“He said he was obsessed with me because I was the prettiest of all of us. He told me this like I’d be fucking flattered. His excuse for hurting me was that if I was less pretty, all scarred up, he wouldn’t be tempted. You know, I don’t give a shit that people think that scar is ugly. What bothers me is that it means I don’t look like my mother anymore. He took that from me.”
I leaned against the cool brick, sick to my stomach, imagining this man summing us up with our gap-toothed smiles and choosing Bonnie, marking her with something she’d never asked for and couldn’t escape.
“So I’m sitting there across from him. The guy’s getting ready to make his big move. He has flowers and wine. I’m thirteen, remember. He asked me to get on his lap. I didn’t. He—he started coming toward me, and then he stopped. He was looking around, wild-eyed, calling my name. I looked down and I couldn’t see myself anymore. I was right there, but I also wasn’t there. I saw the marble floor. I saw my mother’s big ugly floral arrangement on the sideboard. I went to the mirror and I couldn’t see myself at all, just the room, and that creep running around yelling for me. It was like a dream. Meanwhile, he was getting angrier and angrier, thinking I’d tricked him on purpose.
“I just went with it. Once I realized what was happening, I moved as fast as I could. I knew where my mother kept the gun. I knew what to do. He was still looking for me, hunting all over the house. I followed him. I watched him. And then I—I did it.”
That scar, sloping along Bonnie’s face. Maybe every girl hid a different version of herself buried under the surface, waiting to become necessary.
“My mother and I got rid of him. She went into this mode I’ve never seen before. Dumped him in the trunk. Drove him out to nowhere. Bleached the blood out of the carpet and tiles. We never mentioned it again. Never. Either of us. Not once.”
So he hadn’t been chasing us. I’d been afraid of a specter. Of a man buried somewhere in Minnesota’s wildlands, already rotting down to his bones, just a collection of hair and teeth in the dirt. Nothing. I squeezed my eyes shut. It hadn’t been Ricky Peters; it hadn’t been Bonnie’s attacker; I was left with nobody.
“I wish you’d listened to me,” Bonnie said.
“Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said, and laughed, exhausted, everything pressing in. “Apparently Ricky Peters didn’t even kill Bellanger, did you know that? It was my mother.”
Bonnie was quiet for a minute. “No, I didn’t know that. Damn.”
“I’m surprised your mom didn’t say anything. She never liked my mother much.” Although now I felt an unexpected sympathy for Deb Clarkson. Her contempt for my mother seemed less petty, more substantial. A spite with a true grief hidden at the center. The Homestead must’ve meant more to her than I realized, and my mother had taken it all. Maybe I should have listened to Deb more closely instead of assuming she was bitter and frivolous.
“Mommy always said Margaret Morrow ruined everything,” Bonnie continued. “She felt so bad for Bellanger’s family. I didn’t get it at first. But if your mother took their dad away, and then she was the one to kill him too—I can’t imagine what they would feel.”
I didn’t answer for a second. It hit me: Of course. Ricky’s hints made sense now, everything reassembling into a pattern I should’ve noticed already. Bellanger’s family. I’d spent so long benignly ignoring them that they’d slipped past my attention when it mattered the most.
“Oh my god,” I said slowly. “That’s it. That’s who’s after us.” When I’d started this journey, it had felt like there was no good reason to come after my mother. But I understood the lure of revenge. The lit match; Bellanger, his remains charred beyond recognition. A family left in pieces, ignored and unseen. “Bellanger’s boys,” I said. “His sons have been after us all along.”
33
April 24, 1976
My lovely Josephine,
There’s an old song that you may, by chance, hear one day: Come Josephine, in my flying machine. I find it stuck in my head quite often lately. You are my little flying machine. We’re going big places together, you and me, my first and favorite daughter. You’re such a good little helper, curious and patient with an old man. I watch you with the other Girls and see how they look up to you. I couldn’t have asked for a better Girl One, a true big sister in every way. Happy Five Years to you!