The Broken Girls

“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 glanced 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.”