Page 108 of The Deepest Lake

“Are you all right?”

“It’s the altitude.”

But it’s not just her lungs protesting. It’s her heart. She feels sick and angry. At herself. For hoping, even if it was only for thirty seconds. For falling for that foolish hope that any parent of a missing child falls for. As if it were all just a misunderstanding, somehow; as if her own daughter didn’t really drown, and even now, Wendy is confused. Black hair/ blond hair; musician/writer. And what: Jules was going by a fake name? Sahara? And then after nearly drowning, she ran away? As if she would have let her family go through hell, thinking she was dead, and all for what? Ridiculous.

Rose always told herself she simply wanted the truth, but what Rose really wanted, still wants, is her daughter back. She remembers the time, on Jules’s birthday, when she thought she could hear a voice calling out Mama! She thinks of the times she has felt like there is a thin cord reaching out into the dark universe, still connecting them somehow. She remembers all the times she has seen young women who looked like Jules, and how—for just a fraction of a second—she wanted to believe and to trust her mother’s intuition over every expert, including Matt.

“Halfway there,” Wendy says, pulling away from Rose’s grip on her elbow. “At the top, maybe we can flag a tuk-tuk down.”

“Please. Tell me about this Sahara girl.”

“She had a bad workshop. Like what we saw with Scarlett. And then the girl fell apart. But she was a basket case to begin with, of course. Did I mention her ratty hair?”

“You did.”

“She had another friend helping her, at least. We never saw what happened because we left on the textiles field trip, but the assistant girl—”

“Which assistant?”

“I couldn’t possibly—”

“American? Blond hair? Jules?”

For the first time, Wendy looks directly at Rose. Her wrinkled mouth loosens its troubled pucker, making way for a pensive smile. “Yes, Julie May, I think.”

Rose says gently as she can manage, “Her name was Jules.”

“Anyway, they were together.”

“But when you came back from the field trip—what happened, exactly?”

“We didn’t come back to Casa Eva until the next day. Sahara had already left by then. It was only gossip at that point—that she’d spent the day drinking, on drugs, whatever. That she’d nearly drowned. But she didn’t.”

Rose lets it all flood her with a strange mix of horror and calm.

“I understand that Sahara didn’t drown,” Rose repeats. “But what happened to Jules?”

“She left. I don’t know if it was that night, or later.”

“Did you see her the next day? Or ever again, at the workshops?”

They’ve arrived at the gate. “Let’s see,” Wendy says, stepping through it, holding it for Rose, then latching it behind them both with agonizing slowness, her arthritic fingers fumbling. “I guess I didn’t.”

“But surely you heard about Jules having gone missing? The search?”

“Oh, that was days later. After we’d all left workshop. After we’d flown home.”

“It was days later that the search started,” Rose says sharply. “Not days later that she went missing.”

A cloud of dust rises from the road. “We’re in luck,” Wendy says, squinting toward an approaching tuk-tuk.

Rose grabs her hand. “The point is, a second young woman went missing. What did you think?”

Wendy looks stunned. “That the assistant had been fired—I don’t recall the reason, and I don’t really care. Then she went into town, and a few days later, she drowned. Casualty of some beach party, most likely.”

“You didn’t think that was strange?”

“Not at all.”