The Quiet Girl

by S. F. Kosa

  “I can do that. But you’re probably going to be discharged tomorrow morning, and it may be difficult for you to adjust without some help.” She pulled a business card from her pocket and set it on the folds of Maggie’s blanket. “Please consider talking to me again, Maggie, or, if I’m not your cup of tea, letting me refer you to someone else who could help. You deserve that. You deserve the chance to puzzle through what happened to you, with support. And without judgment. Good night.”

  Maggie stared out the window until she heard the door close behind the shrink. There was no trauma. There never had been a trauma.

  This is why she couldn’t talk to a psychiatrist. They were just as crazy as the people they were trying to help.

  She shifted her knees and flicked the business card off of her blanket like the rubbish it was.

  Wednesday, August 5

  You know where she is?” I lean forward, my eyes wide, even though the only things I see through my rain-flecked windshield are the trees of Beech Forest.

  “N-no,” Hannah says. “Not exactly.”

  “Who did you say you were? Hannah who?”

  “Please,” she says, her voice breaking. “I’ll get fired if anyone knows I’m talking to you. I-I just…I think I might be able to help.”

  “I know you’re not her editor, so who are you?” The last thing I need right now is to buy the bullshit story of some attention-seeking nutjob. “Do you really work for Granite Square?”

  “I already told you I did. I don’t want to say anything else.”

  “The police are dredging the bottom of a goddamn pond for my wife’s body, Hannah. If you’ve got any information that could help me find her, you need to help. And if you don’t, you need to fuck off and leave me the hell alone.” I pause, and then I realize what she might need. “Listen, if you’ve got something that can help me find Mina, there’s no way I’m going to get you in trouble. We’ll figure out a way to keep you out of it if possible.”

  “Will you meet me in Boston?”

  It’ll take her at least four hours to get from NYC to Boston by train, and it would take me nearly three to get to Boston myself. “Why can’t you tell me whatever it is you know right now?”

  “It’s not something to tell. I need to show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  Her breath rushes over the phone’s speaker, a blast of white noise. “It’s a manuscript.”

  “Something Mina wrote? Send it to me via email.”

  “I can’t have any electronic trail that traces this back to me. Please, Mr. Zarabian—”

  “Alex,” I say wearily. “And my wife writes romances, Hannah. Fiction. She makes shit up for a living.”

  “This is different.” For the first time, she sounds like an adult instead of a scared girl. “I wouldn’t risk the job I’ve wanted my whole life if I thought this was nothing.”

  “I believe you,” I say. “And I’ll meet you halfway.”

  It might turn out to be nothing, but the hope that it’s not keeps me moving. Helps me feel a shade less helpless. I’ve set the media monster rolling, but after countless interviews today, I’m not sure I have more to say, and knowing that the police have decided that Mina’s dead even if they don’t find her in Beech Forest makes me all the more determined to do as much as I can. Hannah and I agree to meet in New London, one of the stops on the Northeast Regional. I gas up the car and head out, though I stop at that Moby Dick place in Wellfleet and grab a lobster roll to go as I make my way off the Cape. I drive past signs for Harwich, grinding my teeth and drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. Half-tempted to head for the Mariner.

  I’m not sure what this manuscript is actually going to change. I mean, Mina pens romance novels, and having read a couple, I can say that they’re good and clever and, yeah, sexy. But they’re not The Da Vinci Code or Gone Girl, mysteries or thrillers or suspense, nor are they anything even remotely resembling our life. I even asked Mina once, half-joking, half-apprehensive, if I was ever going to recognize myself in the pages of her books. We’d been dating for two months, and I was smitten to the point of obsession.

  She laughed at my question, and because I didn’t understand her quite yet, I took it the wrong way. We were lying in my bed, the Saturday morning of a weekend when I didn’t have Devon, so it was just the two of us there with our champagne and coffee. And her laughter. “Jesus,” I said. “I know I’m not exactly SEAL Team Six or whatever the hell alpha male you’re writing about at the moment, but I didn’t think it was a joke—”

  Her smile died. “Alex, I’m never going to write about you. You’ll never be in one of my books.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You want some more coffee?”

  Her slender fingers grabbed my wrist. “You don’t get it,” she said. “There’s no way I’m going to write about you, or us, because it’s too precious to me.” Her smile was like one of those blown-glass Christmas ornaments—exquisite but easily cracked. “You’re this treasure I’ve found, and I don’t want to share. I don’t want to pull us apart and lay us on a table. I don’t want to worry about pacing or plot structure or tension or twists. We’re real. We’re plain and ordinary and real, and yet still utterly magical. And that’s everything to me.”

  I scooted closer to her as I saw tears shine in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “Sometimes I’m an ass.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You are. But you’re also mine. You don’t belong to some other heroine, even one I invent. When I’m with you, I want to be real. And present. I’m not always good at that, but with you, it’s been easy. I don’t want to distance myself from this relationship by caging it with words on a page.” She set down her champagne flute and ran her hands along my shoulders as I moved next to her. “I want to feel this, not bind it up in a story. A happy ending is still an ending.” Her lips brushed across my mouth. “And I don’t want this to end.”

