Girl One(5)

The last time she’d hidden anything inside the clock, I was in seventh grade, maybe eighth. I’d retrieved a letter. Urgent loops of handwriting. Like a love letter—I think about you all the time—but devolving into sudden fury—You can’t ignore me forever. The only signature a letter T. My mother had never dated, barely even had friends, so it must’ve come from one of our stalkers, those lonely strangers who loved us and hated us with the same unearned intimacy. Why had she kept it? Fascinated, I reread the letter again and again until my mother caught me one night, crouched in front of the disemboweled clock. She tore up the letter without a word, flushing the torn confetti down the toilet. Since then, she’d stopped hiding anything where I could find it. And I’d searched everywhere. Even pulled out a floorboard looking for secret crawl spaces.

My mother’s refusal to acknowledge our past had chafed between us for years. Our twin resentments, forever at odds. She hated my constant need to know-know-know. I hated that she couldn’t embrace the world-changing history that she’d—we’d—been part of. The letters from Bellanger were my only direct lifeline to the Homestead, and sometimes I wondered what I’d have done without them. With only my mother in my life, would I have forgotten that I was a scientific milestone in the flesh? My own memories were fading around the edges, a little fuzzier every time I handled them. I couldn’t even get a pure image of Bellanger’s face in my mind anymore. Just a vague sense of height and warmth, leaning over me.

I stared down at the clock now. Why not? Using the tip of the car key, I maneuvered the screws out of the flimsy plastic and then lifted the backing away. My heart jumped, that old thrill of illicit discovery. A smallish marble-cover composition notebook had been tucked next to the battery compartment. Bingo.

My hands shook as I flipped through the pages, tucking the Maglite under my chin. The pages were full of cutouts, clippings, tattered edges, and taped-down corners. Familiar headlines about Bellanger’s death, Fiona’s death, Lily-Anne’s death. Notes scattered in the margins. Some in pencil. Some in pen. One note seemed to be in crayon or smudged eyeliner. This wasn’t like my mother, whose fastidious handwriting had been passed down to me. For a moment I couldn’t make sense of anything. I was holding a scrapbook of the very things she’d forbidden me from exploring my entire life. Even in these circumstances, I couldn’t help feeling betrayed.

I paused at a page near the front. The edges were embroidered with notes. Numbers, the word REDBUD. My attention settled on the list at the center of the page.

Trish/Isabelle (VT)

Tonya/Catherine (AR?)

Angela/Gina (?)

Tami/Emily (KS)

Vera/Delilah (??)

Debbie/Bonnie (MN)

Barb/Helen (?)

Lily-Anne/Fiona (deceased)

I sat back on my heels, my mind whirring over the other Homesteaders, heart racing in my throat. My mother had been listing us, in our forever order, documenting our last known locations. Seeing the names in her handwriting was so intimate that it took my breath away.

This was the most attention I’d seen my mom give the other Homesteaders. Ever. She’d barely spoken their names when I was growing up. I’d tried to tease revelations out of her, traps I had to set ahead of time, catching her after a long weekend shift at the library and plying her with her favorite tea (orange pekoe). My mother would soak her legs in Epsom salts while I crouched on the other side of the shower curtain. If I played my cards right, the dim bathroom became a time capsule where my mother’s usual reservations didn’t apply.

What were they like, Mom?

Drowsy splashing. Who?

You know. The Mothers. The other ones.

Each grudging glimpse into our lives at the Homestead was precious. My mother’s memories were more detailed than mine, sharper and fuller. Tonya Bower’s love of fresh apples. Patricia Bishop’s habit of stealing cigarettes. Bellanger’s favorite cologne: Eau Sauvage. I’d mouthed those alien syllables at night until they were imprinted on my tongue.

Well. I’d come back home looking for a puzzle, some clues to my mother’s disappearance. I thought that if I could get the pieces back into place just right—click—she’d emerge safe and sound. I’d found a puzzle, all right. Not so much the names themselves, but the fact that my mother—Margaret Morrow—had been documenting the women she’d been avoiding for the past seventeen years. The scattered articles and chopped-up photos in my old bedroom hadn’t been the work of an intruder; it’d been my mother.

My pulse pounded in my ears, a surge of excitement, curiosity, fear.

That noise of the engine outside was still itching at me. Setting the notebook aside for a moment, I crept to the dark window. A car idled across the street. A maroon sedan. I couldn’t make out the interior from here. The taillights were dull blobs against the growing dusk, the license plate obscured. I tried to pinpoint exactly when I’d first noticed the sound. Five minutes ago? Maybe ten? Did someone know I was here?

Stupid—stupid and reckless. I hadn’t told most of my professors and classmates why I was leaving or where I was going, figuring I’d be back in Chicago before they had time to wonder. But the inescapable reality of the house had me spooked. My mother was gone: really and truly gone, her absence telegraphed from every corner. Her favorite armchair reduced down to the stark lines of the frame, padded with a nest of blackened upholstery. The house was a strange, abandoned wreck. Something had been going on for a long time before this fire brought it all bursting to the surface. That car outside: Were they looking for my mother? For me? Whoever was after Mother One could be after Girl One too. We were a matching set, whether we liked it or not.