The Broken Girls

Fiona turned to see a boxy brown Chevy come up the drive and stop behind her own car, the engine idling. The driver’s door opened, and the big, heavy frame of Garrett Creel unwound itself from the driver’s seat and stood. He stared at her, squinting through the flakes of snow in the gray light.

“Fiona,” he said, his voice mild, ignoring Lionel Charters. “You don’t look so good, dear.”

Fiona looked at Lionel. His face was unreadable. He said nothing. He still cradled the rifle.

“I’m . . . I’m okay,” she said to Garrett, forcing the words out past her sore throat. The wind blew down the neck of her coat, and she shivered.

Garrett shook his head. “I don’t think so. You’re gray as a sheet. There’s something going around, you know.” He nodded. “Something real bad.”

Her brain tried to work—why was Garrett here? What did he want? But it was starting to feel like someone had placed hot coals in the spot where her skull met the back of her neck, and she felt sweat trickling down her back the same time as she shivered with cold. “I just need some aspirin,” she managed.

“I don’t think you should be driving, dear,” Garrett said. He hadn’t called her dear before, and something about it repulsed her. “You look too sick. I’ll take you home.”

“Garrett,” Lionel said.

“Shut up, Lionel, or I’ll have you shut down,” Garrett said casually. “Those junkies you let stay in your trailer—you think the cops won’t find a fucking pharmacy if they raid that place?”

“My trailer is for people going clean,” Lionel said. “You know that.”

“Going clean?” Garrett said. “Sure, like that son of yours? Died with enough coke in him to kill someone twice his size. Sounds clean to me.”

Fiona could feel the hostility radiating from Lionel like a vibration. “Get off my property,” he said. “You’re not police anymore. You’re not anything. This is private property. I own it. Get off.”

“You broke our deal, Lionel,” Garrett said. “It took you twenty years, but you broke it. You talked. I thought Fiona might find you, ever since she came to dinner at my house, full of accusations. So I’ve had a few of my friends keep an eye on her as a favor to me. Turns out, I called it right. We’re leaving now.” He stepped forward, his footsteps loud on the gravel in the cold air. He put a big hand on Fiona’s upper arm. “Come with me,” he said.

“Wait,” Fiona said.

There was a click, and she turned to see that Lionel had raised his rifle, aiming it at Garrett. “You let her go,” he said.

Garrett didn’t even flinch. “Are you gonna shoot me?” he asked. “You can’t aim for shit. You’ll hit her first.” He pulled Fiona toward his car as she tried to pull from his grip. “Go ahead, Lionel. Shoot at me. Kill Deb Sheridan’s sister while you’re at it. Then see how quick your little operation shuts down while you’re in prison.”

He opened his passenger door, and Fiona tried to twist out of his hold, but he had her tight and he shoved her inside with practiced precision. He’s not going to hurt me, she told herself as he got in the other side. He’s Jamie’s father. He was the chief of police. It’s daylight, with a witness. He just wants to talk.

Garrett started the car and reversed out of the lot. She looked out the window and could see Lionel Charters standing there, watching them, still aiming his gun.

Chapter 30

CeCe

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?