The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Genres: Coming of Age; Women's Fiction; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

Sage Winters always knew her sister was a little different even though they were identical twins.
They loved the same things and shared a deep understanding, but Rosemary—awake to every emotion, easily moved to joy or tears—seemed to need more protection from the world. Six years after Rosemary's death from pneumonia, Sage, now sixteen, still misses her deeply. Their mother perished in a car crash, and Sage's stepfather, Alan, resents being burdened by a responsibility he never wanted. Yet despite living as near strangers in their Staten Island apartment, Sage is stunned to discover that Alan has kept a shocking secret: Rosemary didn't die. She was committed to Willowbrook State School and has lingered there until just a few days ago, when she went missing. Sage knows little about Willowbrook. It's always been a place shrouded by rumor and mystery.

Release date: August 30, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

People still search the woods for the remains of lost children.

Sixteen-year-old Sage Winters picked up the bus tokens with shaking fingers and stepped away from the station window, her friends’ haunting words playing over and over in her mind like a creepy childhood rhyme. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard the warning—everyone who lived on Staten Island understood the need to keep their eyes on the ground when they entered the woods—but the more she thought about Heather and Dawn repeating those words the previous night, the angrier she grew. Why would they say something so awful instead of trying to comfort her? Why would they dredge up old rumors about Satanic rituals being held below the abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium instead of offering to help her find out what had happened to Rosemary? Sure, they’d been drinking, and deep down they were probably scared too, but this was serious. Her twin sister was missing. It didn’t mean she was dead. It didn’t mean that the urban legend they’d grown up hearing was true. “Cropsey” was nothing more than a scary story parents told their children to frighten them into behaving and staying close to home. And Rosemary was a patient at Willowbrook State School—she wasn’t out wandering the streets, where a homicidal madman could pick her up. Doctors and nurses and teachers were taking care of her, making sure she was being properly fed, protected, kept clean, and taught basic skills. At least that’s what Sage’s stepfather, Alan, had told her last night, when he finally admitted Rosemary was alive.

Shivering at the memory of learning the truth about her twin, Sage shoved the bus tokens into her jacket pocket, then dug in her purse for her pack of Kools. She needed a cigarette so bad she could taste it. And a Pepsi too, but the damn soda machine was out of order. On top of everything else, she was totally hung over. Her head was pounding, her mouth tasted like sandpaper, and her thoughts jumbled together in a thick haze. Feeling this shitty made her even more anxious, but she had no one to blame but herself. She must have been an idiot to think drinking six amaretto sours and ten shots of peppermint schnapps was the best way to deal with the shock of finding out Rosemary had been committed to a mental institution.

Still rummaging through her purse for her cigarettes, she crossed the grimy waiting area, hurrying past the rows of blue plastic chairs as she made her way toward the exit. Considering the weather, it probably would have been a better idea to stay inside the station to smoke, but the place smelled like a urinal, and she didn’t want to miss the bus to Willowbrook. The sooner she got on it, the less chance she’d have to change her mind.

But something kept getting stuck under her mood ring, hindering her search through her purse. She stopped. Had she forgotten to put her fake ID back in her wallet after leaving the bar last night? When she pulled her hand out and saw what it was, she swore under her breath. One corner of an empty condom wrapper had caught beneath the ring’s stone, and now it hung from her hand like a banner. She pulled the wrapper free, went over to trash bin, and chucked it in the garbage. Still cursing, she dug the rest of the six-pack out of her purse and threw them away too, not caring who saw. One thing was for sure: Her next boyfriend would be man enough to buy his own damn condoms. Thinking about Noah, tears burned her eyes. If she hadn’t caught him making out with that bitch Yvette the other day, he could have gone to Willowbrook with her. Instead, he was probably still in bed, enjoying the final days of Christmas vacation and dreaming about seeing her later. Well, he was in for a surprise. She’d slipped a letter under his door, telling him never to call her again. Because if there was one thing she wouldn’t tolerate, it was a cheating boyfriend. It didn’t matter that he and Yvette had “only” been kissing—cheating was cheating. And she’d vowed a long time ago that she’d never waste a minute of her life with someone like her late mother, who was always unfaithful to her father, no matter how heartbroken she was.

