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18

I unlock the door to my apartment. My feet feel frozen from standing in the deep snow at the graveyard.

“Shit.”

The word floats into the room, a puff of cloud, because it’s cold enough inside to see my breath. The floorboards groan as I cross to the heater in the living room and touch it. Warm. It seems to be working.

Then something on the desk catches my eye. My laptop sits in the middle of the table, surrounded by black-and-white photographs. Earlier, I’d been going through them, trying to build a visual storyboard to run with the book. One image per chapter. Except the photos aren’t in a stack anymore. They’re scattered across the table. Had I left them that way? I’d swear I hadn’t.

My throat tightens. Both windows are locked. Next, I check the bedroom. Also locked. I’m being paranoid. What do I think happened, exactly? Rooney got drunk and stopped here for a little breaking and entering on the way to the funeral? But, in the kitchen, I find the window wide open. My heart beats hard enough that I swear I can feel the muscle slamming against my breastbone.

I stick my head out the window and peer down into the narrow, overgrown yard. There are no footprints in the snow. And no ladder marks. So unless Rooney can fly, no dice. I shut the window and stare at it. A second later, it creaks open again. The latch is broken. I sigh, feeling stupid, and rig something with a rubber band until I can call the landlord.

I clean up the windblown photos scattered on the floor. I was lucky the weather wasn’t worse. With an open window, the apartment could have been full of snow, the pictures ruined. I come to the photo of Sister Cecile standing beside the boat. By now, I’ve memorized every part of it, but something is bothering me. Some tickle in my brain. I take in her black habit, the blur of her face. Maybe it’s the incongruity of knowing I stood beside her coffin just a couple hours ago. I nestle the photo back in the box with the others.

I’m halfway to the bedroom to get another sweater when I stop. It feels like the air has been sucked out of the room. In three steps I’m back at the box of photos.

Sister Cecile. The boat.

I pull out my phone. I don’t want to call Xander, would much rather let yesterday remain where it is—something to tell Lola about next time she calls. But I dial anyway.

“Alex,” Xander says. He sounds pleased. “How’s it going?”

“Xander, what you said last night—about seeing a canoe on the water—when was it?” I’m breathless and speaking too fast. “I mean, do you remember exactly what day it was?”

“Well, yeah,” he says, sounding baffled. “It was the night—well, I guess it was probably morning by then—the whole thing with my car—”

“You saw the canoe from the dock that morning? Before the police brought you into the station?”

“Yeah. I was sort of just, you know, sitting on the dock—well, no, I was probably lying down, to be honest. Anyways, yeah, the canoe was out there, off the point.”

He sounds so embarrassed that I feel a trickle of guilt. I plug it up. A girl with her finger in the dike.

“What time was it?” I ask.

He clears his throat. “I don’t know exactly. I was pretty out of it.”

“But you saw it across the water, off the far shore. So there must have been some light.”

“That’s true,” he says, with effort, as if pulling the memory up from a hole. “I don’t know. Seven, maybe?”

I run through the timeline in my head. I got up at six that morning, was heading into Rock Point around six thirty, just like I told the police. The timing works.

“Did you see who was paddling it?”

Xander laughs. “Alex, I was shit-faced. It was barely sunrise. And it was half a mile across the lake.”

“Just—try. Please.”

He sighs. “I don’t know? A man? It was just a dark shape.”

“But just one person?”

“Yeah, that part I’m pretty sure of.”

“Did you tell the police?”

“About what? About the canoe?” He sounds baffled. “I don’t know, to be honest. I mean, I’m pretty sure I gave them my whole life story. I don’t remember much.”

“Thanks, Xander. I have to—”

“Wait, Alex—what is this about?”

I owe him an explanation, but right now I’m itching to get off the phone. “Maybe nothing. I just—I don’t know exactly. Not yet. Look, I have to go. I’ll call you.”

I hang up before he can say anything else. Then I exhale a long, slow breath and go back in time to last week. The quiet, still woods. A single set of footprints on the trail ahead. Dim, predawn light. The scream. I shut my eyes—Garcia’s trick—and hear the other sounds too. The scrape of something against a rock. A hollow thunk.

