It snowed overnight, just a light dusting that gathered in the cracks and crevices, blowing in the wind like packing peanuts. Fiona drove over roads more and more remote and rutted into East Mills, a tiny town that didn’t seem to offer much more than a gas station, a few grimy shops, and a Dunkin’ Donuts. Trucks blasted by as she traveled the main street, either on their way to Canada or on their way back. The sky was mottled, the sun coming and going behind swift-moving clouds.
Sarah London lived in an old Victorian with missing shingles and a postage-stamp front lawn that was thick with dead weeds. Fiona had tried to call first, but had gotten only a phone that rang and rang on the other end, with no answering machine, and she hadn’t had a signal on her cell at all for the last half hour. She pulled the phone out of her pocket now, as she sat in the driveway, but saw that she had no bars. Fine, then. She would wing it.
She got out and walked to the wooden porch, her boots loud on the damp, sagging steps. According to the DMV record Jamie had pulled, Sarah London was eighty-eight years old, which made the house’s neglect logical, especially if the old woman lived alone.
Her first knock on the storm door wasn’t answered, but her second knock brought a faint shuffling from within. “Miss London?” she called. “I’m not a salesperson. My name is Fiona Sheridan, and I’m a journalist.”
That brought footsteps, as she’d known it would. The inner door swung open to reveal a woman with a stooped back, her thin white hair tied back. Though her posture was crouched and she was wearing an old housecoat, she still gave off an air of offended dignity. She narrowed her eyes at Fiona through the screen. “What does a journalist want with me?”
“I’m doing a story on Idlewild Hall.”
In an instant the woman’s eyes lit up, a reaction that she quickly struggled to mask as if she thought Fiona was leading her on. “No one cares about Idlewild Hall,” she said, suspicious again.
“I do,” Fiona said. “They’re restoring it. Did you know that?”
For a second the woman swayed in utter surprise, her gaze so vacant with shock that Fiona wondered if she’d have to barge inside and use the landline to call 911. Then she gripped the doorframe and unlatched the storm door. “My God, my God,” she murmured. “Come inside.”
The house’s interior mirrored the exterior: a place that had been cared for, but was now sinking into neglect with the age of its owner. An unused sitting room sat primly on the right, old figurines and knickknacks growing dust on its fussy shelves. The floor of the front hall was lined with a plastic runner that had probably been placed there in the early eighties. Fiona politely paused and unlaced her boots as the woman proceeded into the kitchen.
“I don’t—I don’t have anything,” the woman said as she looked around the kitchen, where the newspaper she’d been reading was neatly set on the kitchen table. “I wasn’t expecting . . .”
“It’s okay, Miss London,” Fiona said. “I don’t need anything. Thank you.”
“What did you say your name was again?”
“Fiona Sheridan. Call me Fiona, please.”
Sarah London nodded, and Fiona noticed she didn’t return the invitation. “Have a seat, Fiona.”
Obediently, Fiona pulled out a kitchen chair and sat on it. Once a teacher, always a teacher, she thought. She folded her hands in front of her on the table.
That seemed to please the old woman. She pulled out her own chair and lowered herself. Her hands were twisted and gnarled with arthritis, the knuckles pearly gray. “Now, please tell me about this restoration. As you can see, I’ve been reading the newspaper, which I do every day. I’ve never read anything about this.”
“That’s why I’m writing the story,” Fiona said.
Miss London seemed to consider this. “Who—who in the world is mad enough to restore Idlewild?”
It was a sentiment that so closely mirrored Fiona’s own thoughts that she paused. But there was a tinge of nerves on the edges of Miss London’s expression, on the edges of her words. “A woman named Margaret Eden,” she said, “aided by her son, Anthony.”
Miss London blinked and shook her head. “I’ve never heard of such people.”
Fiona had a list of questions in her head that she’d planned to ask, but on an impulse she skipped all of them. “Why do you think it’s mad to restore Idlewild?” she said.
“Well, of course it’s mad.” Miss London’s voice shook a little, but she maintained her composure, sitting with ramrod posture. “Of course it is. That old building . . . that old place.” She waved a twisted hand, as if Fiona should surely know what she was talking about. “Are they making it into a school?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, dear God.” The words were spoken swiftly, softly, as if they’d escaped from the woman’s mouth. Then she recovered and said, “Well, I wish them luck.”
“You were a teacher there for a long time, were you not?”
“Twenty-nine years. Until the school’s last day.”
“You must have loved it there.”
“No one loved it there,” the older woman said bluntly. “Those girls were trouble. They made life miserable for all of us. They weren’t good girls. Not at all.”
Fiona felt her eyebrows rise. “And yet you stayed.”
“Teaching is all I know, Fiona,” Miss London said, her expression growing stern. “It’s what I do. Or what I did, at least.”
“Was Idlewild the only place you ever worked?”
“I worked at a few other schools after Idlewild closed, until I retired. I’m local.” That hand wave again, as if there was no need to say all of this aloud. “Born not even half a mile from where we’re sitting now. A Vermonter all my life. I never saw the need to leave.”
In the pasty light of the kitchen, Sarah London looked much older than she had at first, her eyes watery, the corners of her mouth drooping. She was a tough old Vermonter, but that didn’t mean she’d had an easy life. “I have a photograph,” Fiona said. “Would you like to see it?”
“I suppose,” Miss London said carefully, though the gleam of interest in her eyes was a dead giveaway.
Fiona pulled a printout of the field hockey photograph from her pocket and smoothed it out over the table. Miss London looked at it for a long time. “That’s me,” she said finally. “Took over the team the year Charlene McMaster quit to get married. She barely lasted eight months. I didn’t want to do it, not one bit. But we did as we were told in those days.”
“Do you remember these girls?” Fiona asked.
“Of course I do. We didn’t have all that many students. And my memory hasn’t gone yet, praise God.”
Fiona glanced down at the photograph, the girls lined up in their uniforms. They weren’t good girls. “You even remember their names?”
“Yes, probably. Why do you ask?”
“This was taken two years after the disappearance of a student named Sonia Gallipeau,” Fiona said. “Do you remember that?”
The room rang with deafening silence.
“Miss London?” Fiona asked.
“The French girl,” Miss London said quietly, almost to herself. She shook her head. “I haven’t heard that name in over sixty years.”
“Something happened to her,” Fiona said. “In 1950.”
“She ran away, they said.” Miss London’s hand went to her face, the gnarled yet elegant old fingers stroking her cheek in an absent, thoughtful gesture. “I remember that day. My first year. She went off to see relatives and never came back.”
“What do you remember?” Fiona prompted softly.
“Everything.” Miss London’s fingers stroked her cheek again, automatic. “We searched for her, but not for long. There wasn’t much to do about a runaway girl. I never said anything, because the case was closed and we all moved on. But I always thought she was dead.”
“Why did you think she was dead?” Fiona asked.
“Don’t get me wrong. We had girls who ran away.” Miss London shook her head. “One just the year before Sonia. There’s nothing you can do about a bad apple. But I never thought Sonia would do it. She had nowhere to go, for one. She wasn’t even American. She was plain, quiet as a mouse. She wouldn’t go off hitching rides or running away with some boy. She didn’t have it in her.”