Page 35 of Saltwater

The anniversary of your mother’s death.They have to pay by July 19.

It was easy enough. A typed letter. A simple blackmail. The necklace—whoever had sent it—gave us the upper hand. I couldn’t waste the chance. We needed to act more quickly than the sender would. I was certain someone meant the necklace as a precursor. A signal of some new intervention, a new era in the case of my mother’s death, a tide shift. Whatever it ended up being, with any luck, I’d be gone before they found out.

I had sent the necklace on to Ciro in Naples. Had asked him to hold it and the letter addressed to my father and Marcus until the week before we were scheduled to arrive. Then he mailed it. Timed to meet us, meet me, at the villa. When I saw the necklace emerge from the box, I felt reunited with it. Like it was part of me. The same wayshewas part of me, even though she was gone.

“Do you really think they’ll pay?” Lorna had asked.

The letter was clear: ten million in euros. Delivered to a locker at the ferry terminal. If the money went unpaid by the anniversary of my mother’s death, additional information would be provided to the police. If it turned out the ferry terminal was surveilled, additional information would be provided to the police.

“Of course they’ll pay,” I said.

It was only ten million. They had spent more funding a new administration building for the prep school they attended. They watched ten million slip away every year on home and staff expenses alone. And split between the two of us, it was double what my father owed me. Double, I felt, was fair, considering the mismanagement of the funds. If we were successful, I would finally have some power. Because that’s what money was—power.Autonomy.Theyhad taught me that.

There hadn’t been any physical abuse. Although Lorna once said tome that when someone uses money to get you to act a certain way, to do a certain thing, thatisabuse. Even so, I wouldn’t use that word to describe my family. It wasfanaticism,a rigidity, a preoccupation with what it meant to bea Lingate.I merely had the misfortune of being born into it. Over the years, I had learned casual horrors can be remarkably easy to metabolize. Especially if they start young.

Sometimes a kind of hysterical laughter bubbles up in me—as unwelcome as the hiccups and just as forceful—because the gap between the way I live and the way peoplethinkI live is so great. They think money flows through my life and with it a kind of freedom they long for, a freedom they resent. But there’s so little room in my life. Most days there’s barely enough space for me to turn around, pick up a paintbrush, lie down. Families can be like that. They infect the way you think about yourself. They refuse to make space. You mold yourself around them in ways that contort you, change you.

My family would, I knew, do anything to avoid another spectacle like the one that had unfolded after my mother died. It was the only thing that scared them. The scrutiny, the hounding, the violation of their privacy, the dissecting of every word, every action, every misplaced smile. All we needed to do was convince them the risk had returned.

A month earlier, my uncle had inadvertently set the stage when he invited Lorna to join us on Capri. They, I knew, would task her with taking the money to Naples. And later, much later, maybe months later, we would retrieve it. It was simple. The timing, perfect. Ciro would drive her. Their introduction was supposed to happen yesterday, on the boat, while we were anchored in the shallows. But Lorna changed that.

Lorna.

She was the first person I had met who understood how much leverage money could generate. Who wanted the same thing: power.Freedom.After her mother and the drinking and the dead-end jobs, didn’t she deserve it? Didn’t we both?

—

“She never met theboat last night?” I ask Ciro.

He shakes his head. And all I can think is that she must be on the island. Maybe she’s watching us now. I look around the bow, like I might find her here, stowed away. Ready to throw the money around, a big smile on her face. But then I remember what her fingers felt like when she tried to pull me under. How her nails bit into my skin.

Ten million euros missing.

“Maybe something happened to her,” I say.

But I say it more for myself than for him. Because it feels electric, the way my body responds to the news—everything zinging and constricting. A physical warning system. I want to make more excuses for her, I want to run them dry. But Ciro has seeded something that feels so familiar to me—a fear of overexposure, of being duped, of failing. Me, the idiot.

Freddy’s words reverberate:No, you barely know her.

“When we get back,” he says, reaching again for my arm, “maybe there will be other news.”

“What other news?” I whisper. “When she left the club, she said she was going to the marina. I saw the bag. I saw how heavy it was.”

“Are you sure there was money in it? Are you sure they paid?”

“They’d rather pay than worry.” I didn’t see them fill it. They never would have let me. It would have been obtained via their bankers. A quick hit to their liquidity. “I think something must have gone wrong.”

“It’s Capri,” Ciro says. “If she’s here, she’ll turn up. It’s safe. The money will be safe.”

He’s right, I know. The island isn’t big and the crime is petty. My mother’s death was an exception, but hers was flashy and sensational.Theater.For years others have been exploiting it to sell papers and podcasts and advertising space. Don’t I, of all people, deserve to benefit, even a little bit, from the story, too? That’s what I thought when I first saw the necklace:Why not me?

Ciro interrupts: “Can I see you later?”

“I don’t know.” I can’t think about it, about us. Not right now.

His hand plays across my arm, down to my fingers. I’m distracted by his touch. Even now. But then, I spend so much of the yearwaiting for this week. Ciro, always a shadow in the back of my mind. An unanswerable what-if.

“Maybe we should stop,” I say. It’s an additional complication I can’t manage.

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