“And this is my fault?” Fiona said. “He covered for my sister’s killer, and then he tried to fucking kill me.”
“I get it. I do. It makes me mad. But I have to catch the next Tim Christopher who comes along.”
“Then your cops shouldn’t have tried to cover for the first one.” Fiona pushed back her chair. “We’re done.”
“Call off your dogs, Fiona,” Pfeiffer said.
“I told you, they’re not mine.”
“Just answer me one question.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“I read your statement. You say Garrett told Tim to dump the body in the woods, to buy time before it was found. Yet Tim dumped it in the field. His words, according to you, were ‘He dropped it and ran.’” Pfeiffer paused. “That doesn’t seem to fit, does it? Tim was cool enough to call Garrett that night, cool enough to go along with the plan.” He looked at Fiona through the lenses of his glasses, and she could see he hadn’t missed a detail of this case. “Why do you think he botched it up so badly? Why did he lose his nerve?”
Fiona had actually thought about this; it was true the facts didn’t fit. Unless you remembered that this was Idlewild. “I think something scared him,” she said. “I think he dumped her and ran because he was afraid.”
Pfeiffer’s brows rose. “Tim Christopher was so scared he ran?”
“Yes.”
“What could scare him that badly?”
She’d thought about this, too. Lain awake wondering about it, actually. What had Mary Hand shown him? What sights, what sounds? Tim Christopher, a murderer—what had she reached into his mind and shown him that was so frightening he’d dropped Deb’s body and run?
She shook her head at Pfeiffer. “We’ll never know,” she said. “But I really hope it was horrible.”
* * *
• • •
Her breath puffed before her as she walked away from the station. When she rounded the corner of the building, heading for the parking lot, she stopped when she saw the figure leaning against her car. Her heart pounded, and suddenly she felt light-headed, as if the sudden jolt of happiness could make her fly away.
“Jamie,” she said.
He moved off where he’d been leaning and stood straight, his hands in the pockets of his coat. The cold wind tousled his hair. He looked paler than he had the last time she’d seen him, but his vitality hadn’t dimmed, and he held her gaze with his own, his look dark and worried. “Hey,” he said. He cleared his throat, looking her over. “Are you . . . okay?”
She was quietly, surprisingly elated to see him; what should have felt complicated suddenly didn’t feel complicated to her at all. But Jamie was tense, his posture hard. “Sure,” she managed. “I’m fine now. How are you?”
“All right, I guess,” he said. “I saw your car by accident. It was an impulse. I guess I can’t stay away from this place. I’m not stalking you.”
“Good to know.”
He glanced past her to the station. “You’ve been to see Pfeiffer?”
“I was summoned.” Fiona crossed her arms. “He’s pissed about the BCI investigation. He blames it on me. But I think he’s going to figure out pretty quickly who’s behind it.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and she watched the wariness drain from his expression like water. “I didn’t instigate it—given what’s happened, they opened the investigation themselves. But I’m cooperating, Fee. I’m giving them everything I know.”
“About your own father?” she asked gently.
“He covered for Tim. He tried to kill you. He shot at me.” Jamie shook his head. “But I told you before all of that. I was already done. And I meant it.” He gave her the ghost of a smile. “I guess it’s safe to say I’m not going to be a cop anymore.”
“So what will you do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think of something. Maybe I’ll take up woodworking, or buy an apple orchard.” He took his hands out of his pockets, and she saw the bandage on his hand. “I hear journalism is a particularly lucrative career, except I can’t write for shit.”
That made her laugh, the sound brief before it died again. He didn’t have to be a cop to do good, to help people. Maybe in time he’d realize that. “Jesus, Jamie,” she said, rubbing a hand over her forehead. “What a mess. How is your mother handling it?”
“Not good,” he said, looking grim. He glanced at her. “She blames you, at least for now.”
Of course she did. She was a cop’s wife, a cop’s mother. His mother hates me and his father tried to kill me, Fiona thought. This is never going to work.
As if reading her mind, Jamie said, “So what now, Fee?”
She looked around at the cold, empty street, beneath gray skies that threatened more snow. At the police station behind her. At the man in front of her.
What now?
And then she took a gamble.
“Do you want to go for coffee?” she asked him.
He thought it over, and then he answered.
But he didn’t have to. She already knew what the answer would be.
epilogue
Barrons, Vermont
December 2014
As the machines moved in and the crew worked, the small knot of men circulating, Fiona aimed her camera at the damp square of dirt and took another shot.
“There’s nothing to see yet, you know,” Katie Winthrop said at her shoulder.
Fiona didn’t answer her. For the first time in their brief acquaintance, Fiona was seeing the indomitable Katie Winthrop nervous. The old woman was bundled deep into her coats and scarves, her hands ensconced in thick mittens, her elegant feet lost in a pair of winter boots. She was talkative and fidgety, edgy and emotional. Today, Fiona could clearly see the troublemaking fifteen-year-old who had once driven her teachers crazy.
Anthony was hovering in the background, fretting over his mother, ready to offer her tea from a thermos. Fiona paid no attention to him as she watched two of the dig crew consulting, then calling a third man over for his opinion.
“God, I hate this place,” Katie said.
“So do I,” Fiona said, her gaze still on the crew. “Everyone hates this place.”
It was a dark December day, the sun long hidden behind the cold clouds, and the dim light made Idlewild look even worse. Behind them, shadows loomed under the row of deep eaves that lined the main hall, making them look even more like cavernous teeth. Having the building behind her gave Fiona the chills, as if it would move while she wasn’t looking. The plastic that had been stretched around the old garden flapped mercilessly in the winter wind. Everything seemed to be waiting.
Not long now, Fiona thought, watching the men.
“Oh, thank God,” Katie said. “The girls are here.”
Fiona glanced around briefly to see Roberta and CeCe approaching, bundled just as deeply as Katie was, their arms linked. Jamie accompanied them, making sure neither woman stumbled on the frozen mud of the drive. Roberta looked grim, but CeCe gave a polite wave.
“Good God,” Roberta said when they got close. “This place is even worse than I remember. Is it going to take long?”
“What is that smell?” CeCe asked. “Oh—it’s the garden. Now I remember.” Her expression went hard as the memories hit. “Disgusting.”
It was. Even in the frigid cold, as soon as the crew had overturned the first layer of frost-crusted earth, a damp, hideous smell had come from this square of land, as if it exhaled bad breath in their faces. The crew had said something about drainage and clay and pH, but Fiona hadn’t bought it. The smell was Mary and her baby. It always had been.
Jamie moved to stand next to Fiona’s shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked her softly.
“This is nice of you,” Fiona murmured back. “You didn’t have to come.”
She turned, and the
ir eyes met for a long moment. He gave her half a smile as her throat went dry. “I wanted to,” he said.
Fiona tore her gaze away and stared ahead again.
“I’m taking you for a beer after this,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s early.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling her cheeks warm. It felt like a first date.
“Katie,” Roberta complained as Fiona focused her camera on the garden again. “Your son is trying to give me tea.”
“Take it,” Katie said. “It makes him happy.”
“I’d rather have hot chocolate,” CeCe said. “It would cheer me up. I like hot chocolate better. I don’t really want to see a dead body. Oh, no. I’m talking too much, aren’t I? I do that when I’m nervous.”
She went quiet, and Fiona knew that either Katie or Roberta—or both—had taken her hand.
Without CeCe’s chatter, there was only the flap of plastic and the wind again. The work crew, hired by Katie, had been here for five hours already, and the light would fail soon. But the square they were examining wasn’t very big, and the soil was loose and wet despite the weather. They’d already gone deep, the small backhoe parked by men working by hand with shovels. Finally, the crew foreman made his way around the hole in the ground to Katie, a serious look on his face.
“We’ve hit something,” he said. “Wood.”
A coffin. Mary’s parents had left her outside to die, but they’d buried her and her baby in a coffin.
It took another forty minutes, but the coffin was uncovered and lifted from deep under the old garden. It was rotted, rough, makeshift, clearly homemade. The stench that accompanied it, even in the brisk winter wind, was so bad that the men of the work crew raised their scarves over their noses and mouths.
Fiona smelled it, too, but she kept her hands on the camera, taking shots as the coffin emerged from the ground. She had written most of her piece on Sonia Gallipeau, the sad story of her life and death. Jonas was going to use it as part of his relaunch of Lively Vermont—at long last, he was changing the magazine’s focus from soft-pedaled tourism stories to the kinds of in-depth local coverage he wanted to run. He’d sold his half of their house out to his ex-wife, taken the money, and invested it in the magazine while he lived in the room over his elderly mother’s garage. Strangely, he was in a better mood than ever since he’d done it. I feel like I’m twenty again, he’d said.
Part of his jubilation came from the fact that the cover story of the new Lively Vermont wasn’t going to be about Sonia Gallipeau at all. It was going to be an exclusive article by the legendary Malcolm Sheridan, excerpted from his forthcoming book about the 2008 financial crash. Jonas had worked out a deal for the first new writing from Malcolm Sheridan in twenty years, and even living in his mother’s garage couldn’t dampen his joy.
Don’t get too comfortable, Malcolm had warned Jonas as they sat in Malcolm’s living room, Fiona looking on in amusement. I’m retired. I’m not writing for you all the damn time. But Fiona knew better. Her father was writing—that was what mattered. The Tim Christopher cover-up, as painful as it was, had shaken something loose. It had reawakened her father’s desire to get out into the world and get something done. Just as it had reawakened hers.
Fiona was writing, too. Sonia Gallipeau was just the beginning. She was going to write real stories for the first time in her life. Her focus was going to be the unsolved cases, the missing loved ones who were never found, the cold cases that stayed unsolved. She was going to write about what mattered, whatever the cost. And Jamie was going to help her, lending the expertise gained from ten years as a cop.
As soon as the Idlewild bodies were buried.
There was no story about Mary Hand. That wasn’t why she was here, taking pictures. She was taking pictures because, after so many years of suffering in silence, someone needed to document this.
“I hope no one is going to be sick,” Anthony said. He was standing next to CeCe, watching the coffin come out of the ground, and he was clearly talking about himself.
The girls were quiet, the three of them lined up, watching. They had stood exactly this way at Sonia’s memorial service four days ago, a solemn line of old women in vigil for their friend. Sonia was buried properly now, in a cemetery beneath a headstone bearing her name.
The coffin was placed on crude wooden struts, and the crew foreman approached again. “What do we do?” he asked Katie. Fiona lowered the camera. She felt Jamie take her hand in his.
Katie blinked at the foreman as if waking up. “Open it,” she said.
Anthony stared at her. “Mother,” he said. “I don’t think we can just do that.”
Katie looked at the foreman. “Can we do that?”
The foreman looked back at his crew, then shrugged. “We should probably call the cops,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter to me. A coffin this old, it’s just a few old bones.”
“What do you think, former policeman?” Katie asked Jamie.
Jamie’s gaze was fixed on the coffin. His hand was warm on Fiona’s. “I say open it,” he said.
“Then do it,” Katie told the foreman.
Roberta pulled a handkerchief from somewhere in her winter coat and held it to her nose. “What are we going to do with her?” she asked Katie as the crew foreman walked back to the grave.
“We’ll bury her,” Katie said. “Properly, like we did with Sonia. Mary and her baby. Then she’ll go away.”
“I don’t want to see it,” CeCe said, but she didn’t move.
Fiona heard something behind her and turned.
There was nothing there.
She turned back, but she heard the sound again. A footstep.
There was a rushing sound in her ears, and a strange smell that was almost nutmeg. Fiona peered into the shadows and saw Mary standing at the edge of the trees in her dress and veil, watching them. She was holding a tiny, swaddled baby in her arms.
From behind Fiona, the crew foreman said, “Hand me that crowbar.” There was a cracking sound of wood. CeCe cried out.
“Jesus,” Jamie said.
Still, Mary watched. Fiona stood frozen, her hands still on her camera.
“My God,” Katie said softly. “Oh, my God. It’s her.”
Mary didn’t move.
“I guess we’ll call someone,” the crew foreman said.
“You’re right, Katie,” Roberta said. “We’ll have to bury her. We’ll have to bury both of them.”
In Mary’s arms, the baby moved sleepily. Fiona blinked. Mary vanished into the shadows of the trees.
And then there was nothing but the windblown field, the blank winter sky, the breath of cold wind. And silence.
acknowledgments
Thanks to my editor, Danielle Perez, for believing in this book and championing it from the first. Thanks to my agent, Pam Hopkins, for helping me through the process of writing something new and scary. My mother, brother, and sister keep me grounded, and my husband, Adam, keeps me (mostly) sane. Molly and Sinead read an early version of the book and talked me off a ledge, and Stephanie read a later version and talked me off still more ledges. Thanks, guys.
For research on Ravensbrück, I am indebted to the work of Sarah Helm, first in A Life in Secrets and then her heartbreaking work on Ravensbrück itself, If This Is a Woman. Any errors are my own. Any readers looking for fiction about Ravensbrück should read Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein.
And thank you to every reader who has ever sent me an e-mail or a Facebook message, every book club that has picked up one of my books to read, and every blog or reviewer who has bothered to write about my work. This simply does not happen without you.
The Broken Girls
Simone St. James
Questions for Discussion
Discuss the relationship between Sonia, Katie, Roberta, and CeCe. How would you characterize their friendships
? Why do you think the author chose to write about four girls with such different backgrounds?
Why do you think the author chose to write from multiple perspectives? Did you enjoy one character’s voice more than the others? How did the alternating points of view affect your reading of the book?
Discuss the character of Mary Hand. Do you think she is a malevolent ghost? What do you make of her past? Why do you think the author chose to include a supernatural element, and how effective is it?
Mary shows different things to each girl. What do you think they mean? Is she trying to scare the girls or is there a deeper purpose? What does she show to the other characters and why?
From the beginning, Fiona is determined to identify the girl in the well and uncover the truth of what happened to her. Why is this case so important to Fiona?
Why do you think the author chose the title The Broken Girls? Do you think Fiona is “broken”? If so, do you think this is true for the whole novel or do you believe she changes? What about the four girls in the 1950s?
How would you characterize Fiona and Jamie’s relationship? Do you think it’s healthy? How does it change throughout the course of the novel? Use specific examples from the book to illustrate your points.
Journalism plays an important role in the book. Why do you think the author chose to make Fiona a journalist? Her journalistic investigation often intersects with the police investigation. Do you think the media plays a positive or negative role in police work of this kind?
How are the themes of voice and silence explored in the novel? What do they mean for each of the women? Use specific examples from the book to illustrate your points.
Why do you think the author chose to set the novel at a boarding school? How does the remote location add to the atmosphere and plot? How would the story be different with a different setting?
What’s next on
your reading list?
The Broken Girls Page 32