Secrets in the Mist
by
Mark McGuire
CHAPTER 1: WHO’S GONNA TELL HER?
Who’s going to tell her?
That was the first thought I had as I stood over the crime scene. On the 13th of July, 1895—a blistering, airless day on the east side of Brockton—the body of Deirdre Payton was found. To many, she was the city’s darling, a crusader for justice. To others, she was a menace, a rabble-rouser disturbing the social order. She was a familiar face at City Hall, picketing, promoting women’s rights.
Deirdre had been missing for four days. Four days of panic for Jane. Four days of fading hope. I could imagine Deirdre’s voice echoing in Jane’s mind: “Help me, Mother. I need you. Where are you?” And now… someone had to tell her.
There’s a ripple effect with every sudden death. It stirs up tears, fury, and a crushing sense of helplessness, like being caught in a riptide.
I could imagine Jane reliving every conversation with her daughter. “Did I say something wrong last time?” “Why won’t you let me grow up? Be careful. I always am! I’m just saying, wearing something that revealing sends the wrong message.”
“No, it sends my message—that I have a right to exist in my body without apologizing for it.”
Jane believed misfortune was clinging to her like soot. She thought God was punishing her for her past. She’d barely managed to rise above those memories. And now this.
I pictured her in her rocking chair, hands twisting her rosary beads, whispering: “Heavenly Father, bring my daughter home safe.” But those prayers would go unanswered. There would be no wedding, no children, no more joy. Just grief. A permanent absence. Another weight on Jane’s fragile mind.
“Would this be her last sorrow? I didn’t know. Her parents had given up. Would she? Her past was drowning in death, sickness, hunger, violence. Now her future? I feared it might swallow her too. Still, I hoped. I had to. I’m an optimist. She’s not.”
Her new life in America, once a promised land, now felt like a lie. The promise was broken. That sacred mother-daughter bond shattered violently.
Jane needed connection—a sisterhood like the one she’d lost. Sometimes, she and Deirdre felt like strangers. Fr. Lary could reach her, but not yet. His world was spiritual. Mine was here now. He guided her past. I had to anchor her present.
Truth is, no spiritual or intellectual answer can ease this pain. Jane once described it to me like a small metal rake dragged across your scalp, scraping away happiness. I knew that pain. I’d felt it. Sometimes you can’t even move. Sometimes the greatest loss is what dies inside of you while you live.
The day of death never leaves you. It follows you, shadows you. Memories mold who we are. Some are like sunlit afternoons you long to revisit. Others we hide—cold, unwelcome visitors. We all have them. The ones that wake us at night, that interrupt our days. They stay. Jane had more than her share.
I worried. Her fragile confidence could shatter. I’d promised Tess I’d look out for her; but I couldn’t do it alone. Jane needed others. Women who had suffered, survived. Women who understood. And understanding starts with truth—even the painful kind. But the truth is rarely simple.
Why do people keep secrets? To hide weakness. Avoid pain. To escape shame. Sometimes, to avoid hurting someone they love. Other times, to protect themselves from punishment—or damnation.
Secrets don’t follow a code. They’re the locked drawers of our lives. They haunt, gnawing at the mind, poisoning joy. Some become prisons we convince ourselves are home. That’s where Jane lived. To survive, she built filters. Ways of blurring the sharp edges of memory, of softening the weight of what she couldn’t say out loud.
Her filters were faith and ritual. Her rosary. Reading glasses perched on her nose while she opened her Bible or a menu. She once said to me, “Sometimes it helps me forget famine. Sometimes it feels like a bully in my head that no one else sees.”
Some secrets cool and fade. Others grow white hot, consuming a person until they burst out, often at the worst moment. That’s what happened when the past collides with the present, tearing open old wounds we thought had long scarred over.
A feminist’s murder brought four women together. None of us could’ve predicted what confronting their own memories would awaken in them. At first, they were just surviving until the murder forced them to remember what they’d tried to forget.
It started with Jane. Her grief was raw; her memories were too loud to ignore. The others would follow, but not without a fight. Four women—Jane, Biddy, Arabella, and Charlotte—strangers but bound by secrets and sorrow. They came together not just to solve a murder—but to reclaim their lives. They didn’t set out to be heroines.
Each had something to lose if the truth came out—and even more to gain if it did. What began as a search for justice became a reckoning with the past. Together, they would unearth not just who killed Deirdre Payton—but why so many had stayed silent.
What they didn’t know was how close the truth had always been. Or how dangerous it would be to uncover.
When the message arrived just before noon, it carried more than urgency. It carried brutal finality. They’d found her. I grabbed my coat, my camera, and whatever resolve I had left.