She knew about Ravensbrück, she wrote. Sonia must have told her. Deflected my question about it.
This was the tactic she had to take, she realized, going back over the conversation. Not to note what Roberta had said, because so much of what Roberta had said had confirmed things Fiona already knew. She needed to think about the things Roberta had deflected, as quickly and neatly as if she’d been hitting shots back over the net in a tennis match.
She knew the Idlewild records had been lost, Fiona scribbled. How? The only way is if she has looked for them.
That made her think for a minute. It didn’t stretch the imagination that as an adult and a lawyer Roberta would have made an inquiry, looking for something about her old friend’s disappearance. Once she was no longer a girl, she had used her powers as a lawyer to free her uncle and make his life as right as she could. She might have tried to make things right in Sonia’s death as well, especially as she had been convinced Sonia was murdered. Perhaps she had gotten access to the same missing persons file Jamie had pulled from the Barrons police, the one that said nothing at all. The existence of the Idlewild files had been Roberta’s only slip; she hadn’t known about it, and she had been avidly interested. It had been one of the only times in the interview that Fiona had gotten a peek beyond the calm, careful facade.
So the next question Fiona wrote was the only logical one: Does Roberta know who did it?
And then: Is she hiding it?
She had been truly grieved when she’d heard about Sonia’s body being found in the well—that hadn’t been an act. But Fiona made herself go back over that moment, carefully. What Roberta had shown was sadness and pain. What she hadn’t shown was surprise.
Fuck. Fuck. Fiona could have banged her forehead on the steering wheel. She had seen that, but it had been too fast, and she’d been too caught up in her own shit. She’d been outwitted by a seventy-nine-year-old woman. A woman who had spent thirty years as a successful lawyer, but still . . . Never assume, Fiona, Malcolm said in her mind.
From its place on the passenger seat, spilled out of her purse, her phone rang. She jumped, and for a second a wild hope sprang up in her that it was Jamie. But it wasn’t—it was Anthony Eden. What did he want? To summon her to another meeting with his mother? She’d had enough of frustrating old women for today. She ignored the call and flipped the page in her notebook to a fresh one.
She wrote a heading: Potential Suspects.
It seemed like in sixty-four years no one had done even this basic piece of logic, so she would do it herself. She started with the obvious choice, the one the headmistress had been so convinced of.
A boy.
That meant Sonia had had some kind of illicit romance. She would have had to keep it from the school, because they would surely have expelled her if they knew. It would have had to be a local boy, since in the pre-Internet, pre-Facebook days, there was no way she could have met a boy from anywhere else. It seemed unlikely, but Fiona kept it on the list, because if it was true, then Sonia’s roommate and friend Roberta had likely known. And it was believable that she had kept her friend’s secret all this time.
She wrote another possibility: a stranger.
The tale loosened, wove into a different pattern. This was Ginette Harrison’s theory that Sonia had been targeted. The killer-on-the-road theory, a predator passing through, perhaps a deliveryman or some other worker at the school. I didn’t see the face of a single man for three years, Roberta had said. The truth, or a lie? Why would Roberta cover it up if a gardener had killed her friend? Or, for that matter, a stranger on the road? She had to circle back to the fact that Roberta might be lying to her for reasons Fiona couldn’t see.
If Roberta was covering something, that led to: One of the girls did it. Perhaps Roberta herself, or CeCe Frank, or Katie Winthrop.
We always knew, Roberta had said. Sonia wouldn’t run away without her suitcase. The girls could have protested that Sonia hadn’t just disappeared in order to appear more innocent. The girls had had opportunity, access to Sonia, and Sonia’s trust. There was no gun or other weapon used in the crime—just a rock or a shovel, something the girls would have had access to. It was easy to imagine an argument, an impulse, done in a rage, the body dumped to cover it up quickly, the girls agreeing to cover for one another, never to expose one another.