  I am driving down 95 South with fucking tears in my eyes, remembering that. How she looked, how her body felt beneath my hands, the lilt of her voice, it’s all so real that I can barely breathe. We were too precious to her. We were too real. And she didn’t want it to end.

  Did that change? What was she afraid to tell me? Is this manuscript the answer to why she took off and left her rings behind? Or is this Hannah person bringing me something totally unrelated to our relationship? And should I have stopped in Harwich instead? Maybe what she was afraid of telling me had more to do with him than this damn manuscript.

  I’ve committed to following this particular lead, so I drive, and I think about Mina. I have to keep pushing away the nagging fear that she really was depressed and really did hurt herself. It goes against everything I understood about her, but with every hour of her absence, I’m trusting that understanding a little less.

  As I roll south through Rhode Island, needing to stay awake, I call Drew to check in about next steps with Pinewell. I’m hoping to hear that he’s given in to the reality of our situation and is prepared to sign the deal, because I need at least one thing in my life to go smoothly right now. But he’s focused on Mina’s disappearance. He tells me that Caroline is suggesting that I talk to a PR person.

  “Why?” I ask. “Am I coming across like a murderer?”

  “Only about a dozen times.” He chuckles, but it’s tense and sad. “I’ve been flipping back and forth between the networks and reading every article as soon as it comes out. The police are telling a damn good story, and it makes sense.”

  “Jesus Christ, Drew.”

  “I’m just saying that if you want attention to stay focused on this, you’re gonna have to be strategic. Otherwise…”

  “Because our national attention span is all of a half second long.”

  “Unless there’s something new that pops up, Caroline’s saying they’re going to move on quickly. A lot of other stuff to cover. Another shark atta
ck today in Truro. Did you hear?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Well, that’s not the only thing. There’s always a new thing to freak out about. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” Because I’m not immune to it, either. In fact, a month ago, Mina and I agreed to keep our phones out of the bedroom so we weren’t picking them up off the bedside table and getting lost in a screen every time the other person took a thirty-second trip to the bathroom. It was Mina’s idea—I’m learning to be content with my thoughts, she told me. I shouldn’t be diving into that virtual world for entertainment and stimulation and comfort and outrage every time I’m left alone—and you shouldn’t either. She always seemed so healthy. Like she’d figured it all out.

  Or maybe she was texting Stefan on the sly and didn’t want me to see.

  “I’m not trying to drag you down,” Drew is saying, probably interpreting my silence as fury. “But that’s why Caroline thinks you might need some help to keep the story front and center.”

  “If she’s got a person to recommend, she can text me,” I tell him. “I’ll look into it.”

  “Are you driving back to Boston? We could—”

  “I’m headed in the other direction, actually.” I offer my CEO the executive summary of tonight’s events.

  “You really think this is going to pan out?” Skepticism bleeds from every word. “And it’s worth driving halfway to New York to meet some potential nut instead of being here?”

  “I’ll be back later tonight,” I snap. “And I’ll call in tomorrow so we can talk about accepting Pinewell’s offer.”

  I hang up before he can argue with me. And before I end up confessing that signing this deal with Pinewell will mean the end of his reign as CEO of his own company. Even though he’ll make money, it’ll kill him. He imagines he’s going to be the one who finds some amazing cure for a deadly cancer, but the people who can actually make that happen don’t deal in dreams or fantasies or feelings or egos. They just want to get shit done and make money.

  I’m wondering whether the Pinewell guys ever watch cable news. Kinda hoping they don’t.

  As I pull up to the New London train station and learn that Hannah’s train isn’t due for another ten minutes, I discover someone else has been watching the news.

  Did you do something to her?? It’s Willa, chatting me up through the Facebook app.

  NO, I reply.

  Last week you asked me when I’d spoken to her, and now I find out she’d already been missing for a few days at that point. Except I messaged with her TWO DAYS AGO.

  For a brief moment, my heart jolts to a stop. Then I remember—that wasn’t Mina. I need to come clean.

  Except Willa does it for me. That was you, wasn’t it?

  After a moment of hesitance, I admit it.

  You’re a fucking scary motherfucker, she replies, and I’m going to the police.

  I roll my eyes. I didn’t do anything to Mina, I type. And if you have ANY information about where she went, you’d better tell me. Or the police. I don’t care.

  As if I’d tell the guy who fucking catfished me!

  “Give me a fucking break,” I groan. She told you she had something important to tell me, and you told her to be brave. If that has anything to do with where she might have gone or something that’s happening to her, hiding it makes you complicit.

  I’m telling them you probably killed her, you controlling bastard.

  I thought you were supposed to be creative.

  You’re shady as hell. And that’s her final message. She disappears from chat, and when I search for her, I realize she’s not only unfriended me, she’s blocked me as well. I make a mental note to go ahead and give Detective Correia the news that I cracked into Mina’s laptop. She’ll see that I impersonated my wife, but she’ll also have the confirmation that Stefan Silva is a guy to watch.

