Girl One(121)

“What did I take from her?” my mother asked.

Bellanger laughed, swift and pitying. I watched Fiona gauging his reaction, molding her heart to his. “Don’t downplay your own hand in destroying the Homestead. You girls were more interested in fighting each other than in letting your vision unfold. Women will always blame their troubles on men. You can’t take responsibility for the ways you hate each other too. Maybe if you hadn’t fostered such bitterness between your so-called sisters, Josephine could have grown up with the Homestead instead of merely reading about it. We could’ve been together.”

“Together,” my mother repeated. “As long as we did exactly what you wanted, handed all nine Girls over to you eventually—”

“Even before the fire, you girls were scattering far and wide. You’ve avoided each other for years. What’s kept you from your little utopia? All these years that I’ve been gone.”

My mother was silent. The triumph in his voice stung me too. He was right. I’d only been thinking about Dr. Joseph Bellanger when I set out to unlock parthenogenesis; I’d forgotten the other women involved. I’d been blind to my own arrogance, or—worse—I’d looked right at it and mistaken it for virtue. Now it seemed impossible I could’ve even lasted these past seventeen years without knowing the other Girls. But what mattered was what we did now.

“We’re leaving,” I said, “and Fiona’s coming with us.”

Fiona’s eyes flickered to me, a flash of genuine surprise. I understood just how completely we’d abandoned her. We’d left her to become exactly what I’d thought I’d wanted to be: Bellanger’s favorite. Powerful and stunted, all at once. Everything about Fiona showed his fingerprints. She was light trapped inside a bulb, illuminating only him.

“What can you possibly offer Fiona?” Bellanger said, contemptuous. “What can you offer the child she’s carrying?”

I made a decision that barely felt like a choice, the words pushing irresistibly into the room. “I can offer her the truth. I can tell Fiona what happened when her mother was pregnant a second time.” I looked right at Fiona, those startled and startling eyes. “I can tell her about the tenth Girl. Your little sister, Fiona. Before she died, your mother conceived alone without any help from Bellanger.”

He laughed softly, as if his derision alone could erase my words. My mother was staring at me, her realization spreading, tugging heartbreak in its wake. I saw Margaret Morrow in another life, a woman who’d walked away knowing that the Homestead had created the future she’d wanted so deeply: a woman conceiving on her own. The two of them, Lily-Anne and her incipient daughter, a perfect and closed system.

“Joseph?” my mother asked. “Is this true?”

“Of course not. You were there, Margaret. Don’t you think you’d remember a tenth pregnancy?”

“No, no, no. I was there, but … things were strange. Lily-Anne was sick. Those last few months, she was so sick we never saw her. I thought it was her heart. I never imagined. I wish we’d known. I wish she’d trusted us.”

“Lily-Anne died in childbirth,” I said. “Bellanger and his friend worked together to hide the evidence, and they threatened Barbara—the only woman who knew—into silence. You couldn’t have known. Bellanger made sure of that.”

“This is ridiculous,” Bellanger said. The simple authority in his voice nearly shook my conviction; I steadied myself. “Nothing has changed. It’s still impossible for women to self-conceive. Where are all the miraculous births now, if it’s really so simple? I’m disappointed to see that you’re no better than the women who came before you, Josephine. Stubbornly fixated on cheap superstitions.” His voice was dry with contempt.

“You can’t re-create the original experiment,” I shot back. “You’ve tried with other women and you can’t do it. So you want to use our bodies now—mine and Cate’s and Isabelle’s. We’re finally worth your time again.”

The smoke was thicker now, creeping in under the door. The shouts had thinned out, but the ones left were louder and more desperate. The fire must be spreading, hopping from building to building. I fiercely prayed that Cate and Isabelle had found their way to safety already.

Bellanger began to speak, but I lifted my voice over his. “Fiona,” I said to her. “This pregnancy—it’s yours, isn’t it? Only yours. Not Bellanger’s at all. You wanted to make your father proud, and you couldn’t watch him try and fail. But this pregnancy has nothing to do with him. You did this alone, like your mother.”

Fiona’s eyes on mine were a steady flame. She gave no sign of agreeing or denying. It wasn’t until I looked at Bellanger that I realized what I’d done. The ugliness there transformed his entire face. He looked bruised, exposed, and I knew now that he’d worried about this too. Lily-Anne’s influence had extended past her death. He knew what abilities Fiona held inside, and he would always wonder, looking at her pregnancy, whether it was really his. That kind of doubt could drive a man mad.

“We have to go,” my mother said, low in my ear. “Please. Josie. I won’t lose you.”

“I can’t leave until Fiona comes with us,” I said, but her face was immovable. I needed time. I was undoing a lifetime of cruelty and tenderness in a few sentences. I thought of the zoo animals released back into the wild, unable to survive in the unpredictability of the world.