Girl One(98)

“Of course,” the landlord said, beaming as he cut me off. “Angela. Wonderful girl. And her cute little daughter, what was her name? Virginia?”

“Gina,” I said, exchanging a meaningful glance with Cate. “You remember them?”

“Do I remember them! Of course I do. They were special girls. Angela was connected to some strange things—but she was a good girl, at the end of the day. She just needed a friend.” He leaned forward over the desk, confidential. “I used to watch Gina for Angela if she needed a babysitter. Just let her color some pictures. She was a quiet little thing.”

“When was this?” I asked. Gina, Girl Four, was twenty years old by now.

“Oh,” the man said. “Many years ago. Many. Hold on.” He bent with some effort, slid open a filing cabinet drawer. Cate and I stood silently, bristling with nervous energy, until the man retrieved a paper and scanned it quickly. “Oh yes. That would’ve been 1977.”

The year that was imprinted on my heart, the year I’d lost the only father I’d ever known. The year I was flung from the insular safety of the Homestead into a world that felt too crowded and hostile.

“In ’77?” Cate repeated. “You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” he said. “Do you know why? Because that was the year of that horrible fire over in Vermont. After that fire, Angela and Gina just vanished. Never saw ’em again. I went to their apartment after they missed their rent. Well, nobody was there. They hadn’t had much to their name, but they’d left it all behind. I waited and waited, nearly six months. But sooner or later you got to move on and put the place back up for rent.”

“Wait a moment,” I said, wanting all the facts to line up neatly in front of me. “The Grassis left right after the fire? Could it have been right before?”

The landlord scratched behind his ear. “Could be either, I suppose. I just thought … that fire was all over the news. Maybe Angela needed to lay low, and that’s why she ran.”

“But you never actually saw them after the Homestead burned.”

“Not that I recall. I would’ve asked them about the fire if I’d seen them.”

“So it’s possible they left just before the fire instead,” I said, less a question than a statement. The Grassis leaving their new town: the fire a day or two later. A woman with long dark hair approaching Ricky Peters, desperate for revenge. The shape of a skull. The length of a femur. A piece of land in a sun-bleached world, a property title changing hands. The office felt like it was closing in on me.

“Okay,” I said carefully. My voice still sounded normal. “Do you have any of the Grassis’ things left? Maybe we could look through them. They’re old family friends, and we’ve been trying to get in contact with them for a long time.”

“Like I said, they didn’t have much. I sold a little of it, threw most of it out. I felt bad, but it was just papers, clothes, things like that.” He frowned. “You know, this is the second time in the last month that someone’s come around asking about the Grassis and their things. Years without anyone mentioning them, and now—”

My whole body tightened. “Somebody else was asking about the Grassis?”

“Yes,” the landlord said. I had the impression he enjoyed our captive interest, that maybe there was a thrill in doling out this useless information, suddenly in high demand again. “I always have tricks to remember. Keeps me sharp. And this was right around the time that those birds came falling down and made all that racket. It all happened right around the same time that somebody was here, asking about the Grassis, poking their noses around—a lot like you girls are doing now. Older fellow. Big beard. Dark glasses. He had a girl with ’im.”

“A girl with red hair?” I asked, almost not wanting to say it. My mother had been right all along.

“Yes.” The landlord gave me a strange look. “Bright red.”

Red like fire. Like open flame. Red hair like the mother she’d lost; red hair like the sister she’d never known.



* * *



All this time, I’d been grieving a man who was out there, somewhere, vital and alive. All this time, I’d been grieving Fiona, when I should have been mourning Gina Grassi. So much love poured in the wrong directions. I could hardly pull in a full breath. I was swirling, heart racing, all the oxygen sapped out of my blood.

“Morrow, are you ready to tell me what all that was about?” asked Cate. She tried to sound annoyed, but she just sounded worried. I’d been pacing the motel room for an hour now, feeling like I had to move or else I’d combust.

I had to get it together. I tried to lay it all out like an elaborate equation that had nothing at all to do with me. “Okay, so, the Grassis haven’t been in Freshwater since 1977,” I said. “Right before the fire. Ricky said that he spoke to a woman with long dark hair threatening to kill Bellanger. He assumed that it was my mother because she was one of the only people there. He didn’t realize that Angela Grassi was back in Vermont after she’d already left. Junior said the bodies had discrepancies that Henley managed to hide all this time. Fiona’s body was closer to Gina’s age. Bellanger’s body could’ve been a woman’s.”

Cate nodded, face still creased with concern.