The Broken Girls

Lively Vermont had first published off a photocopier in 1969, and every issue was kept in a bank of scarred wooden file cabinets that had followed the magazine through every office move. They now sat against the back wall of the office, where someone had left a plate with the stale remains of a doughnut atop them, alongside an ice-cold coffee cup.

“You could go to the library, you know,” Jonas offered skeptically as Fiona pulled open the oldest drawers. “They’d have more about Idlewild than we do.”

“Everyone at the library knows who I am,” Fiona said. The files had a musty smell that made her briefly happy. “If they know what I’m researching, it won’t be a secret anymore.”

It was true. Malcolm Sheridan, the famous journalist, was a local legend in Barrons, and Fiona, his one remaining daughter, had distinctive red hair. The Barrons library staff was dedicated but extremely small, and because of Fiona’s many research visits over the years, they all knew who she was.

“Okay,” Jonas said. “And why is this a secret, exactly? Don’t tell me there’s high competition for this story.”

She turned and gave him a look over her shoulder.

He gave her a look back. “I’ve never met a journalist who’s afraid of librarians.”

“You’ve never met a journalist with my family history,” Fiona replied, trying to make it sound casual, easy. “I hate gossip. I can find other sources, especially online.”

There was a pause of silence behind her as she pulled out the files from 1969 to 1979. “If you’re looking for more sources, your father would have them,” he said. “You know that.”

“I know.” Fiona banged the drawer shut. “I’m due to visit him soon anyway. I’ll ask him about it.”

“Fine. Just bring my files back intact. And, Fiona . . .” Jonas shrugged. “Like I say, it’s your business, but there are going to be references to the Christophers in there. It’s unavoidable.”

He was right. Before their son had gone to prison for murder, the Christophers had been the richest and the most prominent family in Barrons. It was very likely there was something about Tim’s parents in the file she was holding. But she’d cross that bridge when she had to. “Like I said,” she told Jonas, “I’m fine.”

Jonas looked as if he was considering saying something else, but all he said was “Say hello to your father for me.”

“I will.” Malcolm Sheridan was Jonas’s journalistic idol, and it was that admiration that kept her employed at Lively Vermont. “I’ll be in touch,” she said, and she waved the files gratefully at him as she turned for the door.

It was a blustery gray day, the sun fighting to be seen from behind the clouds. The leaves had turned from vibrant colors to faded brown and had mostly left the trees. A handful of maple leaves, blown by the wind, had landed on Fiona’s windshield, and she brushed them off as she got in her car.

She glimpsed her face briefly in the rearview mirror as she started the car—red hair, hazel eyes, pale skin, the beginnings of crow’s-feet testifying to her thirty-seven years—and looked away again. She should probably bother with makeup one of these days. She should probably expand her wardrobe beyond jeans, boots, and a zip-up quilted jacket, too, at least until full winter hit. She tossed the files on the passenger seat and headed for downtown Barrons.

Barrons consisted of some well-preserved historic buildings in the center of town, used to draw the few tourists who came through, surrounded by a hardscrabble population that hoped those same tourists didn’t notice their falling-down porches and the piles of firewood in their driveways. Fiona drove past the clapboard library and, half a mile up, a spray-painted sign advertising fall pumpkins, though Halloween was weeks ago. In the square at the center of town, she passed the old city hall and continued down New Street to the police station.

She parked in the station’s small lot and picked up the files from the passenger seat. There was no one around, no movement in the squat square building, which had been built sometime in the 1970s, when Barrons finally became big enough to warrant a police force. Two picnic tables sat beneath the old oak trees in front of the station, and Fiona sat on one of the tables, swinging her feet onto the seat and pulling out her phone. She texted Jamie: Are you in there?

He made her wait five minutes. She had begun leafing through the first file when he texted back: I’m coming out.

Fiona tucked the phone back in her pocket and went back to the files. He took his time, making his point—he was still mad about last night—but eventually the front door of the station swung open and Jamie emerged, shrugging on a late-fall parka over his uniform.

Fiona glanced up and watched him. It was hard not to, she had to admit. Jamie Creel of the Barrons police, son and grandson of Vermont police chiefs, had dirty blond hair, dark blue eyes, and a scruff of beard on his jaw that grew in honey gold. He was younger than Fiona—twenty-nine to her thirty-seven—and he moved with easy grace as he huddled into his coat against the wind.

“Were you busy?” Fiona asked as he came closer.

He shrugged. “I was typing reports.” He had left off his hat, and the wind tried to tousle his hair. He stopped a few feet from her picnic table, his hands in his pockets and his legs apart, as if braced.

“I came to apologize,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “For what?”

“For freaking you out last night. For leaving.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re not actually sorry,” he observed.

“Still, I’m apologizing,” she said, holding his gaze. “I mean it. Okay?”

He didn’t answer, but gestured to the files in her lap, where she held a hand to them to keep them from blowing away. “What’s that?”

“Files from Lively Vermont. I’m looking for a history of Idlewild Hall.”

Jamie’s posture relaxed and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “This has to do with last night, doesn’t it? Fiona, come on.”

“This is good,” she protested. “I’m going to do a story.”

“About Idlewild?”

“About the restoration, the new school.” She watched his face. “It’s a good idea.”

“Maybe for someone, yes. For you?”

“Don’t worry—I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

“You couldn’t handle it last night,” he said. “You were a basket case.”

It had been sort of a strange episode, but she didn’t regret it. That trip to Old Barrons Road had shaken something loose. Idlewild had always loomed silently in the back of her mind, a dark part of her mental landscape. She’d done her best not to talk about it for twenty years, but talking about it out loud now was like bloodletting, painful and somehow necessary at the same time. “I’m better today,” she said, and she patted the table next to her. “Come sit down.”

He sighed, but he stepped toward the table. Fiona watched with the surreal feeling she still got sometimes when she looked at Jamie, even now. A year ago she’d had a bad night—lonely, wallowing in self-pity and grief for Deb—and found herself at a local bar, drinking alone. Jamie had pulled up the stool next to her—handsome, muscled, glorious in a jaded way, a guy who looked like he’d been a college athlete before something had made him go as quiet and wary as a wild animal. Fiona had put down her drink and looked at him, expecting a line, waiting for it, but Jamie had taken his time. He’d sipped his beer thoughtfully, then put it down on the bar. Hi, he’d said.

There was more, but that was all, really—just hi. Two hours later they’d ended up in his bed, which had surprised her but somehow fit her mood. She’d assumed it was a one-night stand, but he’d asked for her number. When he called her, she’d swallowed her surprise and said yes. And when he’d called her again, she’d said yes again.

It didn’t make sense. Cops and journalists were natural enemies; they should never have mixed. And in many ways, they didn’t. Jamie didn’t introduce Fiona to his colleagues or take her to any of their social functions. She never went inside the station when she wanted to see him during work hours, waiting for him outside instead. He had introduced her to his parents exactly once, a chilly conversation that was over in minutes. On her part, Fiona had brought Jamie to meet Malcolm, but only because Malcolm had insisted. He’d been worried when he heard his daughter was dating a cop, even though he never intruded in her love life. The meeting had been awkward, and she still had no idea what the two men had made of each other.