The Broken Girls Page 15

  Now Mitchell Place was stuck between the wishes of its few remaining residents and the reality of a community with not enough tenants. The homes were well kept, but the security guard at the entrance gate was a cheap rental from a local outfit in a polyester uniform, and the sign on his booth clearly stated that the gate was manned only by camera and alarm systems after seven p.m. The weeds on the grass leading up to the gate were overgrown, and past the wrought iron, Fiona could see the covered remains of a pool, drained and empty this time of year and possibly not reopening come summer.

  Margaret Eden’s door, however, was opened by a maid—a white girl in an immaculate uniform, her hair pinned back. Anthony must have called ahead, because the maid let Fiona in. The front hall was marble, its small confines chill and harsh, and Fiona felt like the wayward help as she handed the maid her coat. She rolled up her hat and shoved it into the sleeve of her coat self-consciously before the maid took it away.

  She was led into a parlor, also marble. It was empty except for a few pieces of furniture in stark modern style. There was no sign of Margaret Eden, so Fiona circulated through the room, using her journalist’s instincts without thinking. There were no books, no clutter. No personal items lying around. On the mantel over the fireplace was a framed photo of Anthony, much younger, wearing a graduation cap and gown and smiling. There was a second photo, this one of a man with distinguished white hair, obviously Anthony’s father, standing on a golf course.

  “So you’re Fiona.”

  Fiona turned to see an elderly woman standing behind her. She wore a collared white blouse and slacks, a dark green cardigan over her shoulders. Her white hair was cut short and curled. She looked like a grandmother, except she stood as straight and elegant as a reed, her sharp gaze fixed on Fiona. She gave Fiona an up-and-down once-over that was blatant and assessing.

  “Mrs. Eden,” Fiona said.

  “I’m Margaret,” the older woman corrected her. “And you were at Idlewild.” She held up a hand. “Of course Anthony told me. He’s never been able to keep a secret from me in his life.”

  “He was worried you’d be angry,” Fiona said—though what Anthony had actually said was: If you ever find that you can predict Mother, then you know her better than I do.

  “I’m not angry. I’m curious, though. I admit it. Climbed the fence, did you? Perhaps you’re cold. Do you want some tea?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “All right, then. Have a seat.”

  Fiona did, lowering herself onto one of the uncomfortable sofas. This was supposed to be her interview, she remembered. She opened her mouth to speak, but Margaret spoke first.

  “This house is horrid,” she said. “You don’t have to say it—I can read it on your face. The only thing I can say for myself is that I didn’t decorate it. It came furnished this way when the last people moved out.”

  “You don’t own this place?” Fiona asked in surprise.

  Margaret shrugged. “I didn’t think we’d stay long. Just long enough to get the Idlewild project done.”

  “Were you an Idlewild student?” Fiona asked her.

  “Never. I’m not even local, as I’m sure your research has told you. I’m from Connecticut, and I lived with my husband in New York.”

  “Then why?” Margaret’s bluntness was rubbing off on her; Fiona bypassed small talk and asked the most honest question she had. “Why Idlewild? Why restore that place, of all places?”

  Margaret leaned back in her seat and gave Fiona the assessing look again. “I could ask you the same thing,” she said. “Why Idlewild? Why are you writing a story about it? Why did you climb the fence this morning?” She raised her eyebrows, as if waiting. “Hmm?”

  Fiona said nothing.

  “You have a history there, it turns out,” Margaret said. “I know who your father is, that your sister was killed and left there. It’s why I decided to meet you. At first, Anthony only asked me if I would talk to a reporter, and I said no. He didn’t tell me which reporter. I learned this morning that you’re Deb Sheridan’s sister, Malcolm Sheridan’s daughter, and of course I’d heard of the murder.”

  Even in New York? Fiona thought. “We’re not talking about me,” she said, the words coming out tight. “We’re talking about you.”

  “Are we? Very well. I’m restoring Idlewild so that there will be a girls’ school there again. So that future generations of girls will get a good education.”

