What Was Mine: & Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

being perverse, or did he not understand her request very well? All right, she thought. I’ll keep it brief.
    As she wrote, she reminded herself that it was a calm sea, and that the woman could not possibly be dead. “I had to leave,” she wrote. “There is no phone at the villa we are renting. I will be here tomorrow at ten, with your ring.” She signed her name, then handed the card to the bartender. “It’s very important,” she said. “A woman is going to come in, expecting to find me. A Frenchwoman. If you see someone who’s very upset—” She stopped, looking at the puzzled expression on the bartender’s face. “Very important,” she said again. “The woman had two friends. She’s very pretty. She’s been out boating.” She looked at the card she had given the bartender. He held it, without looking at what she had written. “Grazie,” she said.
    “Prego,” he said. He put the card down by the cash register and then—perhaps because she was looking—did something that struck her as appropriately ironic: he put a lemon on top of the card, to weigh it down.
    “Grazie,” she said again.
    “Prego,” he said.
    She went back to the table and sat, looking not toward the cliff beyond which the French people’s boat had disappeared, but in the other direction, toward Positano. They said little, but during the silence she decided—in the way that tourists are supposed to have epiphanies on vacations, at sunset—that there was such a thing as fate, and that she was fated to be with Andrew.
    When he finished his tea, they rose together and went to the bar and paid. She did not think she was imagining that the owner nodded his head twice, and that the second nod was a little conspiratorial signal.
    From the doors that opened onto the balcony outside their bedroom she could see more of the Mediterranean than from the Cobalto; at this vantage point, high above the Via Torricella, it was almost possible to have a bird’s-eye view. From here, the Luna pool was only a dark blue speck. There was not one boat on the Mediterranean. She heard the warning honking of the bus drivers below and the buzzing sound the motorcycles made. The intermittent noise only made her think how quiet it was most of the time. Often, she could hear the breeze rustling the leaves of the lemon trees.
    Andrew was asleep in the room, his breathing as steady as the surf rolling in to shore. He went to bed rather early now, and she often stood on the balcony for a while, before going in to read.
    Years ago, when they were first together, she had worn a diamond engagement ring in a Tiffany setting, the diamond held in place by little prongs that rose up and curved against it, from a thin gold band. Now she had no idea what had become of the ring, which she had returned to him, tearfully, in Paris. When they later married, he gave her only a plain gold band. It made her feel suddenly old, to remember things she had not thought about in years—to miss them, and to want them back. She had to stop herself, because her impulse was to go into the bedroom and wake him up and ask him what had become of the ring.
    She did go in, but she did not disturb him. Instead, she walked quietly to the bed and sat on the side of it, then reached over and turned off the little bedside lamp. Then she carefully stretched out and pulled the covers over her. She began to breathe in time with his breathing, as she often did, trying to see if, by imitation, she could sink into easy sleep.
    With her eyes closed, she remembered movement: the birds sailing between high cliffs, boats on the water. It was possible, standing high up, as she often did in Italy, to actually look down on the birds in their flight: small specks below, slowly swooping from place to place. The tiny boats on the sea seemed no more consequential than sunbeams, glinting on the surface of the water.
    Unaccustomed to wearing jewelry, she rubbed the band of the ring on her finger as she began to