  I snap out of my miserable churning as the train pulls into the station. I’m supposed to be on the platform, waiting for Hannah. As people trickle through the double doors of the old brick building, I leave my car in a tow zone and rush inside. A minute later, I smooth down my hair and check to make sure my fly is up, because I get some weird looks as I scan the exiting passengers. I have no idea what this Hannah person looks like, but I’m imagining a nervous, bookish girl, pale as a fish and kind of bohemian.

  She’s not that at all. I’m approached by a young woman in a colorful hijab, wearing bright red lipstick and skinny jeans. She’s got a messenger bag slung across her chest and comes right up to me, offers her hand. “Alex?”

  I shake. “Yeah. Hi.”

  “I recognized you from the news.”

  I guess that explains the funny looks. “Want to go grab a drink?”

  We head across the street, but the first place we try, Oasis, is so loud inside that even on the sidewalk, I can’t hear what she’s saying. After I move my car, we walk up the road and end up at a good old-fashioned hole in the wall, the Dutch Tavern. Inside, I order a beer and she orders…water. “You hungry? Want a hamburger or something?”

  She asks for fries. I gesture at a table in a corner. The place isn’t crowded, but I still feel like I’m sitting in the middle of that train station, on display. “So, is Hannah your real name?”

  “What, you think it should be Tahira or Fadiyah or something?” She tugs on her head scarf and arches an eyebrow. “Why does it matter?”

  “Please convince me that I didn’t drive three hours to meet a crank.”

  She has the good grace to smile, and it doesn’t even seem hostile, which I probably deserve. “I met Mina last summer,” she says, “though I didn’t know it was her at the time.”

  She’s known Mina longer than I have. “What do you mean, you didn’t know it was her?”

  “I work for Pleiades. I’m an assistant to one of the editors there. Her editor, actually.”

  “Pleiades?”

  “It’s an imprint at Granite Square.”

  “Mina writes for Diva.”

  Hannah strokes her finger through the condensation on her slightly smudged water glass. “Mina Richards writes for Diva. But Quinn Garrison got a single book deal from Pleiades about a year ago, for her debut novel.”

  “Quinn Garrison?”

  She’s looking at me like I’m slow. “Did Mina tell you that she had a pseudonym?” When I shake my head, she doesn’t seem surprised. “It was top secret. We all had to sign NDAs. She didn’t want anyone to know it was her.”

  Including her husband, I guess. But I wonder if she told her friend Willa. I sip my beer and then nudge it aside. “It’s not romance, I take it?”

  “Far from it.”

  “That doesn’t make it real, though. It’s fiction, right?”

  Her hand slips down and touches the messenger bag hanging on the back of her chair. “Supposedly.” She opens the flap and pulls out a thick stack of paper. “I haven’t read any of her romances, but this…”

  It’s all I can do not to snatch it out of her hands. “Is this something that’s going to be published?”

  “The pub date is set for February, and ARCs—advance review copies—are going out next week.” Her brow furrows. “She said there was no way she’d do any appearances unless she could go in disguise. I thought she was joking at first.”

  “Did she give you any clue why she was so cloak and dagger about it?”

  “You’ll have to read it. When I asked Kyle—he’s her editor and my boss—this afternoon if he thought this book had anything to do with Mina’s disappearance…” She presses her lips together. “He totally shut me down. I don’t think he wants to believe there’s a connection. He’s pretty beside himself.”

  “Over Mina’s disappearance or because he’s afraid this ‘investment’ is going to go down the tubes if she’s…” I look away and give up. �
�He doesn’t know you’re here.”

  “He’d probably toss me out the window and enjoy watching me hit the pavement. And our offices are on the seventeenth floor.” She slides the stack of paper across the table. “This is an older version of the manuscript, from revisions—it has Kyle’s comments in the margins. It was my job to input them into the electronic file for her. When I heard she was missing this afternoon, it made me think of something he wrote.” She pulls up the first half of the manuscript, revealing a dog-eared page near the middle. There, in the margins, Kyle has scrawled, Didn’t you say this is from your own experience? You’re filtering the whole thing for the reader! Make me feel it! Push!

  I meet Hannah’s eyes. “What’s the book about?”

  “A woman with a rare psychological issue. I don’t know how much of it is real and how much is fiction. I never got to ask her.”

  Psychological issue. I accept the manuscript and look down at the cover page. The Quiet Girl, it’s called. By Quinn Garrison. “When did she finish this?”

  “She finished the draft last December,” says Hannah, picking at her fries. “She was revising in the spring, and she’s supposed to be doing copyedits now.”

  We met in December, when she’d already written the book, but I guess she’s been tinkering with it for the last several months. “Did you ever talk to her about the story?”

  “Only once. She came down to the city, and I took her out for lunch because Kyle had a family emergency. I thought Mina might be angry, having to go to lunch with a nobody, but she was really nice. She almost seemed nervous about the whole thing, which I didn’t quite get. I told her how much I loved the book, and she said it was the most scarily honest thing she’s ever written. She said she was absolutely terrified that people would find out it was her.”

  “Did she say why?”

  Hannah glances at her phone. “I have to go.”

  “What? Already?”

  “My train back to New York arrives in fifteen minutes.”

  I stand up as she does. “What do I—”