Barrons, Vermont

November 2014

Within a week the work had started at Idlewild, construction vehicles moving in alongside workers and trailers. The old, mostly broken fence was replaced with a new, high chain-link one, laced with signs warning trespassers. The view inside was obscured by trees, trucks, and the backs of Porta-Potties.

As she waited for one of her many calls to Anthony Eden to be returned, Fiona finally made the drive to her father’s house, on a winding back road just outside the town lines. Fiona’s parents had divorced two years after Deb’s murder, and her mother had died of cancer eight years ago, still broken by her elder daughter’s death. Malcolm Sheridan lived alone in the tiny bungalow they’d lived in as a family, withdrawing further and further into the world inside his formidable brain.

There were gaps on the roof where shingles had become detached, Fiona saw as she pulled up the dirt driveway. The roof would have to be done before winter, or it would start to leak. Malcolm probably had the money for it stashed somewhere, but the challenge would be finding it. Fiona was already running through the possibilities in her head as she knocked on the door.

He didn’t answer—he usually didn’t—but his old Volvo was in the driveway, so Fiona swung open the screen door, toed open the unlocked door behind it, and poked her head into the house. “Dad, it’s me.”

There was a shuffling sound from a back room, a creak. “Fee!”

Fiona came all the way through the doorway. The shades were drawn on all the windows—Malcolm claimed he couldn’t work in bright sunlight—and the house smelled dusty and a little sour. Books and papers were stacked on every surface: kitchen counters, coffee tables, end tables, chairs. Fiona blinked, adjusting to the dim light after the bright fall day outside, and made her way across the small living room, taking note that the run-down kitchen looked as unused as ever.

Malcolm met her at the door to the back room he used as his office, wearing chinos so old they were now sold in vintage stores and a plaid flannel button-down shirt. Though he was over seventy now, he still had some brown in his longish gray hair, and he still exuded the same vitality he always had. “Fee!” he said again.

“Hi, Daddy.” Malcolm took her up in a hug that squeezed her ribs, then let her go. Fiona hugged him back, steeped in the complicated mix of happiness and aching loss that she always felt in her father’s presence. “I don’t see any food in the kitchen. Have you been eating?”

“I’m fine, just fine. Working.”

“The new book?”

“It’s going to be . . .” He trailed off, his thoughts wandering back to the book he’d been writing for years now. “I’m just working through some things, but I think I’m very close to a breakthrough.”

He turned and retreated into his office, and Fiona followed. The office was where her father really lived. This was where his mind had always been as Fiona was growing up, and since her mother had left, she suspected it was where his physical body spent most of its waking hours. There was a desk stacked with more papers, a Mac computer probably old enough to go into an Apple museum, and a low bookshelf. On the wall were two framed photos: one of Malcolm in Vietnam in 1969, wearing combat fatigues, posed on one knee in the middle of a field ringed with palm trees, a line of military trucks behind him; the other of Vietnamese women in a rice field, bent low over their work as four American helicopters loomed in menacing black silhouette above them. One of Malcolm’s award-winning photographs. Fiona was always glad he hadn’t had the other famous photo framed and posted; it depicted a Vietnamese woman gently wrapping her dead six-year-old son in linen as she prepared to bury him. Fiona’s mother had drawn the line at displaying that photo in the house, claiming it would disturb the girls to look at it every day.

Does it ever bother you, one of Fiona’s therapists had asked after the murder, that your father was so absent when you were growing up? That he was never home?

Seventeen-year-old Fiona had replied, How is Dad supposed to save the world if he’s sitting home with me?

It wasn’t just the war, which was finishing as Malcolm’s daughters were born. It was the aftermath: the books written, the prizes won, the trips to Washington, the speaking tours and engagements. And always, with her father, there had been marches, protests, and sit-ins: women’s rights, black power, stop police brutality, abolish the death penalty. Malcolm Sheridan always protested, even well into the nineties, when the other hippies had long sold out and protests were no longer cool. He had wanted to save the world. Until Deb died, and all that protest spirit died with her.

Now he stacked some of the papers on his desk. “I didn’t know you were coming. Some tea, maybe . . .”

“It’s okay, Dad.” She felt a jolt of worry, looking at him. Did those broad shoulders, which had always been so powerful, look narrower, weaker? Did he look pale? “Did you go see the doctor like I told you to?”