And the motive? What kind of motive did teenage girls need? Jealousy, rejection, some imagined slight? The ultimate mean girls, and it explained why Roberta had not been surprised, why she had wanted access to Idlewild’s records: so she could find any clues to the crime in the files and remove them. Why she had made it clear she had no idea where the other two girls were now, which could be a lie.
It was the theory that fit in every detail, and it was the theory Fiona hated the most. She closed her eyes and tried to think clearly of why.
It was too pat, for one. Cliché, like a thriller movie. What’s more sinister than a teenage girl? Angry and duplicitous and full of hate. Everyone liked to picture a witchy coven of teenagers putting their hapless classmate to death, because it was easier and sexier than picturing Sonia being hit over the head by a local man who probably needed the 1950s version of mental health treatment, who had possibly sexually violated her first. But if it had been an accident, a true mistake, instead of a planned murder, then the girls would have been terrified. Covering it up would have been the first thing they’d do.
She hated it. But she had to admit it was possible. It was possible that she’d just had coffee with Sonia’s killer—or with a woman who was covering for Sonia’s killer, her school friend.
Maybe Fiona preferred picturing a man doing such a thing, or even a boy, instead of a girl. And that, she had to admit, circled back to Deb’s murder. She had always wanted Tim Christopher to be Deb’s killer. She had always wanted to believe that a man, sinister and big-handed and cruel, had put her innocent sister to death. Because it had fit.
But no one had seen Tim do it. And no one had seen him dump the body.
And for the first time in twenty years, Fiona let the words into her head, like a cold draft from a cracked window: Could they have gotten it wrong?
Tim had always maintained his innocence. Of course he had; nearly every convicted murderer did. But what if the wrong man was in prison? What if Deb’s killer was still free?
Sonia’s killer had walked free. That person was possibly dead, after living a life in which the murder of a fifteen-year-old girl had never been unearthed. Or that person was possibly living, elderly now. It was even possible that person had had a fruitful career as a lawyer, borne two children, and spent her morning playing cat and mouse with Fiona in a New Hampshire coffee shop.
There is no justice, Malcolm had told her once, but we stand for it anyway. Justice is the ideal, but justice is not the reality.
If Tim Christopher was innocent, it would kill her father.
Outside, the cold wind kicked up, and the flyer tucked beneath her windshield wiper flapped. Fiona stared at it, suddenly transfixed.
It wasn’t a flyer. It was a note.
She got out of the car and snatched it, nearly ripping it in half. She ducked back into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, smoothing out the note, staring at it.
Simple handwriting, on a piece of notebook paper, written in ballpoint pen.
Meet me behind the church at eleven o’clock, it said.
And, beneath that: You’re not looking hard enough.
chapter 23
Katie
Barrons, Vermont
November 1950
“They’re probably circus freaks,” Katie said, sitting cross-legged on her bunk and watching Sonia pack. “He’s the world’s fattest man, and she’s the bearded lady. That’s why they’ve lived alone so long with no kids.”
“You forget I’ve seen them,” Sonia said, calmly folding a skirt and pla
cing it in her suitcase. “They aren’t freaks. I met them when I first arrived in America.”
“And they forgot about you for three years,” Katie pointed out. “Maybe they were just busy building the cell they’re going to keep you in.”
She didn’t know why she was saying these things, passing them off as jokes. It was cruel, unnecessary, considering the true horror of Sonia’s past. But she couldn’t seem to stop it.
I don’t want you to go.
Sonia was unperturbed despite the barbs Katie was throwing. She was calm and happy, a little flushed with expectation. Like the other three, she had never been away from Idlewild, even for an afternoon, since arriving here.
“You’re packing everything,” CeCe pointed out, sitting on the floor, playing with the dials on her little radio, even though it was morning, just after breakfast, and they were at risk of getting caught. They only ever listened to the radio at night. “You’re only going for two days. Why are you packing your uniform?”
