“I love to run my hands down your body.”

“I love the feel of your hands.”

“You are the most beautiful.”

“No, you.”

This whole while I lay on the sand, belly down. I could feel his breath in my ear. He leaned with his weight against me. Over the last month we had been all over the Mediterranean. We had been to the Riviera and to Capri, and also to Sicily; now we were staying in a small villa on a large island off the Croatian coast, and we had taken the boat out for the day.

Back in Rome, the committee had dropped its investigation in a deal brokered behind the scenes by those gray men and women in their gray suits with the splashes of red. It all had to do with government contracts and appropriations. The press had pursued us on our honeymoon and found us in Monte Carlo. Soon after that, we left the Riviera, but our departure didn’t stop the stories.

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Newlyweds Seek Refuge in Corsica

Vittoria Visited by Isabella’s Ghost

Francesco Hires Mafia Assassin

Happy Lovers Thumb Nose at Cardinal Whiting

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The villa on the island where we were staying had been the property of Isabella’s family, but at least it was remote. We pulled anchor and returned there now. Though the family still wanted it back, the property had passed to Paolo by virtue of Italian law.

“Why have you brought me here?”

“Because it’s a beautiful place.”

“It was hers.”

“Not really. Such beauty can’t belong to a single person.”

“But you used to come here with her.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“I feel her presence.”

Later he walked me out from the villa to the shore. It was a longer shore, a stretch of gray sand along the water. Isabella’s father, a director, had shot scenes from several movies here—and eventually Isabella had been filmed here, too, in her greatest movie, the one in which she wore the famous dress.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“Of course you do.”

“Say it.”

“It’s not the kind of thing I should say.”

“Then let it go.”

“My brother—”

“Shh . . .”

“And you—”

“Some people are very jealous. They see what they want to see. The press, every accident, every coincidence . . . Don’t let them poison your mind.”

“The timing, though, of their deaths.”

“There’s such a thing as fate. Things happen.”

“That’s true.”

“Anyway, you can’t say you didn’t wish it.”

“I could.”

“But you’d be lying.”

The sky was red now, the sea calm. You could smell the salt and see the boats out on the water way out there. It was an isolated island. There was a Croatian couple farther along, out on the sea wall. I wondered whether we might be recognized, but the people in the village were fishermen and goatherds who lived in their stone-colored houses and cared nothing for us either way.