Frustration grew under my breastbone. I was realizing that Deb’s version of the Homestead was just as opaque as my mother’s. She talked so much and so charmingly that she usually tricked me into ignoring all the silence underneath. Her role was to take our origin story, blood-soaked, flame-licked, and sanitize it. I was suddenly so tired of cowering, of simplifying our existence into something safe.
Tom was beginning another softball question, but I interrupted. “Why were you part of the Homestead if you wanted a normal child? There are easier ways to go about that, Deb. Or so I’ve heard.”
Bonnie, in my peripheral vision, straightened. For a second I thought she was going to interject, but Deb was speaking: “All that talk of miracles seemed so silly once I had a baby in my arms. Bonnie shifted my priorities. Surely any mother can relate to that. All nine of us wanted the same thing for our Girls. An ordinary life.”
I spoke without thinking. “But not all of us were ordinary children.”
The silence felt prickling, stinging. Deb pressed her lips together briefly. “I’m sorry?” Every syllable a warning.
“I’m talking about Fiona.” Just saying her name was a thrill now. “I know that my mother was in touch with you recently, asking about Fiona.”
Deb stood and moved toward the door. “You’re here under false pretenses. Time to go.”
“Look, this is a misunderstanding, we can—” Tom said, placating.
I stood too, moving in front of her, instinctive. “This big beautiful house, your designer dresses. It’s all because you give people fluffy quotes. I’m not looking for fluff. I want the truth.”
A rough scoff of a laugh. “You won’t like it any more than anybody else does.” I was transfixed. In all her televised interviews—60 Minutes, Late Night—I’d never seen Deb like this. “The truth is that your mother loved to pull all the strings, then play innocent when it suited her. I always wondered how long Margaret could last in an ordinary life. There was something in her that wanted to destroy everything. I don’t know if she could help herself.”
I saw my mother sitting at home, lost in a book: I saw her keeping a slight distance from her coworkers clustered together, chatting, laughing, while she busied herself at the circulation desk with some solitary task. Blunt when necessary, but quiet. Focused. Not at all the woman Deb was describing.
Deb went on, her private anger turned visible. “Margaret loved it when I was just one of the background faces, doing what I was told. Now I finally get to tell the story, and I do a damn good job. Of course, Margaret resents me for taking over her pet project.”
“Pet project?” I repeated. “What does that even mean? My mother was only one part of it—just because she was the first—”
“There’s a reason your mother was the first,” Deb said. “She was our ringleader. She drew us together, the nine of us, and then she tore us apart. She was the one who contacted Dr. Bellanger first, even when some of the girls begged her not to.”
I exchanged looks with Tom, my head thrumming.
“Margaret didn’t care what kind of damage she caused. I saw what she did to Patricia. She would’ve done the same to me if she’d cared enough to hurt me.” Deb’s gaze had shifted weight. She wasn’t looking at me the way she’d look at a stranger. She was speaking directly to my mother.
“Margaret knew you before Dr. Bellanger?” Tom asked. I was grateful to him—I didn’t trust myself to talk—but I was also irritated, suddenly aware of Tom absorbing all this information right alongside me. “Because my impression was that Dr. Bellanger put out a call for volunteers and you ladies only met each other through him,” Tom continued. “Is that correct?”
Deb didn’t even look at him, keeping her eyes locked on mine. “What I’m saying is that Dr. Bellanger takes the blame, but everything about that place can be traced right back to Margaret Morrow. She made Patricia set aside the land for the Homestead. She recruited the women to the commune. She wrote the letter to Dr. Bellanger. She brought us all together, and then she broke the whole thing apart. I hope she’s down on her knees thanking God for my positivity every night, because there’s a lot I could say that she wouldn’t like. Not one fucking bit.”
Bonnie was leaning forward, riveted, eyes shining, her pearly bra strap slipping down her upper arm.
“Patricia?” I repeated. “The Homestead was on her land?” I tried to picture Patricia Bishop, her small serious face, at least a head shorter than the other women in the group photos. I knew she still lived in Vermont, the only one of the surviving eight to do so, but I hadn’t realized that she had any claim to the Homestead land itself.