The Quiet Girl

by S. F. Kosa

  She kept her feet anchored in the sand, but nothing was holding her down anymore except her own desire to be exactly where she was.

  Thursday, September 10

  I leave Waltham just before three, hoping to avoid rush hour. I shouldn’t be leaving the office this early, not with everything that’s going on, but I don’t have another meeting until tomorrow, when I have my first one-on-one with the new CEO of Biostar. Blake Pierce assured me the guy has already steered two other biotechs to IPO, so we’ll be in good hands.

  Drew texts me as I’m getting on the turnpike. Let’s get together this weekend. New opportunity I need to discuss with you.

  I smile. He’s nothing if not resilient. I knew he would back down and do the right thing, and he did. The Monday after Mina was found, Drew signed the agreement with Pinewell—and then he gave his notice. He’s gone out of his way to make sure the transition was smooth.

  It’s also been nice to have my best friend back. The day of Mina’s memorial in Provincetown was not easy, with Scott and Rose sitting on opposite sides of the chapel, me not really wanting to be near either of them, Devon and Caitlin huddled on one side of me, and my mom sobbing uncontrollably on my shoulder as if Dad had died all over again. I was grateful that I had Drew there to hold me up and manage things; otherwise, I might have gotten in my car and driven it straight over the pier. More than one night in the last month, I’ve crashed on Drew and Caroline’s couch, unable to face going back to the condo where Mina and I lived during our first and only exquisite months of marriage. It’s on the market now. I’m closing on a new place in the South End next week.

  Mina’s cottage is already under contract—it was snapped up less than a week after it was listed. I can’t be there knowing she’ll never walk through the door or write another page while looking out at the sea. I hope the next occupant loves the view as much as she did.

  I exit onto 93 South. It’s all familiar now, the turns automatic. But I think this is the last time I’ll drive this way for a good long while. There’s just one final thing I need to do.

  While I drive, I let myself think about her. About us. It’s something I still need to avoid most of the time if I want to keep functioning, but each day, I give in a for a few minutes. I owe it to her.

  I took a risk. A not-so-calculated jump into the great unknown. That’s what Mina was, right up until the end. Huge parts of her, kept hidden from me. I still feel like I knew her, though, and reading her book helped me understand her better.

  I don’t regret loving her. I will never regret it.

  But I will always wonder if I could have saved her somehow. Different words, different actions. I will always fear that I pushed her into motion that Monday morning, but maybe it was inevitable. She’d already decided she couldn’t move on until she’d taken Phillip out of this world. It might have been just a matter of time.

  Could I have stopped her? Should I have stopped her? I’m not sure on either count.

  She died quickly. Instantly, the medical examiner told me. Something, a cast iron pan, they think, slammed into the back of her head at just the perfect place. Massive fracture, catastrophic hemorrhage, lights out. She didn’t have time to be scared or feel pain.

  I’m still glad Sharon is dead, though. Two days after they found Mina’s body, the forensic results came back for the Prius—the investigators found some of Sharon’s silver hairs on the headrest of the driver’s seat. She probably moved the car the day she first met me. The temptation of revenge might have been too difficult for me to resist if she were still alive.

  I wonder if Rose provided the flowers for the funeral of her daughter’s murderer, just to look gracious.

  I walk into the Mariner just after five, another risk I’ve decided to take.

  It’s off-season now, not crowded. I take a seat on a stool and wait for him to recognize me.

  I can tell the moment he does, because a weird array of emotions crosses his face in less than a second—fear, confusion, defiance. I meet his eyes. “The Mayflower, please.”

  Stefan glances around at the nearly empty bar and then obliges. “Didn’t expect to see you in here again.”

  I sip my beer.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I mean, I know you probably think I was happy when I was cleared, but I was still sad to hear what happened to her.”

  I draw in a long breath through my nose. Then I set the little brown pill bottle on the bar.

  Stefan blinks at it. Scratches at his jaw.

  “Figured this belonged to you,” I say.

  He swallows hard. “I don’t know how—”

  “Did you really think she was going to use it on herself?”

  He says nothing.

  “Her plan would have worked if his wife hadn’t come home,” I tell him.

  The fear in his eyes is unmistakable now.

  “She asked for help, and you gave it to her,” I say. In another world, another life, he might have said no. But she still could have gotten what she needed. In this world, though, she made herself a list, including Stef. Including cash. She drove to Harwich on Monday, July 27, and used the money she withdrew from that ATM in Barnstable to pay Stefan Silva for what she wanted, which is most likely why her wallet was empty when they found it in her car. She already had the plan. She just needed the means.

  “If it helps at all, it was more about the future than the past,” he says in a low voice. When I don’t reply, he continues. “She said she’d tried everything else—therapy, her writing, all that shit—and it wasn’t enough. She wanted a fresh start, with you. Kids, living the dream. Clean slate. I didn’t ask a lot of questions about what she was doing. I told her I didn’t want to know.”

  “But you knew.”

  “I knew her back then. Part of her, at least.” His nostrils flare. “What he turned her into.”

