Free The Good Girl by Mary Kubica Page B

never wanted me to hear this conversation.
    This question she doesn’t answer.
    “Is he hurting you?” Mia twitches on the couch, pushing aside the question. Dr. Rhodes asks again, “Did he hurt you, Mia? There, in the car, or maybe before?” There’s no response.
    The doctor moves on. “What else can you tell me about the car?”
    But Mia states instead, “This wasn’t...this wasn’t supposed...to happen.”
    “What wasn’t, Mia?” she asks. “What wasn’t supposed to happen?”
    “It’s all wrong,” Mia replies. She’s disoriented, her visions cluttered, random memories running adrift in her mind.
    “What is all wrong?” There’s no reply. “Mia, what is all wrong? The car? Something about the car?”
    But Mia says nothing. Not at first anyway. But then she sucks her breath in violently, and claims, “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault,” and it takes every bit of willpower I have not to rush from my seat and embrace my child. I want to tell her that no, it’s not. It’s not her fault. I can see the way it grieves her, the way her facial features tense up, her flattened hands turn to fists. “I did this,” she says.
    “This is not your fault, Mia,” Dr. Rhodes states. Her voice is pensive, soothing. I grip the arms of the chair in which I sit and force myself to remain calm. “It’s not your fault,” she repeats, and later, after the session is through, she explains to me in private that victims almost always blame themselves. She says that often this is the case with rape victims, the reason that nearly fifty percent of rapes go unreported because the victim feels certain it was her fault. If only she had never gone to such and such a bar; if only she had never talked to such and such a stranger; if only she hadn’t worn such suggestive attire. Mia, she explains, is experiencing a natural phenomenon that psychologists and sociologists have been studying for years: self-blame. “Self-blame can, of course, be destructive,” she says to me later as Mia waits in the waiting room for me to catch up, “when taken to the extreme, but it can also prevent victims from becoming vulnerable in the future.” As if this is supposed to make me feel relieved.
    “Mia, what else do you see?” the doctor inquires when Mia has settled.
    She’s taciturn, initially. The doctor asks again, “Mia, what else do you see?”
    This time Mia responds, “A house.”
    “Tell me about the house.”
    “It’s small.”
    “What else?”
    “A deck. A small deck with steps that lead down into the woods. It’s a log cabin—dark wood. You can barely see it for all the trees. It’s old. Everything about it is old—the furniture, the appliances.”
    “Tell me about the furniture.”
    “It sags. The couch is plaid. Blue-and-white plaid. Nothing about the house is comfortable. There’s an old wooden rocking chair, lamps that barely light the room. A tiny table with wobbly legs and a plaid vinyl tablecloth that you’d bring to a picnic. The hardwood floors creak. It’s cold. It smells.”
    “Like what?”
    “Mothballs.”
    Later that night, as we hover in the kitchen after dinner, James asks me what in the hell the smell of mothballs has to do with anything. I tell him that its progress, albeit slow progress. But it’s a start. Something that yesterday Mia couldn’t remember. I, too, had longed for something phenomenal: one session of hypnosis and Mia would be healed. Dr. Rhodes sensed my frustration when we were leaving her office and explained to me that we needed to be patient; these things take time and to rush Mia will do more harm than good. James doesn’t buy it; he’s certain it’s only a ploy for more money. I watch him yank a beer from the refrigerator and head into his office to work while I clean the dinner dishes, noticing, for the third time this week, that Mia’s plate has barely been touched. I stare at the spaghetti noodles hardening on the earthenware dishes and remember that