Girl One(31)

I was disappointed, but I pressed on. “Have you seen my mother, though? Maybe she showed up recently, asking about—about Fiona, and—” I glanced around, as if my mother might be hiding in the bougainvillea. “You know what, can I just speak to Tonya? Your mom? She’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“No.” Cate’s irises were a brown so deep it nearly obscured her pupils. She was makeupless, her eyebrows unplucked, unruly: they were like punctuation marks, deepening the intensity of her gaze. “You can’t talk to her. My mother’s dead.”



* * *



The Bowers’ house was low-ceilinged. Shady, cool, private, like a cave. Plants hung from the ceiling, the walls textured with drippy abstract paintings. A box of Kleenex sat on a side table, alongside a cup of something that gave off a fetid smell when I passed. “I have a friend with me,” I said, remembering.

Cate pulled aside one of the white curtains to gaze out, her eyes sharpening. “Is he bothering you? Is he dangerous?”

“No,” I said, surprised by her urgency. “He’s the one who gave me a ride here.”

“I didn’t ask if you owe him something. I asked if you feel safe with him.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do. Mostly. It’s—it’s a long story. My mother reached out to him before she went missing. He’s a reporter and she wanted his help. He got me out of a tough spot. I’m pretty sure Tom’s on our side.”

“Our side,” Cate said. “What makes you think you and me are on the same side?” Then she caught my gaze and laughed, throwing her head back. I was pleasantly disoriented. Both annoyed and intrigued.

Cate let Tom in. He smiled as he entered and she returned it with a chill, a warning look, the traces of her laugh scrubbed out of existence.

“It was ovarian cancer,” Cate said, sitting down on a sofa, tucking her long, bare feet beneath her. She patted the cushion next to her, commanding, and I sat. Tom, on his best behavior, chose a small armchair near the doorway, its upholstery dribbling loose. “My mother,” Cate went on. “A few years ago. I was barely eighteen. She didn’t want to live out her life surrounded by doctors and machines. So she died at home, and I managed to keep it quiet from the press. People around here, they can be protective of us when they need to be. We didn’t have to deal with reporters and camera crews.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

“She went out her own way,” Cate said, graciously overlooking my awkwardness. “I took a while to recover afterwards. I’d never been without her before, really. I basically slept all day and night for a few months and then I woke up one day and I was back. It helps that people around here need me. Not much time for self-pity.” She stretched. “Anyway. What’s all this about? Your mother’s missing?”

“Yeah. She is.” I leaned forward. Through the windows, the filtered murmur and twinkle of the wind chimes made its way inside. “Did my mother get in touch with you at all?”

“She hasn’t shown up in person. I don’t answer the phone much. If someone needs me, she finds me.” Cate gave a quick, sly smile, and I blushed without knowing why. “I would’ve answered if I’d known it was her, though. My mom always spoke highly of your mother. You were saying something about Fiona?” Before I could answer, Cate rose to her feet, lithe as a cat, firmly muscled. “Tea?”

“I’d love some, thank you,” Tom said.

“Orange pekoe okay?” Cate asked, her disapproval cracking just slightly.

“My mother loved that.” I remembered the distinctive grassy smell filling our home, trailing from the kitchen or the living room, wherever she’d brought her mug, the scent sweet and acerbic at once.

“All of our mothers did,” Cate said softly. “They loved it at the Homestead.” She moved into the kitchen, still visible through the narrow arch of a doorway. The clink and clatter of dishes, the hiss and rapid ticking of a gas burner. Through the doorway, a circlet of blue flames rose from the stovetop and I had to look away, my mind filling with the wreckage of my house, the ghostly veil of smoke clinging to our ruined belongings, my mother’s stark absence—

“My mother has apparently been asking about Fiona,” I called. “Both Emily and Bonnie seem to believe Fiona had powers. Telepathy?”

Cate came to the doorway, leaning against it, arms akimbo. She’d buttoned the shirt wrong, one tail sticking down too far. She widened her eyes, ricocheted a meaningful glance between me and Tom several times: “We’re talking about this in front of him?”

I glanced at Tom. He gave me a benign smile back. But I could see how his gaze had turned sharper and brighter, and I realized that he hadn’t known this particular detail yet. Only that Fiona was strange. I wondered how he’d take this. Would it just sound like nonsense, wild rumors?

“He knows more than you think,” I said. “My mother was talking to him.”

“I’m on your side,” Tom said quickly. “Scout’s honor.”

“So I hear.” Cate shrugged. “Well. It was telekinesis. Not telepathy.”

“You’ve heard about it?” Beneath my eagerness to know more, there was that jealousy again. Everyone else’s mother had been sharing secrets with their daughters.