Thinking about her mother, a familiar resentment tightened her jaw. She used to believe her parents were so crazy in love that no one and nothing else mattered. In high school her father had been the star player on the basketball team, and her mother the head cheerleader; they were married right after graduation. It was supposed to be forever. Sage and Rosemary had thought it would be forever too—until the first time they saw their parents fight. The first time their mother threw a martini glass at him. The first time she told him to get out. And the last.

Rosemary never understood why their parents fought all the time—but it had changed her, and not for the better. Sage, on the other hand, knew they had problems but was powerless to fix them, so she tried to ignore their bickering. In the beginning, when she first realized her mother drank every day, she thought her father was having an affair and she’d hated him for it. But then she learned the truth.

The cheaters are the ones who scream and yell, the ones who try to place blame on the other person. As if it were her father’s fault that her mother lied about working late so she could have sex with her boss. As if he were the one who had destroyed her boss’s marriage along with her own. No matter what Sage’s father did or how hard he tried, he was never good enough for their mother. He didn’t love her enough. He didn’t kiss her ass enough. He didn’t do anything enough. Except he was the one who brought her coffee in bed every morning and cooked dinner every night. He was the one who took Sage and Rosemary to preschool and made sure they had clean clothes. He was the one who decorated the house and bought the biggest tree he could find every year because Christmas was their mother’s favorite holiday. No one had ever cared about Sage’s mother as much as he did. And she’d never had a reason not to trust him.

Sage had never had a reason to distrust Noah either. A lot of girls hung around hoping to get his attention, but he never gave any of them a second look. Heather and Dawn always asked her if she trusted him, but Sage knew how much he loved her—or at least she’d thought she did. She was used to seeing the other guys partying with different girls, the whiskey and beer flowing, the joints being passed around. But Noah was always with her, laughing at his friends’ antics. She never thought he would cheat. The whole year they’d been together, there had never been a note stuffed in his locker, a lipstick stain on his neck, a rumor that he’d even looked at someone else. Until now.

She cursed him under her breath again, then blinked back her tears, refusing to cry over a boy. She had more important things to worry about. Pushing the image of Noah from her mind, she trudged toward the exit. He wasn’t worth another thought. At least that’s what her head said. Heather and Dawn weren’t worth a second thought either. At first she’d felt bad about walking out on them last night, leaving them in the bar without paying her tab, but now she was glad she’d left. Her grief over losing her sister six years ago—the horrible, heavy heartache she could still feel to this day—was not something to joke about. They knew Rosemary’s death was the dividing point of her life. The before and after. It wasn’t a hoax or a plea for attention.

To this day, Dawn and Heather still picked on her about the fact that she hated Ouija boards and was so scared of needles that she’d passed out when they’d tried to pierce her ears using a sewing needle and a chunk of ice, so it should have been no surprise that they’d bring up the rumor of Cropsey and the horrible crimes he’d committed when she told them Rosemary was missing. And even that would have been okay, except they wouldn’t quit talking about him even after she begged them to stop.

Now, as she neared the double doors of the bus station, she slowed. Help wanted ads, business cards, and what seemed like a hundred missing-kid flyers covered a bulletin board next to the door—row after row of innocent, smiling faces lined up like faded yearbook photos. She’d always hated those flyers: the word MISSING in all caps knocking you between the eyes, the grainy photos taken on happier days before the kids were abducted, when everyone was still blissfully unaware that they’d be stolen from their families someday. The flyers were plastered all over Staten Island, inside the grocery stores and post offices, outside the bowling alleys and movie theaters, on the mailboxes and telephone poles. Something cold and hard tightened in her chest. Would her twin sister’s face be on one of those damn flyers too? And where were all those poor, innocent kids? What horrible things had they endured? Were they dead? Still suffering? Crying and terrified, wondering why their parents, the people who’d promised to love and protect them forever, hadn’t saved them yet? She couldn’t imagine a worse fate.

