The Broken Girls

Fiona stayed at her father’s house her first night out of the hospital, on the twin bed that was still in her old bedroom, and then she went home. She was shaky and tired, but the worst of the flu was over, and her neck was beginning to heal. She went back to her small apartment, laden with groceries from Malcolm, and looked around at the stacks of boxes from Idlewild Hall. Then she went to bed.

She thought maybe she’d stay there. That maybe she’d run out of whatever had driven her for the last twenty years, and without it she had nothing left. The jittery feeling she always got in her bloodstream was gone, and she thought she’d sleep for a week. But instead she stared at the ceiling, her mind ticking over—more slowly, more deliberately than it used to, but ticking all the same. Within an hour she was up again, wearing old boxers and a stretched-out T-shirt, eating crackers and canned soup, her feet up on a box of Idlewild records. She pulled out her laptop after a while and checked her e-mail.

There was a small avalanche in her in-box. Jonas hoping she was okay. Journalists from the local press covering the story of Garrett Creel’s arrest and looking for a statement. Hester, one of the sisters from the Barrons Historical Society, sending her links to the story in the local press. There was nothing from Jamie.

It was midmorning, quiet in her apartment building, most of the residents gone to work. Fiona clicked on the links Hester had sent her and scanned through the news stories.

Garrett Creel had been charged with kidnapping and attempted murder for his attack on her, as well as firing at a police officer, who happened to be his own son. He was scheduled for a bail hearing the next day. The articles on the newswire gave a brief summary of Fiona’s background, of Deb’s murder and Tim’s conviction, of the fact that Fiona was dating Garrett’s son, but no motive for the attack was given. And there was no mention of Garrett Creel covering up evidence of Tim’s crimes and the murder of Deb in 1994.

It wasn’t completely surprising. The police would keep the internal investigation under wraps for as long as they could. There were always potential leaks in internal police cases, but it took a diligent journalist to dig them out. This story was a small one—a retired chief of police attacking a thirty-seven-year-old woman and trying to choke her to death. A family dispute. Even a lovers’ quarrel, maybe. Something seedy. She set aside the requests from the journalists in her in-box without answering them. She would decide whom to talk to, and when.

She picked up her cell phone, stared at its string of notifications, and suddenly felt tired. She wished Jamie was here.

He hadn’t texted. He hadn’t called. He’d been at the hospital—she hadn’t imagined that. She wondered what he was doing, how he was taking his father’s arrest. She pictured that cozy, time-warped house without Garrett in it, Diane knocking around it by herself.

As she was staring at her phone, it rang in her hand. An unknown number. On impulse, she answered it.

“Hello, Fiona” came the rich, familiar voice of an elderly woman on the other end.

Fiona felt her stomach tighten. “Hello, Katie.”

Katie Winthrop sighed. “No one ever calls me that,” she said. “Except Roberta and CeCe. And now you. The hospital tells me you were released. How are you feeling?”

“Fine, I suppose.”

“I just talked to Anthony. He’s suspicious that something is up. He asked me why in the world you wanted to know my maiden name.”

“Then you should tell him the truth, don’t you think?”

“I just might,” Katie said. “I’m old enough now. I’m tired of being Margaret. I think it’s time to be Katie again. But that isn’t what I’m calling about. I’m calling about the Idlewild files.”

By reflex, Fiona stared around her darkened apartment at the files stacked against the walls. “Anthony already tried,” she said.

“Yes, he did. Now I’m going to try and bargain with you. I want the files. I already own the school and the property. I want the files, too.”

“What for?”

“Because it’s my history,” Katie said. “It’s our history, me and the girls. Sonia’s history. And maybe I’m a maudlin old lady, but I think it might have answers.”

“It’s a bunch of old textbooks and personnel files,” Fiona said. “I don’t think you’re going to find the answer you want.”

“Then I’ll be disappointed, I suppose. But I’m willing to make an offer,” Katie said. “What do you want, Fiona?”

Fiona stared down at her bare legs, her bare feet, as the words echoed home. What do you want, Fiona?