I play it again, this time with a figure, a hood pulled up so their face is in shadow. But with blood on their hands. After all, they just smashed a woman’s head on the rocks. There would be blood. The figure drags a canoe over the rocks with a long scrape. Once it’s in the water, they lift a leg over the side and step in. Thunk. Then they paddle away, emerging from the cove just in time to be seen by Xander, half passed out on his dock. They stash the boat back on the beach in front of Coram House, where it has been sitting unused for months.

Fred Rooney could have left that canoe on the beach and been back in the office in minutes. No footprints in the woods. No witnesses. The lake froze over a few days later. No one would have suspected. Except Xander happened to be looking in that direction.

Before I can change my mind, I pick up the phone again and dial Parker. He answers on the second ring. “Sorry,” I say. “I know you’re busy.”

“It’s all right,” he says. I hear muffled voices in the background.

“I know how he did it, Parker.”

“How who did what?”

“Fred Rooney. How he killed Jeannette Leroy.”

He inhales sharply. “Hang on a second.”

The click of a door shutting. The background noise disappears.

“You still there?”

“He used a canoe. Bill Campbell left one at Coram House, sitting on shore by the boathouse. Rooney would have known it was there. All he had to do was paddle a couple hundred yards, stash it on the rocks, and wait for her there. She went every day—you told me yourself—so he easily could have known. It explains why there weren’t any footprints, why no one saw him. Everything.”

I pause, waiting, triumphant.

“A canoe?” Parker says. His voice doesn’t contain the urgency I’d hoped for.

“I’m not making this up,” I say. “Xander saw a canoe that morning before the police picked him up.”

“The drunk guy? He saw a canoe at Rock Point?” Parker asks. Now he sounds fully awake. “Did he get a look at who was paddling it?”

“Well, no,” I admit. “It was dark.” And he was drunk , I don’t add. “He said it was definitely one person. He couldn’t make anything else out.”

“Alex—” Parker starts, but I cut him off.

“Just… bring him in. Talk to him.”

“We did talk to him. He was so drunk he barely made sense.”

“Try again. Please.” I hear the whine in my voice, but I can’t stop. “I believe Sarah Dale. I think Fred Rooney was in the boat the day Tommy drowned, all those years ago. What if he pushed him in? He could have killed Sister Cecile to cover it up—”

“Alex—”

“Rooney must have known about my book. I mean, didn’t everyone around here know? He must have been afraid I’d find Sister Cecile even tually, figure out what happened. Jesus, Parker, I showed up at his house the day after she died. He was covered in scratches like he’d been in a fight. And he laughed when I asked if Sister Cecile was alive. He laughed.”

There’s a long silence on the phone. I hold my breath. I can’t go to Garcia about this, she’ll think I made it up. If Parker doesn’t believe me, it’s over. Finally, he sighs. “All right. I’ll talk to your Xander. Then we’ll see.”

“He’s not my—”

“Look, Alex, I’m at work. I have to go.”

“Right, yes. Okay. Thanks.”

He hangs up. I look down at my desk, at the photo sitting there. I’d been gripping the edge so tightly my fingernails left little half-moon indentations in the paper. Above them, Sister Cecile stands in her black habit, but the blur has been replaced by the bloody face of the woman in the woods. I blink the image away.

Even though I know they’re the same person, it’s hard to hold them both in my head. Jeannette Leroy, the frail old woman. Sister Cecile, the nun who abused children. What had Parker said the other night? We all have good and bad inside us. I think about Fred Rooney. The sad boy, abused by the adults who should have taken care of him. The teenager who took joy in hurting the other children. The hot, sick feeling of his eyes running over me. The cold sound of his laughter at his house that day.

Maybe goodness is like a tank of gas—enough bad stuff happens and one day you just run empty. Or maybe evil is a seed, born inside all of us, waiting for the right conditions to thrive. I wonder if you feel it—that moment it starts to bloom.