Everyone said it was no surprise that so many kids went missing on Staten Island. After all, it was New York City’s dumping ground; it’d be easy for someone like Cropsey to hide the bodies there. The “dumping,” as they called it, had started back in the 1800s, when the city abandoned people with contagious diseases on the island—thousands of poor souls with yellow fever, typhus, cholera, and smallpox. Later, the city dumped tuberculosis patients at the Seaview Hospital; the destitute, blind, deaf, crippled, and senile at the Farm Colony; and the mentally retarded at Willowbrook State School. The mob dumped bodies in the forests and wetlands. The city dumped tons of garbage at Fresh Kills, which had once been a tidal marsh full of plants and frogs and fish, but now teemed with rats and feral dogs. Maybe the cops should look there for the missing kids.

Just then a woman in a plaid coat came into the station, bringing with her a blast of cold air that swept through the waiting area and stirred the “MISSING” flyers like the hands of ghosts. The woman hurried into the room, bumped into Sage’s shoulder, and, without a word of apology, kept going.

Jarred back to the here and now, Sage turned away from the flyers, pushed the station door open with more force than necessary, and went outside into the colorless light of winter. She lit a cigarette and took a long drag. Heather and Dawn had been right about Noah. What if they were right about Cropsey too? What if he really had kidnapped Rosemary? She took another hard drag of her cigarette and started along the sidewalk, telling herself to stop being ridiculous. An escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand or a razor-sharp ax was not hunting children and dragging them back to the tunnels beneath the ruins of the old tuberculosis hospital to sacrifice them for Satan. It was just easier to believe in the boogeyman than to acknowledge that there were so many evil people in the world.

But if Alan was telling the truth about Rosemary being safe and cared for in Willowbrook for the past six years, why was she missing? How had she gotten away from the doctors and nurses who were supposed to be watching over her? Had Sage discovered Rosemary was still alive only to lose her all over again? She’d already lost enough people she loved.

Digging in her jacket pocket for the bus token, she clasped it tight in one hand and walked toward gate number eight, where the bus to Willowbrook was scheduled to arrive any minute. If she could just stop the hammering in her head and the roiling in her stomach, maybe she could think straight. The most important thing right now was figuring out the best way to find Rosemary. Not being mad at her friends and her boyfriend—make that ex-boyfriend—not feeling sorry for herself, not worrying about a mass murderer who didn’t exist. She needed her wits about her so she could focus on what to do when she got to Willowbrook. Hopefully the search party would let her help in some way. It might have been six years since she’d seen Rosemary, but she still knew her sister better than anyone. Silly things and vague ideas that no one else could see or understand terrified Rosemary; it was perfectly possible that someone or something at Willowbrook had frightened her and she’d gone into hiding. Maybe if she saw Sage looking for her or heard her calling her name, she’d come out. If she was hiding. All Sage knew for sure was that she would call her sister’s name until her voice grew hoarse, until those three syllables came out cracked in despair, until the last nook and cranny had been searched and the last rock overturned.

Near the corner of the station, a homeless man in a frayed army jacket sat huddled beneath a blanket on the trash-littered sidewalk, his long, greasy hair hanging from beneath a worn Yankees cap. A cardboard sign beside him read: DISABLED VIETNAM VET, PLEASE HELP. He looked up at Sage with sad brown eyes, like wet marbles sunken in his bearded face, and held up an empty soup can.

“Spare some coins for a wounded veteran?” he said.

She could hear Alan’s voice in her head, warning her not to give money to the homeless because they’d just use it to buy drugs and booze, especially those “baby killers” who’d fought in Vietnam. But she figured the homeless had to eat too, and it was unfair for all the veterans to be judged by the actions of a few, so she chose to imagine them using what she could spare to buy a McDonald’s cheeseburger or an apple pie. She put her cigarette in her mouth, searched her jacket pocket for the change from her bus tokens, and dropped it in the veteran’s can. It wasn’t much, but it would help.

“Bless you, miss,” he said, smiling to reveal a line of crooked teeth.

