The Quiet Girl

by S. F. Kosa

  “I take it he was telling the truth.”

  Scott raises his head. “We did what we thought was best for Mina.”

  Rose twists her napkin in her lap. “You didn’t know her then. She was lost.”

  “Literally, right?” I run a finger down the length of my sweating water glass. “I know about the fugue.”

  “The what?” asks Scott.

  “The fugue. She was triggered by something.” The question is, triggered by what? Untangling history from fiction is twisting me up. As Rose mutters under her breath and her cheeks flush, I plow forward. “She forgot who she was and dropped out of her life. Stefan was with her during that time. He helped her get home.”

  Rose scoffs. “Is that what she told you?” She shakes her head. “She never took responsibility. She never confessed or repented.”

  “Rose,” Scott murmurs, reaching over to put his hand over his wife’s. She pulls it away and wrings her napkin again.

  “She had every opportunity!” Rose clenches a fist over the poor napkin. “It wasn’t easy, but we sent her to that private school. And then she turns eighteen and poof! Disappears for almost five months! It was ungrateful.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Five months?” Maggie was gone for only about ten weeks.

  “Oh,” says Rose. “She didn’t tell you everything, hmm? I knew she wouldn’t.”

  “Rose,” says Scott.

  She gives her husband a sharp look. “And where were you?” she snaps. Then she covers her mouth and looks away.

  Scott clears his throat. “I’m going to have another drink. Alex?”

  “Did I see some Glenfiddich in there?” I ask weakly.

  “I’ll be right back.” He gets up from the table, leaving me there with Rose, who is taking heavy breaths through her nose.

  “Those were difficult years,” she says quietly. “What I meant is that Scott had a lot of sea days, with all those fisheries to be inspected. He wasn’t home very much. He was working hard for his family.”

  Or he had a month-to-month lease at one of Andy Poole’s rental cottages.

  “I spoke to Amy Poole yesterday.”

  Rose blinks. “Why would you do that?”

  “Andy told me that she and Mina were friends in middle school.”

  “I doubt my daughter was the kind of friend that girl deserved.” She apparently sees the naked what-the-fuck in my expression and changes course. “What I mean is that Mina was very…focused on herself.” Her nostrils flare, and then she apparently can’t help herself. “Selfish, if you want my honest opinion.”

  “Amy told me that Mina seemed unhappy. That she withdrew. Quit all her activities.” And I can’t help bringing it up, because it seems like such a weird lie for Mina to have told. “Like chess.”

  “And I suppose that’s my fault?”

  Huh? “No one’s saying that. I’m trying to understand Mina a little better.”

  She begins to tidy up the table, covering her half-eaten plate of food with her napkin, picking up a grain of couscous and depositing it on the edge of Scott’s plate. “Understand, then, that she made her own decisions. I raised her to behave, to consider others’ needs before her own. But I also tried to support her. I did my best.”

  Another chill rides down my spine. I know what I read in the pages of my wife’s novel. Maggie was raised to behave. To be quiet. To keep secrets. And now I know Mina kept a boatload of them, maybe because her mother trained her to do exactly that, but the pain it must have caused her…it bleeds from those pages. It’s like she’s screaming for someone to help her, and I haven’t yet figured out how. I want to push, but now Rose is acting like she’s about to clam up, so I move on to keep her talking. “So Mina, when she was eighteen, she disappeared for a while. When I first told you she was missing, that was what you were thinking about. You’ve been through this before.”

  “She ran away that time,” says Rose, her hands fluttering over the glasses and dishes, straightening and adjusting. “For months. Do you think she’s run away from you, Alex?”

  I already know this tactic of hers, and I’m not letting her throw me off track. “Did you know where she was, Rose?”

  She shakes her head. “I think she wanted to hurt me.”

  “Why would she want to do that?”

  “Don’t all young ladies need to be tough on their mothers?” Her voice is breezy until it breaks.

  “Most young ladies don’t take it that far,” I say. “You really think this was a decision she made and not a mental health issue?”

  “It was a convenient excuse. She was eighteen. An adult, the police told me. But I knew my daughter. So willful. I suspected she was easy prey for temptation and had probably followed a sinful path. I almost expected it.” She rubs at her temples, fingernails glinting in the fading daylight. “And then she showed up all of a sudden as if nothing had happened, with five months gone by and an elaborate lie that fooled no one.” Rose glances back at the house. “In the end, though, it strengthened our family. Brought us closer. God works in mysterious ways.”

  “She was pregnant.”

  Rose turns as Scott emerges from the house with two drinks. “Will you make me one, too?”

  Scott sets one drink in front of me and the other in front of his wife before heading back inside.

  Rose takes a sip and meets my gaze. “I tried to raise her right. She pushed against me at every turn. I love my daughter, but she seemed determined to flout her upbringing every chance she got. She wouldn’t listen.”

  “Is that why you sent her away to boarding school?”

  Rose flinches. “Is that what you think of me? Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, if you’re getting your information from my daughter. I’ve always done what was best for her.”

