Page 4 of The Deepest Lake

What’s everything?

I’m a troubleshooter.

Meaning?

A Girl Friday. But every day. Whatever is needed I do.

You really don’t get days off?

It’s only twelve days. Writing workshop plus four days before and a couple after. Mom! You still haven’t asked!

Who is it?

Eva Marshall. The author!

Getting paid?

Jules evaded the question. It’s a learning opportunity.

Does that mean only tips?

Most of the women who come are loaded. I’ll take you to dinner in a few weeks when I’m back. Promise.

A few more weeks. Before coming to Lake Atitlán and somehow meeting Eva, Jules had been talking about coming home any day. She’d already been in Guatemala over a month; Panama, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, for six weeks before that. She’d gotten her travel fix, she told Rose and Matt in a rare video call.

Rose and Jules didn’t argue often, but they did argue about Jules’s postcollege plans. Last year, she’d been rejected by two creative writing programs, a huge blow to her dream of becoming an author. Rose thought she should keep trying and get a Master’s, in hopes of teaching later. Jules said there were no teaching jobs anyway. Taking on so much debt was risky. Plus, a degree didn’t make you a writer. But then, Rose had tried asking Jules without success, what did?

Jules completed several new grad school applications just before leaving for Guatemala. She seemed to be bouncing back from rejection. But that was before the week at Eva’s. Then something changed.

Fewer texts, no photos and a different tone. She seemed to be questioning everything, feeling both worthless and hopeless.

How can I be a writer? I’ve never had any interesting experiences. I’ve never done anything. I have nothing to say.

A few minutes later: I’m pathetic.

Two texts, buried amidst hundreds of others, that Rose noticed only later, in those frantic first days after Jules was last seen.

2

ROSE

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Even as they make their way into the simple hotel compound, Rose can still feel the lake behind her, always closer than she’d like. She tries to put it out of her mind, focusing for the moment on sussing out which of these women would have posed a challenge for a young, inexperienced woman like Jules, working as a “Girl Friday” or personal assistant.

There are two women in their early twenties and one over seventy. Nearly everyone else is Rose’s age: forties and fifties. Lots of linen and cotton, crisp white blouses, chunky statement necklaces, flashy silver earrings, a few suspiciously smooth foreheads, many large-brimmed sun hats. Well-dressed. Mostly fit. With a few exceptions, almost entirely white.

Rose tries to figure out who is crazy rich. Who is merely comfortable. Who has spent her last cent hoping to untangle a knotted-up storyline or get an agent referral, something Jules often talked about, along with terms that meant little to Rose, like “slush pile” and “blurbs.”

At the open-air reception area, they gather amidst their mounds of luggage. Three hotel employees bring out pitchers of something red that looks like sangria but turns out to be hibiscus tea.

“Is that alcohol?”

“Unfortunately not.”