The Broken Girls(36)

He’d knocked the wind out of her, and for a second her eyes focused on those bright yellow words—BIG SLIDE FUN!—in confusion, the letters crossing over one another. Then she’d felt his fingers on her, and she’d fought him. She’d bitten him, scratched him, thrashed him with her feet. He’d hit her—hit her—and thumped her to her knees on the ground when she’d tried to run, his big hands on her, his mothball smell in her nose. Hold still. Yanking her cotton underpants off, his only words to her for those few frantic, hot minutes: Hold still.

She’d managed to run. She wasn’t faster than he was, with his big, long legs, but he gave up quickly, not wanting to chase her publicly through the neighborhood. She remembered coming through the front door of her house and seeing herself in the eyes of her mother, who was just then coming down the stairs: disheveled, her stockings ripped, her underwear gone, dirt in her hair, blood on her knees, a red mark on her cheek. Her mother had stared at her in shock for a moment and descended the rest of the stairs in one quick motion, gripping Katie by the arm.

“For God’s sake, get cleaned up,” she’d said. “Do you want your father to see you like this?”

“I don’t—”

“Katie.” Her mother’s grip was painful. She was wearing a flowered silk blouse and a dark green skirt, stockings, heels. Katie could smell her mother’s familiar smell, the Calgon soap she used and the Severens Ladies’ Pomade she used in her hair. She could see the familiar look in her mother’s eyes: anger, wretched fear, bone-deep disgust. You’re going to get in trouble, her mother had warned her countless times, hissed angrily when her father was out of range, when she’d tried to run away yet again. I don’t know what’s the matter with you. I’ve never known. You’re going to get in trouble.

“Go,” her mother said, shoving her toward the stairs.

They blamed her, of course. They never even asked who the boy was, not that she would have told them. The low, murmured conversations behind closed doors were almost expected after that. Katie thought about running away again, but instead she’d been dropped off at Idlewild three weeks later, the mark on her cheek faded, the scrapes on her knees healed.

The Special Detention room was still. The air was thin, stale. The spider in the corner had quieted. But Katie was not fooled.

Somewhere here, breathing. A quiet sound, somewhere she couldn’t see.

And then a breath of voice, pleading. Let me in . . .

Katie felt her legs tense. She squeezed her bladder, trying not to let it go.

Let me in. More clear now, coming from the direction of the window. Please. Please, I’m so cold. Let me in!

“No,” Katie said. She made herself shout it. “No! I’m not letting you in! Go away!”

Please. The voice was high, pitiful, pleading. I’ll die out here.

Katie was shaking. “You can’t because you’re already dead.” She stared at the window, saw nothing, and turned in a full circle, her eyes panicked and staring. “I’m not letting you in, so go away! I mean it!”

Let me in, came the plaintive cry again—and then her mother’s voice, close to Katie’s ear, spoken like an expert mimic. You’re going to get in trouble.

She exhaled a long terrified breath. She waited, but no more voices came, not for the moment. But they would come again. She already knew she was going to be in here for a while.

She stepped to the desk, picking up the pen and tapping it experimentally, looking for hidden spiders. Then she retreated to her spot next to the door. She balanced the textbook on her other arm and managed to write with cold, stiff fingers:

I am trapped in Special Detention with Mary Hand and I can’t get out

She stilled for a long moment, waiting. Waiting.

Then she added: Mary knows.

She lowered herself to the floor and crossed her legs beneath her skirt as something faint and weak scrabbled at the window.





Chapter 12


Barrons, Vermont

November 2014

Malcolm Sheridan listened patiently, sipping his tea, as Fiona told him about the girl in the well. As she talked, he got quietly excited, evidenced by the quick jittering of his knee.

“Does the coroner have her?” he asked when she finished.

He meant the body. Sonia’s body. “Yes.”

“That’ll be Dave Saunders. Can you get the results through Jamie? If not, I can call him.”

Fiona sat back in her mother’s old flowered chair, thinking. “I don’t think the report will have any surprises,” she said. “I saw the girl—her skull was clearly smashed in. I can probably get the report from Jamie.”

“That’s a damned lucky break with those records,” her father said, his mind already flying past hers, following its own track. He had put down his cup and was staring at the glass coffee table, his brow furrowing. This was what he was like when a story was brewing, she thought. She hadn’t seen this in a long time.

“What I want,” she said, trying to steer his formidable brain, “is to know if there’s something we’re missing in France. Family, history. Something more than a birth certificate.”

“You mean something from the camps,” Malcolm said.

“Yes. Jamie found her birth record, but—”