Girl One(108)

“Today, we have the gift of unexpected guests,” Bellanger called to the room, not letting me go. “I am sure you all recognize these three Girls. They may not be fashioned from the same cloth as our Fiona, but they are the ones who preceded her. The ones who made Fiona possible. With these Girls returned to us, our horizons have expanded yet again. It’s a true gift. The very best of omens.”

Something was wrong here. He was surprised, but it wasn’t the pure shock wave of seeing three women from his past walk into the room. Bellanger had known we were coming.

I stood there in the candlelight, upended again. The past few weeks, I’d been brimming with rage and frustration that I’d never have a chance to express. I’d felt cheated. But now, staring him right in the eyes, I didn’t know where to begin. Until I did.

“I’m here,” I said, “for my mother.”

He leaned in close, his breath hot against my ear. He whispered, “I know.”





47

Bellanger’s office felt disorienting. Timeless. Like it could have been early morning, or the middle of the night, or June of 1977—everything held in suspension all this time. No windows, the single halo of yellow lamplight in one corner. Overflowing bookshelves, tables with papers, notebooks scattered widely, some cracked on their spines. If everything else on this desert compound felt functional and impersonal, this space was all Bellanger. I was surprised to see my own adult hands folded in my lap, pressed between my thighs to stop the shake. I felt myself turning back into a six-year-old kid, moony-eyed and hungry for love.

We’d been ushered here, still dusty and tired from the road. Bellanger sat behind his desk with his hands clasped. “My first three daughters.” He nodded at each of us in turn. The light from the lamp caught the sides of his face. “Do you know, I remember each of your births? All these years and I can still recall the distinct sound of each of your cries, nine times in a row. Each one a clarion cry. The very world changing.”

Cate was brisk and firm, speaking before his last syllable had faded. “We need to see Margaret Morrow.”

Bellanger leaned back, a glimmer of surprise, or displeasure, or both. “Of course you’ll see your mother, Josephine,” he said, addressing me as if I were the one who’d spoken. “Of course. You’ll have to forgive us if we aren’t exactly prepared for company at this moment.”

“What is this place?” I asked, softening my question, making sure he had a choice in responding. I was careful not to overplay my hand.

“This? This is home.”

The way he said it, not thinking of the home he’d let burn to the ground. That anger churned in me, so thick I could feel it licking at my throat. “But why are you here, Dr. Bellanger?” I asked, and let the question hold all the implications of that. Why was he here? Why was he alive? Why? “We thought you were dead. We thought Fiona was dead. And you just let us. You never reached out, all this time? You never wondered about us?”

Bellanger examined me, his eyes steady and probing. Having him right in front of me made me feel like everything else was an illusion. Maybe this strange desert outpost would vanish if I traced my finger along the right seam of it.

“Of course I wondered about you.” He sounded almost hurt. “I’ve followed your paths with great interest. I know all about your lives.” He was looking directly at me as he said it, and I realized that Bellanger knew. When I’d appeared on TV, bubbling over with my plans to make him proud, he’d been listening.

“You have to understand,” he went on. “In 1977, I watched my miracle fall apart around me. The pressure placed on me was ugly. I’d achieved the impossible nine times in a row, but the world wanted another miracle, bigger and better and bolder. Something they could hold in their hands. They wanted to take what I’d done and package it into a pill, put it on the shelves of drugstores like—like common aspirin. First they ignored me, then they mocked me, and finally they tried to stop me. But when I succeeded, what did they want? They wanted it for themselves. I was this close to handing over my life’s work so that my colleagues could play God without earning it.”

Bellanger had said similar things in his letters to me. This attitude that I’d always mistaken for confidence, for a maverick brilliance, now sounded petty. I’d always pictured his work as tragically interrupted, but I knew the truth: He’d chosen Fiona over her sisters, over her future sisters. Over everything.

“When I saw Fiona—when I saw that little girl, wielding those powers—I knew what I’d truly accomplished. It may have taken eight attempts before her, but I did it. There she was. A miracle.” Bellanger had grown more animated as he spoke about Fiona, gesturing, face flushed, and he rose to his feet briefly, as if to underscore the magnitude of what he was telling us. “I watched Fiona push a glass off the table without using her hands—gravity itself defied by this tiny girl—I saw her slam doors and start fires without moving a muscle. The entire natural world was bowing down to this scrap of a child. And all I wanted was to protect this miracle at any cost.”

“What about the rest of us? You never saw the rest of us as miracles?” I asked it partially to test him, but there was a stubborn hurt behind the words. Bellanger looked at me with a faint surprise, as if he’d never seen it from this angle.