Page 95 of Saltwater

“Almost back to the villa,” I say.

“I’ve just heard from my friend,” Ciro says. “He thinks they might be close to an arrest. They’re waiting on some documentation from a source. For your mother, not Lorna. He wouldn’t tell me who.”

I don’t say anything, and into the silence Ciro says: “You aren’t surprised.”

It’s the first time since we arrived on the island that I finally feel like I am ahead of them—my family, Lorna, even Ciro. The sensation is quick and flooding: it’s the control I’ve been missing. I’ve waited decades for this feeling. It’s taken me years, but I’ve finally realized this is what it means to be a Lingate—the pursuit of self-preservation above all else.

“I wanted to be sure you knew,” Ciro says. “They’re moving quickly.”

I hope he’s right. I hold the phone to my ear and push through the last of the crowds. It would be best, I know, if they arrive tonight. After I’ve set our secrets loose. They’ll be there in time for the fallout.

“Thank you,” I say. I mean it.

“My mother will be at the Gallo Lungo event tonight, working,” Ciro says. “I don’t think she knows your family will be coming. But she’s there if you need her—”

I think of Renata sayingThey lie.She must have known.

“I hope they come tonight. Can you tell your friend that? That tonight would be best?”

Public,I want to say, but I don’t.

“They’re working as quickly as they can.”

I nod, even though he can’t see me.That’s good.

I realize that it’s the golden hour on Capri. The moment when the sun starts to set and the shadows work like fingers through the creeping vines and cacti. The Mediterranean no longer blue, but gold, and I wonder how anyone could be so ugly in the face of such beauty.

I’m about to find out.

But as I come closer to the villa, I see Freddy working his way uphill.

“I have to go,” I say to Ciro, and drop my phone from my ear.

When he gets closer to me, I realize Freddy’s fully packed, lugging not only his carry-on but a duffel as well. He’s leaving. He tries to shoulder past me without talking, but I reach for his arm.

“Freddy—”

“I’ll be at the Quisisana,” he says.

So it’s a hotel, not a departure. It’s for the best that he won’t be with us tonight.

“Okay,” I say.

I want to say more in that moment. To give him assurances. To tell him I’m sorry. Even to assuage his fears about Lorna and the baby and the police, but I can’t find it in me. Maybe I don’t want to.

When I don’t, though, I can see his disappointment. He shifts the weight of the duffel to the other arm and gives me a look that tells me he expected this. It still seems unfair the way he’s treating his infidelity like it’s more acceptable than my own. But then, Lorna used to always say men take rejection worse than women.

They kill over it.

There has been so much rejection when it comes to my mother, to Lorna. I still don’t know whose confession I should believe—my father’s, Freddy’s, Naomi’s, or Stan’s—but I’ve decided to trust my mother’s words above all else. It’s her legacy, after all. The one thing she left me. The one thing my uncle, it seems, didn’t want me to see.

“You should hurry,” he says, nodding back at the villa. “They’re all ready to go. They’re waiting on you. No one wants to be late for cocktail hour on the private island, do they?”

Helen

Now

We are at sea. Lurchinghalfway between Capri and Li Galli, the small archipelago of rocks that are thrown, like a handful of scattered seeds, between the shores of Capri and Positano. The atmosphere on the boat—full of friends and acquaintances, and even a few enemies, of Werner Leipling—is buoyant.

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