Page 9 of Coram House

I wake as if no time has passed at all, except now sunlight stabs my eyelids. Paper crinkles when I roll over. My comforter is littered with folders and loose paper. I don’t remember bringing them into bed with me. My head aches. Possibly something to do with the empty bottle of wine on the bedside table. I shuffle into the living room. A dusting of powdered cheese coats the table. Papers blanket the floor. It looks like a dorm room.

I gather the papers and wipe down the table. Then I splash water on my face and hunt through my suitcase for a pair of socks—the floor is like ice. All morning, I search for Tommy. Through the list of children, the intake forms, the sheaves of receipts. When that doesn’t turn up so much as a mention, I search online—death records, police records, hospital records. But, without a last name, I don’t get far.

Frustrated, I call Stedsan. He had years with the case; he spoke to Sarah Dale and the others. He must know more than what’s inside these boxes. When he doesn’t answer, I leave a message, asking him to meet. His reply comes when I’m halfway through a bowl of cereal, suggesting we meet tomorrow, Monday. Only two days until our meeting with Father Aubry, but it will have to do.

My body is twitchy from too many days at a desk. The need to move is constant and as annoying as an itch. So I pull on my sneakers and head outside with no plan except to run. The sky is pale blue and cloudless. The air crackles with cold. Within minutes, my thighs ache beneath the thin leggings, and every gulp of freezing air feels like a dagger inside my lungs. Still, I keep going. Past a brewery where people stand around fire pits drinking beer, past a playground with a slide builtinto the hillside so four children tumble down at once, and along a bike path full of other joggers, chatting in pairs or on the phone, running to nowhere.

By the time I get back to the apartment, my toes throb and the hair around my face is crusted with ice. My fingers fumble when I try to unlock the door and I feel a spike of real fear. Upstairs, I get straight into the shower, leaving my clothes in a puddle on the bathmat. The cold, which felt like a part of me just a minute ago, melts away, so easily forgotten.

The coffee shop where I’m supposed to meet Stedsan is tucked on a narrow street, barely wider than an alley. Deep snow covers the sidewalk, so I have to slog my way to the door. A bell rings as I step into air thick with coffee and cinnamon. Stedsan is folded into a green armchair, underneath a painting of a rooster. He sees me and lifts his cup in greeting.

I order a coffee and find the milk hidden among the antique glass bottles arranged on the counter. I take the chair next to his, this one red velvet draped in cowhide. Fur scratches my neck when I lean back. I suppress a shudder.

“Thanks for finding time to meet,” I say. “I’ve read through the depositions and wanted to follow up on a few things before we see Father Aubry.”

“You’ve read all of them?” Stedsan raises his eyebrows. “You do move quickly. All right, go ahead.”

He leans back, getting comfortable. I open my notebook to a random page. People have an easier time talking if you’re not looking at them.

“I want to talk about the children who died.”

The words take flight, an insect crawling out of my mouth and fluttering across the room.

“There’s a boy who was electrocuted on a fence—” I start, but Stedsan interrupts.

“That one was quite sad, but just bad luck. He’d found an army helmet, one of those old metal ones, and the fence was poorly marked.These days you could probably make a case for neglect or sue someone, but back then…” He shrugs.

“Some of these incidents have conflicting accounts, though. There’s a girl who went out a window—”

“Melissa Graves.”

“What?”

“Her name was Melissa Graves, but the children called her Missy, I believe. She’s buried in the graveyard behind Coram House. East section with some of the other children.”

He ticks off the death matter-of-factly. I should find it encouraging that his memory of the case is so good. But instead I feel on the defensive—like he’s preempting every question to show me how little I know.

“And Missy’s cause of death?”

Stedsan shrugs again. “Complications due to flu. About six months after the incident you’re referring to—with the window. Hard to believe children still died of the flu in the sixties but the medical care here wasn’t exactly state of the art.” He laughs.

I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t.Case closed.

“And how can you be sure that the records weren’t falsified?”

He makes a visible effort at patience. “We can’t be sure, not really. But to have the local doctor faking death records for a child?” He shakes his head. “It’s unlikely. And besides, both Sister Cecile and Sarah Dale gave similar accounts—the girl was sent out onto the ledge to clean and then came back in.”

“So Missy Graves was sent outside, onto the outer windowsill, to wash the windows—that part is true.”

“Yes, but she came back in—the important part.”

But I’m not so sure. The windows were two stories up. If Sister Cecile sent a child out there with nothing but a couple of kids holding on to her ankles for protection, it establishes a pattern of behavior. My heart thuds—like I’m about to ask about something off-limits.

“What about Tommy, the boy who drowned?”

Stedsan sighs. “I wondered if it might be that.” He steeples his hands together beneath his chin, as if in prayer.

“Let it go. I looked into all this decades ago. There’s no record of any of it. Not his death, not even a last name. Concentrate on the material you have.”

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