Page 68 of The Deepest Lake

Eva smooths her hair back. I wait until she’s lit up a new cigarette. “Let’s just focus on the staff party. I don’t think you’re cut out for social media.”

“Possibly.”

“Some of us learn faster than others. Anyway,” Eva says, “Astrid will be our MC.”

“Astrid,” I say. “That reminds me . . .”

I feel in my pocket for the paper scribbled with PayPal figures. Maybe it’s because Eva keeps bouncing between insulting me and giving me new trivial things to do, on top of pressuring me about the thing I am absolutely unwilling to do, as if I’ll simply get flustered and give in to all of it. I promised myself—and Mauricio—I’d stay out of this, but it’s just too tempting. I don’t want to rattle her cage so hard she freaks out. I just want to poke.

I pull out the paper and hold it between us without unfolding it. “I’m sure Astrid plans to announce where you are with the orphanage donations. It looks like there might even be ten thousand? I know she’s not expecting that. It will knock her socks off.”

Eva looks startled. She takes a step backward, so close to the bluff, I reach out without thinking and grab her arm.

“Don’t grab me, May.”

I brush her forearm apologetically and keep going.

“I just think you should know that your accounts appear a little . . . problematic.”

Eva hasn’t taken the paper from my hand. It’s obvious now that she doesn’t even want to look at it.

“So, Barbara was right,” Eva says, surprise replaced by a dark smirk. “She found confidential documents in your cabin. Stolen directly from my office.”

“Stolen?”

The word—however ludicrous—makes my heart quicken, even though I’ve done nothing wrong. So much for poking her.

“Financials.”

It clicks. Eva’s talking about the paper I borrowed to use as a new journal once I realized that my Guatemalan “gift journal” wasn’t actually private.

“If you mean paper from the recycling bin—”

“The shredding bin.”

I know Eva’s office is a mess, her standards low. But I’ve spent some time in nonprofit offices. A lot of them are disorganized. I know better. “I’m sorry, Eva. That was sloppy on my part. But I really wasn’t thinking of that paper as confidential. I was just looking for something to write on. And besides, the paper I took to write on, from your bedroom office, wasn’t how I found out about this.”

I hold out the PayPal figures one more time. She cups her hand around mine, closing my fingers tighter around the folded paper.

She doesn’t want to see, and clearly I am supposed to take this lack of curiosity as a blessing.

“Good,” she says. “Relationships matter to me more than administrative details, which is why I have staff. The point is, I didn’t want to think badly of you. You have to understand. We take theft very seriously here.”

She looks over her shoulder as if someone might be listening. “Remember when I told you about Simone?”

“The last personal assistant?”

She lowers her voice. “Took off with about seven hundred dollars in petty change from the safe. Felt she was entitled to it. I was the stupid one who gave her the code.” Eva makes a fist and raps on her temple. “Now, we have a new policy. Only one person knows the code.”

“Barbara?”

“Nope,” she says, flashing an enigmatic smile. But then she’s serious again. “May, it was terrible. The worst part was that we accused three locals first. Concha, Eduardo, Eduardo’s brother—he won’t even work for us now. I felt so bad. I was the one who let Hans off his leash—not a good idea.”

“Off his leash?” I ask. But she doesn’t elaborate.

“Then we brought in the police, embarrassed everyone. Thank goodness Chief Molina is such a gentleman, and a real friend—and don’t you know he’ll get an extra Christmas gift from me, this year!”

I’m absorbing it all.