“Do you know,” Tom said, “when a forest grows back after a fire, sometimes it’s not even the same forest? Different trees grow faster because the soil’s been changed by the fire. So really, you might be looking at a whole new forest now.”
A breeze tugged at the hair around my temples, sending wisps into my eyes. I’d interpreted my mother’s silence as a sign that she wanted to move from the past. I hadn’t considered that she’d been hiding and protecting another woman—one who was daring, defiant, an impossible dreamer, and a ruthless killer. A Margaret Morrow who was a fugitive from both herself and her own daughter.
“I need to ask my mother about this,” I said, a flare of grief. “She’s the only one who can tell me the truth. And I might never find her now.”
“There are still other Homesteaders out there,” Tom said. “Don’t give up just yet. The Kims, the Grassis. The Strouds. Your mother could be visiting them. She has that whole list, and we know for a fact that she visited both Emily and Deb.”
I was so tired. I thought of my apartment, the predictability of the cool, pale lecture halls, the zebrafish darting and sparkling. Chicago was a place where everything about my past was confined inside the pages of textbooks. Where I knew who I was and where I was going. For a while the future had felt auspicious, welcoming, and now it was cluttered and overshadowed by a past I hadn’t ever understood.
“The others might know more about who really set the fire,” I said. “I’m not sure I trust Patricia.” But then I realized something. We were right here in Vermont. Why waste time with secondary sources? “Tom. I should talk to Ricky Peters in person. If he’s spending his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he’ll jump at the chance to tell me what happened.”
Tom hesitated.
“What?”
“You can’t just walk into a prison like it’s a hotel lobby. You need to be on an approved list, pass all kinds of background checks. It could take weeks for you to get in to see him, and that’s if Ricky even allows it—”
“Even so,” I said, determined now. “I’m going to try.”
* * *
A sharp knock.
I woke up. My neck held a complicated ache from sleeping in the Volvo. My eyes were sticky and bleary. I let it all come back to me: my mother, the custody battle, fighting with Bellanger, lighting the match. This was the last morning I’d wake up and have to reconstruct this. From this point on, it would be a simple reality. My mother the murderer.
In the driver’s seat, Tom was asleep, long legs pulled up uncomfortably, chin to chest; in the backseat, Cate curled into a fetal position, her face relaxed in sleep.
Another hard tap against the glass, right near my temple. I jumped more fully awake, heart hammering, muscles gripping suddenly. The stranger had followed us here. The man in the maroon sedan. He’d hunted us, tracked us, and now we were sitting ducks. Unguarded and asleep in this little car, no weapons, nothing. Hidden from the main road.
Slowly, I turned my head. Someone was leaning down to stare inside the car, face too close for comfort, backlit and shadowed by the rising sun, whites of the eyes glinting. I was going to scream: I could feel the sound in my throat, constricting, rising—
“Isabelle?”
She smiled and pulled back, gesturing for me to open the door.
I glanced around. Tom and Cate had stayed asleep, though Cate mumbled to herself and turned over. I stepped outside, shutting the door as softly as I could. The morning air was cool and fresh after the muggy interior of the Volvo.
“I knew I’d find you here,” Isabelle said. Her long hair was tucked back in a high ponytail, and she wore a starched white blouse and puffy floral skirt, too old for her. She was flanked by two suitcases. Childish ones, with embroidered rainbows arcing across the sides. A purse, nice brown leather, old-ladyish, was resting on her hip, the strap cutting into her shoulder. She was channeling three different age ranges at once, all of them wrong for her.
“Where did you even come from?” The clearing behind her was empty. We were miles and miles from the Bishops’ house.
“I took a taxi,” she said. “This was the only place I could think of that you might be.”
I gestured at the suitcases. “What’s this all about?”
Isabelle was radiating something different: she was sharper, energy thrumming off her in neat waves. Her deferent slouch was gone, straightened out as if somebody had taken her and tugged all her bones in the right direction. “Guess what,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”