Pen Pal

Aidan Leighrite is the secondary protagonist, or deuteragonist, of Pen Pal. He is a contractor who comes to help Kayla in fixing her home, which leads to an intense romance between the two. Before meeting Kayla, the author only reveals specific details about Aidan’s life, largely through Aidan’s friend, Jake. Jake and his wife, Deb, tell Kayla that Aidan has always been quiet and traumatized, and Aidan explains to Kayla how his father was abusive, both to himself and his mother. Aidan ultimately killed his father to protect his mother, which led him to spend some amount of time in prison. This trauma carries into Aidan’s relationship with Kayla, in which he is both frightened to get close to another person and worried that he will accidentally hurt Kayla. Aidan’s demeanor in the text is typically brusque, bordering on rude, as he often hits at the most sensitive detail of Kayla’s current experience. However, this directness is a manifestation of Aidan’s interest and concern for Kayla, as he consistently tries to help Kayla overcome her trauma.

As the secondary protagonist, Aidan fulfills a traditional supporting role in the novel, helping Kayla to both overcome her past and discover more about herself. Just as Kayla explores and discovers her sexuality with Aidan, Aidan admits that he, too, has little to no experience in dominant/submissive role-playing. A defining moment in Aidan’s development as a character is his insistence on Kayla using a safe word, which he feels will keep him from harming her as they explore their sexuality together. Unlike Kayla, who has multiple concerns in the novel, Aidan’s goals are focused solely on protecting and helping Kayla. Even as Kayla struggles to confront her death, Aidan reveals after the fact that he waited for her; ringing the doorbell and sending her letters from “Dante” was his way of comforting and reassuring Kayla that he was still there for her. These actions emphasize The Transcendence of Love Beyond the Physical Realm.

Aidan’s alternate identity, Dante Alighieri, is derived from the Italian poet of the same name, whose work The Divine Comedy Aidan was reading before his death. This alias allows the parallels between the novel and Alighieri’s poem. Additionally, it also adds a layer of mystique to Aidan’s character. By aligning himself with the poet, Aidan creates an air of romance and divinity, helping to frame his relationship with Kayla as a matter of destiny or fate.

Fiona is the housekeeper for Kayla and the Wainwrights’s home. She is an older, Scottish woman with a strong connection to the supernatural. Alongside Claire, she fulfills the archetypical sage or mentor role, helping to guide Kayla both before and during Kayla’s confrontation with her death. When Fiona discovers Kayla’s ghost in the house, she offers to continue working for Kayla, offering advice on what to do without exposing Kayla’s death. Fiona is caring and helpful, but she also pushes back against Kayla’s rude dismissals of her beliefs. When Kayla asks for help, Fiona is offended by Kayla’s constant criticisms of believing in anything supernatural. However, she still offers to help Kayla as needed. In the end, Fiona helps Kayla understand her death and helps the Wainwrights get rid of Kayla’s ghost. This makes her a sage for both Kayla and the Wainwrights as the new owners of the home.

Claire is Fiona’s twin sister, though neither Claire nor Fiona explicitly says that they are twins even though they are identical in appearance. Claire is a medium who can communicate with spirits. When Fiona begins suggesting to Kayla that she may need a medium to communicate with the ghost in her home, she calls Claire. She knows already that she and Claire would need to coax Kayla into realizing her death. Claire functions as a second Fiona, expressing the same kindness with the same degree of offense at Kayla’s dismissal of her profession. Nonetheless, Claire offers to stay as long as Kayla needs during and after the séance. Ultimately, she gives Kayla the final push in the form of the buffalo nickel, which forces Kayla to acknowledge her illusory life.

Michael Reece is the antagonist of the text. He is a professor of mathematics, and he and Aidan both admit that he is a genius. However, Aidan suspects that Michael’s intelligence led him to develop a narcissistic personality disorder, an affliction in which the individual feels an exaggerated sense of self-importance and grandeur, often paired with an inability to see one’s faults and wrongdoings. Michael embodies this narcissism in his treatment of Kayla during and after their marriage, in which he constantly tries to assert dominance and control. In their marriage, Michael abused Kayla, including kicking her in the stomach and causing her to lose her pregnancy. The exact nature of these arguments is not clear, but the result remains the same in that Michael created an atmosphere of fear and dependence to control Kayla. After their marriage, Michael continued to stalk Kayla, unable to cope with the idea that Kayla no longer wanted or needed him. This culminated in Michael murdering both Aidan and Kayla.

As the antagonist, Michael serves to obfuscate and complicate Kayla’s journey toward peace and acceptance, both in life and death. In life, Michael abused Kayla. When she escaped his violence, he pursued her relentlessly, choosing to kill her rather than move on. In the Epilogue, Michael asserts that he killed Aidan and Kayla in self-defense, maintaining his belief that he is the true victim in the story. However, his arrogance and disdain for others reframes his defense as mere manipulation, in which he hopes to capitalize on his ex-wife moving on with another man as a point of sympathy. Though Michael is not present as a physical character for most of the novel, only appearing periodically as a man dressed in a trench coat, his effect on Kayla is the root cause of the conflict of the novel, making his influence ever-present.