The Broken Girls(13)

Roberta could talk when she was with her roommates. She’d grown used to them, had come to depend on their constant closeness, their little annoyances. She could picture them clearly now: Katie’s sultry beauty and I don’t care attitude, CeCe’s softer physique and trusting kindness, bone-thin Sonia’s toughness, which hid something damaged underneath. She could talk to these girls, in this place, yet when her mother had come to visit—alone, without Dad—Roberta had been tongue-tied and awkward, forcing her words again. Now is not a good time to come home, her mother had said.

The movement came in the corner of her eye again, and now she straightened and turned. There was still nothing there. Roberta swiped at her forehead and temple, halfheartedly thinking that a strand of hair had gotten loose, though the movement had not looked like hair at all. It had looked like the swish of a skirt, moving as a girl walked past. She’d even thought she’d heard a footstep, though that wasn’t possible. The other players had all left the field.

She turned to look at the huddle of girls milling beneath the eave to get out of the rain. Ginny gave her a narrow-eyed look, but didn’t outright command Roberta to get moving. Roberta felt suddenly rooted in place, despite the rain soaking her, despite her wet feet through the leather shoes, despite the sweat cooling uncomfortably beneath her wool uniform. Something was moving on the field—something she couldn’t quite see. And Ginny, looking straight at her, didn’t see it.

There came a sound behind her, a quick, furtive footstep, and then an echo of a voice came from somewhere in the trees. Singing.

Oh, maybe tonight I’ll hold her tight, when the moonbeams shine . . .

The sweat on Roberta’s temples turned hot, and her arms jerked. She turned again, a full circle, but saw only the empty, rainy field. Ginny had turned away, and all the other girls stood quietly gossiping and catching their breath, their backs to her.

Oh, maybe tonight I’ll hold her tight . . .

Roberta made her legs move. They creaked and shuddered like rusty old machine parts now, but she took one step, and then another. She knew that song. It was one of the songs they played on KPLI, on the Starshine Soap GI Afternoon, the show Uncle Van had listened to every day that played music from the war. It was called “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time,” and it had been playing on the radio that day, its sound echoing off the bare walls and the concrete floor, when she had opened the garage door.

. . . when the moonbeams shine . . .

It wasn’t a radio, or a record playing. It was a voice, coming from the trees—no, from the other end of the pitch—a snippet of sound just barely heard before it blew off in the wind. Roberta began to jog toward the others, fear jolting down her spine. She kept her eyes on the line of sweater-clad backs, huddled out of the rain, as her pace picked up and her legs moved faster.

Uncle Van. Sitting on a chair in the garage, bent forward, the gun pressed to his sweating skin, that pretty song playing, Uncle Van weeping, weeping . . .

She felt her words disappear, the blankness rising.

Away. Just get away. Don’t think about it—just run . . .

Ginny turned and looked at her again as Roberta entered the damp, woolly crowd of girls, inhaling the miasma of rain and damp sweat. “What took you so long?” she snapped.

Roberta shook her head, numb. She remembered Mary Van Woorten’s story about Mary Hand haunting the hockey field, singing lullabies in the trees. Mary Van Woorten was standing a few feet away, unaware, her cheeks red with cold, her blond hair tied back in a neat ponytail, shifting from foot to foot like a racehorse waiting for a signal. Lullabies, she’d said, not popular songs.

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.”