“Warburton? I don’t trust that old hack anymore,” Malcolm retorted. “He just prescribes whatever the pharmaceutical companies tell him to. Does he think I don’t know?”

Fiona gritted her teeth. “Dad.”

“Thank you, sweetie, but I’ll handle it.” He closed the document he was working on almost hurriedly, as if afraid she would read it over his shoulder.

“When are you going to let me read the manuscript?” she asked him. He’d been working on a new book, about the 2008 financial crisis. The problem was that he’d been working on it for five years, with apparently no progress.

“Soon, soon,” Malcolm said, patting her on the shoulder. “Now, let’s go to the kitchen and you can tell me about your day.”

She followed him meekly into the kitchen, where he fussed at the clutter on the counters, looking for the kettle. This was the way it always happened with her: stark courage when she wasn’t in her father’s presence, and lip-biting worry and lack of confidence when she was actually here, watching an old man make tea. There was too much history in this old house, too much pain, too much love. Her mother had bought that kettle, bringing it home one day in her station wagon after one of Dad’s royalty checks came in.

Still, she blurted it out. “I’m working on a new story.”

“Is that so?” Her father didn’t approve of Fiona’s chosen work, the stories about the right yoga poses for stress and how to make mini apple pies in a muffin tin. But he’d stopped voicing his disapproval years ago, replacing it with an apathy that meant he was tuning her out.

Fiona looked away from him, at the old clock on the wall, pretending he wasn’t there so she could get the words out. “It’s about Idlewild Hall.”

The water was running in the sink, filling the kettle, but now it shut off. There was a second of silence. “Oh?” he said. “You mean the restoration.”

“What?” She snapped back to look at her father. “You knew about that?”

“Norm Simpson called me—oh, two weeks ago. He thought I should know.”

Fiona blinked, her mind scrambling, trying to place the name. Her father knew so many people, it was impossible to keep track. “No one told me about it.”

“Well, people are sensitive, Fee. That’s all. What’s your story angle?” He was interested now, awake, looking at her from the corner of his eye as he plugged in the kettle.

“I want to talk to this Margaret Eden. And her son, Anthony. I want to know their endgame.”

“There’s going to be no money in it,” Malcolm said, turning and leaning on the counter, crossing his arms. “That place has always been a problem. City council has debated buying it from the Christophers three times since 2000, just so they can tear it down, but they never got up the gumption to do it. And now they’ve lost their chance.”

Fiona suppressed the triumph she felt—Yes! He agrees with me!—and turned to open the fridge. “That’s what I think. But I can’t get Anthony Eden to return my calls, even when I say I’m writing for Lively Vermont.”

The kettle whistled. Her father poured their tea and looked thoughtful. “I could make some calls,” he said.

“You don’t need to do that,” she replied automatically. “Dad, it’s—it’s okay with you that I’m writing this?”

For the first time, his face went hard, the expression closed down. “Your sister isn’t there. I told Norm Simpson the same thing. She’s gone. You sound like your mother, still worried every day that you’re making Deb unhappy.”

“I don’t—” But she did. Of course she did. Leave it to her father to get to the heart of it with his journalist’s precision. Her parents had divorced two years after the murder, unable to carry on together anymore. Her mother had gone to work at Walgreens after the divorce, even though she had a Ph.D. She’d said it was because she was tired of academia, but Fiona always knew it was because Deb had been embarrassed by what she referred to as her parents’ nerdiness. She’d been uncomfortable with Malcolm’s fame as a journalist and an activist—twenty-year-old Deb, who had wanted nothing more than to fit in, be popular, and have friends, had thought she had all the answers. She’d been so young, Fiona thought now. So terribly young. The attitude had affected their mother, yet no matter how Deb had scorned him, Malcolm refused to apologize for the way he led his life.

But when Fiona looked around their childhood home now, at the clutter and disorder that hadn’t been touched in years, she wondered if her father felt as guilty as the rest of them did. There had been arguments that year before Deb died—she’d been in college, barely passing her classes while she socialized and had fun. She’d been drinking, going to parties, and dating Tim, to their parents’ hurt confusion. Fiona, at seventeen, had watched the rift from the sidelines. And then, one November night, it had all been over.

Still, Malcolm Sheridan was Malcolm Sheridan. Two days after she’d visited him, Fiona received a phone call from Anthony Eden’s assistant, asking her to meet Eden at the gates of Idlewild Hall the next morning for a tour and an interview. “I can’t do it,” she said to Jamie that night, sitting on the couch in his small apartment, curled up against him and thinking about Deb again. “I can’t go.”

