The Quiet Girl

by S. F. Kosa

  “Everyone thought you were chasing me. I remember them holding you down in the parking lot.”

  “It’s almost never a good idea to chase a screaming woman, right?” He shook his head. “I was scared you were going to run right into the road. You were so freaked out. Not that I blame you.” He sighed. “And I did lie to you.”

  “Because you were taking me to Reina and Dan.”

  “I didn’t think you’d come if I told you that.”

  She shrugged. She had no idea if she would have or not. “Do you want to walk, Esteban?”

  His smile grew wide with surprise. He had a gray canine tooth. “You say my name differently. ESTehbahn.”

  “Is that not the right way?”

  “People say it all kinds of ways. You just…you used to say EstAYbahn.”

  She watched him run his hand through his hair. Like he was nervous. “How do you want me to say it?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he muttered, following her along the dirt trail lined with thick seagrass.

  When they reached a wooden bridge, Maggie paused, and he stood next to her, his hands on the railing, eyes downcast. “I didn’t think you’d ever want to see me again,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see you.”

  “I can’t remember anything. I have to be honest about that. I don’t know who I was or how I got there or what I did or said.”

  He nodded. “Reina told me as much. And that the doctors didn’t have a good explanation. That’s all she knew.”

  “What was I like?” she blurted out.

  “Honestly? Kinda stoned. Like, all the time. Just foggy, but also like it didn’t bother you too much.” He moved his hands while he talked, fingers spread, as if he were asking the universe to have mercy.

  She turned to him. “Were we friends?”

  His eyes fell closed. “That’s a weird question.”

  “Why?”

  “It just is. I wanted to help you, and I knew you weren’t any good on your own.”

  But she’d been on her own, somewhere, for weeks before she’d met him. Hadn’t she? She wasn’t going to focus on that, though. It wouldn’t get her what she needed. “You must be a nice person.” She touched his wrist and drew her hand back quickly. Careful not to push too hard too soon.

  His hands were back on the railing, holding on for dear life. “I tried, Maggie.”

  “Why?”

  “You seemed really lost, and it felt good to be there for you. I cared about you.”

  More or less what she expected—no actual reason, nothing to do with her and everything to do with his own issues. Which was enraging. And perfect. “Cared.” Emphasis on that d. Grinding it in.

  “I’m here, right? After the police tossed me into a cell and interrogated me like I was Whitey or something.”

  She watched his veins, blue under light brown, carrying oxygen-starved blood back to his beating heart. “I’m pregnant.” And she watched his face.

  His gaze rose, lofted by the news, up from the marsh and headed for the ocean beyond. “Okay…”

  “Any ideas how I got that way?”

  “No, not—” His Adam’s apple shifted as he swallowed. “How far along are you?”

  She had no idea. She was supposed to get an ultrasound but hadn’t made the appointment. “Just a few weeks. Too soon to get an ultrasound, I guess. They did a blood test when I was in the hospital.”

  He cursed under his breath. “I’m…I’m not…”

  She put her hand over his. “Did you mean it, that you care about me?”

  He pulled his hand from beneath hers. “I…” Now his voice was shaking. “Okay. I wasn’t prepared for this. I didn’t think of it.”

  “Did we have sex, Esteban?”

  He had nice brown eyes. Soft-looking, with long lashes, like a cow’s. “I don’t see how it could be mine.”

  “Because we didn’t have sex?”

  He looked away.

  Something savage curled inside her, the tentacle of some long-buried thing. “We did, didn’t we?” She kept her voice quiet, soft and silken, coaxing him closer. She’d learned a thing or two.

  He shrugged.

  She let out a breath of laughter. “Do we both have amnesia?”

  “It’s not that,” he said. “It was only the one time. And…fuck, I told you this before, but you don’t remember. And you were there! God.” He turned his back to her, ran both hands through his hair. “I do not need this.”

  She opened her eyes wide, letting the sea breeze turn them shiny. “Me neither,” she whispered. “I don’t know what…” She let her voice waver and break, both things she was never supposed to do.

