Page 31 of The Deepest Lake

Finally, Matt picks up. Rose can see him standing at the granite-topped kitchen island, with one toddler sitting next to his side, pincering pieces of banana from a high chair. Matt’s other twin isn’t in the shot, but Rose can hear him fussing, resisting Ulyana’s efforts to corral his squirming body into a pair of pants.

“We’re almost in the car,” Matt says. “Can this wait until this afternoon, after my last class?”

They’re not almost in the car. Ryan—or is it Jacob?—is still eating. When Ulyana walks by, she’s wearing a robe, even if her hair and makeup look perfect.

“No, it can’t. I have new information about Jules. I talked to a person who saw her, Matt.” Rose can’t slow down. It’s too important. “She had a boyfriend. Not the Luka guy.”

Matt has leaned down so that she can only see the back of his close-cropped hair on the phone screen. She remembers that hairline, the perfect fade down his neck. Twice-monthly hair trims on the first and fifteenth. Never a hair out of place.

“Matt,” she says, trying to get his attention.

He’s telling one of the toddlers to stop throwing fruit. But if Matt keeps bending down to pick up the pieces, of course the kid is going to throw another one. It’s a game. Has he really parented three children now without learning a thing?

“Matt!” she yells. “Leave the fruit! Please! God damn it!”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Ulyana’s voice comes from offscreen. “This sounds like an adult call. Can you take it to another room, Matt?”

Yes, Rose concurs. Take it to another room. Go. Now.

Matt’s face is back on the screen. He is holding his phone too close and walking around with it, the background spinning. “I’ve got to get the boys to day care. Then I’ve got an eight A.M. class that ends at eleven, then a lunch meeting with a new dean—”

“This can’t wait,” Rose says, incredulous. “Are you kidding me?”

“Not kidding,” he says, sleepy. Matt has been sleepy for the last three and a half years. Rose has listened to endless stories about twins—how raising them is not twice as hard, it’s ten times as hard. How they are picky eaters and never sleep, unlike Jules, who was easy. But Jules was only “easy” because Matt was never around to help.

“Can Ulyana take the kids to day care, so I can get a half hour with you? Please?”

Matt sighs. “She’s got her own schedule to worry about.”

Must be nice. To have a wife who is ten years younger than you. To have the wisdom, as a father now in his late forties, to know that time with your children matters. Every time Matt turns and the background blurs, Rose’s stomach does another flip. Yes, it’s from the alcohol, and from getting only a few hours of sleep. But Matt is the one making her dizzy from the effort of suppressing her exasperation.

“Let me get to my study,” he says, voice still sleepy, “and then I can give you five minutes.”

She hears Matt call to Ulyana again, asking for her permission. Her permission. As if Rose was calling to ask whether she should bring salad or dessert to their next potluck dinner, instead of calling to explain that the man with the swallow tattoo and no bottom teeth might have nothing to do with Jules’s death at all.

“I’m waiting,” Rose says, feeling hot tears fill her eyes.

I get along great with Jules’s father.

Yes and no.

I even get along with his new wife. You could say we’re friends.

Mostly yes. But also, sometimes, no.

Finally, there is quiet at the end of the line. She recognizes Matt’s home office, with its dark brown bookcases, wall of diplomas and a folded US flag in a glass display frame.

“You’ve got intel,” he says.

She rolls her eyes at the word intel but rewinds to the beginning, speaking quickly, her excitement building all over again, mixed up with her own frustration they didn’t know this all before. Paco. Luka. Guatemalan boyfriend.

“Okay, wait,” Matt says, sounding like he hasn’t managed to drink a single cup of coffee even though she knows he would have had a full pot by now. “This beach dude—Dennis. He’s sharp-eyed enough to see that ‘Paco’ motorcycled out of town with a new jacket, but not enough to see all the flyers with Jules’s picture hanging all over town that same week?”

She pauses, flustered. Yes, Dennis recognized Jules. No, he said nothing about realizing she was the girl in locally posted flyers.

“I didn’t ask him.”

Matt smirks. “You didn’t ask him.” She can see the dimple in his right cheek. She used to like that dimple. Now she could punch it.