The Quiet Girl

by S. F. Kosa

  He shakes his head and wipes at the bar with a black rag. “She reached out to me. Right? A few weeks ago. Doesn’t mean I know where she is.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Aren’t you the one she’s married to?”

  “Did you sleep with her?” Is that why she left her wedding ring behind? She was headed off to have an affair? Or just one night, to exorcise old feelings?

  Very quietly, he says, “With all due respect, fuck you.” His jaw clenches, his gaze on the Employees Only door beyond the bar. “Sorry. No. We didn’t sleep together. I mean—”

  “Not this year?”

  He turns away to dry another glass.

  I take a different tack. “What did she call herself, when you knew her?”

  He goes still, then looks over his shoulder. “What did she tell you?”

  “Plenty.” I’m bluffing, but I’ve always been good at poker. “I know you were her friend when she needed one.”

  He gives me a wary look. “Lisa. That’s what she told me her name was. And I don’t think she was lying. She really believed it.”

  Lisa. Layla. Mina. Maggie. It hits me like a solid punch in the chest. This really happened to my wife. Just like in her book. “How old was she?”

  The wariness seems to deepen. “What did she tell you exactly? You sure it was the truth?”

  No. “She forgot who she was for a while. And you helped get her back to her family.”

  He scoffs. “Okaaay.”

  I plow forward. “And when she came back to herself, she couldn’t remember where she’d been.” Our eyes meet. “But she was pregnant.”

  He runs his tongue over his teeth. “Was she.” Neither question nor confirmation. This guy is probably pretty good at poker, too.

  “She reached out to you after she was back home.”

  A shrug. “I kept up my end of the deal.”

  “Deal.”

  “She didn’t tell you about Daddy Dearest.” He chuckles, an edgy, sad sound.

  In this moment, it is almost impossible to keep my face where it is, to not let my mouth drop open or my eyes go wide. “Scott paid you off?”

  “One way to put it. I guess silence is golden to people like them.”

  “Mina knew?”

  “How the fuck would I know what she knew?”

  “Scott Richards—he wanted you to stay quiet about what happened?”

  “Didn’t want me anywhere near his precious daughter.”

  “But you helped get her back home, didn’t you?”

  “It was a long time ago, man. Different time, different place.”

  Not really that different—Provincetown and Harwich are only forty miles apart. And for all I know, she was never in Provincetown to begin with—she’s changed a few of the locations in her book, with Yarmouth standing in for Truro as her hometown, for example. She might have ended up here during her actual fugue instead of the tip of Cape Cod for all I know. “But she found you again,” I say. “She wanted to see you.” Why? I want to shout.

  He glances around the bar like he hopes another customer needs him. “I can’t be wrapped up in this, okay?” he tells me, his mouth barely moving. “I never asked for this.”

  “Asked for what?”

  “I have to go get some stock from the back.” He grabs a shot glass, sets it on the bar, and pours out a measure of Jack Daniel’s. “On the house. I’m sorry for your troubles. Wish I could help.”

  I wait a long time for him to come back. Finally, a different guy comes out from the back, bald and blank. He eyes me up and starts to wait on customers. When I give up and leave at half past five, Stefan still hasn’t reappeared.

  I drive back to Brookline, wondering if I’m chasing my tail. Knowing I need to read the rest of Mina’s manuscript, knowing it might lead exactly nowhere.

  But it’s still there, the knowledge that Mina wanted to talk to him. To see him. After over a decade, she reached out. And she kept it a secret—from me, at least.

  I call Drew on the way home and let him know I’ll be in on Friday morning. He sounds relieved but stunned. “You sure you’re up for it?”

  “I’m in town anyway. I need to spend a little time with Devon. I’m taking her out to dinner.” I’ve already texted Caitlin, who made it easy, thank God. Didn’t give me a hard time about keeping Devon up late or anything like that.

  “I could use the backup,” Drew says. “I’m going to turn down the Pinewell offer, and I need you with me.”