In the morning, there’s a text waiting from Parker. Sent after midnight last night. Arresting FR on a drunk and disorderly. Wanted you to know. Then another text a few minutes later, also from Parker. It’s a start.

A sense of lightness fills me. For a minute, I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling cracks as I try to parse it. Happy, I finally realize. I feel happy, though I have no real right to be. Sister Cecile is dead and I’m no closer to proving Sarah Dale was telling the truth. And the photocopy I found at Xander’s has turned out to be no help at all. None of the birth or death records for Thomases during that time period in Vermont have a last name that starts with U. Plus, I’m supposed to present a preliminary outline to Stedsan in a few days and I’m nowhere near ready. But Fred Rooney has been arrested. And Parker is taking me seriously. And right now, I have to focus if I’m going to drop in on Father Aubry. Sunday morning, he’d said, but it seems indecent to show up before nine.

I pull on my spandex leggings and sneakers. I run under a gray sky, heavy with unfallen snow. I’m getting used to the weather patterns here. The blue-sky days with sunshine that camouflages the biting cold. Then gloomy days like this where the clouds act like a blanket, trapping any vestiges of warmth, holding them close to the earth.

By eight, I’m showered and dressed, my hair blown dry so it doesn’t freeze into icicles. My instincts tell me Father Aubry might still be useful, even if I’m not sure exactly how. At the very least, if Jeannette Leroy attended church, he would have met the woman, might be able to tell me what she was like.

Coffee mug filled to the brim, I sit down in front of a blank notepad and try to focus. I write Sister Cecile’s name in the center of the page. Father Aubry badly wants to be relevant—I sensed that from our first meeting—and to come out looking like the good priest. It’s too late to find Sister Cecile, obviously, but maybe if he knew her he can help me understand how she fits into all this. For starters, what was her relationship like with Fred Rooney? The depositions suggest she was an authoritarian who played favorites. So what did it mean for him to be a favorite? And could she still have had some kind of hold over him, even after all these years? If I can understand that, maybe it will help me understand why he killed her.

I look down at the paper and see I’ve drawn a constellation of questions around Sister Cecile’s name, a line connecting each of them to her like the rays of the sun. The clock on the stove says quarter to ten. Time to go.

Coram House is busy today. Yellow hard hats dot the scaffolding, bright smudges against the gray sky. The high whine of a blade cutting metal fills the car as I drive past, down the dirt track. The rectory looks even shabbier in the flat light. The bricks are worn down at the edges and missing huge chunks of mortar. Without the tendrils of ivy that cover the building, I wonder if the whole thing would crumble.

I knock, and the door swings open to reveal an older woman wearing a long dark skirt and sweater, which remind me of a nun’s habit despite all the appliqué birds.

“My name is Alex Kelley,” I say, stepping inside. “Father Aubry is expecting me.”

She frowns at the slush gathering at my feet, as if I should know better than to walk through snow. “Follow me,” she says and begins to haul herself to the second floor, grunting on each step, as if it hurts.

Hours later, it seems, we make it to the door of Father Aubry’s study. “He’s on the phone,” she says. “You may wait here.”

Then she’s gone, limping down the dark, creaking floorboards. And I’m alone in the hall, listening to the low murmur of Father Aubry’s voice through the door.

I wander back down the hall a little, not wanting him to think I’m eavesdropping, and inspect the photo of the smiling nuns at the soup kitchen. The black habits made the photos oddly timeless. Apart from the oversize eighties glasses, you could plop these same nuns in the sepia photo of the baptism and they wouldn’t look out of place.

The study door opens. “Ms. Kelley,” Father Aubry says, coming into the hallway. “So good to see you. Ah—I see you’ve had a little wander through our history.”

Immediately, I think of Xander. Historical flavor.

“We run the longest continuously operating soup kitchen in the state, you know,” he says.

Gold star for you , I think, then feel ungenerous. He didn’t murder any kids, at least that I know of.

“And this one,” I say, pointing to the antique photo of the children gathered around the font. “A baptism?”

He pushes his glasses up his nose and leans closer. He smells musty. Like a damp towel. “Ah, yes,” he says. “They used to baptize the orphans at Coram House when they arrived.”

