Daughter of Mine

“No matter where you were driving in Mirror Lake, you were always circling the basin, bending toward it, like a galaxy spiraling closer to a black hole.”

Hazel is describing the topography of her hometown. The mountains completely encircle Mirror Lake, and the main road is a loop that runs next to the water. In depicting the lake as a vortex that sucks everything into it like a black hole, Megan Miranda alludes to the secrets at the bottom of the lake, suggesting that it is inevitable that the lake will become important to the plot.

“Every house has a story, and every renovation, a mystery—something the prior owners are trying to fix, or cover up. Something they hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

Hazel is describing her property rehab business in Charlotte. Part of her job is to assess houses for their renovation potential. While this comment is accurate about real estate in general, it also describes the Holt home. Perry has spent his life covering up family secrets, but the clues are found in the structure itself, and it is up to Hazel to solve the mystery.

“I’d been missing things in the blink of an eye, the pause in a conversation, the stretch of a shadow. I hadn’t been watching, hadn’t been paying attention, and now look. First my father. Then the car beside the road. And now this—another in our own backyard. Like something was spiraling steadily closer. The gravity of the lake, bending everything in its direction—even me.”

Hazel tells the reader that she prides herself on her observational skills. However, her radar seems to be malfunctioning in Mirror Lake. She is missing the details that she usually sees. Once more, she alludes to the lake as a source of gravity, like a black hole; her hypervigilance is powerless against the lake’s magnetism.

“Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”

Having lived in Charlotte, Hazel is aware of the difference between big-city people and small-town folk. The latter magnify every occurrence because they aren’t distracted by metropolitan bustle. They are also closely involved in the lives of their neighbors. In some sense, the constant judgment of the community offers an explanation for Perry’s fear of his secret being exposed. The slightest mistake, if known, would have been a condemnation of his entire career.

“That was the kind of power he had in this town. The way he could make something the truth. No one questioned it. Why would anyone worry about the child left behind with Detective Perry Holt?”

This quote pairs with the preceding one in explaining Perry’s determination to keep the nature of Audrey’s demise a secret. He doesn’t fear only condemnation; he also fears the loss of his authority and power in the community. Those who dispense justice to the town cannot afford to be perceived as criminals. It also establishes Perry as a trustworthy figure no one would suspect of wrongdoing.

“Mirror Lake was a place to hide, with its boundary of mountains protecting us from the outside world, and its lack of cell service, like we were cut off from the past that was looking for us.”

Hazel is discussing the reason why Libby chose to flee to Mirror Lake. She feared her past might catch up with her, but the future may have been even more perilous. While the outside world can’t get in, Libby failed to recognize the pitfalls of life in a small town. Insularity is both a protection and a prison.

“I had been built by my mother’s absence. Had grown out of its shock. The worst thing I could imagine had happened, and surviving it was the thing that had finally, fully made me truly unafraid.”

At multiple points in the story, Hazel comments on the people who molded her, either by their presence or by their absence. She also often asserts that she is fearless. The unintended gift of abandonment by her mother is that, as a child, she already suffered the worst betrayal possible. Any dire threat after that primal wound is to her anticlimactic.

“My dad was always trying to get me to come home. He’d left me the house. And now I thought I understood what he meant by it. A message. A promise. A warning: Come back, Hazel. Look. Find them.”

Hazel spends a good deal of time trying to figure out why Perry left her everything. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that the men in the Holt family are incapable of facing their own weaknesses. Hazel is far less enmeshed in the family drama, because she left Mirror Lake. As an outsider, she has the capacity to expose what everyone else denies.

“Why does someone go biking in the dark? A question no one saw fit to ask. Like it’s irrelevant. People don’t like asking the hard questions around here.”

Sonny is having a conversation with Hazel in which she speculates about Audrey’s bike ride on the night she died. Of course, it seems illogical that a woman who owns a car is going to travel by bicycle at night. Sonny rightly points out that no one asks, because they fear the answer they might receive. Her comment will later be echoed by the Water Hunters, who reach the same conclusion about the uninquisitive local police.

“The truth is […] most of the issues you can see, those are just surface problems. Easy, honestly. If you can see it, you can fix it. It’s the things you don’t see that can really hurt you.”

Hazel is telling Gage and Nico about her renovation projects. As in an earlier quote, she is making a general observation about the pitfalls of renovation but is really offering a commentary about dangers that lurk below the surface. Submerged cars and money hidden in walls would both fall into the category of problems that can’t be fixed until they have been seen.

“Everything here was wrong. Caden was lying to me, and Skyler knew something too. Everyone was keeping secrets here. Maybe that was the thing that bound us all.”

Unlike her experience of living in Charlotte, Hazel becomes acutely aware of the profusion of secrets that exist in Mirror Lake. While she is describing Holt family secrets in this quote, the statement could easily apply to the entire community. Everybody’s lives are intertwined, meaning that the real number of secrets in town may be much higher than Hazel realizes.

“All these mothers in Mirror Lake, never making it out of town. Hadn’t Sonny warned me of that, just a couple days ago? I should’ve been more afraid from the start. It wasn’t a strength but a failing of mine, that I wasn’t. I should’ve understood what she was saying. Do you believe that’s what really happened?”

Hazel has just discovered Sonny’s dead body. This event occurs only days after Sonny hints that nothing is as it seems in Mirror Lake. More precisely, the problem is gendered: Mothers seem to be the most common target for foul play. While the novel doesn’t explicitly state that male violence might be the cause, it is implied.