“Right,” he said. “You can’t go.”

Fiona pressed the palms of her hands over her eyes. “Yes, I can. I can go. I’m going.”

“This is the most ambitious thing you’ve ever written, isn’t it?” he asked. He’d finished a long shift, and they were sitting in the half-dark quiet, without even the TV on. She could feel his muscles slowly unknotting, as if his job kept him in some unbearable level of silent tension he could only now release.

“Is that a dig?” she asked him, though she knew it wasn’t.

“No,” he said. “But since I’ve known you, all you’ve written are those fluff pieces.” He paused, feeling his way. “I just get the feeling you’re a better writer than you let on.”

Fiona swallowed. She’d gone to journalism school—it had been second nature to follow in Malcolm’s footsteps, and she was incapable of doing anything else—but she’d freelanced her entire career instead of working in a newsroom. She told herself it was because she could do bigger and better things that way. But here she was. “Well, I guess I’ll find out. They say you’re supposed to do something that scares you every day, right?”

Jamie snorted. He was probably unaware she’d read that motto on a yoga bag. “It’s a good thing I’m a cop, then.”

“Oh, really?” It was one of her hobbies to test how far she could push Jamie. “Directing traffic at the Christmas parade? That must be pretty terrifying.”

In response, he dropped his head back, resting it on the back of the sofa and staring at the ceiling. “You are so dead,” he said with a straight face.

“Or that time they were fixing the bridge. You had to stand there for hours.” Fiona shook her head. “I don’t know how you handle it every day.”

“So dead,” Jamie said again.

“Or when we get a big snowfall, and you have to help all the cars in the ditch—”

She was fast, but he was faster. Before she could get away, he had pulled her down by the hips and pinned her to the sofa. “Take it back,” he said.

She leaned up and brushed her lips over his gorgeous mouth. “Make me,” she said.

He did. She took it back, eventually.

Fiona stood next to the tall black gates to Idlewild, leaning on her parked car, watching Old Barrons Road. It looked different in daylight, though it was still stark and lonely, the last dead leaves skittering across the road. There was no movement at the gas station, no one on the hill. Birds cried overhead as they gathered to go south before the brutal winter hit. Fiona turned up the collar of her parka and rubbed her hands.

A black Mercedes came over the hill, moving as slowly as a funeral procession, its engine soundless. Fiona watched as it pulled up next to her and the driver’s window whirred down, showing a man over fifty with a wide forehead, thinning brown hair, and a pair of sharp eyes that were trained on her, unblinking.

“Mr. Eden?” Fiona said.

He nodded once, briefly, from the warm leather interior of his car. “Please follow me,” he said.

He pressed a button somewhere—Fiona pictured a sleek console in there, like in a James Bond film—and the gates made a loud, ringing clang. An automatic lock—that was new. A motor purred and the gates swung open slowly, revealing an unpaved dirt driveway leading away, freshly dug like an open scar.

Fiona got in her car and followed. The drive was bumpy, and at first there was nothing to see but trees. But the trees thinned, and the driveway curved, and for the first time in twenty years she saw Idlewild Hall.

My God, she thought. This place. This place.

There was nothing like it—not in the Vermont countryside full of clapboard and Colonials, and perhaps not anywhere. Idlewild was a monster of a building, not high but massively long, rowed with windows that dully reflected the gray sky through a film of dirt. Brambles and weeds clotted the front lawn, and tangles of dead vines crawled the walls. Four of the windows on the far end of the building were broken, looking like eyes that had blinked closed. The rest of the windows grinned down the driveway at the approaching cars. All the better to eat you with, my dear.

Fiona had last been here four days after Deb’s body was found. The police hadn’t let her come to the scene, but after they’d cleared everything away, she’d come through the fence and stood in the middle of the sports field, on the place where Deb’s body had lain. She’d been looking for solace, perhaps, or a place to begin to understand, but instead she’d found a litter of wreaths, cheap bundles of flowers, beer bottles, and cigarette butts. The aftermath of the concerned citizens of Barrons—and its teenagers—conducting their own vigil.

