Page 110 of The Deepest Lake

“Hello?” I say, listening. I try to sound cheerful. “Everything’s fine here. Thanks for coming!”

Only an idiot would believe I am okay with being held captive. Barbara is not an idiot.

Eva wants a baby, and even so, her delusion—that I could give birth to a baby and give it to her, then go on and lead my life without somehow implicating her or anyone else—is fragile. But Barbara? She has no reason to delude herself.

As the dead bolt slides, I hold my breath.

Barbara is about to step through that door and try to kill me.

No.

Barbara is about to step through that door and try to kill me again.

At least I’m more prepared this time. I lean back, reaching for the clothesline I took down and stored under my pillow as an improvised garotte.

The door opens.

It’s her and it’s not her. Barbara’s hair has changed from fluffy pale brown to mostly white. Her clothes hang off her, like she’s lost at least thirty pounds. Her jowls and eyelids droop.

She looks terrible. Sick—and weak. And even so, I’m afraid.

“I didn’t mean for any of this . . .” she starts to say, then sticks a hand out to prop herself against a wall, as if she’s been struck by a dizzy spell.

“Are you all right?”

She scoffs. “You’re asking me if I’m all right?”

Her weariness doesn’t assuage my fears. It’s the fatigue of someone who has worn herself down with a job but won’t stop until she’s finished. Until I’m finished.

“Barbara,” I say. Aren’t you supposed to repeat people’s names, if you want to win them over? “You don’t look well.”

“This whole thing has been killing me.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

Head tipped down, jowls sagging, she gives me a long, pitying look, like she can’t believe I don’t see the obvious.

I shift forward, toward the edge of the bed, and that’s enough to startle her. Barbara hurries out the door and closes it, latching it behind her. The crate of food and new garrafón she was dropping off remain in the in-between space.

I listen for the fading footsteps, the second door and the second latching lock. But I don’t hear it. I hear the groan of wood as Barbara leans against the inner door, lingering.

“Barbara?”

Through the door she says, “Your mother is here, at the workshops.”

I assume I’ve heard her wrong.

My mother. Here.

I move so quickly, trying to get off the bed, that I fall to the floor and collapse on my weak leg, cradling my shin, seeing stars. I crawl the rest of the way, on my knees, until I reach the closed door.

“My mother?”

“She registered under a different last name.”

“She’s looking for me?”

“Not looking, exactly. Trying to figure out what happened to you. I doubt she’d be sitting through a day of workshops if she thought you were anything but dead and gone.”