Page 8 of The Deepest Lake

Mom, when’s the last time you met any women your age?

What are you talking about? You make it sound like dating.

Not dating, just friends.

I’ve got work friends.

You’re self-employed.

I have an office manager. Colleagues and clients.

Fun ones? People you can really talk to?

I’ve got you, Jules. I’ve always got you.

3

ROSE

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The cabin is rustic and dark, the only visible decorations a few handwoven striped blankets on the main floor’s twin beds. A simple round table and four chairs occupy the center of the room. A ladder leads to a low-ceilinged second floor and two more twin beds.

Isobel asks, “You’re sure you don’t mind taking the loft? You don’t have a lake view.”

“I don’t want a view,” Rose says a little too sharply, thinking again of the water they motor-boated across—how shaky she feels just thinking about its lightless depths. “Thanks, really. It’s quiet up there. I’ll sleep better.”

After hauling her bags up the ladder, Rose stands in the loft, glad the window is covered by a sheer curtain. Taking her cue from Lindsay, who already started unpacking downstairs, Rose opens her suitcase.

From upstairs, she hears the cabin’s front door opening. Two new women enter, chatting excitedly. Lindsay and Isobel claimed they wanted rest, but it sounds like cabin nap time won’t be happening anytime soon.

Rose pulls out a long skirt, draping it over a wood chair next to the bed. The T-shirts she considers putting into a small dresser, but when she pulls open the drawer, she smells something off—a bit mousey.

Rose thinks about Matt and Ulyana staying in a budget cabin like this. No way. Matt’s a big-name-brand-resort kind of guy, always intent on using his travel points. When Rose started planning this trip, Matt suggested she put it off and wait for the one-year anniversary, when they could all go together. He thought he was being nice, willing to plan a trip with his ex-wife. He didn’t realize he was undermining Rose, proving how little he understood about her need to go now—and not only to mourn.

Whenever they disagreed about whether a search should continue, Matt pointed to the good work that the local police had done and would keep doing, supposedly.

It’s not like they closed the investigation.

When the first active phase of searching had wrapped up, Matt returned to Illinois to tie up some work details. He intended to return to Guatemala within the week, to meet again with police and press for ideas about a phase two. But then Police Chief Molina called, telling him there was no need. His men had made two critical discoveries.

First, they’d arrested a local small-time drug dealer who confessed to supplying a girl Jules’s age and general description with a locally popular party drug. The police, desperate for a win, sent “Paco” to the capital, where they promised Matt he would rot in jail.

Second, they’d caught a German backpacker shoplifting in a larger village across the lake from San Felipe. Inside his bag was a paperback belonging to Jules, with her name and endless personal annotations. Luka claimed he’d gone for a dawn volcano hike with Jules and a van load of fellow travelers, but barely knew her beyond that. She’d given him the book to lighten her own load.

The group volcano hike checked out. The date of the hike matched up with the date the party drug was sold to a girl who looked like Jules. The “last-known sighting” of Jules, swimming on the lake, occurred later that afternoon, just around sunset. Check, check, check.

In response to which, Rose, even now, standing near the cabin loft window, catching the glimmer of light on the lake through the gauze curtain, thinks No, no, no.

Rose doesn’t believe that her daughter was the person who bought the strangely unspecific “party drug.”

Rose also has a hard time believing Jules would have ever given away her favorite book, the Eva Marshall memoir she’d been rereading since high school.

Matt told her to let the local professionals do the work. It’s diminishing returns from this point. There’s nothing more we can do. It’s time to grieve.