Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

CALL TODAY
. So I know that’s how long
I’ve agreed to wait. Once they find the diary, things will
move quickly.

---

Outside, it’s jungle-hot once again, the cicadas closing
in. My inflatable raft is pink with mermaids on it and too
small for me – my calves dangle in the water – but it keeps
me floating aimlessly for a good hour, which is something
I’ve learned ‘I’ like to do.
I can see a blond head bobbing across the parking lot,
and then the girl with the split lip comes through the chain-
link gate with one of the bath towels from the cabins, no
bigger than a tea towel, and a pack of Merits and a book
and SPF 120. Lung cancer but not skin. She settles herself
and applies the lotion carefully, which is different from the
other beat-up women who come here – they slather
themselves in baby oil, leave greasy shadows on the lawn
chairs.
The girl nods to me, the nod men give each other when
they sit down at a bar. She is reading 
The Martian
Chronicles
by Ray Bradbury. A sci-fi girl. Abused women
like escapism, of course.
‘Good book,’ I toss over to her, a harmless
conversational beach ball.
‘Someone left it in my cabin. It was this or 
Black
Beauty
.’ She puts on fat, cheap sunglasses.
‘Not bad either. 
Black Stallion
’s better, though.’
She looks up at me with sunglasses still on. Two black
bee-eyed discs. ‘Hunh.’
She turns back to her book, the pointed 
I am now
reading
gesture usually seen on crowded airplanes. And I
am the annoying busybody next to her who hogs the
armrest and says things like ‘Business or pleasure?’
‘I’m Nancy,’ I say. A new name – not Lydia – which isn’t
smart in these cramped quarters, but it comes out. My brain

---

sometimes goes too fast for my own good. I was thinking of
the girl’s split lip, her sad, pre-owned vibe, and then I was
thinking of abuse and prostitution, and then I was thinking of
Oliver!
, my favorite musical as a child, and the doomed
hooker Nancy, who loved her violent man right until he killed
her, and then I was wondering why my feminist mother and I
ever watched 
Oliver!
, considering ‘As Long as He Needs
Me’ is basically a lilting paean to domestic violence, and
then I was thinking that Diary Amy was also killed by her
man, she was actually a lot like—
‘I’m Nancy,’ I say.
‘Greta.’
Sounds made up.
‘Nice to meet you, Greta.’
I float away. Behind me I hear the shwick of Greta’s
lighter, and then smoke wafts overhead like spindrifts.
Forty minutes later, Greta sits down on the edge of the
pool, dangles her legs in the water. ‘It’s hot,’ she says. ‘The
water.’ She has a husky, hardy voice, cigarettes and prairie
dirt.
‘Like bathwater.’
‘It’s not very refreshing.’
‘The lake’s not much cooler.’
‘I can’t swim anyway,’ she says.
I’ve never met anyone who can’t swim. ‘I can just
barely,’ I lie. ‘Dog paddle.’
She ruffles her legs, the waves gently rocking my raft.
‘So what’s it like here?’ she asks.
‘Nice. Quiet.’
‘Good, that’s what I need.’
I turn to look at her. She has two gold necklaces, a

---

perfectly round bruise the size of a plum near her left
breast, and a shamrock tattoo just above her bikini line. Her
swimsuit is brand-new, cherry-red, cheap. From the marina
convenience store where I bought my raft.
‘You on your own?’ I ask.
‘Very.’
I am unsure what to ask next. Is there some sort of
code that abused women use with each other, a language I
don’t know?
‘Guy trouble?’
She twitches an eyebrow at me that seems to be a
yes.
‘Me too,’
I say. ‘It’s not like we weren’t warned,’ she says. She
cups her hand into the water, lets it dribble down her front.
‘My mom, one of the first things she ever told me, going to
school the first day: