The Broken Girls

by Simone St. James

Barrons, Vermont

  December 1950

  There was only one Family Visit Day at the end of the year, held between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So on the second Sunday in December, the three girls left in Clayton Hall 3C sat quietly in their bunks, reading and studying in painful boredom. CeCe was miserable; she was having nightmares, insomnia, trouble eating. Her days were a long, slow echo of grief for Sonia, of wondering what had happened to her. Of wondering if it had hurt.

  She lay listlessly on her bed and watched Katie, who was leafing through one of their stolen magazines. Katie had been silent for a few days, but now she was acting as she always had, angry and sassy and beautiful and smart. It should have angered CeCe that Katie had moved on from their friend’s disappearance in less than a week, but it didn’t, for the simple reason that it wasn’t true. CeCe had made a study of Katie, of her ways and thoughts and actions, a closer study than she’d done of any topic in their stupid textbooks. Katie was CeCe’s master’s thesis and her PhD; if there was a test on the topic of all things Katie, CeCe would have passed with flying colors. And Katie had not, in any way, moved on from Sonia’s disappearance. She was pretending to be her old self to deflect attention, but it was a deception. Katie wasn’t herself at all. Katie was angry.

  CeCe watched her friend flip a page. Katie’s uptilted eyes were dark and, in CeCe’s opinion, ominous. Others saw a pretty girl who had a defiant attitude; CeCe saw a white-hot fury that was banked so deeply, fed so carefully, that there was no way it would ever cease to burn.

  Roberta wasn’t acting like her old self, either; she’d gone quiet, pale, obviously in mourning for her friend. The teachers gave Roberta kindly concern, instead of the hard mistrust they gave Katie and the irritated lectures they gave CeCe about bucking up. But CeCe saw the anger there, too, in the way Roberta sat still at meals and didn’t speak, in the way her jaw twitched, in the way she tore around the hockey field with new viciousness she hadn’t had before, as if she wanted to work her anger out through her muscles. The way she ground her teeth at night and jerked her hair into a braid with her deft fingers every morning, yanking at the strands until they obeyed. It didn’t take a genius to see the anger in that.

  It was fine with CeCe. She was angry, too.

  So horribly, horribly angry. She didn’t know what to do with it—channel it, like Katie, or suppress it, like Roberta. CeCe’s anger was like an overfilled balloon she couldn’t tuck away and didn’t want to touch for fear it would explode. It suffocated her, closed her throat so she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t have a sport to play to burn it out, and she didn’t have Katie’s wicked intelligence to plot whatever it was that Katie was plotting. All CeCe could do was suffer.

  The problem was that she didn’t have a target, because she didn’t know who had killed Sonia. (That Sonia was dead, CeCe no longer had any doubt. She’d known the minute she’d seen the words GOOD NIGHT GIRL in the mirror.) Had her great-aunt and great-uncle done it? If so, why was Sonia’s suitcase found in the trees? Katie said that Mary Hand couldn’t have done it, because Mary was a ghost; but CeCe wasn’t so sure. CeCe had seen Mary from the bathtub, her dark, ominous form moving above her, wearing the black dress and veil. She had seen Mary bend down, felt the cold hand grasp her neck, hold her down under the water. Mary might have been long dead, but CeCe had no doubt that Mary was capable of killing a girl and dragging her to wherever she lived, to haunt future Idlewild girls forever. CeCe had no doubt of that at all.

  Besides, Mary walked the grounds, the woods, the road. And Mary had known Sonia was dead; she had told them with the message in the mirror.

  CeCe pictured Sonia getting off the bus on Old Barrons Road, seeing Mary waiting for her. What had happened? Had Sonia screamed? Had she run?

  There was a knock on the door. “Ladies,” came Lady Loon’s voice. “Cecelia. You have a family visitor.”

  CeCe groaned and rolled off her bed. “I’m coming,” she called through the door.

  Roberta poked her face over the edge of her top bunk and looked over at her. “Who do you think it is?” she asked.

  CeCe shrugged, noting the lavender half circles beneath Roberta’s eyes, which mirrored her own. She’d crawled into Roberta’s bunk more than once in the past week, and the other girl hadn’t minded. CeCe slept better when they were together against the darkness, Roberta’s larger, bonier body sprawled next to her in her thick nightgown. “Joseph,” CeCe said listlessly. “My half brother.”

