The Broken Girls

by Simone St. James

  The girls nodded. Idlewild’s main buildings were arranged in a U-shaped square around a common, dotted with unkempt trees and weedy flagstoned paths. “That section scares me,” CeCe said. “The one by the garden.”

  It scared Katie, too. No one liked the garden, even though the curriculum included Weekly Gardening, when they had to reluctantly dig through its damp, rotten-smelling earth. Even the teachers gave the garden a wide berth. “I was sneaking a cigarette after dinner, and I left the path so Mrs. Peabody wouldn’t see me—you know she smokes her own cigarettes out there, even though she’s not supposed to. I was beneath the big maple tree, and I just felt something. Someone was there.”

  CeCe was leaning forward, rapt. “But you didn’t see anything?”

  “There was a voice,” Katie said. “It was— I didn’t imagine it. It was right there next to me, as if someone was standing there. I heard it so clearly.”

  She could still recall that moment beneath the maple tree, standing on a bed of old maple keys, her cigarette dropping to the ground, the hair standing up on the back of her neck when a voice somewhere behind her right ear had spoken. Idlewild was an old place, and the fear here was old fear. Katie had thought she understood fear until that moment, but when the voice had spoken, she’d understood fear that was older and bigger than she could imagine.

  “Well?” Roberta prompted. “What did she say?”

  Katie cleared her throat. “‘Hold still,’” she said.

  They were all quiet for a moment.

  “Oh, my God,” CeCe said softly.

  Strangely, it was Sonia that Katie looked at. Sonia was sitting on the floor, against the wall beneath the window, her thin legs drawn up, her knees to her chest. She was very still, bathed in shadow, and Katie couldn’t tell if Sonia’s eyes were on her or not. Far off, a door slammed, and something tapped, like dripping water, in the ceiling.

  “Why?” Sonia asked her, the French lilt soft. “Why did she say that to you?”

  Katie shrugged hard, the muscles wrenching in her shoulders, even though it was dark and the other girls couldn’t see it. “I don’t know,” she snapped, her voice growing sharp before she tempered it. “It was just a voice I heard. That’s all I know.”

  A lie, a lie. But how could some old ghost even know?

  Hold still. She couldn’t talk about that. Not to anyone. Not yet.

  “What did you do?” Roberta asked.

  This was an easier question. “I ran like hell.”

  Only CeCe, leaning against the headboard, gave a quick tut at the language. She’d been raised prim for an illegitimate girl. “I would have run, too,” she conceded. “I saw a little boy once. At the Ellesmeres’.” The Ellesmeres were her rich father’s family, though CeCe hadn’t been given the family name. “I was playing in the back courtyard one day while Mother worked. I looked up and there was a boy in an upper window of the house, watching me. I waved, but he didn’t wave back. When I asked my mother about it, about why the boy wasn’t allowed outside to play, she got the strangest look on her face. She told me I’d been seeing things, and that I should never say anything about that boy again, especially in front of the Ellesmeres. I never did see him again. I always wondered who he was.”

  “My grandmother used to tell me about the ghost in her attic,” Roberta said. “It moved all the furniture around up there and made a racket. She said there were nights she’d lie in bed listening to trunks and dressers being dragged across the floor. Mum always said she was just an old lady looking for attention, but one summer I spent two weeks at my grandmother’s house, and I heard it. It was just like she’d said—furniture being dragged across the floor, and the sound of the old brass floor lamp being picked up and put down, over and over. The next morning I asked her if it was Granddad’s ghost doing it, and she only looked at me and said, ‘No, dear. It’s something much worse.’” She paused. “I never went back there. She died at Christmas that year, and Mum sold the house.”

  “What about you, Sonia?” CeCe asked. “Did you ever see a ghost?”

  Sonia unfolded her thin legs and stood, then gripped the window and pulled it shut. The draft of cold air from outside ceased, but still Katie shivered.

  “The dead are dead,” she said. “I have no use for ghosts.”

  Katie watched her silhouette in the near darkness. It had sounded dismissive, but Sonia hadn’t said she didn’t believe in ghosts. She hadn’t said she’d never seen one. She hadn’t said they weren’t real.

  She knew, just as they all did.

  The rain pelted the window again. Hold still, the voice in Katie’s head said again. Hold still. She hugged herself tightly and closed her eyes.

  chapter 3

  Barrons, Vermont

  November 2014

  “Jonas,” Fiona said the next morning as she walked into the cramped offices of Lively Vermont. “Did you know that Idlewild Hall is being restored?”

  The main room was empty, but Jonas’s door was ajar, and she knew he was in there. He always was. She wove past the mismatched desks and the cardboard boxes that littered the main room and headed toward Lively Vermont’s only private office, the lair of the magazine’s owner and editor in chief.

  “Is that you, Fiona Sheridan?” came a voice from inside. “I haven’t seen you in days.”

  She reached the door and looked in at him. He was bent over his desk, staring closely at a photograph print, the computer blank and ignored behind him. Typical Jonas. “I guess it’s a good thing I don’t work for you, then,” she said.

  He looked up. “You’re freelance. It counts.”

