Girl One(109)

“You thought the eight of us were just expendable,” Isabelle said.

“Of course not. I merely trusted that you could fend for yourselves.”

“What about the Grassis?” Isabelle asked.

Until now, Bellanger had been studiedly casual, but now I watched as he took some time to compose himself. “So you think you’ve figured some things out,” he said. “But I can promise you don’t understand the full truth.”

Isabelle persisted. “You let them die, and you used their deaths to hide away.”

“Let them die? Angela tried to kill me,” he said. “You want to know what happened that night? Angela came into my lab uninvited. She drew a gun on me in front of Fiona. She said she’d spend the rest of her life in prison to play out some revenge fantasy.”

“Revenge for what?” asked Cate. She squeezed my hand, a signal. I knew that she was thinking of Lily-Anne. Bellanger hadn’t mentioned her yet. She was a clear absence in this story.

“For what? For everything. For paranoid fantasies. Angela had always been an erratic woman. Fiona was getting agitated,” Bellanger said. “I tried to warn Angela. I was the only one who noticed when the fire began on the hem of her dress. One little flame. Tiny enough to pinch out with my fingertips. But before I knew it, the fire had grown out of control. It was no normal fire. That little flame was ravenous, insatiable, inevitable. The heat was enough to blaze your skin away. When I looked back, Angela was already burning—Gina too. I couldn’t save the Grassis or the others, so I fled with Fiona.”

“You didn’t even warn us,” I said, struck by the impersonality of the others. “You didn’t warn my mother and me, or Isabelle, or Patricia.”

“Yet you survived,” Bellanger said. “And I found myself in a strange predicament. If I revealed myself to be alive, I might be accused of murder. If I told the truth about Fiona’s abilities, she’d be reviled as a monster. Fiona had to be my priority. I had to protect her. I had to nurture her unique abilities. And so I went to … a colleague of mine.”

Leland Henley, who doctored the autopsy reports, who lied repeatedly to cover up Bellanger’s obsessions.

“I took Fiona here, a place I knew nobody would search out. I was presumed dead. The media painted me as Icarus, flying too close to the sun. Down I came, in a blaze of fire and ignominy.” For a second his face transformed again, twisted subtly: amusement or regret.

The entire story was a lie. Bullshit. Bellanger had sold the land long before the fire. It was all premeditated. With effort, I made my face soft and receptive, the portrait of a good listener.

Bellanger lifted his voice. “I understand why you resent me, Josephine, but I didn’t ask for any of this. It’s all because of Fiona. You were always my little helper. More than any of the others, you were curious about what we’d accomplished at the Homestead. You grasped its importance, even as a little girl. You grasp its importance now.”

I caught Cate’s nervous glance in my peripheral vision. “I’m not sure I do,” I said. “You don’t know what it’s been like for us. Out there without you.”

“But Fiona is different,” Bellanger said. “She needs me more. Each of you was a miracle, of course, but…” Words seemed to fail him for a moment. “With Fiona’s conception, I achieved perfection. I couldn’t bear to see that success overshadowed and complicated by all the pettiness that had grown at the Homestead. I owed it to her and to the world to rescue her from that.”

“From our mothers, you mean,” Cate said, her voice a low burn. “You were happy to use their bodies, but not so happy that they stuck around afterwards. Is that it?”

I thought he’d be furious, but he didn’t even look at Cate. He folded his hands together under his chin, still addressing me. “Fiona does best with individual instruction. The women—your mothers—they meant well. But Fiona could never have truly thrived under their care, not with her unique needs. I know that now, and I assume they’d recognize it too.”

“And all these people?” I asked. “Your isolation hasn’t exactly lasted, Dr. Bellanger.”

“A light like hers can’t be hidden,” Bellanger said. “Over the years, we’ve drawn followers. People who crave something deeper in their lives. Many of the women are a lot like your mothers, seeking a certain optimism. Our community has become an oasis of sorts. Look at the three of you,” he said. “Pilgrims yourselves. You understand the allure of a place like this.”

“We’re here for my mother,” I said. “You still haven’t told me why she’s here.”

“I blame Freshwater,” Bellanger said, and his voice grew heavier, touched with a sigh. He pressed two fingers into his right temple. “That was our first experiment in venturing beyond the limits of this place—to pay respects to the Grassis. Leaving the home we’ve created here was hard on Fiona. She lashed out. Unfamiliar environments take a toll on her. The world’s exactly the way I remember it, hungry to record any irregularity. Pass it around and stare at it. But they’ve gotten quicker. I wasn’t prepared.”

Bellanger sounded old. He’d been hiding for seventeen years. He’d missed out on personal computers, VCR players, camcorders, MTV. He probably didn’t know about Kurt Cobain’s death, or who he even was. The Berlin Wall toppling. The Challenger exploding. Joseph Bellanger had once been a household name, synonymous with progress and change, the bright knife’s blade of the future. But now he was outpaced. I felt a strange twist of guilt at seeing him diminished like this, as if I were somehow responsible.