  Katie’s eyes flickered up from her magazine. “Comb your hair,” she said. “And straighten your shirt.”

  “Why?” CeCe asked her.

  Katie stared hard at her. “Look good for him.”

  CeCe shrugged again, but she did what Katie ordered. “I don’t see the point. I don’t even want to talk to him, not today. He’s nice enough, but I don’t have the energy.”

  “Make a good impression,” Katie said. “Trust me.”

  So CeCe brushed her hair out and tied it back neatly, then readjusted her shirt so it didn’t look as awkward over her bosom, and added a cardigan. “I hate this,” she said as she pulled on her shoes. “I’m lonely without her.”

  “Me, too,” Roberta said.

  They’d gone through Sonia’s suitcase more than once, but it hadn’t yielded any clues. It had only made them miss her more, picturing these same things when they’d seen them in Sonia’s dresser or hanging on her hook, her bathroom things, her hairbrush. They could smell her. Their friend seemed so close. She couldn’t possibly be dead, could she?

  “If Joseph gives you another gift,” Katie said, “accept it. Act shy. Do your dumb-cow act. And don’t tell him about Sonia.”

  CeCe nodded. She didn’t even have the energy to be angry about the dumb-cow comment, because Katie was right. She should know by now that Katie saw everything. She didn’t have to put up the act when they were in 3C; that was why they were friends.

  She took the stairs down and crossed the common to the dining hall, where the familiar tables were set up. This close to Christmas, very few families visited; most girls got a visit home during the holidays, at least briefly, which made the December visit extraneous. You wouldn’t want to see your daughters too much, CeCe thought with unfamiliar bitterness. How awful that would be, especially when you took the trouble to send them away.

  Mrs. Peabody sat in the corner, yawning and reading a book; she was the assigned supervisor today. Jenny White sat with her parents, the three of them looking quiet and awkward, Jenny looking desperately out the window. Alison Garner was sitting with her mother, who was heavily pregnant and held a toddler in her lap, a little boy who crowed, opening and closing his hands, as he leaned toward his big sister.

  And in the corner of the room, by the windows, stood Mary Hand.

  CeCe stopped, frozen, her breath in her throat. Mary wore her dress and veil, and stood with her hands dangling. CeCe could feel the girl’s stare through the impenetrable black of the veil, imagined Mary’s thin, bony face, which no one had ever seen. Her bladder clenched and her palms turned to ice. Her face prickled with the numbness of terror.

  Mary moved. She took a step forward, and then another, walking across the room toward CeCe. Around them, nothing happened: Mrs. Peabody turned a page; Jenny looked out the window; Alison’s little brother cooed. Run, everyone! CeCe wanted to scream. Run! But she realized, as Mary took another step, that none of them could see.

  She’s come for me, she thought. Just like she did in the bath. She’d managed to scream in the bath, managed to push her face out of the water and make so much noise that every girl on the floor had come running. But now, with Mary walking across the room toward her, she couldn’t make a sound.

  Mary’s dress moved as she walked, and inside CeCe’s head, deep in her brain, she heard a voice: My baby. My little girl.

  Her mouth fell open helplessly, sound dying in her throat. She glanc
ed past Mary to the window behind her. Of course: the garden. That was why Mary was by the window. Because her baby was buried in the garden.

  Someone help me, please, she thought.

  My little girl, Mary said, coming closer. CeCe could see the ruched fabric of her old-fashioned dress, the bony remnants of her hands dangling at her sides. Darling. Darling . . .

  Finally, CeCe screamed.

  The sound was so loud, the blood rushing so viciously in her ears, that she barely heard the room’s reaction: the scraping of a chair, the exclamation from the teacher, the frightened screeching of the baby. She opened her mouth and let the scream out until it rubbed her throat raw. Warmth trickled down her leg, and she realized vaguely that her bladder had let go. Hands grabbed her, and Mrs. Peabody was shaking her, her voice coming from far away. “Cecelia! Cecelia!”

  Cold air slapped CeCe’s face, an angry, icy draft. CeCe blinked, turned her head, and stared again.

  Mary Hand was gone.

  In her place stood a woman. It took a long, agonized second before CeCe recognized her own mother, wearing a dress of winter wool, her coat buttoned to the throat, a scarf around her neck, her usual handbag in her hand. Her hair was tied back as it always was, and a look of frightened concern was on her thin, lined face.

  “Darling!” she cried. “Darling!”

  The hands in the bathtub, pushing her down.

  Her mother’s hands, holding her under the water, the salty ocean filling CeCe’s eyes and nose and lungs as she struggled to move.

  Mary knew everything. Mary saw everything. Everything. Even the things you didn’t say to yourself, deep in your own mind, ever.

  Mary knew the truth, and when she appeared, she showed it to you. Even when the truth was that your own mother wanted to kill you. That your own mother had already tried. That even though you’d blocked it out, deep down you’d always known.

  This was what had happened to Sonia. This was what she’d seen when she’d gotten off the bus. She’d seen Mary, and, behind the mask of Mary, the person who would kill her. Just like CeCe had. And Sonia had run, as long and as fast as she could, dropping her suitcase. Except she hadn’t run fast or long enough.

  CeCe looked at her mother’s shocked face, felt the puddle growing on the floor beneath her, listened to the baby scream, and started to cry.

  chapter 31

  Barrons, Vermont

  November 2014

  Garrett drove in silence as his car bumped down the drive and onto Old Barrons Road. Fiona leaned back against the seat, pain throbbing up the back of her neck into her skull. Despite the blast of the heater, her hands and feet couldn’t get warm.

  “What did Lionel say to you?” Garrett said after a minute.

  “What?” Fiona managed.

  “You know he’s an old druggie, right?” Garrett said. “Him and his son both. His son blew his brains out—with coke, but he blew his brains out just the same. Lionel has pulled this ‘recovering’ bullshit for thirty years, but I know better. Do you understand?”

  “He seemed honest to me,” Fiona said.

  “He’s a liar,” Garrett said, and she felt him turn toward her. “Fiona, you have to tell me what he said to you. Right now.”

  She would never forget it as long as she lived. “He said you were in the car with Tim Christopher the night my sister died,” she said. “That it was your car.” She looked around. Not this car, no. It wasn’t this car. Garrett had been a cop then, and it had been a cruiser. “That was why no one saw Tim’s car that night,” she said, the words forming slowly. “They saw a cop car instead. But that doesn’t make sense, because you didn’t kill Deb.”

  “Of course I didn’t kill your sister,” Garrett said.

  “Tim did,” Fiona said, repeating it to herself, because this was the truth—despite everything, despite twenty years of searching and doubting, despite the confusion and the pain, despite what felt like hot pokers inserted into her brain, this was the truth that had not changed. She rearranged the facts, and then, in a brief flash, her mind worked and she understood. “All that talk about Tim being railroaded was bullshit. Tim killed her, but it was you who helped him clean it up. Just like you did with Helen Heyer.”

  Garrett sighed. “It was a long time ago, Fiona,” he said, as if she were bringing up some petty grievance. “Twenty goddamned years.”

  “What was it?” Fiona asked him. Fear was in her throat, on the back of her tongue. She should never have gotten in the car with him. She should run, but the car was moving. He sat with his hands on the wheel, navigating them over the bumpy back road, and he didn’t even look angry. “What was the agreement? Tim killed girls, and then he called you to clean it up for him?”

  “Believe me, I didn’t like playing janitor,” Garrett said, “but it had to be done. The Christophers were important people around here. Good people. Tim had a great future. I did favors for them; they did favors for me. That’s how it works. They had a lot of pull, and if I didn’t help, they’d have replaced me with someone who would. I couldn’t exactly turn them down. And in the end, it didn’t even work, did it? All that risk, all that danger to cover him up, and Tim has been in prison for two decades.” He sounded disgusted. “I risked everything—my career, everything. And just because he got sloppy, they blamed me. After everything I did for them, for Tim. I thought we were friends, colleagues—family, even. They felt more like family than my own wife and son. But Tim screwed up, and suddenly if any of it had come out in court, they’d have hung me out to dry without a second thought. That’s what happens when you deal with certain types of people, Fiona. They use you, and they don’t thank you. They just get what they want from you for as long as they can.”