  Fiona felt herself smiling. “Not when it comes to health insurance.”

  He gave her a poker face, but she knew he was teasing. Jonas Cooper was fiftyish, his gray-brown hair swept back from his forehead in neat, impressive wings, his eyebrows dark slashes over his intense eyes. He wore a red-and-black-checkered shirt open at the throat over his waffle-weave undershirt. He and his wife had bought Lively Vermont over a decade ago, and since their divorce last year he’d been trying to keep it going. “Do you have a story for me?” he asked.

  “No,” Fiona replied. “I gave you one on Friday. You told me that blew the budget.”

  “For this issue, yes. But there’s always another one.”

  For now, she thought. Lively Vermont was just one of several local magazines she wrote for, and it was struggling just as hard as the rest of them. “What is that?” she asked, gesturing to the photo.

  “Local photographer,” he replied. He glanced down at the picture again and shrugged. “She lives in East Charlotte. The work isn’t bad. I might do a feature, if I can find a writer.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?” Jonas leaned back in his vintage office chair and tossed the photograph onto a pile.

  “Because I just did a story on artisanal cheese. That’s my pound of flesh for this month.”

  Jonas gave her a look that said, I know you’re lying. She was. Fiona excelled at writing fluff—she had no pretensions to creating great journalism. She didn’t want to do an article about a photographer because photographers always asked her about her father. “Consider it,” he said. “If this pans out, I might dig some money out of the sofa to pay for it. Now, what is it you were shouting about when you came in?”

  Fiona felt her heart speed up, as if she were about to ask about something forbidden. “Idlewild Hall,” she said. “I hear it’s about to be restored.”

  Jonas looked wary, then nodded. “The new owner.”

  “Who is he?”

  “She. Margaret Eden. Wife of the late investment whiz Joseph Eden. Does the name ring a bell?”

  It did—something to do with the economic meltdown in 2008. She’d seen his face in the news. “So he bought the property?”

  “No. He died, and the widow did. Sh
e’s come up from New York to oversee the restoration, I think.”

  Fiona was stung, somehow, that Jonas knew. “The Christophers owned that land for decades,” she said. “Ever since the school closed in 1979. No one told me it was sold. Or that it was going to be restored.”

  A look of sympathy came over Jonas’s expression. “It wasn’t my place,” he said softly. “And the restoration has been nothing but talk until now. I didn’t think anyone would actually go ahead with it.”

  “Well, it’s going ahead. I saw the construction signs on the fences when I was there last night.”

  Jonas was quiet. He hadn’t been living here in 1994—he’d moved here only when he bought the magazine—but he knew about Deb’s murder, about her body dumped at Idlewild, about Tim Christopher going to prison for the crime. Everyone knew about it. There was no privacy in Barrons, not for the family of the victim of the town’s most famous murder. Even Jonas knew there was something unhealthy about Fiona visiting the Idlewild grounds.

  “Don’t say it,” Fiona warned him. “Just don’t.”

  He held up his hands. “Hey, it’s your business. I just run a magazine.”

  She stared at him for a minute as the familiar jittery energy from last night ran through her blood. “So, do you really want a story from me?” she asked. “A feature?”

  “Why do I have the feeling I’ll be sorry if I say yes?”

  “Idlewild,” she said. “That’s the story I’ll write. I’ll interview Margaret Eden. I’ll look at the plans for the school. I’ll tour the property, get photographs, everything.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Jonas said. “I don’t know, Fiona.”

  “It’s local color,” she said, feeling her cheeks heat up. “A new school, a revival, local jobs. No one else is covering it. It beats a feature about a photographer. Isn’t that what you want for Lively Vermont?” She looked straight into his eyes. “I’m fine with it, Jonas,” she said. “I swear, I’m fine.”

  To her relief, she saw the wariness leave his eyes and his calculating editor’s side take over. He and his ex-wife, Emily, had bought Lively Vermont for its cachet as an independent Yankee think tank, but under Emily’s direction they’d turned it into a soft-toothed lifestyle magazine, the kind that ran ads for eighty-dollar candles and five-thousand-dollar handmade quilts. Jonas had always been unhappy with that—he’d wanted more, which was why he continued to hire Fiona, hoping she’d show the same journalistic chops as her famous father. “I admit it’s interesting, but I don’t have the budget for a piece that big.”

  “I’ll write it on spec,” she said. “I’ll take my own pictures. You don’t even have to buy the piece. Just let me say I’m working for Lively when I call up Margaret Eden. It’ll get my foot in the door faster.”

  “I see. And what do I get for letting you use the name of my magazine?”

  “I’ll give you first refusal on it.” She waited as he thought it over, suddenly impatient. “Come on, Jonas. You know it’s a good deal.”

  He looked like he wanted to be convinced, but he said, “You’re about to ask for something else, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Fiona said, letting out a breath. “I want to start with history. Can you let me into the archives?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Lively Vermont had first published off a photocopier in 1969, and every issue was kept in a bank of scarred wooden file cabinets that had followed the magazine through every office move. They now sat against the back wall of the office, where someone had left a plate with the stale remains of a doughnut atop them, alongside an ice-cold coffee cup.

