Maria remained at the boarding school for two months, and during that time Miss Waldron did not run away. She enjoyed hearing about the countries Maria had traveled to and what Fredo had done underneath the dining room table. Maria was scheming to get transferred to a boarding school near her stepbrother’s in London. No more New England, she said with distaste, and was true to her word. Soon after, she was standing in the front hall with her maid and her luggage and her hair braided neatly, waiting for the driver.

A week later Miss Waldron convinced a team of Navy cadets to infiltrate the boarding school and smuggle her out. She returned one month later (escorted by the private detectives) and brought back stories of submarines and speakeasies, coral reefs and coconuts, a Bessie Smith record, a long black cigarette holder, a pair of high heels, and a venereal disease.

Miss Waldron had seen her father only three times since he dropped her off at the boarding school in his sports car—twice for Christmas and once for a Memorial Day picnic. When he heard what she was being treated for, he arrived at the hospital in a storm—overcoat flapping, goggles strapped to his head, leather gloves in hand.

She could hear him coming down the hall toward her room. This was something the private detectives did not photograph—the girl crouched in the corner in her hospital gown, her legs bare, her hands at the back of her neck, her eyes darting from the window to the door as it slammed open.

He called her a filthy animal. Then he crossed the floor. Then he kicked her. Then he left.

Miss Waldron curled around the ache in her stomach and listened to her father’s footsteps. She’d had a fever for weeks. The sweat covered her body in a thick paste. It hurt so much to go to the bathroom that she had stopped eating and drinking. Her chubby frame had been peeled down so that you could see the bones in her fingers, feel how tight the skin was around her wrists, notice the paleness of her feet. Her skin was burning, and in certain spots it was as if large, razor-sharp needles were being pressed slowly into her flesh. She wished that she would die. Instead, she was sent to England.

At finishing school she was put under the direct supervision of an ancient but merciless woman named Madame Yuplait. Madame Yuplait had once been a courtesan. She was skilled with a whip and for a time became quite famous for snapping buttons off the waistcoats of men at parties. When she lost her looks, she changed her name, moved to London, opened Madame Yuplait’s Finishing School for Young Ladies, and quickly developed a reputation for turning troubled girls into debutantes.