He makes a face when he says the name like it tastes bad. “There weren’t always records, you see, on who had been baptized before they arrived. Some of the children came from out of state. So they baptized everyone, just to be safe.”

So Tommy would have been baptized.

“Records,” I say, looking from him back to the photograph. “The church keeps records of baptisms?”

“Of course,” he says.

My mouth goes dry, but I try to sound casual. “And would you still have those records? From the 1960s?”

He nods. “Most likely. Those would have been kept here at the church. Why don’t you come in and sit? It’s warmer by the fire.”

He leads me into the office and we settle into the armchairs facing the fireplace. Moaning wind pours down the chimney—like some poor creature is trapped up there. I tell him about the photocopied news article, about finding Tommy’s last initial, about my search for a boy lost to history and how much I’d love his help. He nods and then phones down to Rosa, asks her to take a look at the baptismal ledgers. I’d prefer to do it myself, but don’t push him.

I try to focus on why I’m here. It’s maddening to think that just a week earlier I might have been sitting across from Sister Cecile in a different drafty room. Alive. If only I’d known. If only I’d asked the right questions.

“Thank you for meeting me today,” I say. “You must be busy, especially after the funeral.”

He looks pained. “That was terrible. But grief takes many forms.”

“Did you know Sister Cecile well?”

He looks wary, but I keep my expression bland. I wonder if he’s heard yet about Fred Rooney’s arrest.

“She led a quiet life, but remained a devout member of our congregation. She helped at the soup kitchen every week, you know. The community gardens. But kept mostly to herself.”

“Was it usual for the sisters to change their name?” I ask. “For example, Sister Cecile, I assume she was born Jeannette Leroy?”

He leans back in his chair. “Oh, yes. It was quite common, especially then. It’s symbolic, you see. A new name to symbolize their commitment to our Lord Savior. Their new life.”

“And the fact that she went back to her birth name? Was that the custom too?”

Father Aubry sips from a glass of water. “Generally,” he says, “sisters do not revert to their birth name upon retirement. But, ah, this was a somewhat special case.”

“Oh?” I ask, all innocence.

He puts down the glass. I notice a dried film on the rim in the shape of lips.

“It’s a rather delicate matter, of course. But given the case, the church thought Sister Cecile might be more comfortable living out her retirement at another locale.”

So they tried to hide her somewhere else. Unsurprising. “That makes sense,” I say.

“Yes,” he replies absently. “But she—ah, well—she had lived here for nearly thirty years. And felt very strongly that God was calling her to remain. She wished to retire and live a life of quiet service, so I believe the name change was decided upon to avoid any unpleasantness.”

In other words, she refused to go and they decided this was the best way to avoid bad PR. I nod along as if this was the only possible course.

“And people here didn’t mind—about her history?”

“People tend not to care who is putting soup in their bowl.”

I wonder what she would have said to him in the confessional. What he absolved her for.

“And you have to remember,” Father Aubry continues, “Coram House had been closed for fifteen years by the time the case was settled. Most of the sisters had retired elsewhere. And, well, people simply didn’t talk about the things that had happened there. There was a collective desire to move on.”

“To make the case go away, you mean,” I say. Whoops .

He sighs. “Did you ever pause to consider that we—the church—agreed to settle because we thought it would be the best thing for the community, for the children themselves?”

Father Aubry must see my skeptical look, but he presses on.

“Did you know most people involved wanted to settle? It’s not as if the church forced them to take some sort of deal. Alan was instrumental to the plan, of course, but so was Bill.”

“Bill? You mean Bill Campbell?”

Father Aubry looks at me warily. If he were an insect, his antennae would be waving in the air, searching for a threat.

“I truly got the sense that most of the former children just wanted to move on with their lives,” he says. “Including Bill Campbell, yes. It’s not a surprise really—no one wants to linger on the most terrible moments of their life.”

But plenty of people have no choice.

“But you mentioned Bill Campbell specifically.”