She nodded once and moved on, her shoulders hunched against the cold. Along with everything else, it had started to snow, and she was wearing a short suede jacket and a corduroy miniskirt with bare legs and wooden clogs. Not the wisest choice for today, but she hadn’t been thinking about the weather. Plus, she’d told Alan she was going to the mall with her friends. Of course, if he’d actually been paying attention, he would have realized she hadn’t put on makeup or showered. Everyone knew she wouldn’t be caught dead in public without clean hair and mascara. Everyone who cared, at least. She supposed she should have been thankful he hadn’t noticed—if he’d had any inkling of where she was going, he might have tried to stop her. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell. If it didn’t involve hunting, a bottle of whiskey, or watching sports, he didn’t care much about anything, especially not her. She could stay out all night as long as the cops didn’t bring her home. Alan only cared when her life inconvenienced him directly—like last October, when the school principal caught her smoking in the girls’ room and he had to leave his job at the Fresh Kills landfill to come get her. Then he’d screamed and yelled and threatened to lock her in her bedroom for a week—or a month, or however long it took her to learn her lesson. It was only a threat, of course. Following through would have taken too much effort.

Sometimes it was hard to tell which one of them was more miserable, her or Alan. She never understood what her mother saw in him. She’d dated other men after her boss had dumped her—men with good jobs and decent personalities—but maybe Alan had been the only one willing to marry someone with two kids. Except the joke was on him. The mother and her daughters had been a package deal, but now the prize was gone, and he was stuck with the part of the package he never wanted. Sage had learned a long time ago, even before her mother died in that drunken car crash, that she’d never please Alan. Running away had entered her mind so many times she’d lost count. But where would she go? No close relatives lived nearby. No friends had room to spare. Heather shared a bedroom with four sisters in a two-bedroom apartment; Dawn’s parents weren’t any better than Alan, drinking their money away and leaving Dawn and her little brother to fend for themselves. Not that any of them would have taken in another mouth to feed, anyway. Her maternal grandparents had passed away years ago, and her mother had stopped speaking to her only sister after that. And Sage had no idea whether her aunt was even alive, let alone where she lived. When she and Noah were still together, she might have been able to go to his house, except that his mom thought her little boy was a perfect angel who helped old ladies across the road and was saving himself for marriage. Hell would freeze over before she’d let his girlfriend sleep under the same roof. Make that ex-girlfriend.

Worst of all, she had no idea where her father was. No phone calls came at Christmas; no birthday cards arrived in the mail. It was so unlike him. Her mother had insisted he’d started over and didn’t want anything to do with his old family, but there’d been something about the way she said it that didn’t ring true. Maybe it was the venom in her voice, or how she continued to blame him for leaving. Maybe it was the way she’d treated her daughters like an inconvenience, while he always said they were a miracle. If Sage had to guess why they never heard from him anymore, she’d bet money it was because her mother had never given him their new address or phone number when they moved in with Alan. Still, it seemed like he could have found them if he’d wanted to badly enough.

She always wanted to ask her mother if she knew where he was or if she could call him, but had never been able to bring herself to do it. Because if there was any truth to what her mother said, being rejected for real would have been too hard to take. The first time had felt like an amputation; the second would have felt like death.

She often imagined him with another family and wondered if he had two more daughters, or maybe a son. Sometimes she wondered if she would run into another girl that looked just like her and Rosemary, making them triplets instead of twins. She wondered if they lived in a better neighborhood—if her father had gotten out of the low-rent section of town, away from the broken-down clusters of apartment buildings and two-bedroom houses where almost everyone she knew had a parent or uncle who worked at the Fresh Kills landfill.

Thinking about her broken family, she swallowed hard against the burning lump in her throat. No one knew where she was or what she was about to do. She felt like a feather that could be blown away by a gust of wind and no one would miss her.

Rosemary would have missed her, of course. If she hadn’t been sent away.

Rosemary. Her twin. She was alive. It was still hard to believe. What was it going to feel like when they saw each other again? Would it be awkward? Amazing? Would they wrap their arms around each other and fall down crying? Would Rosemary remember who she was? Would it be a wonderful reunion or another heartbreaking loss? A shiver of fear-spiked excitement snaked up Sage’s back.

Last night, when she’d learned that her twin sister was alive, still felt like a dream or something you’d see in a movie. And if she hadn’t been in the exact right place at the exact right time, she never would have learned the truth.