  He turned to her, put his arms around her cautiously. She tensed but didn’t step away. It felt foreign and wonderful and awful. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  She pressed her forehead to the ridge of his collarbone. He had showered before he’d come to meet her. He smelled like soap and cheap aftershave. It had mattered to him. “I don’t know. My mom is super-religious. She’s never going to help me get an abortion.” She whispered the word as a couple walked by, flanking a giggling toddler. She squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered, hoping it would trigger the right response—the white knight, offering to help her get what she needed. He’d already shown he had it in him.

  His arms tightened around her. “It’s going to be okay.”

  She breathed him in again before delivering her closing line. “Does that mean you’ll help me?”

  His arms loosened a fraction. “Is there a way we could find out, you know, if it’s mine?”

  Panic stirred inside her. She pulled away from him quickly. “Got it. It might not be your mess to clean up. Okay. Thanks.” She needed the words, the moves, the strategy, and all her clever gambits were flaking off her like dead skin. Knight to h3, stupid, stupid, stupid. Terror swirled, coalescing like a whirlpool, sucking her down. “I have to go,” she choked out.

  “Maggie, come on.” Esteban trailed her as she stalked down the path toward the parking lot. “I just asked a question!” He lowered his voice to a fierce whisper as a nearby couple looked over at them. “It’s kind of an important one, right?”

  She walked faster. At some point, he stopped following. Either because he didn’t want to or because he was afraid people would tackle him for chasing her again, and it didn’t matter, she was running now, all the way back to her car. Short-circuited and shaking. One moment, she’d been in control, and now? She wanted to scream. She needed to. And once she was back on Route 6, speeding back toward Yarmouth, she did, letting it stream long and loud and frantic against the pumping music pouring from the radio. She had to figure this out on her own. Had to decide. Had to do something. Abortion. Or having a baby. Or drowning herself in the ocean. Cutting herself long and deep and jagged until she had nothing left inside.

  There were too many things inside her.

  When she walked into the house again, she knew it would be bad. Ivy stood in the living room, her eyes alight, her voice quiet. “Where have you been?”

  “I went for a walk.”

  “In your car?”

  “A drive, I meant. To a park. For a walk.”

  “I came home to this,” Ivy hissed, gesturing toward the kitchen.

  Maggie looked past her. Remembered. The chicken. Rolls and butter. And barbecue sauce. Stains on the white tablecloth. Dishes left out. Claw marks in the formerly smooth facade of the potato salad. Bird bones strewn across the table. “I forgot,” she said, scratchy and weak.

  Her mother seized the back of her neck and shoved her toward the mess. Maggie stumbled and caught herself against the doorframe. “Where were you?” Ivy shrieked. “Out doing drugs? Being a whore?” She shoved Maggie again.

  Maggie grabbed the edge of the table to keep from ending up on the fl
oor. “I’ll clean it up!”

  “Spotless,” Ivy shouted. “My book group meets here tomorrow, and look what you did! Like an animal. I didn’t raise an animal!”

  Maggie clapped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes. “I’ll clean it up,” she screamed. “Leave me alone!”

  “I’ll leave you alone when you act like a civilized little girl,” Ivy roared.

  She slapped a wet rag across Maggie’s left hand, still cupped over her ear, and the tip of it snapped against her forehead, hitting her like a hornet sting. Maggie fell to her knees and covered her head.

  “Don’t you cry,” said Ivy. “You have no reason to cry. I made you this meal. Did you enjoy it?” Her voice was level again now. Flinty. Invincible.

  Maggie didn’t answer.

  Something wet and heavy fell onto the back of her head.

  The leftover potato salad. It plopped onto her hair and the back of her neck and her hands. “But you didn’t finish,” Ivy said. “Are you still hungry?”

  Maggie shook her head. “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “No, thank you.” Lips against the tile. Wished she could sink through and disappear into the foundation.

  “Make it spotless.” The words slithered along the inside of Maggie’s skull, up and back, arcing between the two halves of her brain, swan-diving toward the top of her spine.