“I just wanted someone to tell me something real and true…Out there, it was a strength. But, in this one place, I had forgotten how nervous it made people, like they were seeing someone else standing before them, weaving a story—or pulling one from them, instead.”

Hazel prides herself on her ability to sense when someone is lying to her. This is a handy trait to have in business. She can usually see through deception and extract the truth from her negotiation counterparts. However, Mirror Lake is different. Everyone is keeping secrets, and nobody wants to be put on the spot by a human lie detector.

“How closely we were molded by the people who had come before us. Forging ourselves forward either in their path—or in resistance to it instead.”

This quote echoes an earlier one about how family can influence a child’s growth through positive or negative example. In this instance, Hazel hopes that Serena is modeling her own behavior on her dogged detective father. With the exception of Hazel, everyone else in Mirror Lake uses parental modeling as a maladaptive strategy.

“Who could I possibly trust? Everyone here was connected not only to one another but also to the police. Pete had discovered the first car. Caden and Gage had not pointed out that it could’ve belonged to their mother. Serena returned the photo to me, washing her hands of it.”

In this quote, Hazel explicitly mentions the ties that connect her family and friends to each other. The common denominator is the police department. Hazel is the only outsider. Ironically, all the law enforcement professionals in town are more interested in suppressing inconvenient truths than in capturing criminals.

“Gage had warned me to keep things quiet, to let the police sort it out, but I’d seen what the police here did with the things that made them uncomfortable—burying them instead of digging. Being careful never to disrupt their sense of security—or the legacy of the ones who had come before. It was time for everything to come out, for the ruse to collapse under the weight of our own history.”

Hazel has returned to Mirror Lake with a new perspective. Her years in the big city have made her realize that her hometown is dysfunctional. Mirror Lake’s desire for security causes it to turn a blind eye to real crimes occurring in its midst. This fact is all the more ironic since the community seems to revolve around members of law enforcement whose job is to seek justice along with keeping the peace.

“I understood then how my father had kept the crime rate low and his cases closed for so long here. It was the fact that nothing was designated as a crime. There were accidents, disappearances, suicides. Anything at all but murder.”

Perry’s job as a detective in Mirror Lake seems to hinge on maintaining the appearance of order. The citizens don’t want their tranquility disturbed by the knowledge of violent crime in their midst. To that end, Perry recognizes that creating the illusion of security is enough to keep everyone happy. This fabrication also allows him to maintain his position as a pillar of the community.

“I assume Holt made sure the boys understood the importance of keeping it quiet. But the older I get, the less I like secrets. They eat at you. Destroy you from the inside out.”

Pete is telling Hazel the story of how Audrey really died. For the first time, she understands the trauma that Gage and Caden experienced and were forced to suppress for the sake of their father’s public image. In retrospect, Pete also points out the high price a person must pay for suppressing the truth. No doubt, Perry came to the same conclusion, which was the reason he wanted Hazel to solve the mystery and free the Holt family from its own secrets.

“All these sons, covering up for the sins of their fathers. Keeping their secrets, without even asking for the truth. All these things they didn’t truly want to know. Daughters, though. Daughters are different.”

The deeper Hazel delves into the mysteries of Mirror Lake, the more disgusted she becomes with the men in her life. Perry, Pete, Gage, and Caden were all complicit in the false story of Audrey’s accident. Nico also wanted to protect his father’s reputation by withholding key facts from Hazel. Since the father-son legacy of guilt and shame doesn’t apply to daughters, Hazel is free to do what the others can’t. She rescues them from themselves. The quote also calls back to the title of the book and the idea of matriarchal lineage and the responsibility inherited by women.

“Hazel will know what to do. But I didn’t. I didn’t know what he wanted. Why not just tell me? Why leave it for me to find instead? The gun, the jewelry, the letter Jamie had uncovered—it was enough to cast the blame on anyone.”

In this quote, Hazel is expressing her frustration at the trail of breadcrumbs that her father left for her to follow. She doesn’t yet understand that the greatest threat to her family comes from within. Roy monitors what everyone else is doing. Any direct message from Perry to Hazel would have been destroyed before it ever got to her. Perry has great faith that his stepdaughter, who never joined law enforcement, is the best detective of the lot.

“I could see him clearly then, the puppet master behind the scenes. Manipulating us, playing my brothers and me against one another. An evil lurking in this family. In this town.”

Hazel is talking about Roy and his ability to orchestrate whatever outcome he desires by playing on the weaknesses of others. Mirror Lake’s obsession with placid surfaces ensures that he can get away with murder if he behaves like an upstanding citizen. Roy never ruffles anyone’s feathers. He merely hints and allows his paranoid victims to leap to the wrong conclusions, but Hazel finally recognizes him for who he is.

“He fought it—fought to get back to the inlet. But it was too late. The night fell eerily silent under the storm. He didn’t know: You had to let it take you. You couldn’t be afraid.”

Hazel has just deliberately led Roy to a part of the lake that contains treacherous cross currents. She repeatedly mentions her fearlessness under many different circumstances. In this case, she isn’t afraid to literally go with the flow. Roy is, and he drowns. Roy has always succeeded in manipulating others by preying on their fears. He dies because he succumbs to his own.

“The lake had given up all its secrets. The past no longer had a hold on either of us. We were free.”

Throughout the novel, Hazel’s most difficult relationship is with Caden. When the two cars surface that belonged to each of their mothers, the secrets associated with those past traumas surface as well. Hazel learns that Caden blamed himself for Libby’s disappearance. His guilt caused him to misdirect anger at Hazel. For her part, Hazel learns about Caden’s trauma from witnessing his own mother’s death. Once the two share this epiphany, they are free.