  I gulp down half my drink in one toss of my head, fortifying myself. It burns all the way down. “So when she was pregnant…”

  “I took care of her,” she says in a shrill voice. “Every single day. I made sure she had everything she needed so that she and that precious little life inside her were as healthy as possible.”

  God. “She has a child.”

  “We made sure he went to a good home.”

  He… Mina gave birth to a son. And if she was eighteen when she had him, this kid would have just hit adolescence. I sit back. Push my chair away from the table. That volcanic feeling is simmering again, the pressure growing. “Did she want to have a child?”

  “She made that decision when she decided to have intercourse outside of the sanctity of marriage,” Rose hisses.

  “Rose!” It’s Scott. He has emerged from the house, drink in hand. Then his gaze rests on me. “This is a very stressful time for all of us.”

  “You have a grandson.”

  Scott’s lips press together. Rose bows her head. “She wasn’t ready to be a mother,” she says. “She was in no condition to take care of a baby. She couldn’t even take care of herself. And we…we all thought it was best.”

  “Did she agree to any of it?” I ask. There might be seismic activity inside me, but my voice is steady.

  “She came around,” says Rose.

  I don’t know how much Mina is actually like Maggie. I don’t know if she suffered like her character so obviously suffered and if the effects were as apparent, because I didn’t know her then. But somehow, Mina wrote those pages. She tapped into the emotions. She knew what that felt like.

  I’m guessing it was so painful that she had to change the story. In her novel, her character is older and gone for a shorter period of time, so she’s barely twelve weeks pregnant when she sneaks off and has an abortion. In real life, eighteen-year-old Mina was gone for five months and carried her pregnancy to term, and then she gave the baby up.

  Then she married a clueless asshole who blundered his way into the most agonizing chapter of
her life without even sensing the pain hidden behind that beautiful face, that wild and carefree laugh.

  “And you all pretend it never happened,” I say. If this part of her life hurt her so much that she couldn’t include it in the book, what else did she change or leave out? And what does that say about what’s left? That’s the less painful part? The stuff she could bear? “Jesus,” I whisper.

  “Sometimes it’s best to let things lie,” Rose says primly. “Why open old wounds?”

  I have to work to draw air in my lungs. I know that phrase. It’s in Mina’s book. Maggie recalls being told that by her character’s twisted, evil mother. And I’m sitting here with Mina’s actual mother, and I wonder just how evil she is. “Old wounds,” I murmur.

  Rose nods. “Right. How can they heal if you keep poking at them?”

  “Did Stefan know?” I ask, trying to sound normal instead of full of disgust for the woman in front of me. Especially because I don’t really know how similar Rose and Ivy are. I don’t know exactly what old wounds we’re talking about and which Rose inflicted.

  Scott looks down at his drink. “He was not the right type for her. Not able to support a child.”

  “He’s the father,” I snap. I wish I could spit this bitter taste right out of my mouth.

  “He had absolutely nothing to do with us.” Rose sniffs. “And weren’t we right about all of it?” She leans forward, peering at me. “Look at all she accomplished after that. We got her back on track, into a good school. She moved on and made a living and found you.”

  While Rose and Scott got to pretend that their eighteen-year-old daughter hadn’t had a baby out of wedlock. “Does Mina have any relationship with the child?” I ask.

  “We felt that a closed adoption would be best for her.”

  “The decision wasn’t yours to make.”

  “She signed the papers,” Rose says.

  I’m imagining Mina, my Mina, eighteen, messed up after whatever she went through, scared, and under the thumb of her judgmental and rigid parents. Of course she signed. She was totally at their mercy.

  What if she changed her mind?

  We’re all there, stewing in tense silence, when Sharon Rawlings emerges from a concealed path at the back of the property, carrying a basket. “Oh,” she says as she sees us there. “Hello, hello! I’m so sorry to disrupt your dinner. You said I could help myself to your raspberries?” She gestures at the brambles that bound the woods at the back of the property.

  Rose’s face transforms, aglow with pride and charity. “Help yourself, and then come join us for dessert! I made a berry crumble myself this afternoon.”

  Sharon gives me a rueful look, like I’m in on a private joke. “Of course you did,” she says. “And it will be at least twice as good as the one I’m making for Phillip.”

  Rose waves the comment away. “Please. I’m probably using a recipe you gave me.”

  “Wouldn’t that be ironic?” Sharon’s eyes narrow as she looks us over again. “Is everything okay? Any word about Mina?”

  “The police are doing a very thorough job,” says Rose. “Pursuing every lead.” She obviously doesn’t want to talk about Stefan Silva right now. I wonder how many of the Richardses’ friends know that Mina was even pregnant, let alone that she had a child.

  “Does Phillip need any help on the property?” Scott asks Sharon. “You shouldn’t have to shoulder all of it while he recovers. I can come over tomorrow.”

  “I can come by and clean your house for you!” offers Rose.

  “We’re fine!” says Sharon with a laugh. “Phillip was telling me this morning that he wants to get back to his garden. You can’t keep that man down. But Winn and Andy have also offered to come around and do the mowing and mulching. We have plenty of help.”

  Scott nods. “Call if you need me.” He raises his gaze from his glass. “I’ll be in my workshop, Rose. Leave the dishes for me.”

