The Broken Girls

“Oh, hell,” he said.

The shed was full—literally full—of cardboard file boxes, stacked from floor to ceiling, some of them collapsing beneath a quarter century of weight. Fiona’s heart sped up. This was it: sixty years of Idlewild’s history compacted into one old woman’s shed. Somewhere in here was the answer to who Sonia Gallipeau was, maybe even where she’d come from. Somewhere in here were files about Sonia’s friends, who might still be alive. Somewhere in here might even be a file about a girl named Mary Hand.

Unable to help herself, she tugged on the first box sitting at eye level and hauled it out, placing it on the cold ground and popping the lid off. Inside were textbooks, old and yellowed. The top was titled Latin Grammar for Girls.

Jamie read the title over her shoulder. “The good old days,” he commented, “when apparently Latin was different if you were a girl.”

Fiona agreed. She lifted the textbook and found a few others stacked inside. Biology. History. “It looks like Miss London wanted to keep the curriculum as well as all the records.” She looked up at him. “Is all of this going to fit in your SUV?”

He glanced around, calculating. “Sure,” he said. “The bigger question is, are you going to keep all of this in your apartment?”

“I have room.”

He shrugged, picked up the box, and carted it toward the car.

It took them nearly ninety minutes to empty the shed. Considering how long the boxes had been sitting there, surprisingly few of them had water damage. Even when building sheds with vinyl siding, Yankees had taken pride in their craftsmanship in the seventies. They drove off with all of Idlewild in the back of Jamie’s SUV, smelling like damp cardboard.

There were twenty-one boxes in all. Fiona tried to organize them once they had unloaded them into her small apartment, stacked in the living room. Some boxes contained tests and lesson plans; these were shoved against the wall as unimportant. Some contained financial records, like paychecks and supplier bills; these were stacked next as possibles. Some seemed to contain random memorabilia, probably scooped from classrooms on the school’s last day before closing: a desk-sized globe, a slide rule, a rolled-up poster, the old textbooks. These Fiona set aside as fascinating but not necessary to the story. When she’d finished the article, she’d take pictures of them to add to the context of the story when it went to press.

The final five boxes were student records. Fiona and Jamie ordered Chinese delivery for lunch and split the last boxes, looking for the names on Fiona’s list, as well as any other names that stood out as interesting. Jamie’s box contained the G files, and the first folder he pulled out was Sonia Gallipeau’s.

The first page listed Sonia’s height, weight, age, uniform size, and date of admission to Idlewild. It listed her nearest family member as her great-uncle, Mr. Henry DuBois, of Burlington, a name Jamie recognized from his search for Sonia’s relatives. Henry DuBois and his wife, Eleanor, were the people Sonia had visited for the weekend before she was murdered. The last known people who saw her alive. They were both dead, and had no children.

There was no photograph. Fiona found herself wishing she knew what Sonia had looked like.

There were a few pages listing Sonia’s grades—all were high. A teacher had written in pencil: Bright and quiet. Adept at memorization. Physical fitness adequate. Sonia’s body was small; if she’d been in a concentration camp, she’d have been malnourished while she was supposed to be growing, but she would have had to be strong to survive at all. Fiona made a note to ask a doctor for an opinion.

There was a piece of notepaper slipped into the file signed by Gerta Hedmeyer, the Idlewild school nurse. Student brought to infirmary November 4, 1950. Fainting spell during Weekly Gardening. No reason known. Student is slight; possibly iron deficient. Complained of headache. Gave student aspirin and instructed her to rest. Released to care of Roberta Greene, student’s dorm mate.

“There’s Roberta,” Jamie said as Fiona read over his shoulder. “Proof that they were friends. We need to talk to her.”

Fiona stared at the note. Roberta Greene, who had brought her friend to the infirmary when she’d fainted sixty-four years ago, was at the moment the closest thing to family Sonia Gallipeau had. It was definitely time to meet Roberta.

“This is interesting,” Jamie said, pointing to the nurse’s note. “She says it’s a possible iron deficiency.”

“That’s code,” Fiona explained.

“What?”

“It means Sonia was having her period on the day she fainted. It was a polite way to refer to it back then. Our old doctor still used that when I was growing up.”

“But this is the nurse’s own notes,” he protested. “In an all-female boarding school. There wasn’t a man for miles around.”

“It doesn’t matter. It was going in the file, where others could read it. She still had to be polite. It was a generational thing.”

He shook his head. “That generation blows my mind. They didn’t talk about anything at all. My granddad fought in the war and never talked about it, not even to Dad. An entire damn war, and not one word.”

“It’s true,” Fiona said. “There’s nothing in this file about Sonia being in a concentration camp. If she had come from one, the school nurse didn’t even know. She would have lived with the experience and never talked about it. All of these girls—these Idlewild girls. Whatever they went through to end up sent off to boarding school, they probably never spoke of it. That wasn’t how it was done.”

The next page of the file, the final page, contained the entry about Sonia’s disappearance. It was written by Julia Patton, Idlewild’s headmistress, neatly typed on a page of letterhead.

December 5, 1950

IDLEWILD HALL

I, Julia Patton, headmistress of Idlewild Hall, state that on November 28, 1950, student Sonia Gallipeau was given weekend leave to visit relatives. She departed at 11:00 on Friday, November 28, intending to take the 12:00 bus to Burlington. She wore a wool coat and skirt and carried a suitcase. She was seen walking up Old Barrons Road to the bus stop by several students.

I also state that Sonia Gallipeau did not return to Idlewild Hall, neither on the intended day of her return, November 30, 1950, nor any other day. I swear hereby that she has not been seen again by me, by any teacher in my employ, or by any other student in my care. On the morning of December 1, 1950, when I was informed by a member of my staff that Sonia had not returned, I placed a call to the Barrons police and reported her missing. I was interviewed by Officers Daniel O’Leary and Garrett Creel and gave a statement. I also helped police search the woods by Old Barrons Road when it was made known to police that Sonia had in fact boarded the bus leaving Burlington on November 29, 1950. We found a suitcase that I recognize as Sonia’s, which now resides in my office.

It is my belief that Sonia ran away, likely with the aid of someone helping her, possibly a boy.

Signed,

Julia Patton

A note handwritten across the bottom of the page read:

Addendum, December 9, 1950: Suitcase now missing from my office.

Not located. JP.

Jamie put the file down and stood up, pacing to the window. He didn’t speak.

Running a hand through her hair, Fiona turned to Julia Patton’s statement and picked it up. She turned the paper over, noting the faint carbon marks on the back. “This was typed with carbon paper behind it,” she said. “She probably gave a copy to the police.” Though the police would not have received the handwritten addendum, which had been added later.

“It isn’t in the missing persons file,” Jamie said. “There’s only a report from Daniel O’Leary.”

“Is that weird?” Fiona asked him. “Pages missing from case files?”

“In a case sixty-four years old? I don’t know. Probably not.”

He went quiet again. He was possibly thinking about Garrett Creel Sr., his grandfather, who had apparently interviewed Julia Patton about the disappearance alongside his colleague, and what the file implied about him. Fiona let him wrestle with it for a minute.

“It was a different time,” Jamie finally said, “but it’s pretty clear that no one took Sonia’s disappearance seriously.” He paused. “Not even Granddad.”

It was bothering him. Jamie was proud of his cop’s lineage. “The judgment on Sonia is pretty harsh,” Fiona agreed, “especially coming from the headmistress. I know she left her relatives’, but to conclude that she ran off with a boy? This was a girl who lived under supervision in a boarding school. She was hardly out tearing up Barrons, seducing boys. And she had no suitcase.”