  When she opened her eyes, pop like an old camera flash, she was in the bathroom. Her knees on the soft pink rug, her elbows on the edge of the bathtub.

  Scissors in her hand. Blond hair scattered across the white basin. Flecked with blood.

  She lurched backward, her butt hitting the floor, her breath exploding from her body, the scissors bouncing and clattering across the tile. The door was closed. She covered her mouth. Blinked like it would change things. Looked down at her wrist. One short, neat slice. That was where the blood came from. Her hand scrabbled for toilet paper, pressed it to the wound.

  “Maggie.”

  Her mother was right outside the door.

  “Maggie.” She knocked. “Are you sick, baby? Do you want some water?”

  Maggie’s fist clenched. “I’m fine.”

  “You’ve been in there for a while.”

  “I’m fine.” She got to her feet. The mirror revealed more damage, a missing chunk of hair on the left side. Her gaze flicked to the scissors, then the tub. Confusion clenched its fist in her gut.

  “You cleaned up beautifully, darling,” her mother said through the door. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Maggie’s eyes kept blinking, blinking, blinking, as if the world would right itself with enough resets. “Thanks,” she murmured. “I need a minute, okay? I’m fine.”

  “Take your time. I wanted to make sure you didn’t need anything. I’m worried that if I don’t pay close attention, you might disappear again.”

  The laugh burst from her mouth before she could stifle it. Me too. “I’m fine, Mom!”

  Ivy whispered her love through the door and finally padded away. Maggie could tell by the creaky planks, one four steps down the hall, the other nine steps. Then the closing of the master bedroom door. She knew the sound so well, both the going and the coming. One caused relief. The other…well.

  Every strand of hair. Every drop of blood. Flushed down the toilet. Wiped up and rinsed down the drain. Not a trace left. She was good at cleaning up, so very good. Her hands were still shaking, but not enough to keep her from pulling hair over the missing hank. She spent a moment considering the scissors, then slid them into the waistband of her pants, enough to get her to the safety of her room. Her feet nimbly carried her over the creaking floorboards, a dance she’d learned long ago.

  The number was in her phone. It was nearly seven. She’d probably have to leave a message.

  Wrong.

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. Schwartz?”

  “Yes. Maggie?”

  Maggie swallowed. “Yeah,” she whispered.

  “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been thinking about you a lot this week. How are you doing?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. She could end the call, but what then? End up in the bathroom again. Or Wachusett, or Missouri. Who knew? Please fix me, she wanted to scream. Please tell me what’s happening to me. Instead, she laughed.

  “Maggie?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Maggie, I’d really like it if you’d come and talk to me. Just to check in. Being back home after such a long time away can be an adjustment for anyone.”

  For anyone. Sure, this was normal. She was normal. It was difficult not to laugh again. Instead, she said, “Yeah. When are you available?”

  Thursday, August 6

  I make it back to the cottage at three in the morning after a silent ride home, alone with frenzied thoughts alight in a rainbow flame. She always seemed so healthy. So incredibly healthy. Confident in herself, in her likes and loves, secure and unapologetic in her feelings. She explained things to me. She was teaching me. To be honest and real and open. That vulnerability isn’t the same thing as weakness.

  Maybe it was all therapy speak. Maybe she was parroting Emily the psychologist. Maybe it only ran an inch deep. Maybe it was all a lie.

  If it was an act, Mina deserves a fucking Academy Award.

  Yes, she drifted away in her thoughts. Often. But I could always get her back with a touch, and it was charming, not sick. Artistic, driven by all the characters and worlds churning in that brilliant mind of hers. This manuscript could easily be all that, just fiction. Mina, trying her hand at a new genre. Something darker and more twisted than she’s ever written before. That alone could explain why she might want a pseudonym. It doesn’t have to be because she’s spilling the hideous, agonizing secrets of her actual life.

  God, I hope she wasn’t writing about her actual life.

