My heart jumped.
“You’re welcome to come,” Tom said. “Of course—but it’s also a big decision, and—”
Cate held out a palm, stanching his words. “I know how to make a big decision. I don’t need your permission here.” She looked at me. “Josie? This is a search for your mother. I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’d just leave everything?” The idea of Cate coming along with us was unexpectedly happy, a brightness that nearly made me forget the smoke leaking into the morning sky.
“Goulding can wait. It’ll be here when I get back.” She was different now, that anger turned, through some private alchemy, into resolve. “This may be my best chance to find out what my mother was going to tell me after all these years. Maybe my mom would’ve wanted this.”
* * *
“This is the second attack on a Homesteader in the past week,” I said. “It all has to lead back to Ricky Peters. That’s the cleanest explanation, isn’t it? Occam’s razor and all that. The three attacks must be connected. Bonnie’s, my mother’s, this one.”
Cate was inside packing while Tom and I were loading our suitcases into the trunk. Everything reeked of smoke now. We’d carry it away with us. Tom was quiet, focusing on the task at hand. Usually he was totally forthcoming with his own theories. His silence grated.
“What?” I was sizzling with nerves. I gave his suitcase an unnecessarily hard shove with my elbow. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Still, he held fire for a second. “Josie,” he said, not looking at me, resting his hands on the lip of the trunk. “Listen. You want to know what my book is about? What’s going to make it stand out?” He took a deep breath. “I’m not convinced that Ricky Peters had anything to do with Bellanger’s death.”
I stepped back, startled and then annoyed. The fact that Ricky Peters had murdered Bellanger—and in so doing had robbed me of my chance to know my sort-of father, had cut off the bright future I’d meant to herald into existence—that was a given. In every account about the final days of the Homestead, historians and journalists and fans and critics largely agreed that Ricky Peters murdered Dr. Joseph Bellanger. “Be serious,” I snapped.
“I didn’t want to say anything.”
“Peters killed Bellanger. He was convicted, he pled guilty, for fuck’s sake—”
“The evidence was circumstantial.” Tom looked at me, impatience starting to edge into his voice too. “Peters still claims that he was set up, forced into a plea deal. You’ve never had doubts?”
“Ricky himself said that Bellanger would burn in hell, the week of the fire. It was caught on camera.” I clenched and unclenched my fists. “Even in prison, he’s been convincing half the country to hate us for the past two decades.”
Tom rubbed his neck, looking unconvinced. “Look, what I think is that … uh … Bellanger was a complicated man. A man who challenged everything we know about reproduction. But Ricky Peters as a villain is simple. Too simple. He’s a stock character from a morality play. Science versus religion. What if we convicted him because it was the simplest answer?”
“Yeah, well. From where I stand, a lot of good things in this world are destroyed by simple men.”
Tom gazed at me for a second, then took a deep breath. “I don’t want to fight about it right now,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything. Forget it. I’m going to get my bags—”
Cate passed him as he walked back to the house, did a little double-take at his expression. “Lovers’ quarrel?” she asked me, raising her eyebrows.
“It’s nothing. I’m just on edge. We’re all on edge.”
She gave me a searching look.
“What if I’m just making things worse for everyone?” I asked impulsively. “If we hadn’t come to see you, you’d be fine now. We brought that man here. He’s been following us all this time.” If I’d confronted the driver way back, the first night I arrived in Coeur du Lac—if I’d trusted my instincts instead of reaching for fear and caution, I could’ve pulled what I needed from him instead of turning myself into a target, oblivious, not sure who was chasing me or why.
Cate shoved a box aside to make room for her things. The box was filled with books about the Homestead. Experimental Embryology: A Manual and History. The Virgin Farce: The True Story of Joseph Bellanger. Deb’s memoir, her face gleaming a Crest-ad grin up at me.