Page 102 of Saltwater

Marcus looks between the two of us. He takes the pages from my father. Cradles them, almost. And I wonder if my father isn’t the only one who has spent the last thirty years in mourning.

“It’s true,” Marcus says.

“Why didn’t you just get rid of this?” my father says. It comes out like a whine. If only Marcus had thrown the pages away, there would be no evidence, no need to confront the truth. For me. For them.

“I couldn’t.” He shrugs. “I wanted to keep a piece of her.”

“Didn’t you already have one?” Naomi says, her voice milky.

It’s impossible to know how long she has been there, listening, but she emerges, sinuous and pale, from the depths of the garden. I think of Ciro telling me we are always two people. Yet somehow, I’ve missed this version of Naomi. I always believed her stupor was just a way to manage the sadness, but now I realize it’s been helping her manage the anger.

Richard tries to interject, but I interrupt him. It’s not just my mother’s story I’m here for, it’s Lorna’s.

The pieces slot into place: the photograph of Lorna from the night she died. The check my uncle wrote. The look that passed over Naomi’s face. It was recognition. She knew it was Marcus. Even when the rest of us didn’t. She was sure. It was why she invited me shopping, why she told me what she did. Because she was furious with him for going to see her.

“You knew Lorna had it,” I say, an accusation.

Marcus lowers his voice. “Eventually, yes. I figured out she had it. I went to talk to her that night in the marina because I had written her a check for the play. I wanted to be sure she wouldn’t give it to anyone else. You know Stan was always lingering around her, scenting her like a dog.” He shakes his head. “I just went to talk. To make sure she cashed the check, that she was okay delivering the money to Naples. To assure her we could give her more money if that’s what she needed. If that’s what whoever sent the necklace needed. I offered to run interference with Stan, too. But I did not kill her. When I left her in the marina, she was alive. She still had the money.”

“Why are you lying?” Naomi says.

Her voice is livid, and it’s as if my father and I aren’t even standing here.

“It’s the truth, Naomi,” Marcus says.

“You never tell the truth,” she says. Her voice is growing louder now, and several faces turn in our direction.

Marcus reaches out a hand to her. And there’s something in the way he looks at her that tells me I’ve been wrong in assuming it wasthe Lingates who were in control of the family. It was always Naomi. The money. The secrets. I believed that I needed to stay strictly controlled, quiet, out of the public eye, because of them—my father, my uncle—but really, it was always for her. We’ve spent the last thirty years placatingher. Marcus, perhaps, has spent even longer.

My mere existence was always going to be an embarrassment.

“She was alive,” Naomi finally says to my father. She sounds smug, proud. As if she has won a long argument. “When Marcus found her, Sarah was still alive.”

“She never would have survived her injuries,” Marcus says, closing the distance to my father and shooting a warning look at Naomi.

I want to ask again about Lorna. About two nights ago, not thirty years ago. But it hits me. Naomi is right. My mother was alive. They might have saved her, but they chose not to. I search the audience for Stan, who is watching us closely. Does he know when the carabinieri will arrive? Are they on their way?

“All these years,” my father says, his voice hoarse, “you’ve let me believe I did it? That I killed her?”

“You very nearly did,” Naomi says.

“Can you imagine what she would have done to the family if she’d survived?” My uncle is trying to reason with my father now, but I can already see that he won’t be able to get through to him. My father is adrift in the realization that he has spent his entire life mourning a mistake he didn’t make. A murder he didn’t commit.

It’s a worse realization than the fact his wife was having an affair, that I’m not his daughter.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Marcus says. “After everything we’d done to protect this family, I couldn’t let it fall apart then.”

But what have they been preserving? This thing that has rotted from the inside out? The coldness and strictures of my grandfather? Naomi’s control and manipulation? I look down at my arms, my hands. As if I might be able to see evidence of it—this blight my family seems to have. But maybe it’s already inside me. Maybe there’s never been a time that I wasn’t infected.

“I just made the decision that was best for us. For the family,” Marcus says.

He says the word again—family—and it’s like a revivalist onstage murmuringamenuntil he’s finally shouting it.Family. Family. Family. A call-and-response to the three of us. But I don’t want to believe that’s what we are. There’s a nostalgia and softness to the word.It conjures things I’ve never known: gentleness, physical affection, a mother. Here it means only money. Or even less, it means a performance.

“You left her for dead, Richard,” Marcus says. And the sentence is a slap, a reproach. “You didn’t want to know. You never want to know. Ever since you were a child, you’ve been that way. You’re timid when it comes to the truth. That means someone has to shield you from it. And that person has always been me.”

At this, my father takes a step closer to Marcus, and Naomi brings her hand to her mouth. She seems almost giddy, childlike. I move toward both of them, as if I might be able to stop it.

“Fuck you,” my father says.

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