Page 127 of The Deepest Lake

The woman scoffs. When I take a peek, she’s staring at me wide-eyed, like I’m a monster. Am I?

“Excuse me,” I say, rising to stand. Irritated glances shoot my way, because I’m interrupting the flow just as Eva is reaching the podium. I bump knees and force someone’s jacket to slide off the back of another seat. “Sorry. Sorry. There we go. Sorry again.”

When I finally extract myself from the row of seats, I turn back and look at Eva. She’s staring at me, flustered.

This is the moment I was waiting for. I had all sorts of long public pronouncements planned—castigating Eva for daring to write about me, Zahara, Diane, Rachel and Scarlett, and only in ways that framed Eva in the best possible light. For furthering Barbara’s lies, and suggesting that she and I got into a brawl. For using my desperately written words to prove I was never held captive.

But above all, for daring to open her memoir with lines from the poem by the Guatemalan poet, Isabel de los Ángeles Ruano. The one about complicity, suggesting that “we” were all guilty for any unhappy or unfortunate events at Casa Eva.

“You,” I say, standing just aside from the hundred or so seated bookstore guests. “You’re the guilty one.”

Everyone is staring at me, confused, and probably wishing I would say more. But I won’t. I only want her to know that I know. That I’ll be keeping an eye on her. That I’ll never forget.

“Not We. You.”

Eva’s mouth is opening and closing again like a fish, with no sound coming out. I thought it would feel good when I accused her. I only now realize that it wasn’t a public exchange of words I wanted—not hers and not mine.

I just wanted this: her unable to speak, for once. Eva, silenced, if only briefly.

In that silence, I feel like I can breathe. In that silence, I feel like I can imagine, finally, finishing one episode of my life and starting another. I can imagine telling this story—as long as no one else will get to steal or warp it or tell me what it means. Maybe even as fiction.