“Oh yes, those letters he sent you. I’ve heard all about those.” Fiona’s contempt took on an eagerness, like this was a point she’d wanted to make to me for years. “But you should know, those aren’t anything special. He wrote to everyone. He wrote to the Grassis too.”
“The Grassis?” I feigned disinterest. “What did he want to say to them?”
“The same trivial niceties he wrote to you, I’m sure. That’s why we were in Freshwater, actually. Looking for the letter. He couldn’t find it.”
I swallowed. The sunlight pressed into my eyes like a headache. Bellanger had been looking for something in Freshwater, then. Not to pay respects. What could he have written to Angela Grassi, or to her daughter Gina, that would worry him so many years later? A lifetime later. It wasn’t just trivial niceties.
I remembered what Ricky Peters had said. The way the woman with the gun that night—Angela, it must have been Angela—had claimed that her daughter was under Bellanger’s spell. What if he’d written something to Gina? Or threatened Angela that Gina would always be under his shadow, within his grasp?
Maybe … maybe the words in that letter had lured Angela out of the life she’d been building in Freshwater. It sounded as if she’d been happy in Texas, content with Gina, looking for new opportunities. Maybe she hadn’t returned to Vermont in a sudden rage; maybe she had been summoned.
“Fiona,” I said. “What do you remember about the night of the fire? Bellanger’s always told you that Angela Grassi returned that night to kill him, right?”
“She was hysterical.” Fiona’s mouth twitched, contemptuous. “She started the whole thing. If she hadn’t threatened Father, I wouldn’t have started the fire. We wouldn’t have had to go into hiding. All of this was her fault.”
Everything Fiona was saying had the eerie quality of Bellanger ventriloquizing through her. A bedtime story he’d fed her. Angela as jealous and grasping, destroying the Homestead even if she had to burn along with it.
“But what if Angela only came back to the Homestead because she felt like she had to?” I said carefully. “What if that letter was Bellanger making sure Angela and Gina would return?”
“Why on earth would he do that?” Impatient, dismissive. Fiona hadn’t moved her hand from mine, and it was starting to grate, that little nagging pressure pulling at me.
“It was a setup.” I had to walk slowly, speak slowly, not hurrying ahead with the train of my thoughts. “Bellanger already wanted to go into hiding. It was his plan. He destroyed the Homestead on purpose so that he could vanish more easily.” I lowered my voice. “He murdered Angela and Gina in cold blood, and he wanted you to think that you were to blame.”
Fiona didn’t react. She was so blank that I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me, my words just evaporating in the unbearable blaze of sunlight. I remembered Mathias with a sick sinking in my gut; when I glanced back, his expression was implacable. I’d gotten so caught up in the realization itself that I’d forgotten about his constant, quiet surveillance.
Then Fiona spoke. “You’re wrong. You don’t know him at all. You were only six when he disappeared, weren’t you? A mere child. Now you have an idea of him in your head that’s built out of lies and gossip. I know the real man. He wept for the Grassis. He’d never hurt anyone intentionally.”
Frustrated, I tried to gauge how much Fiona would even understand. All the little calculations that had gone into Bellanger’s planning, lost on someone as sheltered as her. “How did he manage to forge the autopsy reports? How did he steal you away to this commune? He schemed and he lied about so many things—about your mother—” About your sister, I wanted to say. About their deaths. But I reminded myself of Mathias, listening. Not now. I’d already said too much.
“I appreciate what you’re doing, even if your lies are quite twisted,” Fiona said benevolently. “You want to save me from my guilt, but I made peace with that long ago. Seventeen years ago, I did something terrible. For years, my powers were completely out of my control, but now look at me.” She shut her eyes briefly and tilted her head back, as if to give me a better chance to take her in. “Father gave up everything, just to give me a chance to redeem myself. I’m not like you. I don’t have to play the damsel in distress and blame him for my weaknesses.”
“Your whole life has been in the middle of nowhere, performing for him. He doesn’t love you the way a father loves a daughter. I know what a parent’s love looks like. Bellanger loves you like a—like a warden loves a prisoner.” I remembered the stockpile of weapons. “He loves you the way a coward loves a gun.”