Girl One(52)

The room felt too still after my outburst. Through her hair, Isabelle stared at me with her diluted blue eyes, uncertain, looking like she didn’t know whether to be scared of me or grateful.

Then she put her hand out, palm up, laying it on the table like an offering. Her fingers blossomed open, waiting. Patricia gave her daughter a small smile, the two of them communicating privately, as if Cate and I had vanished. She placed her own small hand in her daughter’s and they locked fingers, staring at each other, and I didn’t know whether what was happening was forgiveness or apology, accusation or challenge.

Patricia broke the gaze first. “If you’ll excuse me, Girls.” She rose, leaving the dining room without another glance, her posture very straight. Isabelle waited a few seconds, sitting there surrounded by the drying bloodstains, all the leftover proof of a wound that didn’t exist anymore. She stood and followed her mother out of the room, leaving Cate and me alone.





24

Tom still wasn’t back. I had no idea where he’d gone. Maybe he’d abandoned us to the Bishops, driving off as easily as he’d appeared on that Kansas freeway. It was late, shadows overtaking the inside of the house. Cate and I sat on the sofa in a single pool of lamplight. The isolation drew a tighter and tighter noose around us. The closest outpost, a forlorn convenience store, was miles back. I imagined the crunch of gravel as the maroon sedan crawled up to this defenseless house. Patricia hadn’t shed any light on who was following us. He was still a mystery, a ghost who could pop up any second.

Sensing my uneasiness, Cate took my hand. I thought of her hand on Isabelle’s arm, all her power concentrated in one spot. My skin warmed in response. A quick fluttering deep in my belly. The lizard necklace nestled between her collarbones. “What is that necklace, anyway?” I asked, as much to distract myself as anything else.

“Oh, this? A whiptail lizard. They can reproduce without male lizards. A whole community of lady lizards. My mother had this made for me.” She tapped the necklace softly with her free hand. “A reminder of what we could be, someday. Not just the eight of us scattered around the country, god knows where, but a community. Kind of like your mother’s theory.” She smiled, half to herself. “I wish my mother had been alive when you went off to school, Morrow. It hurt her that the Homestead never went anywhere after ’77—that we just stayed stuck. She would’ve loved to see one of us grow up to put everything back together.”

“Well, I’m no Bellanger.”

“No Bellanger?” Cate’s grip loosened. “You’re still comparing yourself to him? We just learned that we weren’t even his idea.”

I hesitated for a moment. “Look, I’m not going to discount Bellanger’s work over what we’ve learned. That seems like an overreaction.”

“Shit, seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction to me. We just found out that the test subjects were the masterminds. If that doesn’t change anything for you, then you’re…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Brainwashed.”

Brainwashed. I pulled my hand out of hers, folded my hands on my lap. “If our mothers had been able to do it, they wouldn’t have needed to call on Bellanger,” I said, not hiding my anger. “They were there for a long time and nothing happened. Patricia admitted it herself. They needed Bellanger. He’s the one who created us. Without him, eventually they would’ve given up and we never would’ve existed.”

Cate stared straight ahead, her profile rigid, her jaw working.

“They needed someone with a scientific background,” I said. “I admire my mother for reaching out to him. I admire the fact that she took initiative like that. But I’m not going to give up on Bellanger entirely. He’s still the one who made me.”

“If your mother’s involvement wasn’t important, why did Bellanger hide it?”

A light creak came from the shadows that collected at the foot of the staircase. We both turned. Patricia stood, a muddy outline before she turned on the lights and we were all blinking in the glare. I looked for Isabelle and didn’t see her.

Patricia moved across the room, standing opposite from us, posture very straight. “You have to understand,” she said, as if we were picking up a conversation we’d just finished. “Isabelle is my life. I’ve poured every moment into making sure she’s reaching her potential. You two come into our life. and within a few hours Isabelle is blaming me.”

“Oh, Isabelle is an adult,” I said, tired. “She’s twenty-one. Stop treating her like a kid.”

“Don’t talk to me like that. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

“You need to let her go.”

“Like you let your mother go?” Patricia asked.

“Okay! Okay, we should leave.” Cate began to rise. “It obviously won’t do any good for us to stick around—”

“You don’t understand,” Patricia said. “You should know the truth, because I doubt Margaret has ever told you.” The tension in the room was so thick it felt like something would explode if I moved the wrong way, my hip or elbow rupturing the membrane separating us from chaos. Patricia lifted the hem of that thick black turtleneck, revealing her torso, stopping at the lower edge of her breasts. Her skin was shiny and marbled, sections raised like ropy vines. The scar tissue covered her belly, her ribs, wrapping around until it reached the other side. I stared at the burned skin, like hieroglyphics tattooed on her lower torso. “I was able to spare Izzy injuries, but a tree branch fell in my path. My nightgown caught fire. I pulled the gown off—I was nearly naked when they found me.” She rested a hand on her side. “I carry that night with me, always.”