The Broken Girls(15)

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?”

For the first time, his face went hard, the expression closed down. “Your sister isn’t there. I told Norm Simpson the same thing. She’s gone. You sound like your mother, still worried every day that you’re making Deb unhappy.”

“I don’t—” But she did. Of course she did. Leave it to her father to get to the heart of it with his journalist’s precision. Her parents had divorced two years after the murder, unable to carry on together anymore. Her mother had gone to work at Walgreens after the divorce, even though she had a Ph.D. She’d said it was because she was tired of academia, but Fiona always knew it was because Deb had been embarrassed by what she referred to as her parents’ nerdiness. She’d been uncomfortable with Malcolm’s fame as a journalist and an activist—twenty-year-old Deb, who had wanted nothing more than to fit in, be popular, and have friends, had thought she had all the answers. She’d been so young, Fiona thought now. So terribly young. The attitude had affected their mother, yet no matter how Deb had scorned him, Malcolm refused to apologize for the way he led his life.

But when Fiona looked around their childhood home now, at the clutter and disorder that hadn’t been touched in years, she wondered if her father felt as guilty as the rest of them did. There had been arguments that year before Deb died—she’d been in college, barely passing her classes while she socialized and had fun. She’d been drinking, going to parties, and dating Tim, to their parents’ hurt confusion. Fiona, at seventeen, had watched the rift from the sidelines. And then, one November night, it had all been over.

Still, Malcolm Sheridan was Malcolm Sheridan. Two days after she’d visited him, Fiona received a phone call from Anthony Eden’s assistant, asking her to meet Eden at the gates of Idlewild Hall the next morning for a tour and an interview. “I can’t do it,” she said to Jamie that night, sitting on the couch in his small apartment, curled up against him and thinking about Deb again. “I can’t go.”

“Right,” he said. “You can’t go.”

Fiona pressed the palms of her hands over her eyes. “Yes, I can. I can go. I’m going.”

“This is the most ambitious thing you’ve ever written, isn’t it?” he asked. He’d finished a long shift, and they were sitting in the half-dark quiet, without even the TV on. She could feel his muscles slowly unknotting, as if his job kept him in some unbearable level of silent tension he could only now release.

“Is that a dig?” she asked him, though she knew it wasn’t.

“No,” he said. “But since I’ve known you, all you’ve written are those fluff pieces.” He paused, feeling his way. “I just get the feeling you’re a better writer than you let on.”

Fiona swallowed. She’d gone to journalism school—it had been second nature to follow in Malcolm’s footsteps, and she was incapable of doing anything else—but she’d freelanced her entire career instead of working in a newsroom. She told herself it was because she could do bigger and better things that way. But here she was. “Well, I guess I’ll find out. They say you’re supposed to do something that scares you every day, right?”

Jamie snorted. He was probably unaware she’d read that motto on a yoga bag. “It’s a good thing I’m a cop, then.”

“Oh, really?” It was one of her hobbies to test how far she could push Jamie. “Directing traffic at the Christmas parade? That must be pretty terrifying.”

In response, he dropped his head back, resting it on the back of the sofa and staring at the ceiling. “You are so dead,” he said with a straight face.

“Or that time they were fixing the bridge. You had to stand there for hours.” Fiona shook her head. “I don’t know how you handle it every day.”