The building had been in ruins then. It was worse now. As Fiona got closer, she saw that the end of the main building, where the windows were broken, actually sagged a little, as if the roof had fallen in. The circular drive in front of the main doors was uneven and muddy, and she had to take care to keep her balance as she got out of the car. She strapped her DSLR camera around her neck and turned to greet her tour guide.

“I’m sorry about the mess,” the man said as he walked from the parked Mercedes toward her. “The driveway was overgrown, the pavement cracked and upended in parts. We had to have it redug before we could do much else.” He held out his hand. His expression was naturally serious, but he attempted a smile. “I’m Anthony Eden. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Fiona Sheridan.” His hand was warm and smooth. He was wearing a cashmere coat, in contrast to the jeans, boots, and parka she’d worn in preparation for touring a construction site.

“I only have an hour, I’m afraid,” Anthony said. “Shall we start with the main building?”

“Of course.” As they started walking, Fiona pulled out her pocket MP3 recorder. “Do you mind if I record what you tell me? It helps to make the quotes more accurate.”

Anthony briefly glanced down at the recorder, then away again. “If you like.” An electric security console had been installed on the main door, and he punched in a code. The console beeped, and he opened the door.

“You’ve worked fast,” Fiona commented, thumbing on the recorder. “I noticed the new fencing and the electric gate as well.”

“Security was our first measure. We don’t want the local kids treating this place as a free hotel room anymore.” He had walked into the main hall and stopped. Fiona stopped, too.

It was a massive space, musty and dim, lit only by the cloudy sunlight coming through the windows. The ceiling rose three stories high; the floor was paneled in wood of a chocolate color so dark it was nearly black. In front of them rose a staircase, sweeping up to a landing on the second floor and another landing on the third, lined with intricate wood railings, the balconies on the upper floors spinning away from either side of the staircase like a spider’s web, fading back into the darkness. There was no sound but a silent hush and the rustle of a bird’s wings somewhere in the rafters. The smell was mildewy like wet wood, underlain with something faintly rotten.

“Oh, my God,” Fiona murmured.

“You are now looking at the main hall,” Anthony Eden said. She was beginning to see that his manner was more than stodgy politeness—he didn’t want to be here. Likely his mother had made him do this. “The building dates from 1919, and all of the wood is original. Much of it cannot be saved, of course, but we plan to restore the original wood wherever we can.”

“Is that even possible?” Fiona asked, raising her camera and snapping a shot.

“The wood experts arrive next week. There is a drainage problem on the east side of the property, so we’ve had to focus on that this first week, to halt the progress of the damp in all of the buildings.”

The staircase, as old as it was, had held, and they climbed it to the second floor, where Eden led her down a hallway littered with debris. “This was a functioning girls’ boarding school until it closed in 1979,” he said, beginning his tour guide speech. “We intend to restore it to its previous condition and reopen it to students again.”

“Girls only?” Fiona asked.

“That is the intent. My mother believes that girls should be given their own chance at a better education in order to give them a start in the world.”

They entered a classroom. “This still has desks in it,” Fiona said.

“Yes. Most of the rooms in these buildings still contain the original furniture. The school was nearly bankrupt by the time it closed, and it was mostly abandoned as the owners tried to sell off the land.”

Fiona moved into the classroom. The desks were solid wood, very old. Most of them had words and names scratched into them by generations of girls. The blackboard was still here, covered in unreadable chalk scrawls, and there were birds’ nests in the rafters. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling over time onto the floor. A poster on one wall, faded, its edges curled, depicted a line drawing of a row of happy, rosy-cheeked girls in uniforms sitting at desks, with the caption GOOD GIRLS MAKE GOOD MOTHERS!

Fiona took more shots. It smelled less musty in here than it had downstairs, but there were other smells—rotten wood and something coppery, possibly from the old pipes in the walls. Fiona moved closer to the blackboard, stepping around the empty chairs and desks. There were layers of scrawls on it—graffiti from the kids who had wandered in here. Names. Swearwords and crude drawings. There were crumbs of smashed chalk on the floor. But the blackboard was filmed over and cloudy, coated with dust mixed with old chalk dust, as if no one had been here in years.

Fiona took a few more pictures and turned to the windows. Two of the panes were cracked and broken, the sills rotted through where rain and snow had come in. The third window was intact.

“Let’s move on,” Anthony Eden said behind her. He was still in the doorway; he hadn’t come into the room. Fiona turned, and the sunlight coming through the intact window illuminated the writing on it, etched into the grime coating the glass, the lettering thin and spidery.