“Because,” Katie said when Sonia didn’t answer, “she thinks they’re going to want to keep her.”
“Shut up, Katie,” Roberta said. She was leafing through Sonia’s copy of Blackie’s Girls’ Annual, and she didn’t look up as she issued the reprimand. There was no venom in it.
“They might keep me,” Sonia said, adding her pitifully small stack of underwear to the suitcase. “Why else did they ask me to visit after so much time?”
She looked up, and the glimpse of hope on her face, naked and bare before she tucked it away, made Katie feel a slice of pain. She was an idiot, she knew. Stupid and petty. She wanted Sonia to be happy, but not by leaving, not by going to live with strangers.
And what if those strangers didn’t want to keep Sonia after their visit was over? What would happen to the hope on Sonia’s face then?
Sonia had gained a little weight over the last few weeks. She had smoothed out, her eyes less sunken, her elbows less sharp and bony. She wasn’t pretty—Katie knew, with the perfect detachment of the beautiful, that no one was pretty next to her—but her skin had a healthier flush to it, her gaze a calmer sparkle. Her uniform skirt was too short now, and it had begun to grow tight around the hips, though her bust was hopeless and probably always would be. When we’re out of here, Katie mused idly, I’ll get her one of those padded brassieres. There were no movie magazines—no magazines at all—at Idlewild, but some of the teachers wore bras that made their bodies look like soft rocket ships beneath their blouses. Katie was fascinated by the idea, not because she found it attractive, but because she had an animal instinct that boys would. If her hips grow out some more, and I get one of those, and I curl her hair . . . Oh, being eighteen was going to be fun.
Then she remembered that Sonia might not leave here with the rest of them.
“I bet they’re monsters,” she said, unable to stop herself. Unable to keep the words from scraping her throat as they came out.
“Hush,” CeCe chided, looking up from her radio. “Monsters don’t exist.”
They were all quiet for a moment, no one believing this, not even CeCe.
Katie looked up to see Sonia looking at her, watching her from those calm eyes. She had stopped packing. “I’ll be back Sunday,” she said quietly.
The hope draining from her friend’s face was worse than anything, so of course Katie’s perverse mood swung the other way. “It’s best if they do keep you,” she said. “That way you can find a way to sneak me some dirty magazines.”
Roberta laughed, glancing up from Blackie’s Girls’ Annual, and Sonia made a face. “What if they don’t have any dirty magazines?”
“You find a way to get them, silly,” Katie instructed her. “You ask for an allowance.”
“I want chocolate,” CeCe said, perking up at this.
“Books,” Roberta added. “For God’s sake, get us something to read besides Lady Chatterley’s Lover. We’ve already read the dirty parts to death.”
A squawk came from CeCe’s radio, and she twisted a button. “Careful with that thing, or we’ll lose it,” Katie said.
“No one has heard us so far,” CeCe pointed out. “I like it. I want to know what shows are on at this time of morning.”
“Probably nothing.” Katie watched Sonia put her notebook in the suitcase, accompanied by the pen. Her hairbrush, her nightgown. “I don’t think they start the shows this early.”
The radio squawked again as CeCe turned the dial. Sonia looked at the book in Roberta’s hand. “You can borrow that, if you like,” she said.
Roberta looked at her. Her calm gaze cracked for a fraction of a second, a flinch that only someone who knew her well would be able to see. Katie read her thoughts perfectly, since they mirrored her own. You might not come back. “No,” she said, her placid voice recovered. “You take it.” She handed it over, and it went into the suitcase with the other things. “If they don’t want you, come back,” she said to Sonia. “We’ll be here.”
“You’ll be late for class,” Sonia observed, closing the suitcase on its painfully few contents and latching it. “Don’t you have Latin?”
They would be late for class. There was only half an hour of break time allotted after the first class of the day, and it was already stretching past that now. Soon, someone—dorm monitor Susan Brady or Lady Loon herself—would come knocking on doors, shouting that the lazy girls needed to get their things. Still, nobody moved.