  I almost have to pull the fucking car over. “Drew. No.”

  “I’m talking to some people. We could pull funds from different places.”

  “I’ll be in the office tomorrow. Nine?”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  “Drew, don’t do anything before we meet. I know I’ve been out of pocket—”

  “With good reason, Alex. I get it.”

  “—but I’m in this. Just wait, okay?”

  “Will do.”

  And that’s it. Jesus. One more thing. My wife is gone, and my best friend seems to be doing his damnedest to tank his career, my career, and our entire fucking company.

  These risks I took, shocking everyone who knew me from before—conservative Alex who followed a set path, who stuck to what he knew—they don’t look so smart or calculated anymore. Suddenly, dropping off the face of the earth, forgetting who I am, what I need to do, what I might lose…it seems pretty tempting. Was that what happened to Mina? Was it all too much, and she just had to walk away? What happened to push her that far? What was so bad that she couldn’t even remain herself?

  Caitlin always hated what she called my “walls.” She always felt shut out. But really, sometimes stuff has to be kept at bay if you want to keep functioning. Go to school. Do your job. Deal with your parents. Your wife. Your kid. Your boss. Everything in its box, safe and sound. Why should one thing bleed into another? That I understand. But I can’t imagine it ever being so bad that I’d forget any of it, let alone all of it.

  But walls can be useful. Now I shove everything—Drew, Rose, Scott, fucking Stefan, the detective, and even Mina—behind those barriers. And I take my little girl out to dinner.

  Devon is exactly what I need tonight. She chatters about her camp and how she can swim underwater now, how she wants to be princess of the dolphins when she grows up. She asks me when Mina will let her play Plants vs. Zombies again.

  I tell her that Mina is off on a trip. I don’t falter or pause. I lie and try to believe it.

  Caitlin invites me in when I bring Devon back. After she lets me tuck our daughter in, I accept her offer of a drink. She asks me about the search for Mina, tells me it’s been all over the news. I can tell she wants me to talk about it, but she’s also unsurprised when I deflect. She knows me too well. What would have turned into a nasty fight three years ago just shifts to a conversation about our daughter, safe territory. For a while, it’s nice to share this one wonderful thing with her, uncomplicated and glowing and happy. Devon is perfect and whole and sweet, and she reminds me why I could never, ever disappear, no matter what happens. It makes me think of Mina at this age and Scott as her father and why she constructed an otherwise fairly accurate story with this one big departure from real life. Of course, it might not be the only one, but right now, it’s glaring.

  Caitlin must sense I’m not fully in the conversation; she gently suggests I go home and get some rest. As I leave, we share a long hug that’s half-alien and half-familiar, holding between us all the things we’ve lost and the one thing we still have.

  “I’m here if you need me,” she whispers before she closes the door. I’m sure she wants it to be true.

  When I finally get home, it’s almost eleven. With heavy limbs, I head up the stairs and enter the condo, half expecting Mina to come out of her office, happy to have
me home at last. I am greeted by nothing but silence.

  I pour myself a generous tumbler of Macallan and pull the manuscript from my bag, but then my mom calls, demanding to know why I haven’t returned any of her calls. My penance is allowing her to talk my ear off for over an hour about all the things she’s doing to try to help me find Mina. I know she’s mostly trying to make me feel better, but in her usual way, she’s only making me feel worse, reminding me that despite all these good intentions, all these efforts, the woman I love is still missing.

  When Mom tells me that Drew called her personally to ask her to invest more funds, I tell her I have to go. Before I tumble into a restless sleep, I set the alarm for six so I can plow through the rest of the manuscript before my meeting. I jerk awake what feels like ten minutes later, and it’s twenty past seven. I’ve apparently been pushing snooze without even waking up. Fast as I can, I get ready for the day, and then I sit down at the kitchen table where I’ve shared coffee and breakfast with Mina so many times. I read two more chapters of her book.

