Girl One(85)

Everything she’d felt back then was inside her voice. All the fear of that disorienting moment, still alive.

“It was my mom who taught me to scream if I ever got in trouble. She said, bad people will think you’ll be too nice and quiet to do anything. They hope you’re quiet. So you have to scream. Be as loud as you can. I always said, okay, whatever, Mom. She was always on my case about this stuff when our life was so safe and quiet. Back then, I didn’t know about the Homestead. I didn’t think my mom knew what she was talking about. But there I was with this guy and I just knew in my gut that this was it. This was the time. So I did, and at first my voice was normal, sort of soft. I felt like I was acting. Then it got louder, and just kept going. It was like I was inside my own voice. Like I was my voice, big and powerful and wild. I lost track of time. When I came back, the guy was on the ground—dead, I thought, and I started running. I ran past the bonfire and everyone was lying still. I figured I’d killed everyone. I ran home and curled up in bed waiting for the police to show up. Next day at school, though, they’re all okay. Talking about what a great party it was. Everyone drank till they blacked out, including that jerk who’d tried to get me alone. I caught him giving me funny looks sometimes, but … he never said anything, and he kept away after that. They had no idea it was all me, but it was. I know that.”

It didn’t matter how many times it happened. When one of us brought our impossibility to the surface, it made my heart still inside my chest, a sense of wonder so buoyant I could rise into the air.

Soo-jin’s face was glowing with secrecy. “I haven’t done it again, really. But sometimes I just go way out into the woods and I scream—I just scream. To hear myself.”

“All of us are like this,” I said. “Not in the same way, maybe, but every one of us.”

She nodded, taking this in.

“Soo-jin, come with us,” I said impulsively. “You should know where you came from.”

She looked at each one of us and I wondered what she saw: these three fatherless Girls, motherless Girls, our bodies scarred and bruised, our hair flat, artificial colors that didn’t look quite right. There was a flash of longing in her eyes, clear as daylight. But she shook her head. “No. My mother needs me. My sister, my father. My friends.” She laughed a little, opening and closing her arms. “I can’t leave them. Not right now.”

“We understand,” Cate said.

“Maybe one day,” I said, “you’ll come find us.”

Soo-jin smiled, a little proud, a little wicked, and she looked more like her mother than ever. “Maybe one day, you’ll come find me.”



* * *



“What do you know about Freshwater, Texas?” I asked, sliding into the car, clutching Soo-jin’s newspaper scrap close.

“Besides the fact that the Grassis live there?” Tom asked.

Around me, the world expanded and contracted. The Grassis: Mother Four; Girl Four. The last of the Homesteaders on my mother’s list, the only ones we hadn’t contacted. The dead birds, scorched; the red-haired girl; the Grassis.

“They live in Freshwater? You’re sure?” I asked.

I opened the notebook, flipped through to what had seemed like a nonsense word in my mother’s sloppy handwriting. Birds. I showed it to Cate, who inhaled softly.

“As far as I know, the Grassis are still there,” Tom said. “But they were difficult to track down. They’ve never answered a single phone call or letter, not even to tell me to back off.” He paused. “Wait, why do you ask?”

Isabelle and Cate were both turned toward me, and I could tell at a glance that they were on my side, my eagerness and resolve reflected in their faces.

“We’re going to Freshwater,” I said. “My mother is there.”





37

April 24, 1977

My lovely Josephine,

Your sixth birthday. I look at you and I no longer see a little child. You reach my waist now. You are playful and serious in equal measure. You show flashes of a stubborn pride that delights me. A reporter was quite taken aback when you corrected him: “I do have a father, and he’s right there.” What a happy papa I was that day!

But there are blessed few reasons to be happy these days, I am afraid. The loss of our beloved Lily-Anne has been a terrible shock, and the unkindness of the world only makes things all the more painful. I know you miss your aunt Lily-Anne, and I hope you will continue to show kindness to poor Fiona, who now misses her mommy very much.

So many of the bright faces that once made this place feel like home have now vanished. Women who owe everything to me insisting on breaking ties. I fear that one day these sweet girls will no longer know me. Miracles stolen from the miracle-worker. I can only hope that your own mother will not follow suit, for I couldn’t bear to say goodbye to my precious Girl One.

I pray you hold this letter one day and laugh at me. Laugh at my silly pessimism. Laugh at my despair. I hope you bring me this letter and we can smile together, seeing how dark those days were, celebrating the lightness that has thrived instead. We move onward into the future.

Your loving father,

Joseph Bellanger





38

Bats fluttered around each underpass, the streetlights a yellow fuzz against the bruise-dark dusk. Tom snoozed next to me. I was glad to drive. I couldn’t sleep anyway. My curiosity was a hard engine pushing me forward, forward, forward.