Jamie leaned forward. “Shit,” he said. “This is a list of their names.”
“It’s the only photo with handwriting,” Fiona said. She clicked back to the photo itself and pointed to the pixels of black and white, the blur of girls’ faces. “One of these girls must have known Sonia. And if we dig, somebody must still be alive.”
It was nearly one o’clock when they found her.
The beer was long gone, and Fiona’s eyes hurt, moving dryly in her skull as if they were made from the cracked volcanic ash of Pompeii. She was no stranger to Internet searches; she was something of an expert at them, in fact. A journalist had to be in this day and age. But she was soft, she realized. She’d spent too much time looking up gluten-free brownie recipes and ways to use egg cups to make Christmas decorations, and she’d never tried to find this many people from so long ago.
Most of the girls in the photograph, as far as they could tell, were dead. Four of the eleven, frustratingly, had such common names that it was impossible to pin down who they might be; since few Idlewild girls were local, they could have been born anywhere, so records searches were no good. One girl, Roberta Greene, a tall, pretty girl with a braid of pale hair, had possibly become a lawyer in New Hampshire under a married name. That was interesting, and Fiona wondered how an Idlewild girl had ended up with an expensive law school education. But it was Jamie who hit the jackpot, and he hit it with the teacher.
“Sarah London,” he said. “Never married. Retired teacher, member of the East Mills Ladies’ Society.” He turned his laptop toward her, showing her the society’s Web page complete with photo, and gave a tired smile that even this late, even with her ashy eyes, made Fiona’s stomach flutter. “Thank God for old spinsters,” he said. “I’ll get an address from the DMV tomorrow.”
It was a lucky break. They went to bed at last, and even though they were both exhausted, they pulled each other’s clothes off in silence. Fiona didn’t need any words as she slid her fingers through his hair, as he kissed the tender skin along her jawline and just below her ear, as he flexed his arms around her and pulled her in tight. As she hooked her legs over the backs of his thighs and smelled the scent of his skin and let all her thoughts spiral away as sensation took over.
After, Jamie dressed and curled up against her back in his T-shirt and boxers, asleep before his head hit the pillow. Fiona lay on her side with her knees up, her eyes open, feeling the weight of his arm over her waist and the deep, soothing rhythm of his breathing, and as she did so often, she thought about Deb.
Fiona had been at Tim Christopher’s murder trial, sitting in the front seats reserved for the victim’s family. She’d thought she’d get an argument when she said she wanted to go, but by the time of the trial it felt like her parents had been snatched by aliens that inhabited their bodies, leaving them silent and apathetic, barely able to look her in the eye. Maybe a seventeen-year-old girl shouldn’t have been there, but it didn’t matter. She’d gone.
The trial, she realized later, had been her full initiation into adult life, even more than the murder had been. Afterward, she’d no longer been able to pretend that this was happening to someone else, or that Deb had just died naturally and peacefully in her sleep—both fantasies she’d used while lying in bed at night, wishing frantically that it would all go away. The trial was where they had talked of blood and hyoid bones and scrapings from beneath Deb’s fingernails. Of Deb’s sexual activity, or lack of it, analysis of when her sister had had sex and how often. Strands of Deb’s long black hair had been found in Tim Christopher’s backseat, and a discussion had ensued about exactly how a girl’s hair might get into her boyfriend’s backseat: Was she lying there because they were having intercourse? Or was she lying there because he’d strangled her and she was already dead?
Fiona had always thought herself worldly because of her father’s career. But the clear forensic debates by strange men in suits, in front of a crowded courtroom, of the contents of Deb’s vagina—no one had ever said the word vagina in their house—had shocked her deeply, sickeningly. She had looked around the room and known that every person there was picturing smart, sleek, handsome Tim Christopher atop her sister in his backseat, grunting away. That, right there, had been her first clear understanding that adulthood was going to be nothing like she’d thought it would be.
There had been testimony, one day, from one of Tim Christopher’s college friends. He had seen Tim the morning of the murder. They had shot hoops between classes. They had talked about nothing special, the friend recalled—except for one thing. There had been mention of a girl they both knew who had unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide the week before. The friend had been shocked, but Tim Christopher had just shrugged, throwing the ball at the hoop. Some girls should just be dead, the friend remembered Tim saying, his voice cold. There’s nothing that can be done.
Deb, dead in that cold field. Sonia Gallipeau, curled up in the well four hundred feet away.
Some girls should just be dead.
Fiona thought of her sister’s long, beautiful black hair, and closed her eyes.
Chapter 10
Barrons, Vermont
November 2014
It snowed overnight, just a light dusting that gathered in the cracks and crevices, blowing in the wind like packing peanuts. Fiona drove over roads more and more remote and rutted into East Mills, a tiny town that didn’t seem to offer much more than a gas station, a few grimy shops, and a Dunkin’ Donuts. Trucks blasted by as she traveled the main street, either on their way to Canada or on their way back. The sky was mottled, the sun coming and going behind swift-moving clouds.
Sarah London lived in an old Victorian with missing shingles and a postage-stamp front lawn that was thick with dead weeds. Fiona had tried to call first, but had gotten only a phone that rang and rang on the other end, with no answering machine, and she hadn’t had a signal on her cell at all for the last half hour. She pulled the phone out of her pocket now, as she sat in the driveway, but saw that she had no bars. Fine, then. She would wing it.
She got out and walked to the wooden porch, her boots loud on the damp, sagging steps. According to the DMV record Jamie had pulled, Sarah London was eighty-eight years old, which made the house’s neglect logical, especially if the old woman lived alone.
Her first knock on the storm door wasn’t answered, but her second knock brought a faint shuffling from within. “Miss London?” she called. “I’m not a salesperson. My name is Fiona Sheridan, and I’m a journalist.”
That brought footsteps, as she’d known it would. The inner door swung open to reveal a woman with a stooped back, her thin white hair tied back. Though her posture was crouched and she was wearing an old housecoat, she still gave off an air of offended dignity. She narrowed her eyes at Fiona through the screen. “What does a journalist want with me?”
“I’m doing a story on Idlewild Hall.”
In an instant the woman’s eyes lit up, a reaction that she quickly struggled to mask as if she thought Fiona was leading her on. “No one cares about Idlewild Hall,” she said, suspicious again.
“I do,” Fiona said. “They’re restoring it. Did you know that?”
For a second the woman swayed in utter surprise, her gaze so vacant with shock that Fiona wondered if she’d have to barge inside and use the landline to call 911. Then she gripped the doorframe and unlatched the storm door. “My God, my God,” she murmured. “Come inside.”
The house’s interior mirrored the exterior: a place that had been cared for, but was now sinking into neglect with the age of its owner. An unused sitting room sat primly on the right, old figurines and knickknacks growing dust on its fussy shelves. The floor of the front hall was lined with a plastic runner that had probably been placed there in the early eighties. Fiona politely paused and unlaced her boots as the woman proceeded into the kitchen.
“I don’t—I don’t have anything,” the woman said as she looked around the kitchen, where the newspaper she’d been reading was neatly set on the kitchen table. “I wasn’t expecting . . .”
“It’s okay, Miss London,” Fiona said. “I don’t need anything. Thank you.”
“What did you say your name was again?”
“Fiona Sheridan. Call me Fiona, please.”
Sarah London nodded, and Fiona noticed she didn’t return the invitation. “Have a seat, Fiona.”
Obediently, Fiona pulled out a kitchen chair and sat on it. Once a teacher, always a teacher, she thought. She folded her hands in front of her on the table.