  When I finally have to force myself to stop because I’m about to be late to my meeting with Drew, chills of horror are rippling through me, waves on a fast-eroding shore. And two things are obvious to me: Scott has some serious explaining to do, and I didn’t ask Stefan Silva the right questions.

  Chapter Nine

  Esteban got a ride to Yarmouth, and they met at the park. They took Maggie’s car, but she accepted his offer to drive. Maggie brought the cash that had been in the pocket of her shorts, along with another $200 from her bank account.

  Esteban brought the rest. Over $300. She had no idea how he’d scraped it together, but she sensed it wasn’t easy.

  At first, she’d felt powerful. He was willing to go with her, willing to lay down hard-earned cash for her. Something about him seemed so malleable, like she could squeeze him to nothing, like she could make him do anything. Part of her wanted to. The part that made her teeth clench and her fingers twitch and her muscles tense. But that sense of control sloughed off as they reached the city, exposing a new, raw layer that stiffened as it hit the air, drying and hardening like a chrysalis around her.

  They didn’t talk much. The radio filled the silence. Maggie gazed out the window, wondering if they’d done this before.

  “Almost there,” he said as he exited the turnpike at Cambridge/Brighton and took the right at the fork. Cambridge Street. Soldiers Field Road. University, then Commonwealth. Maggie mouthed the street names, watching the time.

  Her appointment was at eleven. She’d told her mother she’d be hanging out with Beth again today, that she’d be home by dinner. Ivy was making cassoulet. A tribute to her French roots. She liked to remind anyone who would listen that she had French roots.

  Maggie had French roots, too, that meant. So did this baby inside her.

  Her throat tightened, and she rubbed at it, wincing. She hated cassoulet.

  But it was his favorite.

  She clutched at her seat belt as fog and static crackled at the edges of her vision.

  “Where the fuck am I supposed to park?” Esteban muttered, slowing the car to roll past the building. Cars lined the busy street. There didn’t seem to be any protesters out front, waving pictures of aborted fetuses, blood and tissue and shame. Thank God.

  “Want me to just drop you off?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll meet you in the waiting room.”

  “Okay.” She hopped out when he stopped the car and walked the half block. Planned Parenthood. Ivy would have a heart attack if she knew. Thank heaven for Jewish Beth.

  Maggie walked through the doors, down the hall, into a plain, sterile waiting room, posters all around, all supportive, all welcoming, all nonthreatening. She didn’t meet the eyes of the other ladies waiting around, some very pregnant, one with a toddler, another clinging to her man. She knew she shouldn’t judge.

  “Hi,” she said as she reached the attendant behind glass. She wondered if it was bulletproof. “I have an appointment at eleven.”

  “Name?” The lady’s jaw worked at a piece of gum.

  Maggie leaned forward as if it mattered whether the people in the waiting room heard her name, as if any of them cared. “Wallace,” she said quietly.

  The woman nodded. “Have a seat. There’s water if you need it.”

  If you need it. In the next two hours, that phrase was uttered so many times, by so many kind people. She was told it would be all right. She was told she would be fine.

  She was already fine, and she had said it aloud, over and over. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. A brief flash of memory—Lori telling her she wasn’t convincing. But no one here questioned her. It wasn’t their job to question or to judge, and they didn’t. Not at all.

  The nurse ushering her through the process asked her when her last period was, and she said she couldn’t remember. She nodded—Maggie had told them this over the phone. She did an ultrasound to determine just how pregnant Maggie was. Important. Less than ten weeks meant she could take a pill, ride out what came next.

  But she was twelve weeks along at least.

  Esteban would never know. He’d asked if a pill could have done it. She’d brushed him off. He wasn’t the curious type. Apparently didn’t do research.

  This baby inside her, it had taken root at least three months ago. It wasn’t his. And as she lay there, wand in her body, lights dimmed, soft hand on her belly, soft voice telling her it would be okay as if she were a skittish horse, as if she didn’t know better, she remembered a little.