  The part she never wanted me to know. Would she ever have told me the real story? Maybe she didn’t want to, for the same reason she never planned to write about our relationship. She wanted to protect us. It’s probably why she left her rings behind, too. I wasn’t the only one who walled stuff off. She wanted to keep me safe behind one of those walls, thinking I had access to her whole world when I only had a piece.

  I wish she were here. I’d tell her we were stronger than that.

  “Did she leave the phone behind on purpose?” I ask.

  He stares down at the pill bottle on the bar. “She was going to come back for it. Afterward.”

  She didn’t mind being seen, but she didn’t want anyone to know exactly where she’d been. After she left her parents, she could have claimed she drove straight back to Harwich, and he could have backed her up. He was her insurance policy, her alibi. “You were left holding the bag.”

  “One last favor, I guess.”

  “Did she tell you that you weren’t the father? Is that why she wanted to talk?”

  He nods. “I didn’t know whether I was relieved or disappointed. I always wondered what would have happened if I’d refused to sign those papers, if I’d been too proud to take the money. Now I think it’s okay, what happened. I hope that kid is in a good place.”

  “Me, too.” I hope he never discovers that his biological father was a monster.

  Stefan slides the pill bottle off the bar and tosses it in the trash. “So the guy’s dead now.”

  I sip my beer.

  “Got what he deserved in the end,” he adds. “Dead at the bottom of the stairs, shot through with nails.”

  “Is that how it was?”

  His eyes narrow. “I have a friend on the Truro force. He said it was a pretty fucked-up scene.”

  “One last favor,” I murmur, staring until I see the understanding dawn. Then I pull out my wallet and lay a ten on the bar. “Thanks.”

  He peers down at the pill bottle in the trash and then a
t me. He nods. “Take care, man.”

  I head out of the bar, back to my car, and start the long drive back to Boston to pick up my daughter. There’s a new voicemail on my phone. It’s Mina’s editor, Kyle. He’s begging me for a decision. Says he needs it yesterday. In Mina’s will, she gave control of her entire estate to me, and it turns out I have a say about whether The Quiet Girl will actually be published. Sure, it’ll be under her pseudonym, but I have a feeling someone’s going to leak the truth. They are, after all, in the business of selling books.

  I don’t know, though, how far it would go from there. Would anyone link the end of her book to the end of her life? Would she want the book to be her final testament, or, having acted out the end, would she want to keep it quiet? What clues did we leave behind, her and Stefan and I, and will anyone ever connect them?

  What was it worth to her, to make her voice heard after so many years of silence?

  I call Kyle back with my final answer. It’s another jump into the unknown, with Mina’s hand firmly in mine.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. When we first meet Alex, he is heading to apologize to his wife after an argument. Why did you initially believe Mina wasn’t responding to Alex’s texts? What did you make of their relationship from this initial scene? How would you describe Alex?

  2. Provincetown is Mina’s writer’s hideaway—a perfect escape. If you could choose any place in the world for your own retreat, where would it be? Why do you think Mina is drawn to Provincetown?

  3. Describe Layla. What was your initial reaction to Layla and her spotty memory? If you were Esteban, would you have taken the girl in?

  4. What do you make of Rose and Scott? How can you describe their overall relationship with Mina?

  5. We learn a lot about Mina through her husband, her parents, and her manuscript. How would you describe her? What can you infer about her personality?

  6. If you were to write a novel about your own life, what kind of story would it be? How much would you change or embellish?

  7. Do you think writing the novel set Mina’s revenge in motion? Or did Mina’s plan inspire the novel?

  8. Why do you think Stefan helps Mina? Do you find him trustworthy? How would you describe his character?

  9. Why do you think Mina decides to write her story? Imagine what that process would feel like for her. If you were in her shoes, how would you decide to finally express yourself?

  10. What ultimately drives Mina to confront her past? What role does Alex and their marriage play in this story?

  A Conversation with the Author

  The Quiet Girl is a clever and intensely twisty story of revenge and suspense. Where did you get your inspiration?

  The first seeds of this story were planted when I was on Cape Cod in 2018 for a late summer weekend. We had ridden from Boston to Provincetown on the ferry, and we were staying with family in Truro. I was enchanted by the setting, a narrow, hauntingly beautiful curl of land that’s only sparsely inhabited in the winter months but full to the brim in the summer. I remember staring out at the ocean when the idea came to me: What if a writer disappeared from this setting…and what if she left a book behind that offered some explanation as to why and how? From there, it was just a matter of the details. And because I am trained as a clinical psychologist, the twists and turns usually involve some sort of psychological injury or condition that affects how some characters view and react to the world.

  Talk a bit about Maggie’s fugue state. What research went into bringing this complicated disorder to life? How are trauma and fugue linked, both in the story and in real life?

  The first time I ever read about what was then called psychogenic fugue was in my abnormal psychology class in college. I was utterly fascinated by the stories of how some people suddenly walk away from their lives and seem to forget who they are for a time; some even adopt entirely new identities before abruptly recovering. I knew this concept had been a topic in fiction before, and certainly amnesia is a popular trope—it’s such a powerful, frightening, universally affecting idea. But as I considered a story that dealt with fugue, I was most interested in why my character had experienced it in the first place.