It was after ten o’clock when she’d decided to sneak out and meet her friends. She left her room and crept down the hallway of their fourth-floor apartment, picking her way around hunting rifles and plastic laundry baskets filled with rumpled clothes. She’d hated the place from the day they moved in. Maybe because it felt like her life after her father left—chaotic, messy, uncertain. The kitchen was small and cramped, with a harvest-gold stove and matching refrigerator that had seen better days. The closets smelled like mice and urine, and every noise made its way through the thin walls—someone’s hair dryer, women laughing, men yelling at a ballgame on TV, a muffled phone conversation filtering through the plaster along with the smell of someone else’s dinner. Any excuse to leave was a good one. Or maybe it was just Alan she hated.

Trying not to trip over the clutter, she tiptoed past the plastic-framed family portraits on the paneled walls—her and Rosemary in matching ruffled dresses; Alan with his arm around their mother when she still looked like Elizabeth Taylor, her black hair in a perfect bob, her silver-blue eyes happy and shining. Alan was smiling in the picture too, a normal-looking man with perfectly ordinary features, content and in love with his wife. But his eyes were cold and calm. Secret-hiding eyes. Sage knew that pictures, just like people, could be deceiving: one moment in time captured on film, everyone looking happy and perfect when the camera clicked—then, a minute later, bickering and stomping out of the room. Or yelling and screaming and hitting.

Before she got to the living room, she checked her jacket pocket again to make sure she still had the cash she’d taken out of Alan’s bedside table. Normally she only stole his drinking money to go out on weekends, but it was Christmas break and Heather and Dawn had asked her to go to a new disco over in Castleton Corners because Heather knew one of the bouncers, which meant they’d get in without being proofed. When she neared the archway to the living room, she stopped to listen, praying Alan was passed out drunk in front of the television again. As predicted, the TV was on, but to her dismay, Alan was talking to someone. It sounded like his hunting buddy, Larry. Edging closer, she peered around the doorframe.

Like the rest of the house, the living room was cluttered, the orange shag matted and worn, the furniture dingy with dust. Alan sat on the edge of the plaid recliner, shirtless and lifting dumbbells, his chest and face shining with sweat. Larry was on the couch, smoking and drinking a beer, his feet on the coffee table; he looked like he’d managed to shower that day, at least. A basketball game was on the TV, the volume turned down. Hoping they wouldn’t notice her, Sage got ready to slip past the doorway. Then Larry said something that made her pause.

“How long has she been missing?”

“Almost three days,” Alan said, his words punctuated by hard breaths as he lifted the dumbbells.

Sage frowned. Oh shit. Not another missing person.

“Why’d they wait so long to call you?” Larry said.

“Beats me. Maybe they thought they’d find her first. I should have changed our phone number so I wouldn’t have to deal with that bullshit.”

“Well, they sure took their sweet time lettin’ you know. Seems kinda strange if you ask me.”

“Nah, it’s not strange,” Alan said. “You got any idea how big that place is? The guy on the phone said they checked forty buildings. Forty. First they thought she wandered off and got lost, maybe ended up in the wrong ward, but now they’re searching the woods. He said Willowbrook has three hundred and fifty acres. Can you imagine how many retards they got there? It’s gonna take a while to search all that.”

Sage racked her brain, trying to think. Who did they know at Willowbrook? The only thing she knew about the place was that it was for mentally retarded and disabled kids, and everyone’s parents threatened to send their kids there when they were bad. Even the shop owners scared away troublesome teenagers by saying they’d called Willowbrook to come pick them up. Girls were warned that if they got pregnant too young, the baby would be born with an underdeveloped brain, taken away, and put in Willowbrook. But Sage had never heard of anyone who’d actually been sent there. And if someone were actually missing from Willowbrook—or any other place in the world—why would they call Alan, of all people? What could he do to help?

“Are the cops involved?” Larry said.

“Don’t think so,” Alan said. “Not yet anyway. The guy I talked to said he was one of those shrinks they got there. Guess they didn’t call the cops yet because they don’t want to cause a panic.”

“So why’d they call you?” Larry said. “What the hell are you supposed to do about it?”

“They had to call me,” Alan said. “I’m Rosemary’s legal guardian.”

Sage went rigid. What the hell was Alan talking about? Her sister was dead. She had died of pneumonia six years earlier— fifteen days before Christmas, two nights after they’d finished writing letters to Santa asking for presents they’d never get.

