The Good Girl

In the cabin, Mia remembers the familiar moments she spent here: “Rainfall on the cabin’s roof […] Canoe scurry[ing] from room to room” (324). She smiles at the memory, but her smile fades.

Colin looks outside; there are at least six police cars parked beside the house. He wakes Mia, and she begins to panic. She grabs the gun and threatens to fight her way out. She doesn’t want it to end like this. Colin is strangely calm. He takes the gun from her hands. In that moment, lights flood the cabin, and Mia falls into Colin’s arms. He raises the hand with the gun to the blinding light.

Gabe gets a call from a local policeman. He says they have a visual of Colin and Mia. Gabe warns them not to shoot—he wants Colin alive so he can trace the man who hired him. As he pulls into the driveway and runs toward the house, he hears a gunshot.

In the cabin, Mia begins to scream. She falls to her knees, howling like “an animal dying” (331). Eve wants to console her daughter, but Dr. Rhodes stops her. Gabe tells Eve that this is where Colin died. Mia recalls the blood flowing across the floor. She relives the memory of begging Colin to come back to life. She blames Gabe for killing him.

Gabe walks into the house where the local police are securing the crime scene. They claim Mia’s life was in danger. Colin is dead on the floor. When Gabe finally sees Mia, he feels like he’s known her forever, though he’s never seen her in person before. EMTs check Mia, and Gabe comes to chat with her. He wants to call Eve but decides against it. Mia has glassy eyes and seems confused; she is in shock. When Gabe talks about her situation, she doesn’t know her name or her location. She insists that her name is Chloe.

Dr. Rhodes administers a tranquilizer to Mia, and she sleeps in a small hotel in Grand Marais. Dr. Rhodes explains that Mia is probably experiencing Stockholm Syndrome. When Dr. Rhodes walks down the hall to her own room, Eve tells Gabe that Mia loved Colin. Gabe is reluctant, but she insists. Gabe stays in the second double bed with Mia and Eve, feeling guilty for Colin’s death.

Mia relives Colin’s death; she is grieving deeply. She barely eats and thinks about killing herself. Eve doesn’t know what to do with her. On a walk, a man wearing a replica of Colin’s baseball cap runs into Mia, and she collapses in grief. Gabe returns to ask her questions about the reason Colin kidnapped her. He reassures her that Colin’s mother is safe and living with her sister, and that Colin’s funeral was beautiful. The news allows Mia to begin to regain her trust in Gabe. Mia explains what little she knows—that she was going to be held for ransom because of her father, and Colin decided not to pass her off to his boss. As Gabe leaves, Eve fears Mia’s threats of suicide, the litany of ways she has thought about ending her own life.

Gabe gets a warrant to search James’s chambers and finds threatening letters from Dalmar demanding a ransom. James is disbarred and arrested for accepting bribery in a racketeering charge. Gabe questions James in jail. James says he demanded proof of Mia’s life, but Dalmar didn’t have it. James assumed his daughter was dead and didn’t want to risk his reputation over a corpse. Eve files for divorce and will take half of James’s money, enough to start over. Gabe is considered a hero.

Mia talks to Dr. Rhodes about her love for Colin. She recalls her father’s cruelty when, as a middle schooler, she brought home a “A” paper, and he used it as a coaster. She recalls a warm September day when she met a man named Dalmar and offered a proposition. She had blackmail on her father, proof of extortion that she found on an evening when he was at a benefit. She tells Dalmar to orchestrate a ransom, to get money from her father and blacken his reputation. She wanted her father to lose the reputation he cherished. Dalmar asks who he’ll kidnap. Mia offers herself.