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.
And yet Jamie’s job was part of the reason she liked him, as was the fact that he’d been born in Barrons and had it in his blood. With every relationship, she’d had the hurdle of explaining her past, explaining Deb, rehashing what had happened and why. Most men tried to be understanding, but Deb was always there, a barricade that Fiona couldn’t quite get past. She had never needed to explain with Jamie: He knew who she was when he approached her in that bar; his father had been police chief when Deb was murdered. She’d never had to tell him anything because he already knew.
So, despite the difficulties, it was easy with Jamie. Easy in a way Fiona was prepared to sacrifice for. He was smart, quietly funny. What he saw in her, she was less sure of, and she didn’t ask; maybe it was the sex—which was particularly good—or companionship. All she knew was that she’d rather amputate her own arm with a rusty handsaw than have the where are we going? conversation.
Now he sat next to her on the picnic table and folded his long legs. “You want something else,” he said matter-of-factly. “Go ahead.”
“The Idlewild property,” she admitted. There was no point in prevaricating. “What do you know about it?”
“I only know what’s common knowledge.”
“Liar. You know everything. Start from the beginning.”
Jamie’s father and grandfather had both been chiefs of police in Barrons. The Creels had been a vital part of this area for decades, and they knew every family in Barrons, from the richest on down. In a way that felt alien to Fiona, Jamie was dedicated to this place, and he had an intelligent brain that never forgot a detail when it came to his town. So she waited for him to call up the information from somewhere in his circuitry, and then he started talking.