  Walking into the CVS. Looking away from the cashier. No, she didn’t have a CVS card. Drifting out, eyes averted, everything is fine here. Nothing to see.

  Peeing on the stick in the stall of the cavernous dorm bathroom.

  Plus sign.

  Everything is fine here. She was going to hell even though it didn’t exist. Everything is fine.

  She wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Wes. Especially not Wes. He’d given her a nervous smile and headed in the other direction when she’d run into him at the library that morning, not that she could blame him for running. She’d turned into a crazy bitch; that was how he put it. She couldn’t blame him at all. And she had a final to study for anyway. Another A, another A. Perfection. The opposite of a waste of time.

  After the final, she might go take a swim in the Quabbin Reservoir. Maybe never resurface. She’d read the other day that there were whole towns submerged in the depths, sacrificed in the name of drinking water for thirsty Bostonians. Paved roads that once led to town commons ran straight from the shore to the depths. Everything is fine, and nothing hurts.

  That was all she remembered. Nothing after that, nothing coherent or whole or right, until the parking lot and the running and the hard kiss of a bumper.

  “Is it a boy or a girl?” she blurted out.

  The nurse looked startled, then uncomfortable, then blandly clinical once again. “That’s not something we could know for several more weeks. And—”

  “Right.” Maggie stared at a poster of female anatomy hanging on the opposite side of the room. “Of course. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Would you like to talk to our counselor? She’s really—”

  “Definitely not.” Maggie’s hand slid off the table to cover her belly. A few months would make it round with the tiny creature inside her, one that would be entirely dependent on her. Hers to protect. Hers to doom in any one of a million possible ways. “I made up my mind.”

  Would it love her? She knew it would, the helpless, needy, adoring love of a child for a parent. Linked by body and heart, so tightly that nothing could sever it. Even if you wanted to.

  The nurse watched Maggie’s fingers curling into the spare flesh of her abdomen. “It’s okay to change it. This is an important decision, and it’s entirely yours. No one here wants to pressure you.
We only want to help.”

  Maggie clenched her fist and lowered her hand to her side. “I want to get this over with.” Her heart was beating so fast. Her throat was so tight. “I’m in school. I’m not with anyone. I don’t have a job. And—” Something is very wrong with me.

  “You don’t have to explain. Like I said, entirely your choice. But if you need some support—”

  “I have a friend in the waiting room. I’m fine. But we have to get back to the Cape, so…”

  The nurse cleared her throat. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll get everything set up.”

  She walked back into the waiting room, hollow. Esteban jumped to his feet when he saw her, and the concern in his eyes made her want to fly at him and tear at his hair, scratch his face, punch that dead gray tooth right out of his mouth.

  Instead, she laughed, light and high. “I’m fine,” she said. “It was quick. Let’s go.”

  “Great,” he said. “I won’t have to feed the meter again.”

  She followed him out to her car, cramps gnawing away at her. Like they’d removed the baby and replaced it with a small demon, punishment for her sins.

  “You hungry?” Esteban asked as he headed for the highway. He almost seemed to be floating with happiness, the dead weight removed.

  Or live weight, as it were.

  When she didn’t answer, he said, “There’s a McDonald’s up ahead.”

  “Whatever you want,” said Maggie, and then when he pulled to the drive-thru window, she told him she wasn’t hungry. He ordered himself a Big Mac and fries and a Coke. She flattened her palm against the warm window as he pulled back onto the road.

  Teeth on edge, she listened to him eating, inhaled the greasy scent. A Taylor Swift song played as he drove up the highway, headed back to the Cape.

  “You okay?” he asked after several miles. “Need anything?”

  She glanced over at him. Considered grabbing the wheel and giving it a yank, wondered if they could make it through the concrete barrier and into the Neponset River, or bounce off and veer into the semi passing them on the right. Either way could be fine, enough to mash flesh and bone and brain.