The Broken Girls

And yet Jamie’s job was part of the reason she liked him, as was the fact that he’d been born in Barrons and had it in his blood. With every relationship, she’d had the hurdle of explaining her past, explaining Deb, rehashing what had happened and why. Most men tried to be understanding, but Deb was always there, a barricade that Fiona couldn’t quite get past. She had never needed to explain with Jamie: He knew who she was when he approached her in that bar; his father had been police chief when Deb was murdered. She’d never had to tell him anything because he already knew.

So, despite the difficulties, it was easy with Jamie. Easy in a way Fiona was prepared to sacrifice for. He was smart, quietly funny. What he saw in her, she was less sure of, and she didn’t ask; maybe it was the sex—which was particularly good—or companionship. All she knew was that she’d rather amputate her own arm with a rusty handsaw than have the where are we going? conversation.

Now he sat next to her on the picnic table and folded his long legs. “You want something else,” he said matter-of-factly. “Go ahead.”

“The Idlewild property,” she admitted. There was no point in prevaricating. “What do you know about it?”

“I only know what’s common knowledge.”

“Liar. You know everything. Start from the beginning.”

Jamie’s father and grandfather had both been chiefs of police in Barrons. The Creels had been a vital part of this area for decades, and they knew every family in Barrons, from the richest on down. In a way that felt alien to Fiona, Jamie was dedicated to this place, and he had an intelligent brain that never forgot a detail when it came to his town. So she waited for him to call up the information from somewhere in his circuitry, and then he started talking.

“Let’s see. Idlewild was built just after World War One, I think, for girls who were veterans’ orphans. It passed into different hands over the years, but enrollment went lower and lower. The Christopher family bought it when the school closed in 1979.” He didn’t glance at her when he spoke the family name of her sister’s killer, so she knew he was absorbed in the history. “The Christophers were buying land like crazy around that time,” he continued. “They planned to be real estate barons, I guess. Some of the properties they bought were profitable, and others were not. Idlewild was definitely in category two.”

“Why?” Fiona asked. She knew some of this, but she let him talk.

Jamie shrugged. “Everything they tried fell through. Partners backed out; funding disappeared. They couldn’t get anyone on board. The school has always been rumored to be haunted, which sounds silly when you’re talking about a development deal, but I think the Christophers miscalculated. The fact is, Idlewild has always scared the people here. No one really wants to go near the place. The Christophers had other deals that were making them rich—or richer, I should say—so they eventually focused on those and let Idlewild sit as a white elephant.”

Fiona remembered Idlewild from when she was growing up—kids telling stories at sleepovers, teenagers daring one another to go onto the property after dark. She’d never really believed in ghosts, and she didn’t think any of the other kids did, either, but there was no doubt the abandoned remains of Idlewild Hall were unsettling. A crumbling portico, overgrown vines over the windows, that kind of thing. But for all its spookiness, it was just another place until the murder. “And then Deb died,” she prompted Jamie.

“That was the end of the Christophers here,” Jamie said. “Their years as the most prominent family in Barrons were over. After Tim was arrested, his father, Henry, started pulling up stakes almost right away. By the time Tim was convicted at trial, the family had sold off what they could and moved to Colorado. They’re still there, as far as I know.”

Fiona stared down at her hands. Deb had been so excited when she’d started dating Tim Christopher; he was tall, good-looking, from a rich and important family. Deb had never been happy as the child of middle-class intellectuals. “But they didn’t sell Idlewild.”

“They couldn’t. The buildings are so run-down they’re nearly worthless, and the land isn’t worth much, either. The crash in 2008 didn’t help. The family must have been pretty happy when this new buyer came along.”

“Margaret Eden,” Fiona said. “Who is she?”

“That I don’t know.” Jamie gave her an apologetic smile. “She’s not local—she’s from New York. I hear she’s an elderly widow with a lot of money, that’s all.”

“I want to meet her.”

“Dad says she’s a recluse. Her son handles all of her business.”

“Then I want to meet him.”

“Fee.” Jamie turned toward her, twisting his body so he could look at her. His knee brushed hers, and she tried not to jump. “Think about what you’re doing,” he said. “That’s all I ask. Just think about it.”

“I have thought about it,” Fiona said. She held up one of the files. “What I want to know is, why restore Idlewild Hall now? There can’t be any money in it.”

“People still send their kids to boarding school,” Jamie said.

“Around here? You know as well as I do what the average salary is in this part of the state. Who is sending their kid to an expensive boarding school, one that has already required millions to rebuild? Margaret Eden can’t be financing everything by herself. If she has investors, who are they? How do they expect to make money?” Money talks had always been one of her father’s tenets as a journalist. Someone, somewhere, is almost always making money.

“You think there’s something else going on.”

“I think that the place is a money pit. Maybe she’s batty, or she’s being taken advantage of. Don’t you at least find it weird?”

He stepped off the table and stood facing her again. “All right,” he admitted. “It’s weird. And it’s probably a good story. And no one has covered it.” He looked at her triumphant expression and shook his head, but his features had relaxed, and she knew she’d convinced him. “Let me know how it goes when you track down Anthony Eden.”

“Anthony is the son?”

“Yes. They live in one of the town houses on Mitchell Place—the big one on the corner. You could have found all of this stuff out yourself, you know.”

“I know,” Fiona replied, and she felt herself smiling at him. “But it’s more fun to get information from you.”

“I have to go back inside,” he said. He caught her gaze, and there it was, the arc of electricity between them that never seemed to quit. Fiona felt the urge to touch him, but whoever was watching them from the station windows—and there was almost certainly someone—would never let him live it down.

“I’ll call you later,” she managed.

“Maybe,” he replied. He took a step back, then turned and walked toward the station, giving her a wave over his shoulder. As he put his hand on the door, he stopped. “Tell your father,” he said. “Don’t let him find out from someone else.” And then he was gone.

Chapter 4

Roberta

Barrons, Vermont

October 1950

It was raining, a fine, cold mist descending over the hockey pitch, but still the girls played. At seven o’clock in the morning the sun was barely rising and the light was watery and gray, but the girls put on their thick uniforms and laced up their leather sneakers, then lined up beneath the eave outside the locker room with sticks in hand, waiting for the signal.

This was Roberta’s favorite time. The quiet, the chill of the leftover night air, the cold seeping into her legs and her feet, waking her up. The trees around the edges of the pitch were black against the sky, and from one of them three ravens took flight, rising stark and lonely against the clouds. Their calls echoed faintly back to the girls as they stood, their breaths puffing, one girl coughing into her hand the only answering sound.

Ginny Smith and Brenda Averton were the team captains, and they conferred quietly just outside the eave, the rain gathering in drops in Ginny’s frizzy hair. Roberta was good enough to be team captain—she was a better field hockey player than either Ginny or Brenda—but she had been at Idlewild for only a few months, and neither Ginny nor Brenda was budging. Roberta didn’t mind—all she wanted, really, was to play.

“Team Seven,” Ginny said, turning to the girls, waving an arm, and trotting to one end of the hockey pitch.

“Team Nine,” Brenda echoed, leading off the other half of the girls.

There weren’t nine field hockey teams at Idlewild; the numbers came from the archaic team schedule, written in a pencil schematic and pinned to the wall of the locker room by some long-ago team captain, the graphite fading after years of display. Roberta was Team Nine, and she trotted after the other girls, stick in hand, as Brenda, her thick legs making an audible chafing sound beneath her hockey skirt, shouted strategy at them.