Fiona frowned at it. The words were fresh, the letters in the glass clear, not clouded over like the blackboard was. It had been written with something scratchy, like a fingernail.

“Miss Sheridan?” Eden said.

Fiona stared at the words for a long moment. Had someone been in here today? Had they gotten past the new locks? Who would come all the way here, bother to break in, to write graffiti like that? Why Good Night Girl? It made her think of Deb, lying on the field outside, her shirt and bra ripped open, the wind blowing over her unseeing face.

“Miss Sheridan.” Anthony Eden broke into her thoughts. “We really should move on.”

Tearing her gaze from the window, she followed him out of the room. They toured another classroom, and another. Except for the damage—water had run down the walls in one room, and a section of wall was crumbling in another—it was as if those girls had left yesterday, just stood up and walked away. Fiona paused at another broken window and looked out over the view of the common and the grounds beyond. “What’s that out there?” she asked.

Eden was in the doorway, impatient to leave again. His face had gone pale, and as Fiona watched, he pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. He glanced past her shoulder at the construction equipment that was moving busily in the distance. “That is the crew hired to deal with the drainage problem. They need to dig up an old well, from what I understand. I think we have the idea of the classrooms, don’t we? Let’s move to the dining hall.”

She followed him down the corridor again. “Mr. Eden—”

“Anthony, please.” His voice was tense.

“All right, thank you. I’m Fiona. Anthony, how long do you see the restoration taking?”

He was walking quickly toward the stairs, barely waiting for her. “It may take some time, especially to repair the fallen-in ceilings. But we are prepared to do it properly.”

“This restoration was all your mother’s idea?”

A definite chill at that. “Yes, it was.”

“I wonder if I could interview her.”

“Unfortunately, that won’t be possible. My mother doesn’t wish to speak with journalists.”

We’ll see about that, Fiona thought. They had descended the stairs and he turned left, taking her through the atrium. No way was she going to be deterred from interviewing the mysterious Margaret Eden. “Why not?” Fiona asked. “Is your mother ill?”

“My mother is in perfect health. She does not wish to answer questions from reporters, that’s all.”

Fiona kept at it. “Why did she choose Idlewild? Was she a student here?”

“No. My mother is from Connecticut. My father is from Maryland.”

“Your father was an investor,” Fiona said. “Was this one of his projects? Your mother is carrying it on now—is that it?”

They had reached a back door, and Eden turned to face her. Some of the paleness had left his face, but the flush that replaced it was no healthier. “Not even close,” he said. “In fact, my father did not approve of this project at all, and forbade my mother from attempting it. He said it would lose money. It’s only now that he’s died that my mother has gone ahead.”

So that was it, then. Anthony was on his father’s side on this, and disapproved of his mother’s going against her husband’s wishes. It explained why he looked so pained to be here, so eager to keep moving. She tried for a little softening. “I’m very sorry about your father,” she said.

He stayed stiff for a second. “Thank you, Fiona.” Then he turned and opened the back door, leading her out into the common.

The cold air slapped her in the face, dispersing the close, damp smells she’d been inhaling inside. The sunlight, even in its indirect, clouded-over form, made her blink after the dimness. What the hell, she wondered, would possess Margaret Eden, a woman who was not local, to be so determined to sink her money into Idlewild Hall?

They crossed the common. In Idlewild’s heyday, this would have been a manicured green spot, made for strolling and studying in the soft grass. Now it was harsh and overgrown, the grass flattened and going brown as winter approached. The wind bit Fiona’s legs through her jeans.

They were behind the main building, thankfully facing away from the sharp-toothed mouth of the front facade. To the left, a gloomy building of gray stone and broody windows sat silent. “What is that?” she asked Anthony.

He glanced over briefly. “That is the teachers’ hall. It was flooded, I’m afraid, and I can’t give you a tour because the floors are too rotted and dangerous. The dining hall got off more lightly, so we can go inside.”

They were headed for the right-hand building, this one with large windows and double doors. “The school’s buildings all look very different,” Fiona said as they picked their way over the broken path. “Do you know anything about the architecture?”

“Almost nothing,” he replied. “There are no records still in existence of who the architects were.” He stopped on the path. “If you look here, and here”—he motioned with a black-coated arm to the roof of the main building and the roof of the dining hall—“you can see that the buildings are strangely mismatched. In fact, the southernmost windows of the dining hall provide only a view of the brick wall of the main hall. It’s a curious construction.”

