Page 75 of Coram House

“She said something to Sister Cecile about how the smudges were all on the outside where we couldn’t reach. She wasn’t sassing her or anything, just trying to explain, but it was a stupid thing to say.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, Sister Cecile grabbed the girl by the ankles and shoved her out onto the sill. Said something about how she could reach now. I don’t know if she just meant to scare us and lost her grip, but the girl fell.”

“You saw her fall?”

Karen nods. “She was just lying down there, not moving.”

I try to reconstruct the scene in my head. In her deposition, Karen said that she actually saw the girl bounce as she hit the ground. But that would have been two stories down. There’s no way she could have seen it unless her head was already out the window.

“And what did Sister Cecile do after?”

“Nothing. She just left. Didn’t say a word.”

“Karen.” I need to tread gently for this next part. “In her testimony, Sarah Dale said the girl never fell. And Melissa Graves’s death certificate says she died of the flu.”

Karen shrugs, seemingly unbothered. “We all blocked a lot of shit out to survive that place. You don’t always get to pick what you remember and what you don’t.”

Her face lights up like she’s had a great idea. “You should find Sarah—ask her again. You never know what else might have surfaced after all this time.”

She must see something on my face. “What is it?” she asks.

“I’m so sorry, Karen, but Sarah Dale died a few years ago. A car accident.”

Karen looks sad, but unsurprised. “I saw her once, you know? Years later. It was during my travel-the-world phase—Paris, New York, San Francisco. We just ran into each other on the street. Can you imagine that?”

I smile. “It must have been nice to see each other again.”

Karen laughs. “God, no. She was horrified. Like I’d crawled out of the grave. She tried to hide it—was polite and all that, but I could tell.”

“I’m so sorry. That must have been hard.”

“It was my fault. I never should have sprung on her in the street like that, especially when she had her kid with her—of course she didn’t want to go into all that. But I didn’t have kids. I was still so young. I didn’t understand.”

Her gaze is back out the window now. “So many of us died before we should have.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say again. But it’s meaningless. Just something to say.

I’m aware of the deep orange color of the light outside and how little I want to be driving these roads after dark. “I should go,” I say. “I can’t thank you enough for your time.”

Karen waves away both my thanks and offer to help with dishes and walks me to the door. As I pull on my boots and coat, I decide to take a gamble. “Karen, can I ask you one more thing?”

She nods. “Shoot.”

“Do you remember Tommy’s last name?”

Karen looks up at the ceiling, like the answer might be written there. She takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “No,” she says, “sorry.”

I force a smile—I knew it was a long shot. “Thanks anyways.”

“One last thing from me too,” Karen says. “When this book is published, make sure you send a copy to Bill Campbell with a bigfuck youfrom Karen Lafayette.”

She smiles at me, but it’s not a happy smile. It’s the look of a scorpion hoping its sting found the killing spot. She shuts the door behind me.

The cold sucks the air from my lungs as I trudge back to the car. I’m about to slide into the driver’s seat when Karen shouts my name. I turn to see her running across the driveway with no jacket.

“Karen, is everything—”

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