“What?”
“I don’t know. Brainwashed.”
Brainwashed. I pulled my hand out of hers, folded my hands on my lap. “If our mothers had been able to do it, they wouldn’t have needed to call on Bellanger,” I said, not hiding my anger. “They were there for a long time and nothing happened. Patricia admitted it herself. They needed Bellanger. He’s the one who created us. Without him, eventually they would’ve given up and we never would’ve existed.”
Cate stared straight ahead, her profile rigid, her jaw working.
“They needed someone with a scientific background,” I said. “I admire my mother for reaching out to him. I admire the fact that she took initiative like that. But I’m not going to give up on Bellanger entirely. He’s still the one who made me.”
“If your mother’s involvement wasn’t important, why did Bellanger hide it?”
A light creak came from the shadows that collected at the foot of the staircase. We both turned. Patricia stood, a muddy outline before she turned on the lights and we were all blinking in the glare. I looked for Isabelle and didn’t see her.
Patricia moved across the room, standing opposite from us, posture very straight. “You have to understand,” she said, as if we were picking up a conversation we’d just finished. “Isabelle is my life. I’ve poured every moment into making sure she’s reaching her potential. You two come into our life. and within a few hours Isabelle is blaming me.”
“Oh, Isabelle is an adult,” I said, tired. “She’s twenty-one. Stop treating her like a kid.”
“Don’t talk to me like that. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“You need to let her go.”
“Like you let your mother go?” Patricia asked.
“Okay! Okay, we should leave.” Cate began to rise. “It obviously won’t do any good for us to stick around—”
“You don’t understand,” Patricia said. “You should know the truth, because I doubt Margaret has ever told you.” The tension in the room was so thick it felt like something would explode if I moved the wrong way, my hip or elbow rupturing the membrane separating us from chaos. Patricia lifted the hem of that thick black turtleneck, revealing her torso, stopping at the lower edge of her breasts. Her skin was shiny and marbled, sections raised like ropy vines. The scar tissue covered her belly, her ribs, wrapping around until it reached the other side. I stared at the burned skin, like hieroglyphics tattooed on her lower torso. “I was able to spare Izzy injuries, but a tree branch fell in my path. My nightgown caught fire. I pulled the gown off—I was nearly naked when they found me.” She rested a hand on her side. “I carry that night with me, always.”
“I’m sorry.” I was quiet, sobered. “I didn’t know at all.”
“Your mother is with me all the time. Every time I see this scar, I’m reminded of Margaret. Because…” Patricia hesitated. “Because your mother is the one who set the fire that night, Josephine. She’s the one who burned the Homestead to the ground.”
Cate touched my shoulder. I registered the warmth of the gesture, but I also wasn’t in the room anymore. My mother setting the fire. The fire that had disintegrated the last bonds between the women of the Homestead, that had taken Bellanger away before he had a chance to share the mysteries of our origins with the world. If my mother was behind it, then she’d been the one to take everything from me.
“No,” I said. “It was Peters, we know that. She wouldn’t have done that to Bellanger. Or to any of you. She wouldn’t have done that to—”
Fiona. To Fiona. I thought of that little girl on the film, crying for her mother. My mother hadn’t killed that child. The same woman who’d competently brushed my hair every night, who’d reminded me to wear a coat on cold days, who left me the last cookie in the box every single time, even when I didn’t ask? It couldn’t have been her. No. No.
“She never intended to kill Fiona. I imagine that guilt has been harder on Margaret than anything,” Patricia said. “But it doesn’t change what she did.”
“Ricky Peters confessed.” I stated the fact, solid and immovable. Of course my mother hadn’t started the fire. The man who had set it was behind bars. Even as I said it, I remembered Tom’s pet theory: that Ricky Peters’s indictment was too pat, too simple. That Bellanger was a complicated man with complicated enemies. Well, my mother was complicated too. A headache started at the base of my skull. “My mother testified at his trial,” I said. “So did you.”