The Broken Girls(48)

“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.”