Barrons, Vermont

December 1950

There was only one Family Visit Day at the end of the year, held between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So on the second Sunday in December, the three girls left in Clayton Hall 3C sat quietly in their bunks, reading and studying in painful boredom. CeCe was miserable; she was having nightmares, insomnia, trouble eating. Her days were a long, slow echo of grief for Sonia, of wondering what had happened to her. Of wondering if it had hurt.

She lay listlessly on her bed and watched Katie, who was leafing through one of their stolen magazines. Katie had been silent for a few days, but now she was acting as she always had, angry and sassy and beautiful and smart. It should have angered CeCe that Katie had moved on from their friend’s disappearance in less than a week, but it didn’t, for the simple reason that it wasn’t true. CeCe had made a study of Katie, of her ways and thoughts and actions, a closer study than she’d done of any topic in their stupid textbooks. Katie was CeCe’s master’s thesis and her PhD; if there was a test on the topic of all things Katie, CeCe would have passed with flying colors. And Katie had not, in any way, moved on from Sonia’s disappearance. She was pretending to be her old self to deflect attention, but it was a deception. Katie wasn’t herself at all. Katie was angry.

CeCe watched her friend flip a page. Katie’s uptilted eyes were dark and, in CeCe’s opinion, ominous. Others saw a pretty girl who had a defiant attitude; CeCe saw a white-hot fury that was banked so deeply, fed so carefully, that there was no way it would ever cease to burn.

Roberta wasn’t acting like her old self, either; she’d gone quiet, pale, obviously in mourning for her friend. The teachers gave Roberta kindly concern, instead of the hard mistrust they gave Katie and the irritated lectures they gave CeCe about bucking up. But CeCe saw the anger there, too, in the way Roberta sat still at meals and didn’t speak, in the way her jaw twitched, in the way she tore around the hockey field with new viciousness she hadn’t had before, as if she wanted to work her anger out through her muscles. The way she ground her teeth at night and jerked her hair into a braid with her deft fingers every morning, yanking at the strands until they obeyed. It didn’t take a genius to see the anger in that.

It was fine with CeCe. She was angry, too.

So horribly, horribly angry. She didn’t know what to do with it—channel it, like Katie, or suppress it, like Roberta. CeCe’s anger was like an overfilled balloon she couldn’t tuck away and didn’t want to touch for fear it would explode. It suffocated her, closed her throat so she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t have a sport to play to burn it out, and she didn’t have Katie’s wicked intelligence to plot whatever it was that Katie was plotting. All CeCe could do was suffer.

The problem was that she didn’t have a target, because she didn’t know who had killed Sonia. (That Sonia was dead, CeCe no longer had any doubt. She’d known the minute she’d seen the words GOOD NIGHT GIRL in the mirror.) Had her great-aunt and great-uncle done it? If so, why was Sonia’s suitcase found in the trees? Katie said that Mary Hand couldn’t have done it, because Mary was a ghost; but CeCe wasn’t so sure. CeCe had seen Mary from the bathtub, her dark, ominous form moving above her, wearing the black dress and veil. She had seen Mary bend down, felt the cold hand grasp her neck, hold her down under the water. Mary might have been long dead, but CeCe had no doubt that Mary was capable of killing a girl and dragging her to wherever she lived, to haunt future Idlewild girls forever. CeCe had no doubt of that at all.

Besides, Mary walked the grounds, the woods, the road. And Mary had known Sonia was dead; she had told them with the message in the mirror.

CeCe pictured Sonia getting off the bus on Old Barrons Road, seeing Mary waiting for her. What had happened? Had Sonia screamed? Had she run?

There was a knock on the door. “Ladies,” came Lady Loon’s voice. “Cecelia. You have a family visitor.”

CeCe groaned and rolled off her bed. “I’m coming,” she called through the door.

Roberta poked her face over the edge of her top bunk and looked over at her. “Who do you think it is?” she asked.

CeCe shrugged, noting the lavender half circles beneath Roberta’s eyes, which mirrored her own. She’d crawled into Roberta’s bunk more than once in the past week, and the other girl hadn’t minded. CeCe slept better when they were together against the darkness, Roberta’s larger, bonier body sprawled next to her in her thick nightgown. “Joseph,” CeCe said listlessly. “My half brother.”

Katie’s eyes flickered up from her magazine. “Comb your hair,” she said. “And straighten your shirt.”

“Why?” CeCe asked her.

Katie stared hard at her. “Look good for him.”

CeCe shrugged again, but she did what Katie ordered. “I don’t see the point. I don’t even want to talk to him, not today. He’s nice enough, but I don’t have the energy.”

“Make a good impression,” Katie said. “Trust me.”