He frowns. “Bill and Alan were the de facto leaders, I suppose. The others listened to them, took their advice.”

My mind is whirring. Could Bill Campbell have had his eye on developing the property, even then? Why else would he convince people to settle for next to nothing? And Stedsan was on board with this. Not exactly the crusader for justice he painted himself as, then.

There’s a knock at the door. Father Aubry stands, barely concealing his relief as he lets Rosa in. Her long skirts swish around her ankles as she thumps the ledger on the table. The spine of the book cracks as Father Aubry opens it. “Around 1967, you said? Tom or Thomas,” he murmurs.

I hover over his shoulder as he flips through the brittle, dusty pages.

“We’re in luck.” Father Aubry stabs the page with his index finger, as if the name might wriggle free. “Here you are. Thomas Underwood, aged eight.”

I go to lick my lips but my tongue is dry.

Thomas Underwood. The name is printed right there. I don’t know what I’m expecting—the clouds to part? Angels strumming harps?—but there is something there. A tiny light. Two days ago I had nothing—no face, no name. Now, both.

I take out my phone and snap a picture. Father Aubry clears his throat. “Did you have other questions, Ms. Kelley? It’s just, with every thing that happened yesterday—I haven’t had much time to focus on my sermon.”

“Of course,” I say, standing. “Thank you for your help.”

As we shake hands, Father Aubry looks down at the ridged gold band on my right hand. “Ah, I didn’t realize you were married.”

I want to pull my hand back. “My husband died,” I say.

Father Aubry squeezes my fingers. “My condolences for your loss. I will add you both to my prayers.”

It feels like a violation. I don’t want his prayers. But I thank him again and show myself out.

Back in the car, I blast the heat to get the chill of the rectory out of my bones. My mind is spinning. Thomas Underwood. Finally, a name. But it’s hard to enjoy my victory when I think about everything else Father Aubry said. Alan was instrumental to the plan, of course, but so was Bill. What does that mean?

I could ask Stedsan about Bill Campbell’s involvement in the settlement, but Father Aubry made it sound like they were working together. But surely Stedsan wouldn’t have brought me here to write a book if he’d been involved in some kind of corruption? He’s smarter than that.

My phone rings, cutting through my thoughts. It’s a local area code. “Hello?” I answer.

“Is this Alex Kelley?” It’s a woman’s voice, but deep with a hint of gravel. Older but not elderly.

“Yes,” I say. “This is Alex. Can I help you?”

“This is Karen Lafayette. I hear you want to talk to me.”

“Karen,” I say. “Karen Lafayette.”

My brain takes a moment to process the name. Karen who was a child at Coram House. Karen who knew Sarah Dale. Karen who saw Sister Cecile push a girl out the window.

“Yes,” she says. “You called me? Left a message. Two messages, actually. I’ve been on a cruise. Just got back yesterday.”

“A cruise,” I repeat. My heart thumps absurdly, not quite believing she’s here, alive, on the phone.

“Do you want to tell me what this is about? Or should I start guessing?”

She sounds amused.

“Right,” I say. “Yes, of course.”

I’d kept my messages vague, hoping to pique her curiosity enough to call me back. “I’m writing a book about Coram House.” I pause, waiting to see if she’s going to hang up.

Instead, she lets out a long breath. “Well,” she says. “It’s about time somebody did.”

Before I know what’s happening she’s agreed to an interview tomorrow and is giving me directions to her farm. “All right,” Karen says. “So I’ll see you tomorrow sometime around eleven. Are you in a truck?”

“A—what?” I ask.

“The roads up here are pretty slick, but you should be all right, as long as you have four-wheel drive.”

“Oh, right.” I look around my car, trying to figure out if I have four-wheel drive.

“Otherwise, you might want to wait a week. Give the plows a chance to catch up.”

Not going to happen. I try to fill my voice with confidence. “No problem. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

We hang up and I drop the phone into the cupholder. Fireworks are going off in my stomach. For weeks, I’ve been looking for some proof of what happened to Tommy. But every time I think I find a way in, a window open just a crack, it slams shut. And now, finally, a door.