Girl One(114)

“I want to request that you stay here,” Fiona said. “Father confided in me about your confrontation yesterday. He thought I’d better be able to explain things from the feminine perspective.”

“The feminine perspective,” I said. “Okay.”

“We weren’t born to be ordinary,” Fiona said. “I know you aren’t like me, but you are powerful in your own way. Father is the only one who truly understands what we’re capable of. He knew us inside and outside before we were even born. He was the very first to imagine us.”

“That’s not true. Our mothers imagined us before Bellanger ever got around to it.” But Fiona just kept smiling, as if she knew something I didn’t. “Doesn’t Bellanger ever talk about your mother?” I pressed. “Aren’t you curious about her? Lily-Anne. Because I remember her.”

“That was a very long time ago,” Fiona said, but there was the tiniest hesitation when she said it, a door left cracked open.

“Your mother would’ve wanted to know all about you,” I said. “She was so curious. And she was brave. She wanted you for a long time before you arrived. When I was little, she’d braid my hair and play hopscotch with me, and she’d tell me how much she wanted a daughter of her own. The protesters scared most of our mothers, but not Lily-Anne. She’d scream right back at them if they got too loud. She’d have done anything to protect you.”

Fiona’s mouth twitched slightly. She blinked. “Father thought highly of her.”

“Bellanger always did think highly of our mothers.”

I wasn’t sure if Fiona was able to detect the sarcasm. Maybe she hadn’t learned it yet. But she looked at me sidelong. “Why do you take so much issue with Father?” Then she laughed, half to herself. “Well. Besides the obvious reason.”

“What’s that?”

“That you’re jealous of me.” A hot pinch tucked in there. “How close I am to him. You were Girl One for so long, the only one who mattered. Father warned me that this might happen.”

I remembered blithely calling Bellanger my brainfather in that Rolling Stone interview, how easy that devotion had felt, and I wanted to laugh and cry. “You’re right that this is a—a big change for me,” I said. “For most of my life, Bellanger’s just been old letters, and now he’s—”

“Oh yes, those letters he sent you. I’ve heard all about those.” Fiona’s contempt took on an eagerness, like this was a point she’d wanted to make to me for years. “But you should know, those aren’t anything special. He wrote to everyone. He wrote to the Grassis too.”

“The Grassis?” I feigned disinterest. “What did he want to say to them?”

“The same trivial niceties he wrote to you, I’m sure. That’s why we were in Freshwater, actually. Looking for the letter. He couldn’t find it.”

I swallowed. The sunlight pressed into my eyes like a headache. Bellanger had been looking for something in Freshwater, then. Not to pay respects. What could he have written to Angela Grassi, or to her daughter Gina, that would worry him so many years later? A lifetime later. It wasn’t just trivial niceties.

I remembered what Ricky Peters had said. The way the woman with the gun that night—Angela, it must have been Angela—had claimed that her daughter was under Bellanger’s spell. What if he’d written something to Gina? Or threatened Angela that Gina would always be under his shadow, within his grasp?

Maybe … maybe the words in that letter had lured Angela out of the life she’d been building in Freshwater. It sounded as if she’d been happy in Texas, content with Gina, looking for new opportunities. Maybe she hadn’t returned to Vermont in a sudden rage; maybe she had been summoned.

“Fiona,” I said. “What do you remember about the night of the fire? Bellanger’s always told you that Angela Grassi returned that night to kill him, right?”

“She was hysterical.” Fiona’s mouth twitched, contemptuous. “She started the whole thing. If she hadn’t threatened Father, I wouldn’t have started the fire. We wouldn’t have had to go into hiding. All of this was her fault.”

Everything Fiona was saying had the eerie quality of Bellanger ventriloquizing through her. A bedtime story he’d fed her. Angela as jealous and grasping, destroying the Homestead even if she had to burn along with it.

“But what if Angela only came back to the Homestead because she felt like she had to?” I said carefully. “What if that letter was Bellanger making sure Angela and Gina would return?”

“Why on earth would he do that?” Impatient, dismissive. Fiona hadn’t moved her hand from mine, and it was starting to grate, that little nagging pressure pulling at me.

“It was a setup.” I had to walk slowly, speak slowly, not hurrying ahead with the train of my thoughts. “Bellanger already wanted to go into hiding. It was his plan. He destroyed the Homestead on purpose so that he could vanish more easily.” I lowered my voice. “He murdered Angela and Gina in cold blood, and he wanted you to think that you were to blame.”

Fiona didn’t react. She was so blank that I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me, my words just evaporating in the unbearable blaze of sunlight. I remembered Mathias with a sick sinking in my gut; when I glanced back, his expression was implacable. I’d gotten so caught up in the realization itself that I’d forgotten about his constant, quiet surveillance.