My mother had been resurrected on my face just a second ago and I hadn’t even known.
“It does a man good, as a matter of fact, seeing the same faces reappearing like this. It makes me feel twenty years younger to look at you.” His eyes moved to my breasts.
This time, I did grab for the front of my T-shirt, instinctively trying to cover myself. “You’ve aged more than twenty years, yourself,” I snapped back.
Ricky gave a small nod, amused.
“Did you send somebody after my mother?” I asked, knowing I was losing my cool, not fighting it. “Did you tell somebody to set that fire? Do you know where she is?”
“Such a chatterbox. Any other questions, while you’re at it? The meaning of the universe, perhaps?”
“Just those three.”
“The answer to all three is the same thing: no.”
I leaned forward until the damp man and the raincoated woman on either side of me were hidden from view. Ricky leaned in too; without the glass we might’ve looked like we were about to kiss. “Patricia Bishop told me that you shouldn’t be in here,” I said, so low that nobody could overhear. “She said that you weren’t the one to start the fire.”
He didn’t seem surprised. “So she came around.”
“You were found guilty.”
“That I was,” he agreed. “I’m sure it’s been easier on you all, knowing that I’m locked up in here. Everyone’s happy. Of course, sometimes I worry for you girls.”
“We’re fine,” I said brusquely. “Don’t waste time worrying about us.”
“But I do. Because I’m not a bad man, Josephine. And the real killer is still out there.”
As a child, I’d known Ricky less as a person and more as a disembodied threat: a distant voice leading rhythmic chants at the edge of the compound, the anger flattened out by repetition until it was no more remarkable than birdsong. I’d only seen him in person a few times, on the rare occasions when we left the grounds. Those faces clustered at the edges of our property, all those grown-ups turning to stare at me, jostling for a better view. Most of them were angry—gazes so hard and cold I had to look down at my own arm, sun-freckled, to remind myself I was there. That I hadn’t actually turned into a monster. But there were other faces, curious or kind.
Later on, I’d been baffled when I’d first identified Ricky Peters as the ringleader, the one who’d murdered Bellanger. I remembered him as one of the friendlier faces, a man who’d sometimes smiled at me. Now those smiles took on a slippery quality in my memory, more threatening than the scowls.
“If you’re not guilty, why did you accept the plea deal?” I demanded. “Why let yourself rot away in here for something you didn’t do?”
“You have no idea,” Ricky said softly. “I was proud, back then, and idealistic. I wasn’t going to waste my best years in prison when I was an innocent man. You better believe I was full of fire. They’d slapped me with so many trumped-up charges. Trespassing, aggravated assault, arson, two first-degree murders. I’m not from Vermont, you realize. I traveled here all the way from Alabama. I had to come here once I saw that doctor on the news. After the fire, though, they painted me as an outsider who’d brought scandal and death to this nice little state. They were out for my blood. My lawyer counseled me to take the plea bargain. One charge of second-degree murder, one charge of manslaughter for the little girl. I refused. I wanted to bring the real killer to justice, you see. So I brought it to trial. I trusted that the world would be on my side. I’d shown the world what you were. I told the world what it meant for women to have babies on their own—what it meant for us men, if it kept on. And what good did it do? Nothing.” He leaned back. “People get too distracted by the shiny and the new, and you girls were shiny and new. There were baby dolls of you girls in the stores, for little Suzy to get under the Christmas tree. Like it was something little girls would want for themselves one day.”
I’d seen my baby doll in old ads. A generic doll, bubble-headed, tufty-haired, with a ONE on her bib. It had been discontinued, but apparently the dolls sold for a lot on underground markets now as novelty items.
“The world was on your side,” I said, my heartbeat gathered in the spot where my cheek pressed into the receiver. “They did hate us.”
“As it turns out, they were not on my side,” Ricky said, his voice holding long-ago bitterness. “You should’ve seen that trial. Those young women weren’t the enemies anymore. They’d turned into victims. As sweet as could be. The world looked at me and saw a man who’d murdered a little girl. They forgot who that girl was, and they forgot what she stood for. They just imagined one of their own little girls burning in a blaze set by a monster like me and they wanted justice.”