The Broken Girls(16)
“So dead,” Jamie said again.
“Or when we get a big snowfall, and you have to help all the cars in the ditch—”
She was fast, but he was faster. Before she could get away, he had pulled her down by the hips and pinned her to the sofa. “Take it back,” he said.
She leaned up and brushed her lips over his gorgeous mouth. “Make me,” she said.
He did. She took it back, eventually.
Fiona stood next to the tall black gates to Idlewild, leaning on her parked car, watching Old Barrons Road. It looked different in daylight, though it was still stark and lonely, the last dead leaves skittering across the road. There was no movement at the gas station, no one on the hill. Birds cried overhead as they gathered to go south before the brutal winter hit. Fiona turned up the collar of her parka and rubbed her hands.
A black Mercedes came over the hill, moving as slowly as a funeral procession, its engine soundless. Fiona watched as it pulled up next to her and the driver’s window whirred down, showing a man over fifty with a wide forehead, thinning brown hair, and a pair of sharp eyes that were trained on her, unblinking.
“Mr. Eden?” Fiona said.
He nodded once, briefly, from the warm leather interior of his car. “Please follow me,” he said.
He pressed a button somewhere—Fiona pictured a sleek console in there, like in a James Bond film—and the gates made a loud, ringing clang. An automatic lock—that was new. A motor purred and the gates swung open slowly, revealing an unpaved dirt driveway leading away, freshly dug like an open scar.
Fiona got in her car and followed. The drive was bumpy, and at first there was nothing to see but trees. But the trees thinned, and the driveway curved, and for the first time in twenty years she saw Idlewild Hall.
My God, she thought. This place. This place.
There was nothing like it—not in the Vermont countryside full of clapboard and Colonials, and perhaps not anywhere. Idlewild was a monster of a building, not high but massively long, rowed with windows that dully reflected the gray sky through a film of dirt. Brambles and weeds clotted the front lawn, and tangles of dead vines crawled the walls. Four of the windows on the far end of the building were broken, looking like eyes that had blinked closed. The rest of the windows grinned down the driveway at the approaching cars. All the better to eat you with, my dear.
Fiona had last been here four days after Deb’s body was found. The police hadn’t let her come to the scene, but after they’d cleared everything away, she’d come through the fence and stood in the middle of the sports field, on the place where Deb’s body had lain. She’d been looking for solace, perhaps, or a place to begin to understand, but instead she’d found a litter of wreaths, cheap bundles of flowers, beer bottles, and cigarette butts. The aftermath of the concerned citizens of Barrons—and its teenagers—conducting their own vigil.
The building had been in ruins then. It was worse now. As Fiona got closer, she saw that the end of the main building, where the windows were broken, actually sagged a little, as if the roof had fallen in. The circular drive in front of the main doors was uneven and muddy, and she had to take care to keep her balance as she got out of the car. She strapped her DSLR camera around her neck and turned to greet her tour guide.
“I’m sorry about the mess,” the man said as he walked from the parked Mercedes toward her. “The driveway was overgrown, the pavement cracked and upended in parts. We had to have it redug before we could do much else.” He held out his hand. His expression was naturally serious, but he attempted a smile. “I’m Anthony Eden. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Fiona Sheridan.” His hand was warm and smooth. He was wearing a cashmere coat, in contrast to the jeans, boots, and parka she’d worn in preparation for touring a construction site.
“I only have an hour, I’m afraid,” Anthony said. “Shall we start with the main building?”
“Of course.” As they started walking, Fiona pulled out her pocket MP3 recorder. “Do you mind if I record what you tell me? It helps to make the quotes more accurate.”
Anthony briefly glanced down at the recorder, then away again. “If you like.” An electric security console had been installed on the main door, and he punched in a code. The console beeped, and he opened the door.
“You’ve worked fast,” Fiona commented, thumbing on the recorder. “I noticed the new fencing and the electric gate as well.”
“Security was our first measure. We don’t want the local kids treating this place as a free hotel room anymore.” He had walked into the main hall and stopped. Fiona stopped, too.
It was a massive space, musty and dim, lit only by the cloudy sunlight coming through the windows. The ceiling rose three stories high; the floor was paneled in wood of a chocolate color so dark it was nearly black. In front of them rose a staircase, sweeping up to a landing on the second floor and another landing on the third, lined with intricate wood railings, the balconies on the upper floors spinning away from either side of the staircase like a spider’s web, fading back into the darkness. There was no sound but a silent hush and the rustle of a bird’s wings somewhere in the rafters. The smell was mildewy like wet wood, underlain with something faintly rotten.
“Oh, my God,” Fiona murmured.
“You are now looking at the main hall,” Anthony Eden said. She was beginning to see that his manner was more than stodgy politeness—he didn’t want to be here. Likely his mother had made him do this. “The building dates from 1919, and all of the wood is original. Much of it cannot be saved, of course, but we plan to restore the original wood wherever we can.”