“Just like him,” I echoed, defiant. Cate cultivated a nonchalance about Bellanger that verged on hostility. It rankled me, a nagging defensiveness. It wasn’t the first time I’d considered that this devotion hadn’t been passed down to all nine of us. I knew my role as Girl One, the oldest, the favorite, put me in a unique position.
“Watch out,” Cate said. “I’ve seen med school turn people into real assholes.”
“Exactly the kind of thing an asshole would say,” I shot back.
Cate waited a second, then threw her head back, her big, full laugh bouncing around inside the car. “Okay. You got me, Morrow. But I’ve seen what can happen. People in Goulding don’t always have the money for doctors. Or they’ve been hurt by them. After the Homestead, my mother started helping. She knew which herbs could soothe a sore throat or ease postpartum depression or kill a flu. People need an alternative.”
“I never realized your mother had any medical training,” Tom said. “That’s fascinating.” I noticed a shift in his voice now, switching into the glossy interview tone he’d used with Deb, like he was stepping closer with a magnifying glass. “Did she train with Bellanger at all?”
“Not that she told me.”
“So did she—do you—ever work with pregnant women?”
“Why do you ask?” Cate was cool, cautious. She caught the prying note too.
“Because of where you come from. Because of who your mother is. Was.”
“Yes, Thomas,” Cate said. “My mother helped pregnant women. She taught me how to deliver a baby when I was sixteen. I help however I can now that she’s gone. Sometimes it’s delivering a baby for a woman whose last doctor tried to convince her she was too weak to do it on her own. I’ve seen women who’d been traumatized by forceps or so drugged they couldn’t remember anything.” I thought of the look the woman had given my belly before giving me directions to Cate’s home. “And sometimes it means ending pregnancies, if that’s how I’m needed. At its best, what Bellanger accomplished was supposed to be giving women choice and control. That’s what I’m doing too.” She gave me a quick look. “And I hope it’s what you’re planning on doing, Morrow.”
* * *
When we stopped that night, Tom slept in the car, volunteering his duties as a sentinel, leaving the single bed to me and Cate. I lay on my side, watching the thin curtains, imagining a silhouette rising. A struck match: a knife blade.
“Are you planning to fuck that guy?” Cate asked, like she’d been having this conversation in her head for a while and had finally decided to let me in. She rolled over. Even in bed, she wore that necklace, the curves catching the light. “Is that what’s happening here?”
“No. Come on. Tom’s a—a colleague.”
“You have a boyfriend, though? You seem that type.”
I considered telling her about Dr. McCarter, the closest thing to a boyfriend I’d had for a while. “Well, I’m not a virgin,” I said instead. “I’m not my mother.”
Cate barked with appreciative laughter. “Let me guess. The boyfriend: Mike or Joe or Jason. He’s an understanding guy. He forgives you for your past. Or maybe he gets off on it.”
“Just because men are like that with you—”
“Men aren’t any way with me. And I’m not any way with them.” My heartbeat settled in my throat. Cate shifted, turning over onto her back, and I glanced sidelong at the shape of her, stretched long under the covers. “I knew I was gay from when I was a little girl. The idea of being with a man never even occurred to me. My mother didn’t have too much time for dating, but she only ever brought women home. All of us should be lesbians, scientifically speaking. We were made without men. What do we want with them now?”
The room felt smaller, more intimate, the air suddenly charged. I was intently aware of Cate next to me, long hair spread across the pillow and nearly touching me. She smelled like sweat—briny and sweet at once—overlaid with the peppermint sting of her castile soap. Stubbornly, I wanted to point out that Cate wasn’t entirely right; Bellanger had been involved every step of the way. But I was distracted, thinking about the thin space between our two bodies, my pulse quickening.
“A girl at my high school was a lesbian,” I offered instead.
“Was? It’s not a temporary state.”
“Yeah, sorry. Is. I just don’t know her anymore.”