  Fiona shifted on her bleak sofa. Her hands and feet were still cold. “No one in these parts can afford to send their daughters to boarding school,” she said. “And I’ve seen the grounds. It will cost a fortune to make the buildings even habitable.”

  “You sound just like my husband.” Margaret smiled, rubbing a finger absently over the bracelet on her other wrist. “He hated the idea of this project so much. With the heat of a thousand suns. So does Anthony. He’s worried I’m going to flush away his entire inheritance.”

  “You don’t seem very concerned about that yourself,” Fiona said.

  “Anthony will have plenty of money,” Margaret said. “He always has. He’s divorced, and he has no children, so there’s just him and me. And I’m still breathing. So I bought Idlewild, and I’m going to do what I want with it.”

  I’m not in control of this conversation, Fiona thought. So she said, “Even after a body was found in the well?”

  A flinch crossed Margaret’s face and was gone. It was the first real emotion the older woman had shown. “If the police can’t find the girl’s family, I’ll have her buried properly myself. And then the restoration project will continue.”

  “You can’t.” The words were out before Fiona could stop them. They came from somewhere deep inside her, from a well of something she almost never acknowledged. Grief, anger, outrage. Get a grip, Fiona, she thought, but instead she said, “No girl is going to want to go to school in that place.”

  “And yet girls did,” Margaret said, unfazed by Fiona’s outburst. “For sixty years.” She looked Fiona over again, but this time her expression was softer. “Tell me something.” Her voice lowered, became more intimate. “At Idlewild. Did you see her?”

  Fiona’s skin went cold. The girl in the black dress and veil, standing in the field. But no. That wasn’t possible. “See who?”

  “Mary Hand,” Margaret replied.

  Fiona had never heard the name before, but something about it made her stomach drop, made her brain do a lazy spin. “I don’t—” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know who that is.”

  But Margaret was watching her face, missing nothing. “Yes, you do,” she said. “You’ve seen her. This morning, I think. Anthony said you were standing in the field.”

  Fiona blinked at her in horror. “Is that what this is?” she asked. “Is that what this whole thing is all about? You’re some kind of ghost hunter?”

  “She was wearing a black dress, wasn’t she?” Margaret said. “She had a veil over her face. Did she speak to you?”

  Their gazes were locked, and Fiona couldn’t look away. From nowhere, she recalled the words etched into the glass of the classroom window: Good Night Girl. “Who is she?” she asked. “Who is Mary Hand?”

  “She’s a legend,” Margaret replied. “I don’t know if she existed, or who she was. I’ve spent money looking. I can’t find a record of her. I don’t know if she was ever real.”

  “A student?”

  “Who knows?” Margaret shrugged and leaned back again, breaking the connection. “What I’d like, more than anything, is the Idlewild files so I can see for myself. But they weren’t on the property when we bought it. Anthony says they’re gone.”

  Fiona held still. She didn’t think about Sarah London, or Cathy telling her aunt’s secret, that the files were sitting in her shed. “Do you think that will answer your questions?” she asked Margaret. “You think that this ghost,
Mary Hand, is in the files somewhere?”

  But Margaret only smiled. “I think they’d be illuminating,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  chapter 16

  Barrons, Vermont

  November 2014

  Jamie insisted on coming with her to pick up the files from Sarah London’s back shed. It was a Thursday, his day off shift, because as the police department’s junior member—Jamie was twenty-nine, but the force was hardly swamped with new recruits—he worked all the weekend shifts. Like a man born from a line of true cops, he ignored Fiona’s suggestion he take an actual day off, and drove her to East Mills to clean out the ancient shed filled with papers that had been sitting there for thirty-five years.

  Fiona gave in, unable to resist not only Jamie but the use of his strong shoulders in hauling boxes, and his much bigger SUV. So they drove down the rutted two-lane blacktop off the highway as the sun climbed, slanting thin late-autumn light into their eyes even though it was after nine o’clock. The days were getting shorter, and soon they’d be in the dregs of winter, when the sun never warmed the air no matter how bright, and the light was gone by five.