  Rose glances between her husband and his almost-untouched plate, and I see the calculation. She probably thinks he’s being rude in front of guests but calling him out will only draw more attention to it. “A wonderful night for tinkering,” she says with a smile. “I’ll do the dishes.”

  He holds her eyes for a long moment, and I don’t know either of them well enough to guess what’s held inside that connection. Love? Resentment? Shared secrets, certainly. Ones I’ll never get with Sharon right here, smiling and making small talk. Rose is deep inside her hostess role, playing it for all she’s worth.

  She and Scott are hiding things. It’s possible that Stefan did something to Mina. I’m betting she met with him to tell him that they have a child together. It makes sense; she said she had to talk to him. She was worried he wouldn’t take it well. Maybe he lost it when he found out that he had a teenage son he never got to meet, that he never had the choice to raise. Or he was still simmering with rage. What if, instead of paying Stefan off, Scott really did hire someone to try to break the guy’s legs, just like the Lawrence character threatens? Or perhaps Stefan wanted more money to keep the whole thing secret and Mina wouldn’t give in? Who knows? He’s now a person of interest, so it’s the detective’s job to figure it out. She’s already warned me off it.

  But as I sit here in this lovely backyard, my senses filled with the scent of summer flowers and an uneaten meal, the trilling laughter of Mina’s mother, and the pale gray flash of eyes that are way too familiar, I can’t help but think that Mina’s parents had something to do with her disappearance. Mina visited them the day she vanished. They haven’t had an easy relationship. And Rose, at least, is desperate to keep up appearances.

  Was Mina about to drop a grenade on their picture-perfect facade?

  Suspicion is brewing inside me, but none of it quite fits. It’s difficult to see why any of them, Stefan included, would go this far. It’s hard to understand why Mina would take off her rings and just disappear. All I know is that when I get home, I need to read the rest of Mina’s book.

  Sure, not all of it is history. That’s obvious now—some of it is fiction. But although it’s shattering my heart to admit it, I have a feeling the desperate, dark heart of it is truth.

  Chapter Eleven

  Are you comfortable? Do you want something to eat? I think I have some crackers…” Lori moved a stack of folders from the floor to her desk, making way for her to sit across from Maggie, who was curled up on the couch.

  She’d been hungry. She could remember that feeling in the depths of the morning as she sat in her car, waiting. Now, though, things were different. “I’m fine,” she said, then shook her head. “God, I always say that.”

  “Why, do you think?”

  “Maybe I always want it to be true.” She paused. “Or I just want people to stop asking me how I am because I can’t cover it up forever.”

  Lori glanced at Maggie’s face, then her wrists. “I imagine that some times are easier than others. To pretend, I mean.”

  Maggie tugged at her sleeves, then realized the bruises on her arms were the least attention-grabbing thing about her appearance. Her hair, her face, the way she was lying on her side, knees pulled to her chest—everything about her positively screamed Something is very wrong. “It’s never been that easy.”

  Lori waited.

  “Ask me questions,” said Maggie. “I don’t know how to do this.” And I don’t want to.

  As if that were obvious, Lori asked, “What made you come here this morning? I can tell it’s not easy.”

  “Something happened to me last night, and it really scared me.”

  “More than having a three-month gap in your memory?”

  Maggie snorted. “Maybe not. But this… Is there just another person inside me, one who comes out sometimes?” If so, I think she’s trying to hurt me.

  “I can’t give you an easy answer. I need to have a better understanding of wh
at’s going on for you.” The corner of Lori’s mouth twitched. “Right. Questions. Can you walk me through your day yesterday?”

  “It didn’t happen until last night.”

  “Let’s work up to that.”

  “I got an abortion yesterday morning.”

  “That’s a hell of a way to start your day.” Lori pressed her lips together. “I’m not being flippant, Maggie. I’m just—”

  “Don’t worry about it. I guess that probably was a part of everything. I wanted it to be no big deal, you know?”

  “You chose the path that was best for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s a simple one. There can be short-term emotional fallout, depending on the person and their circumstances.”

  “I was further along than I wanted to be,” Maggie murmured. “I was hoping…” She was hoping it had been Esteban’s. “Part of me wanted a baby, you know? But—” A shudder cut her words short.

  “Take your time.”

  “There was a man. He took care of me when I was—well, when I was someone else. I think he liked me. And I got him to help me. I manipulated him. I let him believe he was the father.” She checked Lori’s face for judgment and saw none. “And I kind of lost it afterward, on the way home. It got physical.”

  Lori leaned forward. “He assaulted you?”

  “I started it.”

  “Maggie—”

  “No, I did.”

  Lori sat back. “Is that how you got the bruises?”

  “He probably has some bruises, too. I scratched him. I threw his phone in a ditch and left him stranded. Not sure how I could have been a bigger bitch, even if I’d tried.”

  “You have a right to defend yourself. And I imagine you were pretty emotionally vulnerable.”

  “I’m a monster,” Maggie whispered. “I think I’ve always been one.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  Maggie’s throat constricted. “I’ve messed up so many people. Sometimes I think I do it on purpose.”

  “Why?”