The Broken Girls(67)

A boy.

That meant Sonia had had some kind of illicit romance. She would have had to keep it from the school, because they would surely have expelled her if they knew. It would have had to be a local boy, since in the pre-Internet, pre-Facebook days, there was no way she could have met a boy from anywhere else. It seemed unlikely, but Fiona kept it on the list, because if it was true, then Sonia’s roommate and friend Roberta had likely known. And it was believable that she had kept her friend’s secret all this time.

She wrote another possibility: a stranger.

The tale loosened, wove into a different pattern. This was Ginette Harrison’s theory that Sonia had been targeted. The killer-on-the-road theory, a predator passing through, perhaps a deliveryman or some other worker at the school. I didn’t see the face of a single man for three years, Roberta had said. The truth, or a lie? Why would Roberta cover it up if a gardener had killed her friend? Or, for that matter, a stranger on the road? She had to circle back to the fact that Roberta might be lying to her for reasons Fiona couldn’t see.

If Roberta was covering something, that led to: One of the girls did it. Perhaps Roberta herself, or CeCe Frank, or Katie Winthrop.

We always knew, Roberta had said. Sonia wouldn’t run away without her suitcase. The girls could have protested that Sonia hadn’t just disappeared in order to appear more innocent. The girls had had opportunity, access to Sonia, and Sonia’s trust. There was no gun or other weapon used in the crime—just a rock or a shovel, something the girls would have had access to. It was easy to imagine an argument, an impulse, done in a rage, the body dumped to cover it up quickly, the girls agreeing to cover for one another, never to expose one another.

And the motive? What kind of motive did teenage girls need? Jealousy, rejection, some imagined slight? The ultimate mean girls, and it explained why Roberta had not been surprised, why she had wanted access to Idlewild’s records: so she could find any clues to the crime in the files and remove them. Why she had made it clear she had no idea where the other two girls were now, which could be a lie.

It was the theory that fit in every detail, and it was the theory Fiona hated the most. She closed her eyes and tried to think clearly of why.

It was too pat, for one. Cliché, like a thriller movie. What’s more sinister than a teenage girl? Angry and duplicitous and full of hate. Everyone liked to picture a witchy coven of teenagers putting their hapless classmate to death, because it was easier and sexier than picturing Sonia being hit over the head by a local man who probably needed the 1950s version of mental health treatment, who had possibly sexually violated her first. But if it had been an accident, a true mistake, instead of a planned murder, then the girls would have been terrified. Covering it up would have been the first thing they’d do.

She hated it. But she had to admit it was possible. It was possible that she’d just had coffee with Sonia’s killer—or with a woman who was covering for Sonia’s killer, her school friend.

Maybe Fiona preferred picturing a man doing such a thing, or even a boy, instead of a girl. And that, she had to admit, circled back to Deb’s murder. She had always wanted Tim Christopher to be Deb’s killer. She had always wanted to believe that a man, sinister and big-handed and cruel, had put her innocent sister to death. Because it had fit.

But no one had seen Tim do it. And no one had seen him dump the body.

And for the first time in twenty years, Fiona let the words into her head, like a cold draft from a cracked window: Could they have gotten it wrong?

Tim had always maintained his innocence. Of course he had; nearly every convicted murderer did. But what if the wrong man was in prison? What if Deb’s killer was still free?

Sonia’s killer had walked free. That person was possibly dead, after living a life in which the murder of a fifteen-year-old girl had never been unearthed. Or that person was possibly living, elderly now. It was even possible that person had had a fruitful career as a lawyer, borne two children, and spent her morning playing cat and mouse with Fiona in a New Hampshire coffee shop.

There is no justice, Malcolm had told her once, but we stand for it anyway. Justice is the ideal, but justice is not the reality.

If Tim Christopher was innocent, it would kill her father.

Outside, the cold wind kicked up, and the flyer tucked beneath her windshield wiper flapped. Fiona stared at it, suddenly transfixed.

It wasn’t a flyer. It was a note.

She got out of the car and snatched it, nearly ripping it in half. She ducked back into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, smoothing out the note, staring at it.

Simple handwriting, on a piece of notebook paper, written in ballpoint pen.

Meet me behind the church at eleven o’clock, it said.

And, beneath that: You’re not looking hard enough.





Chapter 23


Katie


Barrons, Vermont

November 1950

“They’re probably circus freaks,” Katie said, sitting cross-legged on her bunk and watching Sonia pack. “He’s the world’s fattest man, and she’s the bearded lady. That’s why they’ve lived alone so long with no kids.”

“You forget I’ve seen them,” Sonia said, calmly folding a skirt and placing it in her suitcase. “They aren’t freaks. I met them when I first arrived in America.”

“And they forgot about you for three years,” Katie pointed out. “Maybe they were just busy building the cell they’re going to keep you in.”