I leave Mina’s parents’ house by three and head for Boston, still reeling from the sheer weirdness of what’s happening. Whatever Rose’s motives, she was right that I should go and see Devon. I was supposed to have her for a few days this week as well as the weekend, and she must be wondering where the hell her dad has gone.
I can’t help but make a little detour, though. Brewster has only one library, and it’s open. I slide along Route 6, past traffic crawling in the other direction, people in search of sunsets and waves. I roll into Brewster looking for something more fundamental, more desperate. The library is adorable in the way so many things in this part of New England are. It’s maroon with yellow trim, quaint and welcoming. Not a lot of cars in the parking lot; it’s a great day for the beach.
I walk into the hushed, cool interior and find the reference desk. “Hi. Is Amy around?”
The librarian, with horn-rimmed glasses and almost-buzzed silver hair, looks me up and down. Her eyebrows rise. “And you are?”
“My name is Alex. Her dad told me I could find her here.”
“Oh,” says the lady. I can see the debate behind her eyes as her gaze slides over me yet again. Stalker? Suitor? Good or bad news? She smiles. “I think she’s in back. Hang on.” She rises and heads through a doorway behind her.
I spend my waiting time reading a wall display about the history of the library, started by twelve Brewster ladies in the mid-1800s. It reminds me of Scott and his pilgrim roots. Rose and her Southern heritage. All these deep ties, and yet as I think of Mina, I can’t pin her down anywhere.
“Can I help you?”
I spin around to see a short, mousy woman with frizzy brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She’s wearing a long skirt and a loose, short-sleeved shirt. She has the same blue eyes as her father, the same forlorn yet defiant look in them. “Amy,” I say. “I’m Alex Zarabian.” I offer my hand, and she shakes it.
“I saw you on the news last night,” she says. “You know my dad?”
“I just came from the Richardses’.”
She nods, unsurprised. “I’m glad he has that community. They all support each other, no matter what.”
“Do you have some time to talk?”
“About Mina.”
It’s not a question. I nod.
“I can’t tell you much,” she says.
“Anything might be helpful. I’m just trying to understand…everything.”
She gives me a strange smile, with the corners of her mouth angled down. “There’s a little reading lounge.”
I follow her into a sitting area next to a bay window looking out on a patch of woods. She sits in a rocking chair, and I sink onto a worn leather couch. “Your dad told me that you and Mina were friends.”
“That was a long time ago.” She’s watching me with an almost amused curiosity. “Surely she’s made new friends since middle school.”
I shrug. “The Cape has always meant a lot to her. I mean, we live in Boston, but she escapes to Provincetown whenever she can.”
“Weird how people do that.” She continues when she sees my confusion. “I thought she’d leave and never come back.”
“Because she thought she was too good for it?” That’s what Amy’s dad said. Winn Dalrumple, too.
So I’m surprised to see the genuine puzzlement on Amy’s face. “Why would you say that? I never said that. No, I just thought…she wasn’t happy here.”
“She told you that?”
Amy looks out the window. “She never told me much. I didn’t understand it then, okay? We rode the bus to P-town every morning, only twenty kids or so from Truro, and we sat together every day. Lunch, too. In class, she was always the teacher’s pet. Always with a stack of books. I was, too, so we fit.” This time, her smile is right side up. “We’d make up stories—she was good at it, even then. I’d draw the pictures, and she’d write a few pages to go with them. At the time, I thought that was what we’d do when we grew up. Write books together.”
“Did you have a falling out?”
“It wasn’t like that. She…pulled away, I guess. Lost interest? One day, she didn’t want to do it, and I thought she’d change her mind, but she didn’t. She wasn’t mean, though. She seemed like she was somewhere else. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. She quit all her activities, one by one.”
“Including chess?”
She nods. “She was the best player, too. Tournaments and everything.”
I still don’t get that. “Did something happen to her? How old were you?”
“We were in eighth grade. I remember because it was our last year at the school—high school’s in a different town. We had to go on a tour of the school, and Mina stayed home that day. My parents told me she was going away for school.”
“You didn’t know why?”
“Not at the time. But a few months later, I overheard something one night. My parents talking. It was unseasonably hot, and the windows were open. Their bedroom was next to mine, so it happened sometimes.” She looks over at me and sees me there, leaning forward and desperate for answers. “It might not have had anything to do with it.”
“It was about Mina.”
She shakes her head. “Dad told Mom that the Richardses were having trouble.”
“I’m surprised either of Mina’s parents would share that kind of thing.” Rose is all about appearances, and even Scott’s friends seem to think he’s a mystery.
