“Margaret hurt everybody,” Deb went on. “Not just Patricia. Not just us girls at the Homestead. Bellanger’s real family—Marianne, poor little Junior and Bobby. They were abandoned when she lured Dr. Bellanger over to us. Margaret didn’t give them a single thought. They were just collateral damage to her.”
The chandelier’s lighting looked soft and forgiving from a distance, but now that I was positioned beneath the glare, the lights burned against my skin. “My mother only learned about Bellanger when he called for test subjects.” I clung to the story I knew. The one that had been repeated again and again and again, in everything from a sleazy made-for-TV movie to formal scholarly articles. “He recruited the nine of you. He created the Homestead. My mother didn’t even—she couldn’t have known about him, or about—she would have told me—”
“Are you sure?” Deb said. “Because lying is just what Margaret does. I’m sure she wouldn’t want her own daughter to know about what she really did.”
I breathed deeply, steadying myself, giddy with shock.
“Does this mean that Margaret Morrow was already interested in the idea of virgin birth?” Tom asked.
You’re descended from the guinea pig, not the scientist. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“No, you don’t,” Deb said, voice suddenly tired. “No more from me. I’ve said too much. Get out of here. And don’t even think about sharing any of this. Consider it off the record. Or I’ll have my lawyers on you so fucking quickly that you won’t know what’s happening.”
I opened my eyes, vision starred over for a second. “Did my mother contact you recently?” I asked, grasping for the original reason I’d come here. Nothing about my mother’s past would matter until I could ask her about it directly.
“You’re leaving, or I’m calling the cops—”
“Was she asking about Fiona?” I pressed.
Bonnie stood abruptly. “You need to tell her, Mommy.” Deb and I turned, equally startled. Color rushed to Bonnie’s cheeks, rough red splotches beneath the pastel blush. Wildflowers springing up inside a cultivated garden. “If you were missing and I came to somebody for help, wouldn’t you want them to help me?”
“I wouldn’t be in this situation at all,” Deb said.
“Mommy, there are a lot of things that you don’t say,” Bonnie said. “But there are things that I don’t say either. Things that we both want to stay quiet.”
Deb’s face tightened. She sucked an inhale through her nose.
“Tell her,” Bonnie said.
Whatever passed between the two of them, Deb lost: she broke her gaze, turned back to me. “Margaret has been here,” she said, each word cold and grudging.
“She has?” Instantly, I was focused. “When?”
“A month ago? I didn’t keep track. It’s not a cherished memory, let me say that much. She gave me a goddamn fright, banging on the gates until I let her in. That woman hid away for years, too stuck-up to agree to any media appearances, and then she came here making a scene? No. I wouldn’t stand for it. I wouldn’t be pulled back into her bullshit.”
I tried to imagine this, electrified by the immediacy of it. My mother, right out there, rattling those big imposing gates, refusing to be turned away.
“I let her onto the grounds to keep her from alerting the whole neighborhood, but it was a short visit. She was rambling on and on about Fiona. Resurrecting dead dreams that nobody needs. Your mother is a very sick woman, Josie. When I heard that there’d been a fire? That she’d vanished into the night? I thought…”
“You thought what?” In a hard, ugly way, I wanted her to say it.
“I thought—no surprise there. The woman was unwell. It was bound to happen sometime.” She looked me up and down. “And now you come here. All selfish demands and wild rants. No idea where your own mother is or what she’s been doing.”
I licked my lips, tasting the sting of perspiration. Deb stepped closer. Again, she touched me, gripping my chin, turning my face this way and that. I let her do it. It kept her talking.
“Do you know what it was like, waiting to get pregnant?” Deb asked softly. “Your mother was the first. Of course she was. We all had to wait our turn for our own daughters. She trapped us with that hope.” Deb’s touch turned unexpectedly gentle. “All Margaret ever wanted was a daughter. That was the point of everything she did. It was all just to get you. Here you are, her grand prize, and she can’t even hold on to you.”