“We’re getting so close,” I said. “Why not? Now or never. To be honest,” I added, “I could just really use a fucking drink.”
39
“So? When’s the interview start?” I leaned closer, confidential. “Something tells me you’re not very good at this, Thomas Abbott.”
One drink. Vodka, the cheap kind that blazed through me swiftly, leaving me pleasantly hollow. This place was perfect. Accidental mood lighting from busted bulbs, the low whine and melancholy wailing of country music, a few obvious regulars at the bar. Tom and I sat hidden in a booth near the back. He had a beer in front of him, dewy with condensation.
He laughed. “Be fair. I’m not usually interviewing my subjects at three in the morning in a shitty bar in—Alabama? Where are we again?”
“Close enough. Come on,” I said. “Ask me something. Anything.”
“Fine. Uh. What are you thinking about?”
“God. I’ve had truth-or-dare questions more hard-hitting than that. But okay … I’m thinking about my mother. I’m thinking about her imagining a dead girl coming back to life. What if that’s what she meant by, Tell the world about Fiona? Not Fiona’s abilities, but whoever she saw on the screen. She wants to tell the world Fiona’s alive.” I hesitated. “Tom, what if Fiona is really alive? What if my mother wasn’t imagining things?”
“There were bodies. Found and identified. That’s pretty hard to argue with.”
“Yeah, I know, but—” I held off.
“But?”
“I’ve been wrong about so much else. I don’t want to go right back to assuming my mom is crazy.”
“I’m not saying she’s crazy,” Tom said carefully, turning his beer bottle around and around. Each time the bottle landed with a scuff. “But the guilt must’ve weighed on her. Especially over Fiona. Maybe she was seeing what she wanted to see, letting herself off the hook.”
I took a long slug of my drink, the ice clicking against my teeth. “It’s all my fault, anyway.” At his look, I went on: “Leaving my mother behind like I did. I was always so hard on her for not acknowledging the Homestead. Okay, so now she’s looked into the past and all of a sudden she’s running off chasing ghosts.” I sighed heavily, the gust fluttering the edge of a napkin. “I hope she’s in Freshwater. This is our last stop. No more Homesteaders after this.”
Tom tapped his finger on the tabletop. “What happened to your house, if your mother just ran off? Where’d the fire come from?”
I hesitated. “On the record? I have no idea.”
“And off the record?”
“Off the record … maybe she did set it herself,” I said. “You think she was broken by guilt.” My mother, alone, standing there in the middle of that impossible heat just to feel what she’d done to Fiona and to Bellanger. Punishing herself for that long-ago crime. But it didn’t fully fit. It didn’t explain the maroon sedan, or the fire at Cate’s house. I let some of my frustration bubble up: “God, Tom, why didn’t you track down Bellanger’s sons? If we knew where to find them, we’d be able to get answers.”
Tom took a sip of beer, tilting the bottle back. “The Bellanger boys always seemed beside the point. I was more interested in the Miracle Babies. You’re Bellanger’s actual inventions. Edison’s light bulbs. Bell’s telephone.”
“Edison’s light bulb, huh? Nice line. I bet you say that to all the girls.”
A strange smile. “Hmm. Just you, actually.”
We held the smile, the music pulsing around us. “Well,” I said. “They’ll probably catch up with us anyway. Let them come to us, right? Cut out the middleman.”
“Gallows humor.” Tom lifted the bottle in a salute. “I like it, Morrow.”
The way he said that, Morrow, tugged at me for a second, but I picked up my glass. “To light bulbs who like it dark,” I said, and we clinked, laughing.
* * *
Two drinks. The edges of everything fuzzed and glowing.
“I appreciate that you’re letting me be part of this.” Tom kept nudging the puddle of condensation with his finger, making the water change shapes. “One day, if you’re comfortable with it, I’d love to be your official biographer.” The heavy reddish light over the bar caught in his hair, which had grown longer on the road, unruly. “I wish Bellanger had gotten the chance to see what he really did. The full extent of it. Not just Fiona. All of you.”