Patricia’s smile was small and twisted, like it hurt her. “Yes. I did.”
“Patricia.” Cate spoke steadily. “First you tell us that Margaret is the one who brought Bellanger to the Homestead. Now she killed him?”
I shot her a grateful look, some of our earlier tension wordlessly forgiven.
“We planned it together,” Patricia said. “After Lily-Anne’s death, when Fiona started behaving strangely, everything changed again.” Patricia’s voice shook, and she rested a hand against her neck, steadying herself. “Bellanger pushed us out. He stole the spotlight. He even offered to buy the Homestead from me, my own land, and add it to his investments in Arizona or Nevada or wherever. He’d stop at nothing—he was a cancer.”
Her rage built as a sour heat in my own breastbone. I couldn’t tell if I was angry at her for talking about Bellanger this way, or strangely ashamed, as if she were criticizing me too. I’d inherited his mind, after all. I saw the world through his eyes.
“I didn’t think Margaret understood,” Patricia said. “She thought I was jealous. But one day, she came to me and said she’d discovered certain things. Bellanger was trying to get legal custody of all of you. Not just Fiona, all of you. He’d had us sign contracts back when we were loopy on drugs. We had no lawyers, no real counsel. There were no legal protections for children born to only one biological parent. Children who shouldn’t have existed at all. If anything happened to any of us, Bellanger could have taken you. Your mother hadn’t known until Lily-Anne died and the custody battle came to the forefront.”
Becoming Bellanger’s daughter. Living with his two sons. Bellanger himself reading me bedtime stories by the soft radiance of a night-light. This was a well-worn fantasy, embarrassingly soothing as an outgrown toy. I’d never felt guilty over it before—it was a secret dream, not my mother’s business—but now the memory was mixed with a sharp humiliation, and the tight beginnings of anger. I hadn’t even known what I’d been wishing for.
“Margaret had a plan to end everything so that we didn’t have to worry about Bellanger. She wanted to burn the whole place down. Make it look like it was the protesters. They were the perfect foils, out there every day and yelling about hellfire. I was pulled right back into her orbit. The two of us against the world again. So I stayed with her on the Homestead, even as the other women ran off into their own lives. They could see the writing on the wall. They knew that place wasn’t long for the world, they wanted to find safety and normalcy for their girls while they still could. Then one day, out of nowhere, Margaret told me it was over. She told me to take Isabelle and leave the Homestead.”
“Why didn’t you?” I demanded.
“I had no chance. That very night—the fire.”
My mother had killed Fiona so that she could keep me, and then I’d turned around and abandoned her, and now she’d vanished, a whole chain of loss and want and grasping that had led to this night.
“I testified that Ricky had started the fire,” Patricia said. “I lied to protect us. After the trial, Margaret promised me that we’d be together again. Just as soon as the dust settled, she said. I waited and waited. A year went by. More. She stopped answering my calls. Wouldn’t answer my letters. So I gave up on Margaret Morrow.”
The headache was building now, pounding. Patricia began to say something else, but the twin halos of car headlights entered the room through the crack in the curtains, refracted against the wall, hovering above the mantel before flicking into darkness. Tom. Or the stranger: while we’d been lost in the past, we’d left our present selves open and vulnerable.
Patricia moved over to the window and twitched aside the curtain. “Your friend is back.”
Before we left, I turned to her. Our gazes met; for the first time, she looked bereft. She was watching my mother leave her all over again. “I’m worried about you and Isabelle,” I said to her, a sudden impulse. “I think we’re being targeted by somebody. All of us. Be careful, okay?”
Stepping closer, Patricia grabbed my hand like she’d dared herself to do it. “Take care of her,” she whispered, fierce, her eyes slipping past me and landing on Cate. “Don’t you dare hurt her just because you’re afraid. Either love her fully or not at all.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, glancing back, worried that Cate had heard. Heat stirred in my stomach, and guilt, and something like excitement—