  They talked as they drove, Jamie in jeans and a thick flannel shirt over a T-shirt, his hair combed back, a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in one hand as he drove with the other. Fiona wore a pullover sweater and jeans, her hair in a ponytail, and leaned against the passenger door, sipping her own coffee as they talked. It had been a while since they’d spent a day together—two weeks, maybe three. Jamie picked up as much overtime as the force’s budget would allow, and Fiona’s schedule was equally offbeat as she wrote one story or another. They usually kept their conversations light, but today it wasn’t going to happen. She had too much on her mind. Jamie, as always, was a good listener, and before she knew it, the words were spilling out.

  She told him about her visit to Idlewild. It hadn’t been her finest moment, and she still didn’t know what to make of what she’d seen on the field. But she forced the story out, trying to keep her voice matter-of-fact. Jamie didn’t chide her about trespassing, or not answering his texts, and he took in her account of the ghost with surprised silence.

  “Jesus Christ, Fiona,” he said at last.

  Fiona gulped her coffee. “Say it,” she prompted him. “If you think I should go on meds, just say it.”

  He shook his head. “No meds,” he said. “I can’t say I know what you saw, but I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  She stared at him for a long time, waiting for more. But the silence stretched out in the car, the hum of the SUV’s engine the only sound between them. “That’s it?” she said. “You think I actually saw a ghost?”

  “Why not?” he said, surprising her. “You want me to say it isn’t possible? How the hell do I know what’s possible or not? Kids have always said that place is haunted.”

  “Have you ever heard the name Mary Hand?” Fiona asked.

  “No.”

  “Margaret Eden has,” she said. “She says there’s a legend about a girl named Mary Hand haunting the grounds. And yet Margaret also says she was never a student, and she isn’t local.” She paused, looking out the passenger window, unseeing. “She knew what I saw, Jamie. She knew.”

  “Is there any way she could have been repeating back something you’d already said?”

  Fiona thought back over the conversation. “No. Margaret described the black dress and veil. I hadn’t talked about that. I hadn’t admitted anything.”

  “A girl with a veil,” Jamie said, musing. “I haven’t heard that particular story before. Then again, I never did a dare to go on the Idlewild grounds, growing up. I was the straight-and-narrow kid, destined to become a cop. What about you?”

  Fiona shook her head. “Deb was into friends and boys, not ghost-hunting dares. Which meant I wasn’t, either.” The words cut sharply, the memory still clear. Deb had been three years older, and Fiona had followed everything she did—she’d worn Deb’s hand-me-down clothes, her old shoes, her old winter jackets. She was quieter and more introverted than her outgoing sister, but she’d tried her best not to be. Deb had been a road map of what to be, and when she’d died, that road map had vanished, leaving Fiona adrift. For twenty years and counting.

  “If this . . .” It felt strange to talk about a ghost like it was actually a real thing. “If Mary Hand has been there all these years, someone must have seen her besides me. Sarah London told me that everyone at the school lived in fear of something. But she’d never heard of Margaret.”

  “So Sarah London knows,” he said. “Maybe Mary Hand was a student. If so, there should be something about her in the records.”

  “That’s what Margaret thinks.” Fiona drained the last of her coffee. “She wants these records. She was a cagey old lady. I can’t figure out what her game is—whether it’s money, or ghosts, or something else she wants. But the records are definitely part of what she’s looking for. I think she suspected that I know where they are.”

  “Well, we’re one up on her, then,” Jamie said, grinning. “Let’s see what happens when she knows they’re yours. Maybe she’ll come to you with a different game.”

  Fiona smiled at him.

  “What?” he said, glancing at her.

  “You’re sucked in,” she said. “Just like I am. Admit it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe,” she mocked him.