  I’d dismiss it—and Hannah—out of hand, except for a few hard realities. One, Mina’s still gone, so I can’t be dismissing anything. And two, I can see glimpses of Mina in the main character. Same likes and dislikes, same habit of stepping on each crack in the sidewalk—when I noticed and asked her about that during a Sunday stroll along Beacon Street a few weeks before the wedding, making a joke about that old saying, she gave me the most enigmatic smile and said, “It’s just a superstition,” before stomping on the next one with childlike relish. Now she’s written the same quirk into the Maggie character. But there are larger similarities as well: both Mina and Maggie are from the Cape and went to school in the same town in Western Mass, though Mina went to the more exclusive Amherst College while her character went to the state university.

  And then there are the similarities between Rose and Ivy, the fictional mother. They have the same body type, same meticulous appearance, and the same frenetic focus on hospitality. I can’t picture the Rose I met turning into a monster who shoves her daughter and dumps potato salad on her head, but then again, Rose does seem intent on showing people her most perfect self. Who knows what she’s like in the privacy of her own home? Mina never mentioned being treated poorly, but she also doesn’t talk about her parents much at all. Is this why?

  There are differences, too, though. In the book, the Maggie character’s father is dead, so that doesn’t match up, though Scott does seem to drift around like a ghost. Still, I find that departure from Mina’s actual history reassuring. This isn’t an autobiography.

  It’s something much more complicated.

  So the question remains: What does this novel tell me about where Mina is now?

  Perhaps I should ask her editor, as he seems to know her better than I do. So many little comments in the margins, pushing her. Be raw! Be real! Be brave! He urged her to bare all the truths she never bothered to tell me. I’m halfway through the fucking book, and he’s constantly encouraging her to bare her soul. But Hannah could have
misinterpreted the comments. Or overinterpreted.

  Or she could be dead-on. Maybe Mina wrote about her past—and maybe history is repeating itself.

  I call Correia. It goes straight to voicemail. I’m about to leave a message when I realize that nothing I say will help. How can I put it? Mina wrote a semi (maybe?) autobiographical (maybe?) book in which the main character forgets who she is and walks away from her life?

  It would only confirm for the detective that my wife is crazy. What I need Correia to do is dig deeper on Stefan Silva. On Mina’s missing phone. On the possibility that someone took her. Has her. Hurt her. Those are all realistic scenarios, given the way her car turned up. But there’s now another: What if Mina’s out there somewhere on her own, lost and confused and not herself?

  What if something triggered her—and what if it was me? Our fight, my churlish, childish insistence that we talk about having kids, the way I implied that her resistance was a sign of her lack of commitment to our marriage. This could have been my fault.

  I pour myself two fingers of Macallan 18 and sit on the couch—her desk is hers, still hers, always hers, and it hurts to sit where she did, because it only reminds me that she’s not here—and I Google “fugue.” Wikipedia tells me it’s a rare psychiatric disorder. Can last for days or months. Associated with trauma, especially childhood sexual abuse. My hands fist as the internet tells me all the things I never would have suspected. The things I can’t believe, the things it kills me to picture. Especially when Devon’s little face fills my thoughts. If anyone ever did anything to my daughter…

  It doesn’t sit right, though. Mina was so open about sex. She claimed to love every second we spent connected, to want me as badly as I wanted her. Sometimes it was profound. Emotional. Tears in the eyes, her fingernails in my skin, her face pressed to my neck, her shaking arms around me, clinging like she would never let go. Sometimes it was free and easy, laughing and joking and playful. Joyful. Sometimes it was just fucking, intense and treading that knife’s edge, and she professed to like that just as well.

  What it never was: complicated or delicate. I’ve been with some women where I went into it fully aware that there were traps hidden in the dark, set by memories that only needed the wrong move or sensation to trigger a cascade of awfulness. I’ve been with women where it was a surprise, too, which was worse. So many women have these horrible things in their pasts, though, experiences that steal their joy and render sex an act of bravery instead of simple fun. Mina just…didn’t seem like one of them.