“Probably nothing.” Katie watched Sonia put her notebook in the suitcase, accompanied by the pen. Her hairbrush, her nightgown. “I don’t think they start the shows this early.”
The radio squawked again as CeCe turned the dial. Sonia looked at the book in Roberta’s hand. “You can borrow that, if you like,” she said.
Roberta looked at her. Her calm gaze cracked for a fraction of a second, a flinch that only someone who knew her well would be able to see. Katie read her thoughts perfectly, since they mirrored her own. You might not come back. “No,” she said, her placid voice recovered. “You take it.” She handed it over, and it went into the suitcase with the other things. “If they don’t want you, come back,” she said to Sonia. “We’ll be here.”
“You’ll be late for class,” Sonia observed, closing the suitcase on its painfully few contents and latching it. “Don’t you have Latin?”
They would be late for class. There was only half an hour of break time allotted after the first class of the day, and it was already stretching past that now. Soon, someone—dorm monitor Susan Brady or Lady Loon herself—would come knocking on doors, shouting that the lazy girls needed to get their things. Still, nobody moved.
“What time is your bus?” CeCe asked for the dozenth time, though they all knew the answer.
“Twelve o’clock,” Sonia replied, as she had every other time. “I should start walking to the bus stop soon.”
“Do you have your ticket?” Roberta asked.
Sonia nodded. Her relatives had mailed her the ticket when she’d accepted the invitation. She had carefully placed it in the pocket of her wool coat so she wouldn’t lose it—as if she had so many things that she was in danger of not keeping track of them. Now, despite her earlier excitement, even Sonia seemed reluctant. She picked up her shoes and sat on the edge of her bunk, slowly putting them on.
The radio in CeCe’s hands stopped its static blast, and the harmony of a barbershop quartet emitted from it. A voice came over the music: “Welcome to The Pilcrow Soap Sunrise Show!”
“Sunrise was hours ago,” Katie snorted.
“Shh,” Roberta said. Sonia continued slowly pulling on her shoes.
The singing continued, sweet and buttery, the notes slipping so easily from one voice to the next. “Sweet dreams of you, sweet dreams are true . . . sweet dreams of us saying, ‘Yes, I do . . .’ ” The girls listened in silence, hypnotized, no longer caring about teachers or dorm monitors or Latin. A few sweet moments of peaceful quiet, the kind only the radio could give them, a few moments of nothing but sound from the world outside, where people were living and singing and playing songs. Normal people in a normal world.
Far off, down a hallway, a single door slammed. The radio squawked in CeCe’s hand, the singing interrupted.
It blasted briefly; then it was gone again. Silence came from the little box. Not static, not music. Just silence.
“What did you do?” Roberta said.
“Nothing!” CeCe stared down at the radio. “I didn’t touch anything.”
Steps sounded in the hall. “Someone’s coming,” Katie whispered, her lips cold and numb with sudden fear.
CeCe shook her head. “I—”
There was the sound of breathing. A breath in, a breath out. From the radio.
Katie felt her temples pulse, her vision blur. She had heard that same breathing, sensed it, in Special Detention.
She’s here.
The four girls sat frozen in a tableau, no one moving. And from the radio, breaking the breathing silence, came the thin, reedy, distressing cry of a baby’s wail. It wavered, as if far away, as if weak. And then it cried again.
CeCe dropped the radio with a thump. She kicked it, hard, and it spun under the bed, hitting the wall, the baby’s wail cutting off.
A knock pounded on the door. “Ladies!” Lady Loon shouted through the wood, making them all jump. “Ladies! You are late for class!”
There was a frozen moment in which nobody moved. And then Katie leaned over, took Sonia’s icy hand in hers, and looked into her face.
“Go,” she said.
Chapter 24
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
November 2014
There was more than one church in Portsmouth. There were many, and Fiona silently cursed her anonymous note writer. What the hell church did he or she mean? New England was hardly bereft of churches.
She blew out a breath and checked the time on her phone. It was ten forty-five. Should she stay for fifteen minutes and play into this person’s game, or should she start her car and drive away? She already faced a wet drive back to Vermont, and she wanted to get back into the Idlewild files, which she’d barely had time to skim through. She wanted to talk to Malcolm. Even, if he’d let her, to Jamie.
Still . . . You’re not looking hard enough.
Goddamn it.
It was as if whoever it was knew how to reach into her journalist’s psyche and flip the switch of her curiosity—the switch that couldn’t be turned off. The switch that would most likely get her killed one of these days. But it was morning in sunny New Hampshire, with the thin wet snow melting and retirees walking by to go into the twee coffee shops beneath pretty awnings.
She hadn’t even processed the thought fully before she got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. Inhaling a bite of the chill air, she stepped to the hood of the car—where the note leaver would have stood to tuck the paper beneath her windshield wiper—and did a slow 360-degree turn, scanning the horizon.
When you looked at it that way, it was unmissable. There was a church only several hundred feet away—one of New England’s historical specialties, redbrick with a tall, elaborate white steeple, as pretty as a wedding cake. The clock embedded halfway up the steeple showed the time. Fiona left the parking lot and made her way toward it, crossing the cobblestone walks. She got close enough to the front to read the sign and see that it was called the North Church, and that it dated from 1671, the building itself from 1855. The front doors were open, a cloth Welcome sign propped up outside them. Fiona circled around toward the back.
She didn’t see anyone—just more tourists and retirees, and a panhandler sitting on the ground, leaning against the church wall, his knees drawn up. That struck her as odd, since panhandlers were rare in tourist areas like this one, most of them moved along by private security or the cops. She looked at the panhandler again and realized he was watching her.
He was a man, thin and stringy as a kid, in his thirties, his long hair combed back from his forehead. On second look, Fiona realized he wasn’t panhandling at all; he had no sign or overturned hat. He was just sitting against the wall, looking at her. His face was pale and pitted, his eyes sunken, his clothes of good quality but well-worn. He wasn’t homeless, but a man down on his luck, sick perhaps, used to sitting on the cold ground and watching crowds go by.
She walked up to him and held out the note. “Are you looking for me?”
His eyes didn’t leave her face as he looked up from his low position on the ground. He watched her for a long time. She saw uncertainty in his gaze, and calculation, and anger mixed with fear. Be careful with this one, she told herself.
Finally, he smiled and stood up, bracing himself against the church wall. “Hi, Fiona,” he said.
She stepped back, glad now that they were in an open square in daylight, with people around. This had been a mistake. “Do I know you?”
“I’m sorry about the note,” he said, watching her reaction. “I didn’t know how else to approach you. It seemed the best way.”
“Okay, well, I’m here now. How do you know me, and what do you want?”
The man shifted his weight. Now that they were face-to-face, he made no move to come closer. “My name is Stephen,” he said. “Stephen Heyer.”