  He pulled into Sarah London’s gravel drive and turned off the ignition. Her heart gave a little pop, because she knew that look in his eyes. Still, she watched as he put his cup down, leaned over, and took her face in his hands.

  He kissed her slowly, properly, taking his time. She tried to stay unaffected, but he was oh so good at it; she felt the rasp of his beard and the press of his thumbs, and before she knew it, she was gripping his wrists and kissing him back, letting her teeth slide over his bottom lip as he made a sound in her mouth and kissed her harder. Sometimes their kisses were complicated, a kind of conversation on their own, but this one wasn’t—this was just Jamie, kissing her in his car as the bright sunlight slanted in, making the moment spin on and on.

  Finally, they paused for breath. “Come to dinner at my parents’ tonight,” he said, still holding her face, his breath on her cheek.

  She felt herself stiffen. She’d met Jamie’s parents once, briefly, and she was pretty sure a journalist was not whom they wanted for their precious son. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Sure it is.” He kissed her neck and she tried not to shiver. “We’ve been dating for a year, Fee. Having dinner with the parents is part of the deal.”

  It was. She knew it was. But a meet-the-parents evening— Jesus. She wasn’t ready for this. “I’m no good at it,” she warned him. “The girlfriend thing. I’m terrible at it, actually.”

  “I know,” he said, and he laughed softly when he felt her stiffen in offense. “But they’ve been asking about you. My mother especially. She wants to feed you pot roast and ask leading questions about what your intentions are.”

  “Oh, my God.” Fiona didn’t even like pot roast. She’d had pretzels for dinner last night.

  “I know we’ve taken it slow, Fee,” he said. “I get it. I wanted to take it slow, too. But it’s time.”

  Damn it. He was right. There was only so long she would have gotten away with putting this off. “Look, I can endure it, but if we do this, they’re going to think we’re serious.”

  She regretted the words—this could lead to the are we serious conversation—and thought he might argue, but Jamie just exhaled a sigh and leaned against the seat next to her. “I know,” he said. “But I have to give them something. My mother actually asked me when I’m going to find a nice girl and settle down.”

  Fiona paused, surprised at how that alarmed her. The words bubbled up—Is that what you want? To get married and settle down?—but she bit them back. What
if he said, Yes, it is?

  They were not having this conversation.

  It had been only a year. That wasn’t long; this was 2014. People weren’t expected to court and get married anymore like it was 1950. But Jamie was younger than she was, and he hadn’t grown up with freethinking hippie parents. He didn’t ask her for much. As much as she hated the idea of dinner with his parents, she could do it. For him. Just suck it up and go.

  “Fine,” she finally said, halfheartedly shoving against his chest. “I’ll go, all right? I’ll eat pot roast. Now let’s get moving. You’re going to give that old lady a heart attack if she’s looking out the window.”

  He grinned and grabbed his coat from the backseat.

  Miss London wasn’t watching from the window. She didn’t come to the door, either, even after repeated knocking. Worried, Fiona pulled out her cell phone and walked to the end of the drive, looking for cell reception. She was partway down the street when she lucked into enough bars to call Cathy.

  “I had to take Aunt Sairy for a checkup,” Cathy said. “The doctor changed the time, and she can’t miss her checkups. Just go around back to the shed. I left the key under the old gnome.”

  So they walked around the house to the backyard. Miss London had no neighbors behind her, and her backyard sloped away into a thicket of huge pine trees, stark and black now against the gray sky. Beyond that were a few tangled fields and a power station crisscrossed with metal towers. Crows shouted somewhere overhead, and a truck engine roared from the nearby two-lane highway.

  Standing behind the old house was a shed covered with vinyl siding in avocado green. Fiona felt for the key beneath the garden gnome on the back porch while Jamie cleared the shed doorway of the snow shovel and the wheelbarrow leaning against it. The door was rusted, held shut by a padlock that was dulled with age and exposure. Fiona had a moment of doubt that the old lock would even work, but the key slid in easily and Jamie popped off the lock and swung open the door.