  “You could go to the library, you know,” Jonas offered skeptically as Fiona pulled open the oldest drawers. “They’d have more about Idlewild than we do.”

  “Everyone at the library knows who I am,” Fiona said. The files had a musty smell that made her briefly happy. “If they know what I’m researching, it won’t be a secret anymore.”

  It was true. Malcolm Sheridan, the famous journalist, was a local legend in Barrons, and Fiona, his one remaining daughter, had distinctive red hair. The Barrons library staff was dedicated but extremely small, and because of Fiona’s many research visits over the years, they all knew who she was.

  “Okay,” Jonas said. “And why is this a secret, exactly? Don’t tell me there’s high competition for this story.”

  She turned and gave him a look over her shoulder.

  He gave her a look back. “I’ve never met a journalist who’s afraid of librarians.”

  “You’ve never met a journalist with my family history,” Fiona replied, trying to make it sound casual, easy. “I hate gossip. I can find other sources, especially online.”

  There was a pause of silence behind her as she pulled out the files from 1969 to 1979. “If you’re looking for more sources, your father would have them,” he said. “You know that.”

  “I know.” Fiona banged the drawer shut. “I’m due to visit him soon anyway. I’ll ask him about it.”

  “Fine. Just bring my files back intact. And, Fiona . . .” Jonas shrugged. “Like I say, it’s your business, but there are going to be references to the Christophers in there. It’s unavoidable.”

  He was right. Before their son had gone to prison for murder, the Christophers had been the richest and the most prominent family in Barrons. It was very likely there was something about Tim’s parents in the file she was holding. But she’d cross that bridge when she had to. “Like I said,” she told Jonas, “I’m fine.”

  Jonas looked as if he was considering saying something else, but all he said was “Say hello to your father for me.”

  “I will.” Malcolm Sheridan was Jonas’s journalistic idol, and it was that admiration that kept her employed at Lively Vermont. “I’ll be in touch,” she said, and she waved the files gratefully at him as she turned for the door.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was a blustery gray day, the sun fighting to be seen from behind the clouds. The leaves had turned from vibrant colors to faded brown and had mostly left the trees. A handful of maple leaves, blown by the wind, had landed on Fiona’s windshield, and she brushed them off as she got in her car.

  She glimpsed her face briefly in the rearview mirror as she started the car—red hair, hazel eyes, pale skin, the beginnings of crow’s-feet testifying to her thirty-seven years—and looked away again. She should probably bother with makeup one of these days. She should probably expand her wardrobe beyond jeans, boots, and a zip-up quilted jacket, too, at least until full winter hit. She tossed the files on the passenger seat and headed for downtown Barrons.

  Barrons consisted of some well-preserved historic buildings in the center of town, used to draw the few tourists who came through, surrounded by a hardscrabble population that hoped those same tourists didn’t notice their falling-down porches and the piles of firewood in their driveways. Fiona drove past the clapboard library and, half a mile up, a spray-painted sign advertising fall pumpkins, though Halloween was weeks ago. In the square at the center of town, she passed the old city hall and continued down New Street to the police station.

  She parked in the station’s small lot and picked up the files from the passenger seat. There was no one around, no movement in the squat square building, which had been built sometime in the 1970s, when Barrons finally became big enough to warrant a police force. Two picnic tables sat beneath the old oak trees in front of the station, and Fiona sat on one of the tables, swinging her feet onto the seat and pulling out her phone. She texted Jamie: Are you in there?

  He made her wait five minutes. She had begun leafing through the first file when he texted back: I’m coming out.

  Fiona tucked the phone back in her pocket and went back to the files. He took his time, making his point—he was still mad about last night—but eventually the front door of the station swung open an
d Jamie emerged, shrugging on a late-fall parka over his uniform.

  Fiona glanced up and watched him. It was hard not to, she had to admit. Jamie Creel of the Barrons police, son and grandson of Vermont police chiefs, had dirty blond hair, dark blue eyes, and a scruff of beard on his jaw that grew in honey gold. He was younger than Fiona—twenty-nine to her thirty-seven—and he moved with easy grace as he huddled into his coat against the wind.

  “Were you busy?” Fiona asked as he came closer.

  He shrugged. “I was typing reports.” He had left off his hat, and the wind tried to tousle his hair. He stopped a few feet from her picnic table, his hands in his pockets and his legs apart, as if braced.

  “I came to apologize,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “For what?”

  “For freaking you out last night. For leaving.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re not actually sorry,” he observed.

  “Still, I’m apologizing,” she said, holding his gaze. “I mean it. Okay?”

  He didn’t answer, but gestured to the files in her lap, where she held a hand to them to keep them from blowing away. “What’s that?”

  “Files from Lively Vermont. I’m looking for a history of Idlewild Hall.”

  Jamie’s posture relaxed and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “This has to do with last night, doesn’t it? Fiona, come on.”

  “This is good,” she protested. “I’m going to do a story.”

  “About Idlewild?”

  “About the restoration, the new school.” She watched his face. “It’s a good idea.”