Page 83 of The Deepest Lake

If you write, you’re a writer. Zahara made it sound so simple. It’s a better mantra, one I’m willing to take home with me.

I run the three bottles and empty juice carton back up to the kitchen. I come down again and make a few more notes.

Zahara rolls to her side, wiping drool from her cheek. “Sweaty. Need another swim.”

“This late?”

It’s cool now. The sun is only minutes from dipping below the horizon.

“Going in,” she says, groggier now than she’s been. “And Jules, you appreciate that mom of yours. I won’t be seeing mine for a long time.”

“Why?”

Zahara has waded up to her thighs and peeled off her white gloves. I don’t see them on the dock or on the beach.

“She died. A week after I got out of the hotel. Aneurysm.”

With that, Zahara plunges headfirst into the water.

23

ROSE

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Rose loiters on the lawn long after most of the other women writers have left to catch a water taxi to town, replaying the conversation with Mauricio. Surely, he’ll find a way to talk to her privately. Town is small. He’ll find her. A better plan than talking here. Safe. Simple.

But if it’s so simple, why does she feel at this moment like she dare not leave? Like there’s a chance he knows something about Jules and she might never see him again?

She lurks near the steps, watching the house just in case Mauricio manages to sneak back out. But he doesn’t, not even after Eva reappears, crossing the lawn toward the classroom again.

“Don’t walk the road alone,” Eva says as she passes Rose, without bothering to look up. “At the very least, pair up!”

Rose notices that both Diane and Lindsay have stayed back as well, each of them eager to get a few minutes of Eva’s time.

Diane is bubbling over with enthusiasm for the orphanage talk. She’s hung back to promise a donation. “Whatever you need. I can’t imagine anything more important.”

Eva asks, “What were you thinking of giving?”

Rose strains to hear Diane’s answer, but Diane has lowered her voice, murmuring with Eva, who seems much more interested in chatting with the workshop stragglers than she was just a minute ago, now that a donation is at stake.

“Go up to the house,” Eva says to Lindsay. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Lindsay follows the order, winking at Rose as she passes, stage whispering, “My private session.”

“Good luck,” Rose says. “I’ll wait for you.”

Eva and Diane chat a moment longer before Eva returns to the house, leaving Diane standing alone, gazing off into the distance with a blissful smile on her face, as if everything has gone her way this week, when it hasn’t. She never had her pages reviewed. She was told to leave her husband. Clearly, it doesn’t matter. She got what she needed: attention. Maybe a new purpose.

Women’s voices trickle down the steps toward Rose, confusing her for a moment, because after all, the workshop participants just left.

“Beautiful day,” says a sixty-something woman with impressively inflated lips, painted the same shade of red as her stylishly oversized eyeglass frames.

“Yes,” Rose answers, stepping out of the group’s way. “Are you all here for private meetings with Eva?”

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