The Broken Girls(64)

Roberta Greene tilted her head up slowly, then looked up at the ceiling, and Fiona watched grief fall over her like a blanket. The old woman blinked, still looking up, and two tears tracked down her parchment cheeks. Her sadness was so fresh, so raw, it was as if none of the years had happened at all.

“Sonia,” she said.

Fiona felt the sting of tears behind her own eyes, watching. You loved her, she thought. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said softly. “Sonia.”

“Tell me. Please.”

“She was hit over the head. She probably died quickly.” Fiona had no idea if this was true, but she couldn’t help saying it. “She had been in the well . . . Her body had been in the well all this time.”

“Oh, God,” Roberta said on a sigh.

“I’m sorry.”

Roberta shook her head. “After all this time, I suppose there’s no chance of the police catching her murderer.”

“You knew her best,” Fiona said. “Can you think of anyone who wanted to harm her? Anyone at all?”

“No.” The older woman picked up her napkin and dabbed at the tear tracks on her face. She seemed to have a handle on her grief now.

“Was there anyone who bothered the girls? Strangers who came to the school or hung around? Anyone who bothered Sonia in particular?”

“We were so isolated—you have no idea,” Roberta said. “No one ever came, and we never left.”

“What about gardeners? Janitors? Repairmen?”

“I don’t know. We never saw the kitchen staff. There were no gardens except the one the girls were forced to maintain. I suppose there were delivery people, for laundry and such, but we never saw them either. And as for repairs”—she gave a wry smile—“you’re making the assumption that anything at Idlewild was ever repaired at all. Unless a girl’s father or brother came on Family Visit Day, I didn’t see the face of a single man for three years.”

“There was a family visit day?” This was news to Fiona.

“Yes, the last Sunday of every month was designated for families who wished to visit.”

“Did anyone ever visit Sonia?”

“Her great-aunt and -uncle visited once a year at Christmas, but that was all. Sonia’s other family was all dead in the war. In concentration camps.”

Fiona felt a thread of tension unspooling in her, to hear her research confirmed so clearly. “There is evidence that Sonia spent time in Ravensbrück,” she said.

Roberta’s eyebrows rose again. She paused for a long time, and Fiona realized she had truly surprised the other woman. “You’ve done your research,” she commented. “And you’re very good.”

If it was a compliment, somehow it didn’t sound like one; it sounded more like Fiona had discovered something Roberta considered private, intruded on it. “Did Sonia ever talk to you about Ravensbrück?” she asked.

“No one ever talked about the war in those days,” Roberta replied. “We were teenage girls. No one talked to us about anything.”

That wasn’t an answer, Fiona realized. Not at all. “What about your own family?” she asked. “They didn’t talk to you about the war?”

“No,” came the answer. And then, repeated more softly: “No.”

“Did your family ever come to visit you on Family Visit Day while you were at Idlewild?”

“Only a few times over the years. The way I left home was difficult.”

“Because you stopped talking after what happened with your uncle,” Fiona said.

Roberta blinked at her. “Yes,” she said, her voice chilled. “I’m sorry, but may I ask how you know about my uncle?”

“It’s in your file.”

“My file?”

“From Idlewild.”

The other woman’s voice grew even colder. “There are no Idlewild files. The records have been lost.”

For a second Fiona was pinned by that cold gaze, which had probably been used in courtrooms and judges’ chambers for thirty years. It was impressive, and a little frightening, even in an old woman. Roberta was angry, Fiona realized, because she thought Fiona was lying. “The records weren’t lost,” Fiona insisted. “They exist. I’ve read them.” She left out Sarah London’s shed, and the fact that the records were currently stacked in boxes in her own neglected apartment.

“That isn’t possible.”

“Then how do I know you were sent to Idlewild after witnessing your uncle attempting suicide with a pistol? It wasn’t covered in the newspapers at the time.” She’d checked, of course. Journalistic habits died hard.

Roberta pressed her lips together, thinking. Then she said, “My uncle Van came home from the war with a severe case of PTSD, though that term didn’t exist at the time. He was very ill, but everyone simply told him to move on and it would get better.” She blinked and looked out the window. “When I was fourteen, I walked into our garage to find him sitting in a chair, bent over, holding a gun in his mouth. The radio was playing an old GI song. He was weeping. He hadn’t known anyone was home.”

“What happened?” Fiona asked softly.

“I started screaming. Uncle Van looked up at me, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t blow his brains out while I watched. So in a stupid way, I saved his life.” She turned to look at Fiona again. “I couldn’t talk after that. I don’t know why; I simply couldn’t. It was some kind of shock or stress. We had no knowledge in those days to help people. We barely have it now.” She paused. “So my parents sent me to Idlewild, and while I was away, they sent Uncle Van to a mental hospital and had him locked up against his will. Instead of having any feeling for him at all, they thought he was a disgrace to the family. I was a disgrace, too, because I’d had to see a psychiatrist, which in those days was a shameful thing to do. I had exemplary parents, as you can guess.”