Page 90 of The Deepest Lake

Playing the dumb tourist, she darts into the tourism office first, where a young Mayan woman in a pale blue button-down blouse grabs for a map the moment Rose enters.

“Can I help?” the woman says eagerly, like she doesn’t get many opportunities.

“I’m looking for the local police chief.”

“The wrong door,” the woman says, “but you are very close.”

Her smile broadens, broad cheeks dimpling. Rose smiles back, a little puzzled by the enthusiasm. It’s only when the young woman lifts a hand to wave that Rose understands she’s been looking over her shoulder, past Rose, to someone else out in the plaza.

Rose glances behind her, then snaps her head back. It’s Hans, from Casa Eva. He’s holding two large takeout coffee cups. This is bad. For a moment she thinks Hans has come to deliver coffee to the tourism bureau employee.

But as Rose steps to the side, pretending to be fascinated in a carousel of volcano postcards, she notices he isn’t coming in.

“You need any police, like to report a crime? Or the police chief?”

“The jefe,” Rose says. “Molina, yes.”

“Okay,” the woman says, “I show you,” bringing out an unnecessarily detailed, photocopied map of the plaza, showing an ATM, a jewelry shop, an ice cream stand, two separate entrances to the police station, the first only fifty feet from where they are now standing.

Rose feigns confusion to buy time, hoping Hans will have moved on. She can’t exactly walk into the police station while he’s watching.

When the tourism woman’s face lights up again, Rose cringes. Go away, Hans!

The woman comes around the desk. “Never mind, I just walk you over—”

“No, you don’t have to—”

“—because look, you don’t even have to go far. There he is!”

Rose can’t believe her eyes. The man being pointed out is surprisingly light skinned and light haired, with a ginger mustache that Rose remembers without question from one of Matt’s photos. Chief Molina, in the flesh. She has seen him before.

And worst of all, he’s the one lifting a hand to receive the coffee from Hans, both of them grinning and chatting, like old friends.

Rose runs, crouched over, holding the plaza map in front of her face for cover, toward the nearest tuk-tuk. First, because a tuk-tuk is the easiest place to hide. Second, because Casa Eva offers her the only remaining chance of running into Mauricio, as well as Wi-Fi, so she can keep calling him, on the hour. And third, because the police station is now completely off-limits.

When Rose creeps into the classroom twenty minutes later, smiling with her head down to signal that she’s sorry for arriving late, Eva finishes writing “Show Don’t Tell” on the whiteboard, then sets down her black marker.

“Come here.”

Rose has just made it to a seat in the back of the aula. “Me?”

“Yes. Come to the front.” Eva’s pinched expression relaxes into a forgiving smile.

Rose whispers apologies as she moves to the front of the room, where Eva stands, waiting.

“Breathe,” whispers Isobel as Rose passes.

When Rose is directly in front of Eva, Eva throws her arms around her shoulders, squeezing tight. Relieved sighs and tender exclamations fill the classroom.

“All right,” Eva says when she nudges Rose gently away, still clasping both of her hands, so that they remain attached at center stage, with everyone staring. “When you didn’t show up on time this morning, I was worried. I thought maybe those prompts yesterday morning overloaded you emotionally.”

Rose looks around, notices that others have failed to show up as well. K-Tap, who has left town. Rachel, whom no one has seen lately. But Rose is the one Eva claims to be worried about.

“And yet,” Eva says, “you did it, didn’t you? You dug deep. You found a story. A real story. A story about motherhood. One that matters to you, more than your little essay about your sister.”

Rose scrambles to remember what she wrote about. The man who wanted to watch her masturbate. That’s not it. The one about . . . she flashes hot . . . the one about postpartum depression. Oh god.

But she never named Jules. She only said “the baby.” She probably mentioned Matt, though—but there’s no way for Eva to know who “Matt” is. And she might have mentioned Ulyana, toward the end when her defenses were down and the words were pouring out of her. Ulyana. Rose remembers how glad she was that her own photo didn’t show in the major news items about Jules’s disappearance, because it made her confident no one would recognize her, here. But Ulyana’s face was in those photos, along with her highly recognizable name.