Page 109 of The Deepest Lake

“You didn’t consider that maybe both girls went swimming together, at the same time? Or that Jules swam after the first girl, because she was drunk and high like you said, and a basket case like you said, to try to help her, and that’s when Jules possibly drowned?”

“No.”

“But why not?”

“I told you. Because that’s not what Eva said, when she told us about Sahara, before we went home. No one said anything like that. No one.”

Wendy pulls her hand from Rose’s grasp.

The tuk-tuk brakes in front of them. Wendy hobbles toward it, waving her walking stick.

Rose remembers the Instagram photo of two girls’ slim knees and hands, side by side on a dock. She always knew the scabby knees belonged to Jules. The unblemished knees and perfect hands with perfect nails belonged to this other girl: Sahara.

Check.

This is the first clean-fitting puzzle piece in a dilapidated set of torn and bent pieces. It’s the first one that makes sense rather than upending everything she thought she knew about her daughter. Now, Rose can imagine the last hours, the moments she’d never understood from Jules’s birthday texts. Can’t complain. Mimosas with a view. Jules had befriended this girl. Jules was sitting with her, consoling her and protecting her from further harm. It’s what her daughter would have done.

That sorry at the very end of the last texts Jules ever sent wasn’t a suicidal sorry.

I’m sorry I’ve been so out of touch.

I love you Mom.

I’m sorry.

It was just a sorry that they weren’t together—a sorry that there were moments when things between a mother and daughter weren’t easy, but they didn’t have to be easy. Love doesn’t always have to be easy.

The word “closure” doesn’t capture this feeling, as Rose reimagines those final moments. It’s not “closing” anything. It’s getting back a piece of her daughter Rose had lost. And it explains why Eva was elusive. Her workshop with Sahara created this situation. Her “brand” could be called into question. She wasn’t willing to face it, not willing to accept even the smallest bit of responsibility, not willing to change a single damn thing.

“Wait,” Rose calls out to Wendy.

“No thank you.”

Wendy starts to climb into the back of the tuk-tuk without inviting Rose to follow. “The bad workshop with the musician made Eva sad. I’m sure the accident with the assistant girl made Eva even more sad. But that all happened later. And none of it was her fault. Things just happen. And please,” Wendy’s voice is warbling with emotion now, “don’t tell Eva I talked to you. I didn’t spend seven years cultivating her good graces for you to come along and make her think badly of me.”

“Why do you even care?” Rose calls back.

She covers her mouth and nose with her hand, coughing on the dust cloud that Wendy and her tuk-tuk leave behind.

32

JULES

——————————

———————

———

The new session is underway. I can tell from the changes in Eva’s habits, the way she is always in a rush, more preoccupied than ever. The workshops have started. She can’t manage that and this at the same time. Something has to give.

I’m mentally prepared for yet longer stretches when no one comes to visit me at all. So, when I hear footsteps outside the hut, I’m surprised.

“Eduardo?” I call out, as soon as I hear the first lock turning.

Outer door open, the footsteps continue to the second door, but these steps are heavy, slow and shuffling.

Barbara?

---