Read The Good Girl for Free Online Page B

Around her, the room spins. I can see it in her expression: she isn’t used to hearing the word no. She rearranges a crumpled shirt, runs sweaty hands through her hair, ashamed.
    I don’t know how long we stay like that.
    “It’s just a bad idea,” I say then, suddenly inspired to pick up my shoes. I throw them in the closet, one pair at a time. They smack the back wall. They fall into a messy pile behind the closet door. And then I close the door, leaving the mess where I can’t see it.
    And then the resentment creeps in and she asks, “Why did you bring me here? Why did you bring me here, if only to humiliate me?”
    I picture us at the bar. I imagine my own greedy eyes when I leaned in and suggested, “Let’s get out of here.” I told her my apartment was just down the street. We all but ran the entire way.
    I stare at her. “It’s not a good idea,” I say again. She stands and reaches for her purse. Someone passes in the hallway, their laughter like a thousand knives. She tries walking, loses her balance.
    “Where are you going?” I ask, my body blocking the front door. She can’t leave now.
    “Home,” she says.
    “You’re wasted.”
    “So?” she challenges. She reaches for the chair to steady herself.
    “You can’t go,” I insist. Not when I’m this close, I think, but what I say is “Not like this.”
    She smiles and says that’s sweet. She thinks I’m worried about her. Little does she know.
    I couldn’t care less.

Gabe
After
    Grace and Mia Dennett are sitting at my desk when I arrive, their backs turned in my direction. Grace couldn’t look more uncomfortable. She plucks a pen from my desk and removes the chewed-up cap with a sleeve of her shirt. I smooth a paisley tie against my shirt, and as I make my way to them, I hear Grace muttering the words “slovenly appearance” and “unbecoming” and “Spartan skin.” I assume she’s talking about me, and then I hear her say that Mia’s corkscrew locks haven’t seen a hair dryer in weeks; there are neglected bags beneath her eyes. Her clothes are rumpled and look like they should be cloaking the body of someone in junior high, a prepubescent boy no less. She doesn’t smile. “Ironic, isn’t it,” Grace says, “how I wish you’d snap at me—call me a bitch, a narcissist, any of those unpleasant nicknames you had for me in the days before Colin Thatcher.”
    But instead Mia just stares.
    “Good morning,” I say, and Grace interrupts me curtly with “Think we can get started? I have things to do today.”
    “Of course,” I say, and then empty sugar packets into my coffee as slowly as I possibly can. “I was hoping to talk to Mia, see if I can get some information from her.”
    “I don’t see how she can help,” Grace says. She reminds me of the amnesia. “She doesn’t remember what happened.”
    I’ve asked Mia down this morning to see if we can jog her memory, see if Colin Thatcher told her anything inside that cabin that might be of value to the ongoing investigation. Since her mother wasn’t feeling well, she sent Grace in her place, as Mia’s chaperone, and I can see, in Grace’s eyes, that she’d rather be having dental work than sit here with Mia and me.
    “I’d like to try and jog her memory. See if some pictures help.”
    She rolls her eyes and says, “God, Detective, mug shots? We all know what Colin Thatcher looks like. We’ve seen the pictures. Mia has seen the pictures. Do you think she’s not going to identify him?”
    “Not mug shots,” I assure her, reaching into a desk drawer to yank something from beneath a stash of legal pads. She peers around the desk to get the first glimpse and is stumped by the 11x14 sketch pad I produce. It’s a spiral-bound book; her eyes peruse the cover for clues, but the words recycled paper give nothing away. Mia, however, is briefly cognizant, of what neither she nor I know, but something passes through her—a wave of recollection—and then it’s gone as soon