“Scott had asked my dad about renting one of his properties. My dad has a couple of cottages near the bay side. Wanted a month-to-month lease. And my mom said that Rose hadn’t been herself lately, and my dad wondered if they were having problems. I guess it was temporary, though. I mean, they’re still together.”
I sit back, somewhat disappointed. Doesn’t every marriage hit a rough patch at some point? But it might also make a weird kind of sense, matched up with Mina’s manuscript. In the book, Maggie’s father, someone she has happy memories with, is dead and gone. And there’s a stepdad, with whom she isn’t close, who’s separated from Maggie’s mom. In Mina’s life, could these two characters be the same man? The engaged, fun-loving father who transformed into the stoic man I know today? “You think that’s why Mina got so withdrawn? Her parents were fighting and Scott had moved out?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. She left for sleepaway camp that summer, and then she was off at school. I got the address from my mom and wrote her, but she never wrote back.” She doesn’t sound sad, merely relating old facts no longer stitched to the pain they once caused. “I ran into her once or twice after that. Truro’s a tiny place, only a few restaurants. She was friendly, but her life was somewhere else.”
“Did you ever hear anything about her disappearing?”
She ponders the question for a second. “I guess she sort of did? Or at least I heard things, but I never thought of it like that.”
So many questions crowd my mind that I can’t get them out fast enough. Rose said no one outside the family knew, but maybe that was a lie, to keep me from asking their friends about it? “What happened? When was it? Did you talk to her? I—”
She holds up her hands as if trying to stem the flow. “I was in school. My freshman year at URI. I just remember my mom told me that Mina wasn’t starting college until the spring, and she’d been away all summer. My mom hinted that she wasn’t doing well. She said Rose was taking care of her. I figured she’d had a nervous breakdown or something. It happens, right? But I saw her at Christmas services that year with her parents, and she seemed fine, mostly? She’d gained a little weight, and her hair was really short, but she told me she was headed to Amherst in January. And she did, and I haven’t seen her since. Congratulations, by the way.” Her gaze is on my ring finger. She sighs. “And I’m sorry.”
I leave the library with more questions than answers, glad I have the manuscript tucked into my bag. I skim over what I’ve read so far to confirm what matches and what doesn’t. Amy didn’t seem to know much about Mina disappearing, but what she described—Mina being away for the summer, then being home with her mom and out of school for a semester—sounds like the aftermath of the fugue she writes about in the book. Only she was younger than the character she’s created—only eighteen or so instead of twenty. Why would she age the character up? And I’m still puzzling over the whole stepfather-father thing. If so much of this is true to her life, and Rose and Ivy line up right down to the flower names, where’s Scott in the book? The father, the stepfather, or both? And was she really pregnant, or is that fiction, too, to spice up the drama and tension of the novel? Amy described Mina as having gained some weight when she saw her that Christmas, but that isn’t definitive in the slightest.
I want to keep reading, but Mina’s manuscript isn’t the only lead I have. And I need to get back to Brookline, but it’s rush hour, so I make yet another detour, this one even more uncertain but less than a twenty-minute drive from Brewster. It would be a waste if I didn’t even try.
I make it to Harwich by half past four and pull up in front of the Mariner. It’s a standard gray clapboard structure on Main Street, across from a bakery. The interior is dark and plain and smells like yeast and grease. There are people at the bar, but it’s not crowded this early.
The bartender has his back to me and is drying a set of pint glasses. When he turns to speak to a patron, I see him in profile, and my insides clench. It’s Stefan Silva. Has to be. I edge onto a barstool and wait for him to spot his new customer. During the few minutes it takes, I watch him. He’s built. Looks like he works out. Broad, sloped shoulders. Tats up the arms. Olive skin, black hair slicked back into a ponytail, beard. The ex-con that Mina had to see, had to speak to. This man from her past.
The one she put in her book. Subtract a few years, and this is Esteban, straight out of the novel.
“What can I get you?” asks Stefan as he turns to me, smiling, revealing a dead gray canine tooth that isn’t even a surprise. His eyes narrow. “Oh.”
“Saw me on TV?”
His nostrils flare. “What can I get you?”
I glance at what’s on tap even as my thoughts churn at the eerie similarity between the man in front of me and the character from Mina’s book. This, at least, is a near-exact match. “The Mayflower IPA.”
He fills a pint and slides it over to me. “I’m working,” he says quietly.
“You’re not that busy.” When he starts to turn away, I lean forward. “Please.”
Maybe the urgency in my voice turns him around. “I have no idea where she is,” he says. “The detective already called me. I was working the night she disappeared. Right here the whole time. Then straight home to my wife.”
“I’m trying to figure out where she might have gone, all right? And I know she was trying to contact you.”
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.