viiic’s Reviews > The Broken Girls > Status Update

[SPOILER] “There’s been—a discovery,” he said. “I don’t— They’ve found something. It seems to be a body. In the well.” Oh fuck

[CW : Allusion to suicide] “She no longer pictured the face of her uncle, Van, her father’s brother … Uncle Van, who had fought on the beaches of Normandy and now could not sleep or work … She did not think about how she had opened the door to the garage one day and found Uncle Van sitting there, alone, hunched over in his chair, how she had seen—” Oh fuck, did he kill himself? And she found him?

“why restore Idlewild Hall now? … Margaret Eden can’t be financing everything by herself. If she has investors, who are they? How do they expect to make money?” …
“You think there’s something else going on.”
“I think that the place is a money pit. Maybe she’s batty, or she’s being taken advantage of. Don’t you at least find it weird?” It *is* very weird

“What did she say?”
… “‘Hold still,’” she said.”
… “Why did she say that to you?”
… Katie shrugged hard, the muscles wrenching in her shoulders … “I don’t know,” she snapped, her voice growing sharp before she tempered it. “It was just a voice I heard. That’s all I know.”
A lie, a lie. But how could some old ghost even know?
Hold still. She couldn’t talk about that. Not to anyone. Not yet.” Damn, what happened?

“She didn’t much like to think about how the murder had torn her family apart … It was easier to … obsess over how Christopher had dumped her sister’s body, something that had never been fully understood, since no footprints had been found in the field or the woods, no tire tracks” So there’s an element of paranormal in there, which makes sense with the reference she made to “monsters” in the prologue

“Her sister, age twenty, had been strangled and dumped in the middle of the former sports field on the abandoned grounds of Idlewild Hall in 1994 … Her boyfriend, Tim Christopher, … claimed he was innocent” Okay, damn
First thing I’m thinking: she’s right, it wasn’t him (or there wouldn’t be a book, and also there’s this thing about monsters that makes me think it’s about the school (not hospital) she was put in

“Tim Christopher was charged,” he said. “He was tried and convicted of Deb’s murder. He’s spent the past twenty years in a maximum-security prison. And, Fee, you’re still out there on Old Barrons Road at three o’clock in the morning.”
… “I need to know how he did it” I have to say: I get it. But I’m not sure it’s very healthy

“Of course you think they covered everything,” she said to Jamie, her voice coming out sharper than she intended. “You’re a cop. You have to believe it. In your world, a girl gets murdered, and Vermont’s greatest minds come together to solve the case and put the bad guys away.” Ouch

“On the other end of the line, she heard Jamie breathe. They’d been together for a year now … and he knew better than to say the usual empty words. It doesn’t matter. This won’t bring her back. He’s already in prison. It was twenty years ago; you need to move on.” Wait, so he’s in prison? What’s the problem, then? Is he not in prison for her sister’s murder?

“I started wondering how much traffic there is on Old Barrons Road in the middle of the night. … The cops always said it wasn’t possible that Tim Christopher could have left his car here for so long, unseen. But they never really tested that …”
… “This isn’t healthy … I know you think about your sister a lot. … But actually going to Idlewild—that’s different” So her sister was killed, but things aren’t adding up?