She wanted to say something else, but her eyelids felt like sandpaper, and she closed her eyes. Sleep took her before she could speak.
The world was disjointed for a while, images passing by like dreams. She had a long, vivid dream of running across the field toward the trees, the dead brush scraping her shins, her breath bursting in her chest, as Garrett ran after her. Crows called in the stark sky overhead. Fiona jerked awake over and over, disoriented, before falling back into the same dream again. She had another dream of waking to the sight of her hand in Jamie’s, lying on the bed. His hand was bandaged, her fingers curled around it. She was aware of him, could see the familiar strong bones of his hand, the lines of his forearm, but she did not look up to see his face before falling asleep again.
The fever broke sometime the next day, and she sat up in the bed, sweaty and weary, drinking apple juice, as the police took her statement. Malcolm sat in the back corner of the room, listening, his sandals on over his socks, his newspaper folded on his lap.
She did not hear from Margaret Eden, but she heard from Anthony. When she was well enough to get her cell phone back from her father (“What do you need that thing for?”), she answered his call. He told her he was sorry, and he asked if there was anything he could do. She had the beginning of an idea, an itch at the back of her mind, and she asked Anthony a question. The answer he gave her put all the pieces together, and she realized it had been in front of her all along.
She had her answers now.
She would go to the Idlewild girls as soon as she was well again. But she had a suspicion that they’d come to her first.
Chapter 34
Katie
Barrons, Vermont
April 1951
This was going to work.
There was never a doubt in Katie’s mind. Still, she could feel the tense anticipation from the other girls in Clayton 3C. Roberta sat in the chair by the window, pretending to study from a textbook. CeCe pulled off her uniform and put on her nightgown, even though it was only just past lunchtime. She yanked the pins from her hair and scrubbed her hand through it, making it messy.
For her part, Katie straightened her stockings and her skirt. She polished her black shoes to a shine and put them on. She added wadded Kleenex to her bra, then put on her cleanest white blouse, adjusting it so that the fabric stretched just slightly over her enhanced chest. She pulled a cardigan with the Idlewild crest over the blouse and buttoned it demurely to her neck.
CeCe pulled off her shoes and stockings, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I really don’t know about this,” she said. Her cheeks were pale. Good, Katie thought. That makes it more believable.
It was Roberta who answered. “Just follow the plan,” she said, bending her head to the textbook. In the five months since Sonia had disappeared—since she had died, since she had been killed; they all knew she had been killed—Roberta had gone waxy and hard, rarely smiling, never laughing. Her grades didn’t falter, and she played better than ever on the hockey field, but the change was clear to Katie. Roberta had taken her grief and her anger and buried it, let it sink into her bones. She looked less like a girl now and more like a grown woman, and she had become fierce. Katie loved her more than ever.
“You know I’m no good at these things,” CeCe said, pushing the covers back on her bed and obediently sliding into it. “When Katie cheated on that test, I nearly passed out.”
Katie leaned toward the room’s only mirror, smoothing and adjusting her hair, and watched the corner of her mouth turn up. CeCe always got cold feet, but she always did as well as the rest of them. “You were perfect,” she said to CeCe, “and you know it.”
CeCe flushed; praise from Katie always pleased her, even after all this time. Still, she had to whine a little. “This feels like lying.”
“It isn’t lying.” Roberta looked up from her book and directed her gaze at CeCe, lying in the bed. “We talked about this for months. It isn’t lying if it’s making someone happy. If it’s making all of us happy.”
CeCe bit her lip and looked back at Roberta. “Not Katie,” she argued. “She doesn’t get to be happy.”
So that was what was bothering her. Katie should have known. She laughed, touched despite herself. “I’ll be happiest of all,” she said. It wasn’t a lie, not completely; her heart was pounding in anticipation and a queer kind of excitement. She was ready. Was that the same as happy? She didn’t know, and in this moment she didn’t particularly care. She had just turned sixteen. What mattered was that she got what she wanted.
“It’ll be fine,” Roberta said, her voice flat.
“If it works,” CeCe said.
Katie leaned closer to the mirror, smoothing her eyebrows and lightly biting her lips. They weren’t allowed makeup at Idlewild—absolutely not—and part of her wished she had some, at least some dark eyeliner and mascara like she’d seen on movie stars, but she was afraid it would look too obvious. She definitely needed to look like a schoolgirl. “It’ll work,” she said.
CeCe lay back in the bed, pulling the covers up over her ample chest. Katie caught Roberta’s gaze in the mirror’s reflection, and they traded a look of understanding.
I’m going to do this.
Yes, you are, and we both know why.
It’s going to work. I’m going to make it.
Roberta’s gaze softened, the lines around her eyes easing, and she smiled at Katie in the mirror.
There was a knock on the door. “Ladies!” Lady Loon said. “It’s Family Visit Day. Cecelia, you have a visitor.”
Katie smoothed her expression into one of concern and opened the door. “Oh, no, Miss London,” she said. “Are you sure?”
Lady Loon looked frazzled, tendrils of hair escaping from the bun on top of her head. “Of course I’m sure, Katie,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s just that CeCe isn’t feeling very well.”
Katie stepped back, and Lady Loon stepped into the room, looking at CeCe on the bed. CeCe moaned a little. She looked positively green, probably from terror, which added to the effect.
“What is the matter?” Lady Loon asked her.
“Oh,” CeCe said, licking her lips as if they were dry. “It’s my stomach, Miss London. Is it my father who has come to see me?”
Lady Loon clenched her hands, her knuckles going white. “No, it’s—your brother, I believe.” She hated saying the words, Katie could see, keeping her face straight. Lady Loon did not like referring to CeCe’s bastard status, or her brother’s, which was what they wanted.
“Oh, no,” CeCe groaned, quite believably. “He came all this way. I can’t. I just can’t.”
“It’s very rude to turn him away,” Roberta commented calmly from over her textbook. “Can you talk to him, Miss London?”
Lady Loon’s eyes went wide. She looked positively horrified. “Me? Ladies, I am certainly not going to talk to that man.” An illegitimate bastard, she didn’t say.
“He came so far,” CeCe wailed again.
“Maybe one of us can go,” Roberta said.
“Maybe,” Katie said, as if this had just occurred to her. “Roberta, why don’t you go?”
Roberta frowned. “I have a Latin test tomorrow, and I need to study.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Why study?”
That made Lady Loon jump, just as it was supposed to. “Of course she needs to study, Katie Winthrop,” she said sharply. “And since you seem to be at leisure, you are to go speak to Cecelia’s brother immediately and explain the situation to him.”
“Me?” Katie put her lip out just a little, petulant. “I don’t want to go.”
“You’ll do as you’re told, young lady. Now go.”