She wanted all of this to be over. She wanted to be different. She wanted her life to be different. She wanted the chance to do it all over again.

She wanted money, a career that felt real. She wanted Jamie back.

But what she said was “I want Sonia’s diary.”

There was icy silence on the other end of the line.

“You thought I’d ask for money, didn’t you?” Fiona said. “I suppose everyone asks you for money. But that’s not what I want from you.”

“What exactly do you want with the diary?” Katie asked.

“There’s a historian in the UK who is writing about Ravensbrück,” Fiona said. “The records from the camp were burned before the Soviet army liberated it. The survivors’ histories are few. She’s trying to put the pieces together, to tell the story. Sonia’s diary would add to the history.”

“I’m willing to consider it,” Katie said. “I’ll ask the girls. But we aren’t prepared to give the diary away permanently. We’ll lend it or give a copy. But we’re in that diary—she drew all of us. It’s personal to us.”

“I think she can work with that.”

“I’m burying her, you know,” Katie said. “Sonia. Now that the coroner is done with her and she has no relatives, I’ve asked that she be released to me. I’m going to have her properly buried in Barrons Memorial Cemetery, with a headstone. There will be a small ceremony next week, if you’d like to come.”

“I will,” Fiona said. “And I’m still going to write the story about the case, about her disappearance and the discovery of the body.”

“I see,” Katie said. “And will your story mention Rosa Berlitz?”

“It might.” It would. Of course it would. Whom did she think she was dealing with?

“Do your worst,” Katie said, resigned. “I’m old now. I have lawyers.”

“I will. Thanks. And there’s one more thing.”

“What is it?”

Fiona reached into one of the file boxes and pulled out the file in which Lila Hendricksen, Idlewild’s history teacher, had put together the map of the Hand house and the church before Idlewild was built. “When you get the files, there’s one in particular you’ll want to read. It’s the history of Mary Hand—the real Mary Hand. She was an actual person, and her house was on the Idlewild grounds before the school was.”

There was another cold silence, but this one was tinged with fear. “My God,” Katie said. “Is she buried there?”

“With her baby, yes,” Fiona said.

“She’s in the garden, isn’t she?” Katie was excited now. She didn’t wait for a reply before she said, “I knew it. That damned garden. Well, it’s my garden now, which makes her mine, too. I’m calling the girls.”

“Katie—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Katie said, and hung up.

Chapter 37

Barrons, Vermont

December 2014

The Barrons police headquarters looked the same as it always had, squat and industrial. Fiona crunched through the icy crust of last night’s snow through the parking lot and up the walk to the front door. She passed the picnic table where she’d sat the first day she’d told Jamie about the Idlewild story.

Christmas was a few weeks away, and someone had pulled out the department’s box of wilted decorations. A too-short garland made of tinsel sagged over the door when Fiona walked through, and a small plastic Christmas tree, topped with a Snoopy, sat on the dispatch desk. The old cop on dispatch looked up and nodded at Fiona as she came through the door. “Back interview room,” he said. “The chief’s waiting for you.”

Fiona tasted copper in the back of her throat at the words. The chief’s waiting for you. It wasn’t Garrett Creel; it was Barrons’ current police chief, Jim Pfeiffer. Still, she wasn’t quite used to hearing those words. She nodded and kept walking.

The open office had a low hum of activity that went quiet as she passed. Jamie’s desk was empty, his coat gone, his computer off. Jamie was on leave while his father’s case moved through the system.

People watched her as she walked by. This was the effect of being the person Barrons’ beloved longtime police chief had assaulted and nearly killed, the person that had caused his fall from grace. She kept her gaze forward and walked back to the station’s interview room.

Jim Pfeiffer was fifty, fit and vigorous, unremarkable except for the black-framed glasses he wore that made him look more like an engineer from 1960s NASA than a modern-day cop. He shook Fiona’s hand and offered to take her coat before he closed the door of the interview room.

“Sit down,” he said, not unkindly. “I thought we should talk in private.”

Fiona sat. “I already gave my statement,” she said. “Several times, actually.”