Girl One(81)

But before I could say anything, Isabelle was speaking: “That’s your other daughter? The girl with the video game?” she asked.

Barbara’s face tightened. “Yes,” she said. “It’s not what you think. I had Min-ji with my husband. She’s his daughter, in every way.”

“You never told your daughters about us at all,” Isabelle said to Barbara. “Soo-jin didn’t recognize us and she grew up with us. She has no idea who she is, does she? She’s so special, but she thinks she’s just like anybody else.”

“She knows she’s special,” Barbara said. “She has a loving family. She has a good home. She’s brilliant, kindhearted. What else does she need to make her special?” The rest of us didn’t answer. Cate and I were both wedged in a fraught silence.

Isabelle shrugged. “Maybe she deserves to know.”

Barbara’s mouth twitched into a sudden, contemptuous smile. “Are you blackmailing me? You’re just a kid. I remember changing your diaper.” She was amused, giving us a glimpse of the past Barbara. Fierce, outspoken Mother Eight. Always more willing to joke or roughhouse than the other mothers. Always up to be it during a game of tag or hide-and-seek.

Barbara stepped forward, took Isabelle’s chin in her hand. She gently turned Isabelle’s face to the side, examining her. “Your mother,” Barbara said at last, “was always stealing my things. I couldn’t leave anything out or she’d assume it was hers too.” Barbara let go of Isabelle’s chin. She moved across the basement toward the stairwell, locked the door. “You have ten minutes.” She pointed at the clock. “After that, you leave town and you never come back and bother us again, or there will be consequences.”

“Yes,” I said at once. “Of course.” The other two nodded.

Barbara sat on the one folding chair in the workroom. We stayed standing, close together, the wet, green scent of the flower stems all around us. Now that the moment had passed, I was relieved that I hadn’t given in to the grubby temptation to force her to talk. Still. Ten minutes. My lungs tightened at the idea of fitting everything into such a short time. I pulled the photograph of Lily-Anne out of my pocket and handed it to Barbara.

She cradled it behind the other hand as if sheltering a guttering flame. “Where did you find this? I was sure it was destroyed in the fire.”

“My mother held on to it,” Cate said. I craned my neck to take in the photo again, Barbara and Lily-Anne. Now I noticed a deeper texture to Lily-Anne’s smile. It reminded me of Bellanger. The kind of smile he wore whenever he was photographed on the heels of a breakthrough. Triumph.

“We thought she was pregnant with Fiona,” Cate said. “But this is from at least January 1976.” She tapped the edge of the framed image. “Fiona was already a nine-month-old baby at that point. Lily-Anne couldn’t have been pregnant with her.”

Barbara held the photograph up at different angles, as if the light might alter the image. “This photograph was taken even later than that. New Year’s Day in 1977. I knew it was a mistake to frame that silly Time cover, but Tami thought it belonged in the timeline of the Homestead. She thought we’d helped to inspire this shift.”

I exchanged a glance with the others. The same year as the fire. There was a pressure growing around the edges of my skull. “Why is Lily-Anne pregnant in this photo?” I made myself ask.

“It’s too much. I can’t catch you up, I don’t want to revisit all that.” She squeezed her eyes shut briefly, reopened them. “You girls aren’t ready.”

“We know more than you think,” I said. “We know about Fiona’s abilities. We know that my mother was behind most of what happened on the Homestead.”

Barbara processed this quietly.

“It’s our story too,” I said. “We need to know.”

I could see her relent. “You’re right that this wasn’t Fiona,” she said, touching Lily-Anne’s pregnant belly. “It was her little sister.”

A tenth baby. Another miracle, one the world hadn’t dissected and documented. Bellanger’s lost creation.

“At first I was the only one who knew about it,” Barbara said. “Lily-Anne was my dearest friend, and she barely even trusted me with this secret. She was so quiet, staying in one room and sleeping a lot. We thought it was the stress. The rest of us had to look after little Fiona.” She peered at me. “You don’t remember any of this, Josie?”

“I remember that … that Fiona was always around,” I said slowly. “I was jealous of her. For a while, my mom watched Fiona more than she spent time with me.”

Barbara nodded. “We all stepped in and helped when Lily-Anne couldn’t handle things anymore. One day, I was checking on Lily-Anne and she showed me that she was pregnant. Five months along by then. I couldn’t believe it. That’s when she asked me to take the photo. How could I say no? She was glowing. She begged me to keep it quiet from the others, and I did. Dr. Bellanger had been home in Maryland for months at that point. One of his sons needed his attention. He’d just had an operation for his scoliosis and it had finally convinced Bellanger to spend more time with the poor boy.”

Judging by Cate’s small inhalation, this detail stood out to her too. A week ago I would barely have thought about Junior.