So CeCe brushed her hair out and tied it back neatly, then readjusted her shirt so it didn’t look as awkward over her bosom, and added a cardigan. “I hate this,” she said as she pulled on her shoes. “I’m lonely without her.”

“Me, too,” Roberta said.

They’d gone through Sonia’s suitcase more than once, but it hadn’t yielded any clues. It had only made them miss her more, picturing these same things when they’d seen them in Sonia’s dresser or hanging on her hook, her bathroom things, her hairbrush. They could smell her. Their friend seemed so close. She couldn’t possibly be dead, could she?

“If Joseph gives you another gift,” Katie said, “accept it. Act shy. Do your dumb-cow act. And don’t tell him about Sonia.”

CeCe nodded. She didn’t even have the energy to be angry about the dumb-cow comment, because Katie was right. She should know by now that Katie saw everything. She didn’t have to put up the act when they were in 3C; that was why they were friends.

She took the stairs down and crossed the common to the dining hall, where the familiar tables were set up. This close to Christmas, very few families visited; most girls got a visit home during the holidays, at least briefly, which made the December visit extraneous. You wouldn’t want to see your daughters too much, CeCe thought with unfamiliar bitterness. How awful that would be, especially when you took the trouble to send them away.

Mrs. Peabody sat in the corner, yawning and reading a book; she was the assigned supervisor today. Jenny White sat with her parents, the three of them looking quiet and awkward, Jenny looking desperately out the window. Alison Garner was sitting with her mother, who was heavily pregnant and held a toddler in her lap, a little boy who crowed, opening and closing his hands, as he leaned toward his big sister.

And in the corner of the room, by the windows, stood Mary Hand.

CeCe stopped, frozen, her breath in her throat. Mary wore her dress and veil, and stood with her hands dangling. CeCe could feel the girl’s stare through the impenetrable black of the veil, imagined Mary’s thin, bony face, which no one had ever seen. Her bladder clenched and her palms turned to ice. Her face prickled with the numbness of terror.

Mary moved. She took a step forward, and then another, walking across the room toward CeCe. Around them, nothing happened: Mrs. Peabody turned a page; Jenny looked out the window; Alison’s little brother cooed. Run, everyone! CeCe wanted to scream. Run! But she realized, as Mary took another step, that none of them could see.

She’s come for me, she thought. Just like she did in the bath. She’d managed to scream in the bath, managed to push her face out of the water and make so much noise that every girl on the floor had come running. But now, with Mary walking across the room toward her, she couldn’t make a sound.

Mary’s dress moved as she walked, and inside CeCe’s head, deep in her brain, she heard a voice: My baby. My little girl.

Her mouth fell open helplessly, sound dying in her throat. She glanced past Mary to the window behind her. Of course: the garden. That was why Mary was by the window. Because her baby was buried in the garden.

Someone help me, please, she thought.

My little girl, Mary said, coming closer. CeCe could see the ruched fabric of her old-fashioned dress, the bony remnants of her hands dangling at her sides. Darling. Darling . . .

Finally, CeCe screamed.

The sound was so loud, the blood rushing so viciously in her ears, that she barely heard the room’s reaction: the scraping of a chair, the exclamation from the teacher, the frightened screeching of the baby. She opened her mouth and let the scream out until it rubbed her throat raw. Warmth trickled down her leg, and she realized vaguely that her bladder had let go. Hands grabbed her, and Mrs. Peabody was shaking her, her voice coming from far away. “Cecelia! Cecelia!”

Cold air slapped CeCe’s face, an angry, icy draft. CeCe blinked, turned her head, and stared again.

Mary Hand was gone.

In her place stood a woman. It took a long, agonized second before CeCe recognized her own mother, wearing a dress of winter wool, her coat buttoned to the throat, a scarf around her neck, her usual handbag in her hand. Her hair was tied back as it always was, and a look of frightened concern was on her thin, lined face.

“Darling!” she cried. “Darling!”

The hands in the bathtub, pushing her down.

Her mother’s hands, holding her under the water, the salty ocean filling CeCe’s eyes and nose and lungs as she struggled to move.

Mary knew everything. Mary saw everything. Everything. Even the things you didn’t say to yourself, deep in your own mind, ever.

Mary knew the truth, and when she appeared, she showed it to you. Even when the truth was that your own mother wanted to kill you. That your own mother had already tried. That even though you’d blocked it out, deep down you’d always known.

This was what had happened to Sonia. This was what she’d seen when she’d gotten off the bus. She’d seen Mary, and, behind the mask of Mary, the person who would kill her. Just like CeCe had. And Sonia had run, as long and as fast as she could, dropping her suitcase. Except she hadn’t run fast or long enough.

CeCe looked at her mother’s shocked face, felt the puddle growing on the floor beneath her, listened to the baby scream, and started to cry.