“What time is your bus?” CeCe asked for the dozenth time, though they all knew the answer.
“Twelve o’clock,” Sonia replied, as she had every other time. “I should start walking to the bus stop soon.”
“Do you have your ticket?” Roberta asked.
Sonia nodded. Her relatives had mailed her the ticket when she’d accepted the invitation. She had carefully placed it in the pocket of her wool coat so she wouldn’t lose it—as if she had so many things that she was in danger of not keeping track of them. Now, despite her earlier excitement, even Sonia seemed reluctant. She picked up her shoes and sat on the edge of her bunk, slowly putting them on.
The radio in CeCe’s hands stopped its static blast, and the harmony of a barbershop quartet emitted from it. A voice came over the music: “Welcome to The Pilcrow Soap Sunrise Show!”
“Sunrise was hours ago,” Katie snorted.
“Shh,” Roberta said. Sonia continued slowly pulling on her shoes.
The singing continued, sweet and buttery, the notes slipping so easily from one voice to the next. “Sweet dreams of you, sweet dreams are true . . . sweet dreams of us saying, ‘Yes, I do . . .’” The girls listened in silence, hypnotized, no longer caring about teachers or dorm monitors or Latin. A few sweet moments of peaceful quiet, the kind only the radio could give them, a few moments of nothing but sound from the world outside, where people were living and singing and playing songs. Normal people in a normal world.
Far off, down a hallway, a single door slammed. The radio squawked in CeCe’s hand, the singing interrupted.
It blasted briefly; then it was gone again. Silence came from the little box. Not static, not music. Just silence.
“What did you do?” Roberta said.
“Nothing!” CeCe stared down at the radio. “I didn’t touch anything.”
Steps sounded in the hall. “Someone’s coming,” Katie whispered, her lips cold and numb with sudden fear.
CeCe shook her head. “I—”
There was the sound of breathing. A breath in, a breath out. From the radio.
Katie felt her temples pulse, her vision blur. She had heard that same breathing, sensed it, in Special Detention.
She’s here.
The four girls sat frozen in a tableau, no one moving. And from the radio, breaking the breathing silence, came the thin, reedy, distressing cry of a baby’s wail. It wavered, as if far away, as if weak. And then it crie
d again.
CeCe dropped the radio with a thump. She kicked it, hard, and it spun under the bed, hitting the wall, the baby’s wail cutting off.
A knock pounded on the door. “Ladies!” Lady Loon shouted through the wood, making them all jump. “Ladies! You are late for class!”
There was a frozen moment in which nobody moved. And then Katie leaned over, took Sonia’s icy hand in hers, and looked into her face.
“Go,” she said.
chapter 24
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
November 2014
There was more than one church in Portsmouth. There were many, and Fiona silently cursed her anonymous note writer. What the hell church did he or she mean? New England was hardly bereft of churches.
She blew out a breath and checked the time on her phone. It was ten forty-five. Should she stay for fifteen minutes and play into this person’s game, or should she start her car and drive away? She already faced a wet drive back to Vermont, and she wanted to get back into the Idlewild files, which she’d barely had time to skim through. She wanted to talk to Malcolm. Even, if he’d let her, to Jamie.
Still . . . You’re not looking hard enough.
Goddamn it.
It was as if whoever it was knew how to reach into her journalist’s psyche and flip the switch of her curiosity—the switch that couldn’t be turned off. The switch that would most likely get her killed one of these days. But it was morning in sunny New Hampshire, with the thin wet snow melting and retirees walking by to go into the twee coffee shops beneath pretty awnings.
She hadn’t even processed the thought fully before she got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. Inhaling a bite of the chill air, she stepped to the hood of the car—where the note leaver would have stood to tuck the paper beneath her windshield wiper—and did a slow 360-degree turn, scanning the horizon.
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