Lorna sipped the glass of water I had poured for her and didn’t say anything.

“That’s the worst part of it,” I finally said to her, breaking the silence in the kitchen. “No matter how much distance I get from them, I’m always going to see them when I look in the mirror.”

—

I catch my reflectionin the window of Chanel and look away. I can’t unsee what Naomi has told me about my parentage. And now I can feel her suspicion infecting me too. Like a contagion. I think of Lorna cashing my uncle’s check. Of Stan’s comments on the yacht. Of the grayscale photo the police brought. Of the pregnancy.

It would be so clichéd to kill your mistress.

It’s so much easier to get away with if you only do it once.Isn’t that what the carabiniere had said?

I hear Freddy, too:No, you barely know her.But he’s wrong—Iambeginning to know her. I only hope I’m not too late.

I pass the patio of the Quisisana Hotel, where a handful of women sit under exquisitely woven straw hats, huge ribbons anchoring them in place.

“Helen!”

There are too many people on the patio for me to see who’s calling. And I don’t want to stop and make small talk, so I pretend I haven’t heard anything. I continue on, past a group of kids—teenagers, really—all of whom are on their phones.

“Helen!”

I recognize the voice but keep walking. Stan’s footsteps echo behind me—he jogs to catch up. I lengthen my stride as much as I can without looking like I’m doing it on purpose. Ahead of me is the split where I tack right, back to the villa.

“Helen, wait.”

I’m sure it usually works, that tone. But I keep moving.

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