“You think it was hastily planned?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “We’re still debating what to do. There is a garden in the wedge between the two buildings, so at least the school tried to put something there. But sunlight must be a problem. We’re not sure what they grew, or tried to grow.”

Fiona peered into the space between the two buildings as they passed. There were the remains of an overgrown garden, tangled with weeds that were brown and wet. The sunlight hit the spot at an oblique angle, making the shadows beneath the dead leaves dark as ink. The windows from both buildings stared blankly down.

There was an electronic keypad on the dining hall door as well, and Anthony punched in the combination. Fiona realized as she walked inside that she’d been picturing something Harry Potter–like, with high Gothic ceilings and warm candlelight. But Idlewild’s dining hall was nothing like that. The plaster ceilings were damp with rot and mold, the walls streaked with water stains so dark they looked like blood in the half-light. Heavy, scarred wooden tables lined the walls, some of them jumbled together, one turned on its side, the legs jutting out like broken bones. The sunlight coming through the uncovered windows was gray and harsh, raising every ruined detail. The classrooms had looked abandoned; this room looked postapocalyptic, as if the last thing to happen in here had been too horrifying to contemplate.

Fiona walked slowly into the middle of the room. The hair on the back of her neck felt cold. Suddenly she didn’t want to take pictures. She didn’t want to be here at all anymore.

She glanced at Anthony and realized he felt the same way she did. His expression was almost nauseated with distaste.

He cleared his throat, pulling the handkerchief from his pocket again, and began to speak. “The kitchen is quite usable. The appliances will need updating, of course, and the floors and walls need repair. But the basics are there. We should be able to create a functioning cafeteria in here for the students.”

Fiona walked to one of the windows. Did he actually think any students would want to eat in here? The thought made her queasy. The school has always been rumored to be haunted, Jamie had said. It was just an abandoned building, like a million others, but standing here, looking at this ruined room, she could easily see how the rumors had started. Where the stories had come from. If you believed in that sort of thing.

She raised her camera to take more pictures—it was time to wrap up; she was in agreement with Anthony on that—but was distracted by motion through the window. The angle was different, but this was the same view she’d seen from the classroom in the main hall, of another building and then the construction crew digging—tearing up an old well, Anthony had said. The glass was grimy, and without thinking, Fiona curled her fingers and touched the side of her palm to it, wiping a swatch of dirt away for a clearer view. She immediately regretted touching anything in this room, and dropped her hand to her side.

“I have another appointment,” Anthony said from the doorway. He hadn’t come fully inside any room they’d been in. “I’m sorry we couldn’t spend more time.”

“I haven’t asked all my questions,” Fiona said, distracted by the scene at the construction site. The backhoe had stopped moving, and two men in construction helmets were standing on the green, conferring. They were joined by a third man, and then a fourth.

“We can try to reschedule, but I’m quite busy.” He paused. “Fiona?”

“You have a problem,” Fiona said. She pointed through the rubbed-clean streak to the scene outside. “The crew has stopped working.”

“They may be on a designated break.”

“No one is taking a break,” Fiona said. Now the fourth man had a phone to his ear, and a fifth man came around from the sports field, jogging in haste to join the others. There was something alarmed about his quick pace. “I think that’s your foreman,” Fiona pointed out. “They’re calling him in.”

“You can’t possibly know that.”

There was a chill of foreboding running through Fiona’s blood. She stared at the men, gathered with their heads together, their postures tense and distressed. One of them walked away into the bushes, his hand over his mouth.

In the damp emptiness of the dining hall, Anthony’s cell phone rang.

Fiona didn’t have to watch him answer it. It was enough to hear his voice, short at first, then growing harsh and tense. He listened for a long moment. “I’ll be there,” he said, and hung up.

She turned around. He was drawn and still, his gaze faraway, a man in a long black cashmere coat in a ruined room. He put his hands in the pockets of his coat, and when he looked at her, his face was pale again, his expression shaken.

“There’s been—a discovery,” he said. “I don’t— They’ve found something. It seems to be a body. In the well.”

The breath went out of her in an exhalation as the moment froze, suspended. She felt shock, yes. Surprise. But part of her knew only acceptance. Part of her had expected nothing else.

Of course there are bodies here. This is Idlewild Hall.

“Take me there,” she said to him. “I can help.”