Even if she had to go back to being Florence Darrow, she would never allow herself to sink to such triviality. She would refuse an average life. She would send it back like undercooked chicken. She would— “Babe, your turn.” Nick nudged her elbow gently.
“Oh, sorry. Um. Never have I ever…” The group looked at her expectantly. “Never have I ever…” Thrown bananas on a corpse? Drugged a friend? Stolen my boss’s identity?
She abruptly stood up. “Just skip me. I’m going to get another drink.”
The group fell silent. She had ruined their fun.
39.
Florence was hungover. She rolled over in bed. Nick had left hours before to go kiteboarding. She looked around the empty room. All her belongings—and Helen’s—were still in suitcases in the front hallway. She stood up and trudged downstairs to drag up Helen’s so she could get dressed.
She peeked into the living room. It was immaculate. Amira had already cleaned up the mess they’d left last night.
As she passed through the front hall, she suddenly froze, certain she’d just seen Helen. She turned her head. It had been her own reflection in a mirror on the wall. She peered closely at it. Her hair had gotten blonder in the sun, and the storm had broken the humidity so that her curls now hung in loose waves. If she squinted, she might really have been looking at Helen.
She could have easily used Helen’s passport at the airport, she realized. If her new life hadn’t been snatched away from her.
“Florence,” she said into the mirror in a loud, dull voice.
Just then she noticed another presence in the room. It was Amira, watching her from the kitchen doorway. She forced herself to smile.
“Good morning,” she said as brightly as she could.
“Good morning, Madame. Coffee?”
“That would be great. Thank you.”
Once she was dressed, she tried to regain some of the momentum she’d felt yesterday. Helen’s body could still wash up, she reminded herself. But that thought no longer inspired the same sense of urgency. Once she’d decided to stop being Helen, she’d felt absolved of all her sins—as if without the reward there could be no misdeed. Besides, if Helen’s body washed up, at least they’d know Florence hadn’t murdered Jenny.
No, she reminded herself. No. If Helen’s body washed up they’d ask how she ended up in the ocean and why Florence had never reported her missing. If they could prove that Florence had been drinking—maybe even if they couldn’t—she’d go to prison for manslaughter.
She was fucked. That was the long and short of it. Florence Darrow was fucked and Helen Wilcox was fucked. At least Helen was lucky enough to be dead.
She toppled over on the couch, planted her face into a pile of pillows, and screamed as loudly as she could. She wished she’d never come to Morocco. No, farther back. She wished she’d never met Helen Wilcox.
When she sat up, her hair in disarray, Amira was setting a cup and saucer gently on the table in front of her.
“Thank you,” she said, as if all were normal, as if this woman were not witnessing the disintegration of her self.
“Je vous en prie.”
Florence sipped the strong, hot coffee and felt her wits begin to sharpen.
The first step was getting out of Morocco. If she had to explain what had happened to Helen, it would be better to do that in America. After all, extradition treaties go both ways. Morocco couldn’t compel the United States to send her back to stand trial for manslaughter.
She Googled how to replace a lost passport in a foreign country. It appeared that she would need to go either to the embassy in Rabat or to the consulate in Casablanca. She’d also need a new passport photo, a photocopy of her old passport, and her driver’s license.
Well, fantastic. She didn’t have any of those. She noticed she was gnawing on her knuckle again. She removed it from her mouth, and picked up Dan Massey’s card from where it still sat on the table. She tapped it against the glass a few times.
Finally she stood up.
It was time to embark on the long, unpleasant process of becoming Florence Darrow again.
She went into the kitchen and dialed the number.
“Massey here.”
“Hi, Mr. Massey. This is Florence Darrow.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“The woman from yesterday?” she prodded. “You were at my house?”
“I certainly remember visiting Helen Wilcox’s house. What can I do for you, Ms. Wilcox?”
“It’s Ms. Darrow,” Florence said emphatically. “I want to go back to the United States. But I don’t have a passport. Or any photo ID.”
“I have your passport.”
“No, you have Helen Wilcox’s passport.”
Another silence. When he spoke again, it was in a tone eager to show off how very reasonable he was being. “Alright, we’ll do this your way. Remind me of your name again.”
“Florence. Florence Margaret Darrow. I was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, on October ninth, 1993.”
“And you have nothing with your name on it? Nothing at all?”
“No. But I can give you my mother’s phone number—she’ll tell you. Or wait, actually, there’s someone here in Semat right now—an old friend, she’s known me since I was six—she can tell you who I am.”
“Uh-huh. But you see how I can’t issue a legal government document using the assurance from a friend as proof of identity, right? You understand that?”
“I know, but…”
“Do you have access to your birth certificate or your social security card?”
“No.” Both of them were in a shoebox in her closet in Helen’s house. “But I can tell you where to find them.”
He sighed. “Alright. Listen. I’m going to talk to a few people in the office and see what our options are. Maybe your friend could sign an affidavit. I’m not sure. To be honest, I’ve never encountered a situation quite like this before. What’s the best number to reach you at?”
Florence rattled off the phone number from the yellowed piece of paper taped to the wall next to the phone.
“Okay, sit tight. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“When?”
“Hopefully later today. Goodbye, Ms.—” he stopped himself. “Goodbye.”
Florence hung up and immediately retrieved the laptop from the living room. She had no plans to sit tight.
She Googled the number for Riad Lotus—that was where Amy had said she and Whitney were staying—and asked to speak to Whitney Carlson. It was nine thirty in the morning; she hoped they were still in the room. She hoped they were still in Semat.
“Hello?”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Whitney? It’s Florence.”
“Florence, I’m so glad you called! I feel absolutely horrible about the other night. I don’t know what happened.”
“It’s fine—don’t worry about it. Listen, we didn’t really get a chance to catch up, so I was wondering how long you were staying in Semat.”
“Just until tomorrow.”
“You’re leaving tomorrow?”
“Yeah, we’re taking the bus to Marrakesh in the morning then flying back to the States around eight.”