Page 125 of The Deepest Lake

Rose and Barbara change seats, each of them squatting low, eyeing the other with suspicion.

After a quiet spell, Barbara says, “Jules isn’t at the bottom of this lake.”

The mere mention of her daughter’s name makes Rose tense with dread, the horrible images returning. Barbara must know where Jules’s body washed up. Eva and Barbara must have hidden it somewhere.

“Don’t lie to me, Barbara.”

“I’m not,” she says, choking on the last word.

There’s a small wooden club, stained with what could be blood, near Rose’s feet. She’s spent the last minute staring at it, hoping that the glittering scales stuck to its surface mean the club was used only to whack small fish. Rose grabs for it now, club raised shoulder-heigh.

“Then take me to her.”

When Rose feels Barbara turning the boat, angling toward the shore, she steels herself. The truth is coming, one way or another.

They pull up to a rocky beach between two houses. They clamber silently up a trail, to the road. And then, up another trail: higher yet, up the smoky hillside into a less developed area, a mix of forest and grassy, cleared patches.

When they arrive at the empty temazcal hut, and Barbara unlocks both doors to get to the squalid interior, it feels like the meanest trick of all. Because there, strewn across the room, are a young woman’s clothes: underwear, a pair of jean shorts. As if Jules was recently here.

Barbara’s mouth opens and closes once before she finds her words. “I saw her. I talked to her just yesterday.”

The assertion takes Rose’s breath away. “You’re still lying to me. Why are you doing this?” Lindsay had warned her that other people would take advantage, and maybe that’s what Barbara is doing now. Feeding her some elaborate story that will conclude in an outrageous request.

Barbara stammers, “Eva went somewhere early this morning, before she met with you. She kept running off, even more than usual. I knew she was planning to do something. Your daughter was just here.”

Barbara pushes her stubby fingers through her thinning hair, eyes searching the room as if Jules will jump out from the shadows.

She says, “When I heard that Jules was still alive, it seemed like the first time in my life I could undo something. I thought I could persuade Eva, over time. But this morning, she was acting differently. She had blood on her cheek.”

No, Rose thinks. There are too many details. These are the false elaborations of a practiced liar. Barbara is spinning a tale, trying to pull her into a spell of believing. Why?

“It wasn’t from Jules,” Barbara stammers. “Eva told me she’d done something to Mauricio. She wanted me to be the one to do it—again. She confessed to me that Mauricio was still alive. She expected me to do it all for her. Finish off Mauricio; get rid of Jules, even though Jules had something Eva wanted. But Eva changed her mind. It wasn’t worth the risk. Jules couldn’t keep secrets. Eva wanted me to come here and clean up her messes.”

Rose can’t make sense of Barbara’s ramblings. It makes little difference. Rose doesn’t believe her version of events, anyway. They leave the temazcal hut just at the moment two local men come over the hill, dragging Eva behind them. Her face is smudged. She’s trying to twist out of one man’s grip.

“Barbara!” Eva shouts. “Tell them to let me go. Tell them you’ll go to the police! They can’t treat me this way!”

In Spanish, one of the men shouts, “This woman was trying to light more fires.”

Rose doubts her own comprehension. Why would anyone . . . ?

But then she sees a third local man lumbering behind, supporting the weight of Mauricio, limping. His hair is matted. His face is stained.

Rose hears one of the men say, “She was trying to kill him! When we found her, she was trying to burn him alive!”

It’s too horrible to imagine.

Incredible.

But not as incredible as what Rose sees next: the thin, frail figure shuffling behind all of them, hurrying to catch up, reaching for Mauricio’s other arm as if she has any hope of supporting him, when this waif of a girl looks just as broken.

Rose’s heart skips a beat. She’s been wrong before. She lifts a hand to her mouth, trying to stop herself before she’s wrong again. But she can’t stop it. The name slips out, and not just the name, but the vain hope.

“Jules.”

Jules looks up. Her face crumples. One moment, she’s only halfway recognizable—too pale and wasted away to be the daughter Rose knows. And the next moment, she is both the little girl and the young woman Rose has always loved.

“Mom,” Jules says. She starts to cry and can’t stop crying as Rose rushes forward and embraces her thin, trembling body. “Mama.”

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