But Mary had sung a popular song this time. One just for her.

Roberta clutched her stick, crossed her arms over the front of her sweater, and moved in closer to the rest of the girls, seeking warmth. She thought of her roommates again, their familiar faces, their voices, their bickering laughter. And then she made the words come out.

“It’s nothing,” she said to Ginny. “Nothing at all.”

Chapter 5

Barrons, Vermont

November 2014

Within a week the work had started at Idlewild, construction vehicles moving in alongside workers and trailers. The old, mostly broken fence was replaced with a new, high chain-link one, laced with signs warning trespassers. The view inside was obscured by trees, trucks, and the backs of Porta-Potties.

As she waited for one of her many calls to Anthony Eden to be returned, Fiona finally made the drive to her father’s house, on a winding back road just outside the town lines. Fiona’s parents had divorced two years after Deb’s murder, and her mother had died of cancer eight years ago, still broken by her elder daughter’s death. Malcolm Sheridan lived alone in the tiny bungalow they’d lived in as a family, withdrawing further and further into the world inside his formidable brain.

There were gaps on the roof where shingles had become detached, Fiona saw as she pulled up the dirt driveway. The roof would have to be done before winter, or it would start to leak. Malcolm probably had the money for it stashed somewhere, but the challenge would be finding it. Fiona was already running through the possibilities in her head as she knocked on the door.

He didn’t answer—he usually didn’t—but his old Volvo was in the driveway, so Fiona swung open the screen door, toed open the unlocked door behind it, and poked her head into the house. “Dad, it’s me.”

There was a shuffling sound from a back room, a creak. “Fee!”

Fiona came all the way through the doorway. The shades were drawn on all the windows—Malcolm claimed he couldn’t work in bright sunlight—and the house smelled dusty and a little sour. Books and papers were stacked on every surface: kitchen counters, coffee tables, end tables, chairs. Fiona blinked, adjusting to the dim light after the bright fall day outside, and made her way across the small living room, taking note that the run-down kitchen looked as unused as ever.

Malcolm met her at the door to the back room he used as his office, wearing chinos so old they were now sold in vintage stores and a plaid flannel button-down shirt. Though he was over seventy now, he still had some brown in his longish gray hair, and he still exuded the same vitality he always had. “Fee!” he said again.

“Hi, Daddy.” Malcolm took her up in a hug that squeezed her ribs, then let her go. Fiona hugged him back, steeped in the complicated mix of happiness and aching loss that she always felt in her father’s presence. “I don’t see any food in the kitchen. Have you been eating?”

“I’m fine, just fine. Working.”

“The new book?”

“It’s going to be . . .” He trailed off, his thoughts wandering back to the book he’d been writing for years now. “I’m just working through some things, but I think I’m very close to a breakthrough.”

He turned and retreated into his office, and Fiona followed. The office was where her father really lived. This was where his mind had always been as Fiona was growing up, and since her mother had left, she suspected it was where his physical body spent most of its waking hours. There was a desk stacked with more papers, a Mac computer probably old enough to go into an Apple museum, and a low bookshelf. On the wall were two framed photos: one of Malcolm in Vietnam in 1969, wearing combat fatigues, posed on one knee in the middle of a field ringed with palm trees, a line of military trucks behind him; the other of Vietnamese women in a rice field, bent low over their work as four American helicopters loomed in menacing black silhouette above them. One of Malcolm’s award-winning photographs. Fiona was always glad he hadn’t had the other famous photo framed and posted; it depicted a Vietnamese woman gently wrapping her dead six-year-old son in linen as she prepared to bury him. Fiona’s mother had drawn the line at displaying that photo in the house, claiming it would disturb the girls to look at it every day.

Does it ever bother you, one of Fiona’s therapists had asked after the murder, that your father was so absent when you were growing up? That he was never home?

Seventeen-year-old Fiona had replied, How is Dad supposed to save the world if he’s sitting home with me?

It wasn’t just the war, which was finishing as Malcolm’s daughters were born. It was the aftermath: the books written, the prizes won, the trips to Washington, the speaking tours and engagements. And always, with her father, there had been marches, protests, and sit-ins: women’s rights, black power, stop police brutality, abolish the death penalty. Malcolm Sheridan always protested, even well into the nineties, when the other hippies had long sold out and protests were no longer cool. He had wanted to save the world. Until Deb died, and all that protest spirit died with her.

Now he stacked some of the papers on his desk. “I didn’t know you were coming. Some tea, maybe . . .”

“It’s okay, Dad.” She felt a jolt of worry, looking at him. Did those broad shoulders, which had always been so powerful, look narrower, weaker? Did he look pale? “Did you go see the doctor like I told you to?”

“Warburton? I don’t trust that old hack anymore,” Malcolm retorted. “He just prescribes whatever the pharmaceutical companies tell him to. Does he think I don’t know?”

Fiona gritted her teeth. “Dad.”

“Thank you, sweetie, but I’ll handle it.” He closed the document he was working on almost hurriedly, as if afraid she would read it over his shoulder.

“When are you going to let me read the manuscript?” she asked him. He’d been working on a new book, about the 2008 financial crisis. The problem was that he’d been working on it for five years, with apparently no progress.

“Soon, soon,” Malcolm said, patting her on the shoulder. “Now, let’s go to the kitchen and you can tell me about your day.”

She followed him meekly into the kitchen, where he fussed at the clutter on the counters, looking for the kettle. This was the way it always happened with her: stark courage when she wasn’t in her father’s presence, and lip-biting worry and lack of confidence when she was actually here, watching an old man make tea. There was too much history in this old house, too much pain, too much love. Her mother had bought that kettle, bringing it home one day in her station wagon after one of Dad’s royalty checks came in.

Still, she blurted it out. “I’m working on a new story.”

“Is that so?” Her father didn’t approve of Fiona’s chosen work, the stories about the right yoga poses for stress and how to make mini apple pies in a muffin tin. But he’d stopped voicing his disapproval years ago, replacing it with an apathy that meant he was tuning her out.

Fiona looked away from him, at the old clock on the wall, pretending he wasn’t there so she could get the words out. “It’s about Idlewild Hall.”

The water was running in the sink, filling the kettle, but now it shut off. There was a second of silence. “Oh?” he said. “You mean the restoration.”

“What?” She snapped back to look at her father. “You knew about that?”

“Norm Simpson called me—oh, two weeks ago. He thought I should know.”

Fiona blinked, her mind scrambling, trying to place the name. Her father knew so many people, it was impossible to keep track. “No one told me about it.”

“Well, people are sensitive, Fee. That’s all. What’s your story angle?” He was interested now, awake, looking at her from the corner of his eye as he plugged in the kettle.

“I want to talk to this Margaret Eden. And her son, Anthony. I want to know their endgame.”

“There’s going to be no money in it,” Malcolm said, turning and leaning on the counter, crossing his arms. “That place has always been a problem. City council has debated buying it from the Christophers three times since 2000, just so they can tear it down, but they never got up the gumption to do it. And now they’ve lost their chance.”

Fiona suppressed the triumph she felt—Yes! He agrees with me!—and turned to open the fridge. “That’s what I think. But I can’t get Anthony Eden to return my calls, even when I say I’m writing for Lively Vermont.”

The kettle whistled. Her father poured their tea and looked thoughtful. “I could make some calls,” he said.

“You don’t need to do that,” she replied automatically. “Dad, it’s—it’s okay with you that I’m writing this?”

Tags: Simone St. James Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net