Girl One(93)

“It’s our story, either way,” I said softly, letting my voice be raw and tender, not hiding my sadness behind the shining heat of anger. “Leave us, Junior.”





42

“Well, this is it,” Cate said.

We crowded on the porch of a small apartment complex. Concrete-encased yard. Yellow siding. Poorly maintained, but lived-in: fresh oil splotches in the parking lot. Mother Four was the last Homesteader on the list. The final piece of the puzzle. I was one big raw nerve of anticipation.

“If Gina’s been reckless enough to be making the news already,” I said, low enough that I wouldn’t be overheard, “maybe we shouldn’t push our luck. Not all the Homestead survivors have been happy to see us. Let’s be careful.”

Cate and Isabelle nodded their agreement. The idea of all those dead birds, thousands of them, their heartbeats stilled in midair, their feathers scorched. The seriousness of this had grown in my head. Gina might be more powerful than the rest of us. And she obviously wasn’t trying to hide her abilities, the way the rest of us had managed to do so far. I remembered that bird on my mother’s lawn and something began spinning together. What if, in reaching out to the others, my mother had summoned one of them to her? What if Gina had come to my mother?

With a little show of ceremony, Cate pushed the doorbell, then knocked gently with her knuckles on the door of 1C. We waited. No response. I pressed my hands against the glass to peer inside. It was shadowy in this first-floor apartment. Dishes stacked in the sink, beaded with water. A pair of sneakers by the back door. Men’s sneakers, large and ugly.

“Wait a minute—” I began.

The door opened. “Can I help you?” A stranger. He looked at each one of us in turn. He was holding his face in a polite half smile, but his blue eyes were harder, already retreating.

“We’re looking for Angela Grassi,” I said at once. “Is she home?”

“Never heard of her,” he said. “Sorry.”

“What about her daughter, Gina?” He started to withdraw into his house, but I kept talking, my urgency like a hand shot through the door. “Do you know them? Do they live here in Freshwater? Maybe you’ve heard of them—”

“You got the wrong place. I’ve lived here a long time,” the man said. “A long time.” He glanced behind him, any excuse to get away from us.

“Look at me,” I snapped. I locked eyes with him, digging in, letting that world-tilting sense of vertigo rush through me as I reached inside his brain. “Tell me if you know the Grassis,” I said.

“I don’t know them,” he said at once.

“Tell me if you’ve met a woman named Margaret Morrow,” I said. Phrasing questions like this—commands, not queries—felt more natural to me now. Like people’s minds were opened drawers I could rummage through, then close again.

“I haven’t met her.”

“Tell me if you’ve heard of the Grassis.”

“No. Never.”

Cate’s hand on my shoulder. “Morrow, this guy doesn’t know anything. He’s just a tenant,” she whispered. “Junior gave us the wrong address. Let’s go.”

“Shit.” I broke the gaze reluctantly, and he shook his head like he wasn’t sure what had just happened, inhaling shakily. He was already closing the door, and I suppressed the urge to slip in behind him, run through the rooms screaming for my mother until I made her materialize by sheer willpower and want. But I just stood with Cate and Isabelle until the door was shut, a click so final I could feel it in my bones. My mother wasn’t here. Maybe she wasn’t anywhere. I’d had weeks to accept this conclusion. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But I felt that loss, and I realized I’d have to feel it every day if I couldn’t find her. I’d never get used to a world without my mother.

We split up and tried every door in the complex. Some people didn’t answer; the ones who did had never heard of the Grassis, seeming just as confused as the man from 1C. We returned to the Volvo, connected by a grim frustration.

“What now?” Isabelle asked.

I tried to push my grief aside. “This is the first time Junior’s address didn’t work.” I spoke with an assuredness that became firmer. “He was going to get an address wrong eventually. The Grassis could still be here in Freshwater. Or there’s someone who knows where they went next. We’re just going to have to look, that’s all.”



* * *



The coffee was stale, the burger greasy and limp. But I was hungrier than I’d realized. All three of us gained a little life as we ate. “I feel like Junior’s somehow behind this,” Cate said. “His one last grand gesture. His one last fuck-you to the three of us.” She swung her middle finger high, then dropped her hand.

“In fairness,” I said, “he shared this address with us before we kicked him out.”

Cate took a long sip of her drink, licked her lips unselfconsciously, a quick glimmer of her tongue. She leaned back. “Do you miss him?” she asked frankly.

I stalled with a long gulp of bitter coffee. “Junior was the first one to help me out. He’s like—he’s like my scarecrow. So, yeah. I miss him a little. I know it’s stupid.”