“What happened to her?”
“She got twenty-five years.”
“But in the book—”
“The novel.”
“Right, the novel. In the novel, it was you. You made the Maud character the murderer.”
Helen waved her hand. “Oh, it just makes a better story. Well, maybe it was the jealousy a little bit. I wanted to try and experience a faint shadow of what she had.”
“So is Jenny still there?”
“Where?”
“Prison.”
Helen’s eyes refocused. Florence had broken the spell. “Yes, of course.”
Then Helen exhaled loudly and opened her eyes wide. “Well!” she said, effectively ending their conversation. “That went in a direction I wasn’t expecting.” She laughed lightly and placed her hands on her thighs to push herself up to standing. “And now this old sack of bones needs to get to bed. See you in the morning? We’ll go into town, do some exploring.”
Florence nodded.
At the door, Helen turned back. “I don’t need to remind you that this stays between us, do I?”
Florence shook her head.
“Good girl.” She paused. “I’m glad you came, Florence.”
Then she disappeared into the dark house without waiting for a response.
25.
The tangled vines in the window filtered the early morning light, leaving rippling shadows on the wall beside her. Florence looked at her watch. It was a little after eight. She swung her legs off the bed and planted her feet on the cool terra-cotta floor.
Downstairs, Amina had laid out breakfast on the terrace. There were fresh brioches in a basket covered with a clean dishtowel. Sweating butter in a ceramic ramekin and three kinds of jam. A bowl of honey so thick that a wooden spoon stood up straight in it. There were dishes of dates, almonds, pomegranate seeds, and slices of navel orange. There were three different pitchers of juice.
Florence sat down and startled a small, sparrow-like bird pecking at the breadbasket. It fluttered to a nearby chair.
“Sorry, little guy,” she said, throwing him a bit of brioche. A bird’s feathers weigh more than its skeleton, she remembered from somewhere.
Helen came down shortly afterward. She paused in the doorway and turned her face up to the sun.
“God, that feels good,” she said.
They ate slowly and spoke very little. They were both slightly hungover. After breakfast, Florence checked their email at the laptop in the living room.
“You have a new message from Greta,” she called out to Helen, who was still on the terrace, smoking a cigarette and staring into the distance.
“What does it say?” she asked without turning her head.
“Hope the trip is going well, blah blah blah, and she wants to talk to you about something when you have a sec.”
“About what?”
“It doesn’t say. She just says to call her.”
“Okay.”
“Should I write back?”
“Nah. I’ll give her a call in a little bit.”
Florence logged into her own email. She had just one, from her mother. She scanned it quickly. She caught the word betrayal before closing the window.
*
They left for town around ten. At the door, Helen once again handed Florence all her belongings.
“You’re bringing your passport?” Florence asked.
“Life lesson: Always keep your passport on you when you’re abroad. You never know what’s going to happen. Besides, I don’t trust that woman.”
“Amina?” Florence asked, laughing. “Come on.”
“Don’t mistake naivete for compassion. Your own I mean. You know nothing about her.”
Florence rolled her eyes but still trudged back to her room and grabbed her passport.
Semat proper was a fifteen-minute drive from the villa, in the opposite direction from which they’d come. The town was huddled on a hill above the coast and encircled by ramparts the same color as the sandy beach. The wall helped block the fierce wind that blew in off the water and whipped up frothy waves on its surface. Inside the medina, where there were few cars, a tumble of white buildings were silhouetted against the bright blue sky. It had been founded by Berbers in the first century, and in the ensuing years, it had been occupied in turn by the Romans, the Portuguese, and the French. The guidebooks called it a fishing village, but now its economy depended mainly on tourism, making do with whatever visitors hadn’t been snared by the more popular seaside resorts of Essaouira and Agadir.
Florence parked near Place Hassan II, close to the heart of Semat, just outside a building with an arched door painted a brilliant blue. In one direction lay the harbor and the beach; in the other, the town. As they stepped out of the car, Florence noticed a grittiness beneath the soles of her shoes. She looked down. It was sand, blown in from the shore.
She asked if they could stop in the souk; she’d wanted to go shopping since seeing Helen’s hat. Inside the marketplace, which was a fraction of the size of the one in Marrakesh, sunlight flickered through rattan matting strung up overhead to block it. Several tables held tall piles of spices; Florence saw labels for saffron and cumin and harissa. Another held colorful ceramic tagines lined up in neat rows. She wandered over to a man selling tooled leather purses. Behind him, his partner was carving an intricate design into a flap of raw leather with a knife. Florence picked up a small, stiff red bag and opened it.
“Two hundred dirhams,” the man behind the table said. “Twenty dollars.”
Florence rotated the bag in her hands. She turned to Helen to ask her opinion, but Helen was a few paces away, watching a man pull feathers from a chicken carcass.
“Okay,” Florence said to the man. “I’ll take it.” She fished the money out of her wallet.
She transferred the contents of her purse into her new bag and put it over her shoulder. She was happy she’d have a souvenir from the trip. She imagined getting compliments on it, and telling people where she’d found it. She walked over to Helen, who had moved on to inspecting the tagines, and showed it to her.
“You like?”
“How much?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“Down from what?”
“Down from nothing. Twenty dollars seemed like a bargain.”
“You didn’t haggle?”
Florence shrugged. “He probably needs it more than I do.”
“That’s not the point. They respect people who know how to negotiate. Now he has one more reason to think all Americans are spineless, coddled buffoons.”
Florence was briefly exasperated by Helen’s determination to always cast her as a fool. “Exactly,” she insisted, “wouldn’t it be wrong to mislead him?”
Helen laughed, a begrudging snort.
They left the souk and passed through Place Hassan II again, toward the harbor. Vendors were grilling fresh fish at stalls up and down the street. Smoke billowed up into the air before being tugged away by the wind. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of boats bobbing in the water, mostly beat-up rowboats painted a brilliant blue and single-man fishing operations, though there were a few tall wooden ships and a handful of small, ugly yachts. In a way, it reminded Florence of home. When she was in high school, she and her friend Whitney used to sneak onto empty boats at the harbor. You couldn’t actually get inside, but you could lie on the deck and pretend it was yours.