  These days, the condition is called dissociative fugue. Some kinds of dissociation are normal and not linked to trauma, like daydreaming. It’s a kind of mental disconnection from the world around you. However, the more disabling types of dissociation—where the mind completely walls off the memory of certain experiences—are pretty closely linked with traumatic experiences. This is Maggie’s experience in the book: she had been sexually abused for years before she experienced a severe and prolonged fugue state, and it was her realization that her abuser had gotten her pregnant that finally triggered the event.

  In this story, Maggie is at first quite intent on recovering memories of what happened when she was “away,” but her psychiatrist, Dr. Schwartz, does not focus on memory recovery as part of treatment. Dr. Schwartz even points out that those memories might never be recoverable, and she’s much more interested in uncovering and processing the trauma she believes triggered the fugue episode. This is consistent with many models and approaches to treating trauma and dissociative disorders.

  It was very important to me to depict not only the condition properly, but also its aftermath, including potential treatment. For that reason, I asked an experienced colleague of mine who works with adults (my specialty is children and families) to read a draft of the novel and critique it with the goal of achieving a faithful and accurate portrayal that neither romanticized nor minimized fugue for plot convenience. And this is why, just as an example, I did not have Maggie suddenly remember what happened during her fugue, even if it might have been handy for my plot—in real life, memories of what happened during a true fugue episode are usually never recovered.

  There’s a really fantastic blurring between fact and fiction in The Quiet Girl, as readers try to discern the difference between Mina’s novel and Mina’s real experiences. How did you play with that line? Do you think authors often insert their own experiences into their writing?

  The blurred and shifting line between invention and reality is one of the reasons I enjoy reading books in this genre, and it was one of the many enjoyable things about writing The Quiet Girl. I loved leaving tiny little clues in the Layla/Maggie story line, especially early on, that might make readers sit forward and wonder if they’ve hit upon something significant—or remember later and think, So that’s what that was!

  For most differences between Mina’s life and the story she wrote, I wanted there to be a reason why she made the choice she did as an author. For example, she had just turned eighteen when she experienced a fugue episode, and it lasted for five months instead of ten weeks, and she actually had the baby instead of having an abortion. She chose to create a character that was a bit of a wish for her past self—the character of Maggie becomes angry and energized rather than continuing to try to suppress her past as Mina did. She is older and more proactive, more able to function as an adult in this world and make the choices that are ultimately best for her, and, in the end, takes a drastic action that until the very end Mina had only fantasized about. Mina gave her main character more advantages, and arguably less pain, and she wrote the ending she wanted for herself. And although she never gets to experience it, her character lives on in her own hard-won happy ending.

  I think writers use their own experiences in different ways within their stories. Sometimes it’s a deep understanding of a certain setting, world, or culture. Sometimes it’s some life situation or relationship dynamic. For me, I often use my stories as a kind of processing of my own experiences, perceptions, and fascinations, and The Quiet Girl is a very particular version of that—no other book I’ve written veers closer to my real life than this one, which is a strange confession to make, all things considered…

  How much do you think Mina changed or em
bellished her life story when writing her novel?

  I think of Maggie and Layla as Mina’s understanding of herself as a younger person, only with Mina controlling the history and course of events. In writing that story, Mina was trying to show herself some compassion and even heal by creating a more empowered character than she herself might have been when she was younger. Mina deliberately changed events in the story, not just to obscure details or protect people, but to allow herself to nurture and experiment with different pasts. In the end, of course, weaving that narrative isn’t enough for Mina and might even have made that fantasy more real and necessary for her. I think that kind of revenge fantasy is not abnormal for someone who endured what Mina did, and I wanted to show the different ways it could play out.

  Which character did you enjoy writing the most? Which was the most challenging?

  I most enjoyed writing Maggie, I think. She’s so incredibly raw, like an exposed nerve, but at the same time, her intellect is active and even aggressive. She’s not an agreeable, easygoing character, and at times I think she’s a bit hard to sympathize with. I enjoyed the challenge of making her not likable but understandable. Only my readers can tell me if I succeeded!

  In terms of the most challenging characters to write, it was probably the mothers: Ivy and Rose. I was worried they risked being almost unbelievable in terms of their behavior, and I didn’t want them to be caricatures. Social desirability and display can twist people up, and I wanted Ivy and Rose to be examples of how a person can lose sight of doing what’s right when there’s a possibility they might lose face or status as a result. And sometimes, when that need to protect one’s image is deep and internalized, it can drive a person to develop their own alternative narrative or completely deny reality as a form of self-protection.

  Was it difficult to keep track of the characters and how they were portrayed in Alex’s world and in Mina’s novel?

  I didn’t find it particularly difficult, in drafting, at least. It was in revisions that I’d read something in one of the narratives and nearly have a heart attack because it wasn’t consistent…and then realize it was supposed to be a difference between the two. My editor, MJ Johnston, was particularly helpful during the revision process in encouraging me to highlight some of the differences between reality and fiction as Alex tries to understand how the book Mina wrote is linked to what happened to her, both to help readers keep track and to process the unfolding story. In my opinion, that made the story much clearer and more compelling—and probably much more enjoyable for readers!