Sage would never forget the instant she heard the news. She’d never forget the way the air disappeared from her lungs, the explosion of agony in her chest, like someone had stabbed her with a white-hot knife. She’d never forget screaming until she ran out of breath. Losing her sister was the worst thing that ever happened to her. Only her father’s leaving had even come close. Her twin’s death had left a hole in her heart and soul that nothing else would ever fill.

So how could Rosemary be missing? Dead people don’t go missing. Her mother had already spread her ashes in the Hudson River; neighbors had brought pies and casseroles. It didn’t make sense.

She felt a shift somewhere deep within her, as if she were watching old home movies but didn’t recognize anyone; like all her memories were being torn away and replaced by something unknown. She felt it in her chest too—a thickening, a hardening, a heavy pressure that made it hard to breathe. She put a hand on her stomach, took a deep, gulping breath, and tried to pull herself together. Maybe she’d heard wrong. Maybe she’d misunderstood. Maybe the television had garbled Alan’s words.

No. She’d heard what she heard. Alan said Rosemary was at Willowbrook and she’d been missing for three days. It sounded impossible. Unbelievable. Insane.

She steeled herself, then entered the living room. When Alan saw her, he dropped the dumbbell and stood.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said. “Don’t you got school in the morning?”

“No,” she said. “We’re still on break.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know what you were saying about Rosemary.”

Alan shot Larry a nervous glance, then looked back at Sage, his mouth twisted in an ugly scowl. Acting oblivious, Larry took his feet off the coffee table and sat forward to crush out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, his eyes locked on the TV.

“Were you listening in on our conversation?” Alan said to Sage in a new voice, one she knew all too well. It was the voice of authority, of lectures, of pretending to impose rules.

“No,” she said.

“Don’t lie to me. Admit it. You were eavesdropping.”

“No, I was—”

“Sneaking out again?”

She shook her head.

“Then why the hell are you wearing your coat?”

Heat flushed her cheeks. She’d forgotten she was wearing her coat, forgotten all about leaving to meet her friends. “Tell me what you said about Rosemary,” she said.

“I didn’t say anything about her,” Alan said. “Maybe you need to get your hearing checked.” He let out a humorless chuckle and looked at Larry, hoping for a reaction. Larry ignored him and picked up his beer.

Anger flared beneath her rib cage. He was lying, like he always did—about paying the rent, about going to parent-teacher conferences, about where he was on the nights he didn’t come home. “Yes, you did,” she said. “I heard you. You said someone from Willowbrook called to tell you she was missing. And that they had to call you because you’re her legal guardian.”

An ugly sound came from Alan’s throat, like the grunt of a burrowing animal. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Well, you heard wrong,” he snarled. “Now get out of my hair. Go out drinking or whoring, or whatever you do with your slutty little friends. I don’t care what it is, just leave me alone.”

“No,” Sage said. “Rosemary is my sister. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

He gave her a blistering look. “You have a right?”

“Yes, you have to tell me.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll tell your boss you drink at work. I know what you put in your Thermos every morning.”

He moved closer, his face twisted in rage, his hands in fists. The rank odor of beer and sweat came with him, wafting over her like a pungent cloud. “Are you threatening me, little girl?”

“Tell me the truth or I’ll—”

Before the next word left her mouth, he slapped her hard across the face. Her head whipped to one side and her teeth rattled together. She put a hand to her cheek and glared at him, fighting back tears of shock and anger. It had been months since he’d hit her. The last time had been when he found her asleep on the couch with her jeans unzipped, reeking of beer. She’d come home, gone to the bathroom, and forgotten to zip them up again before laying down to watch TV. But he thought she’d been out doing something else, so he slapped her and called her a slut, then followed her down the hall and shoved her across her bedroom onto her bed. She’d been too shocked and drunk to do anything about it then, but she decided then and there that if he struck her again, she’d call the cops.

Larry put down his beer and stood. “I better get going,” he said.

“No,” Alan said, his voice hard. “I want you to witness this. That way she can’t say I lied about anything.” Larry sat back down, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. Alan went over to the recliner, pic