  Fiona stared at him as his words washed over her in waves. “What do you mean, he got sloppy?”

  He glanced at her. “I guess I shouldn’t have said that, since she was your sister. I’m just trying to be straight with you here. And I need you to be straight with me.”

  She felt like screaming. “What do you mean, he got sloppy?”

  “Calm down. I’m not talking about a serial killer here. He had a temper, that’s all, and some girls made him mad. Helen . . . I couldn’t do anything about Helen, but no one had ever seen him with her, so it was easy to drop it.” He glanced at Fiona again. “But your sister—I knew from the minute they called me that Tim was done. Her father was a journalist, for God’s sake. Everyone had seen them fighting, had seen her get in his car. Tim called me and said she’d made him mad, it had gone too far, and I had to help him fix it. Someone would be looking for her soon. I had to think fast, and I didn’t have a lot of options. We had no chance to take her over the state line.”

  Deb, Fiona thought. My God, Deb.

  “The Christophers owned Idlewild then,” Garrett went on. “I thought we’d dump her there, quick, and I’d be able to go back later and do it proper without attracting any suspicion. It was the only thing I could think of to do. So we moved the body from Tim’s car to my cruiser, and while he dumped her, I distracted Lionel and the kids at the drive-in. I told Tim to hide her in the trees, but the idiot had to put her in the middle of the field like she was a goddamned display. A rush job—he just dropped her and ran, even after I told him not to. How stupid can you be?”

  Deb, lying in that field, her shirt ripped open. Dropped like trash in the middle of the field, waiting to be seen. Mary Hand, Mary Hand, dead and buried under land . . . Fiona’s head hurt so much.

  “It was a goddamned clusterfuck,” Garrett Creel went on. “She wouldn’t have been found so fast if she wasn’t in the field, and I would have had the chance to move her. But someone found her. I had to clean it all up—everything. I had to make sure his footprints were erased when we searched for evidence in the trees.”

  “Richard Rush,” Fiona said, remembering the man who owned Pop’s Ice Cream. “He saw Tim
at four o’clock in the afternoon. But you told him to say he saw Tim at nine.”

  “Fuck him,” Garrett spit, angry now. “His shop was in debt, and I promised he’d be square if he did what I said. Instead, he bailed out on me when he realized he’d be called as a witness at trial. Said he wouldn’t commit perjury because of his kids. That was Tim’s best chance at reasonable doubt, flushed straight down the toilet.”

  So many details. So many. Garrett had thought of them all. “The kids at the drive-in,” she said. “They saw you that night. You came and lectured them while Tim dumped the body.”

  “That was easier. I tracked them down and told them that if they said anything about seeing me, I’d pin them on drug charges. Underage drinking. I wore my uniform when I sat them down, and I brought another cop with me. Intimidating as hell. Every one of them shit their pants and shut up. Lionel was tougher, but I just threatened to burn down his fucking business, because I knew he didn’t have a penny of insurance. And in the end, you know what? Tim went to jail anyway.” He glanced at her, his gaze furious, his face red. “People are so stupid, don’t you see? Maybe I sound crazy, but for thirty years it was just so goddamned easy. Nothing ever came back on me—not once. What is it with people? Why don’t they see?”

  Fiona looked out the window. They weren’t driving back into town; they had turned onto another side road, past the south end of Idlewild.

  “Even my own son,” Garrett said. His neck was flushed red where it emerged from his parka, and his hands were tight on the wheel. “I always wanted Jamie to be a cop, but he wasn’t on the force a year before I realized he wasn’t going to be like me. I did my best to raise him right, but he doesn’t have the instincts I do. He isn’t hard enough. He still thinks he can do right by everyone. Tim had brains and guts, at least until that last night. Until that night, I always thought Tim should have been my son instead of Jamie.”

  Jamie knows about Helen, Fiona almost said, but she stopped herself. She didn’t think Garrett knew yet that Jamie had pulled the Helen Heyer file, that he’d seen a shoddy investigation under his father’s name. “Let me out of the car.”