“My mother?” I asked, half rising.
“No. Fiona.”
My disappointment was replaced by a keen curiosity. Fiona. My lost sister, the one I’d never expected to talk to again. I had more questions for her than I’d had for any of the others.
Outside, the blue sky was startling against the oranges and reds of the desert. We moved through the quiet labyrinth of buildings. I watched for the particular shed that had housed all the guns, making a small note of it at the back of my mind when we passed.
Then I stopped. Fiona stood just ahead of us with her brilliant hair glowing painfully in the sun. Instinctively I imagined touching her hair, how hot it would feel under my fingertips. She wore a simple white dress, her belly almost concealed by the volume of the skirt. But I looked for the swell, wanting to see proof of Bellanger’s next step. When I glanced up, Fiona gave me a small and knowing smile.
“Josephine,” she said. “I’m glad you came. Father thought it might do us some good to have a little chat.” She held out a hand. I was shaken by the easy way she said Father, a possessive term that even Junior hadn’t used. “I usually walk the grounds every day for exercise. Walk with me.”
I let her guide me as we went behind the nearest building and began walking the ersatz alleyway, the thin space between the buildings and the fence. The whole desert stretched out beyond the chain-link. “Is he coming too?” I asked softly, jerking my head at Mathias, who trailed us a foot behind, a faithful shadow. Close enough to eavesdrop.
“He’s just here to offer extra protection. You don’t mind, do you?”
The way she spoke. It was uncanny to hear Bellanger’s old-fashioned, pretentious talk mirrored in her teenage girl’s voice. She’d never picked up the little tics and quickly evolving, snappy slang that circulated through public school hallways, phone calls, cable TV. She channeled one man perfectly, uninterrupted and uncorrupted. His voice in her mouth. “It’s fine,” I said. “I’m used to that guy following me. Feels like old times.” Mathias’s expression was unmoved. “What do you want to talk about?”
We walked slowly, past the silent, shuttered windows, our feet stirring the dust. I wondered if my mother was behind one of those windows, and it was all I could do not to stare into each window, calling her name. I took a deep, aching breath.
“I want to request that you stay here,” Fiona said. “Father confided in me about your confrontation yesterday. He thought I’d better be able to explain things from the feminine perspective.”
“The feminine perspective,” I said. “Okay.”
“We weren’t born to be ordinary,” Fiona said. “I know you aren’t like me, but you are powerful in your own way. Father is the only one who truly understands what we’re capable of. He knew us inside and outside before we were even born. He was the very first to imagine us.”
“That’s not true. Our mothers imagined us before Bellanger ever got around to it.” But Fiona just kept smiling, as if she knew something I didn’t. “Doesn’t Bellanger ever talk about your mother?” I pressed. “Aren’t you curious about her? Lily-Anne. Because I remember her.”
“That was a very long time ago,” Fiona said, but there was the tiniest hesitation when she said it, a door left cracked open.
“Your mother would’ve wanted to know all about you,” I said. “She was so curious. And she was brave. She wanted you for a long time before you arrived. When I was little, she’d braid my hair and play hopscotch with me, and she’d tell me how much she wanted a daughter of her own. The protesters scared most of our mothers, but not Lily-Anne. She’d scream right back at them if they got too loud. She’d have done anything to protect you.”
Fiona’s mouth twitched slightly. She blinked. “Father thought highly of her.”
“Bellanger always did think highly of our mothers.”
I wasn’t sure if Fiona was able to detect the sarcasm. Maybe she hadn’t learned it yet. But she looked at me sidelong. “Why do you take so much issue with Father?” Then she laughed, half to herself. “Well. Besides the obvious reason.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’re jealous of me.” A hot pinch tucked in there. “How close I am to him. You were Girl One for so long, the only one who mattered. Father warned me that this might happen.”
I remembered blithely calling Bellanger my brainfather in that Rolling Stone interview, how easy that devotion had felt, and I wanted to laugh and cry. “You’re right that this is a—a big change for me,” I said. “For most of my life, Bellanger’s just been old letters, and now he’s—”