“Barbara,” I said. “We’re here about my mother.”
“Your mother? How do I know her?” Barbara asked, a warning underneath the politeness. “Is she—are you friends of—”
“My mother was Tonya Bowers,” Cate said. “She died last year. Josephine is Margaret’s daughter, and Isabelle is Patricia’s daughter.”
Barbara’s expression wavered, then turned stony. “What are you doing here?” she asked, voice tight with suppressed anger. “Don’t you know better than to come by here? This is my family business. Our livelihood. Anybody could see you marching in here.” She glanced up at the ceiling. “My girls,” she breathed. “Did you talk to them? What did you say?”
“Don’t worry,” Cate soothed. “We barely spoke. They have no idea who we are.”
“Didn’t your mother tell you to leave me alone, Josephine?” Barbara said. “I told her I didn’t want anything to do with her or you.”
“You heard from my mother?” I asked, that old optimism springing up again.
“You aren’t listening to me, young lady,” Barbara said. “I don’t want you here.”
“Please,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve seen on TV that my mother might be in trouble—if you know anything about her—”
For one cold moment, I thought: I could make her tell me. I was tired of playing nice, always trying to ease information out of people who didn’t want to talk to me. These women who’d been involved in my very creation and wouldn’t tell me the things I needed to know, cloaking my history from me, keeping me from my mother. I just wanted to know, and I had the power to find out. What was I doing standing here, limp and compliant? It would take almost nothing to drag it out of Barbara. No harm done. Not really.
But before I could say anything, Isabelle was speaking: “That’s your other daughter? The girl with the video game?” she asked.
Barbara’s face tightened. “Yes,” she said. “It’s not what you think. I had Min-ji with my husband. She’s his daughter, in every way.”
“You never told your daughters about us at all,” Isabelle said to Barbara. “Soo-jin didn’t recognize us and she grew up with us. She has no idea who she is, does she? She’s so special, but she thinks she’s just like anybody else.”
“She knows she’s special,” Barbara said. “She has a loving family. She has a good home. She’s brilliant, kindhearted. What else does she need to make her special?” The rest of us didn’t answer. Cate and I were both wedged in a fraught silence.
Isabelle shrugged. “Maybe she deserves to know.”
Barbara’s mouth twitched into a sudden, contemptuous smile. “Are you blackmailing me? You’re just a kid. I remember changing your diaper.” She was amused, giving us a glimpse of the past Barbara. Fierce, outspoken Mother Eight. Always more willing to joke or roughhouse than the other mothers. Always up to be it during a game of tag or hide-and-seek.
Barbara stepped forward, took Isabelle’s chin in her hand. She gently turned Isabelle’s face to the side, examining her. “Your mother,” Barbara said at last, “was always stealing my things. I couldn’t leave anything out or she’d assume it was hers too.” Barbara let go of Isabelle’s chin. She moved across the basement toward the stairwell, locked the door. “You have ten minutes.” She pointed at the clock. “After that, you leave town and you never come back and bother us again, or there will be consequences.”
“Yes,” I said at once. “Of course.” The other two nodded.
Barbara sat on the one folding chair in the workroom. We stayed standing, close together, the wet, green scent of the flower stems all around us. Now that the moment had passed, I was relieved that I hadn’t given in to the grubby temptation to force her to talk. Still. Ten minutes. My lungs tightened at the idea of fitting everything into such a short time. I pulled the photograph of Lily-Anne out of my pocket and handed it to Barbara.
She cradled it behind the other hand as if sheltering a guttering flame. “Where did you find this? I was sure it was destroyed in the fire.”
“My mother held on to it,” Cate said. I craned my neck to take in the photo again, Barbara and Lily-Anne. Now I noticed a deeper texture to Lily-Anne’s smile. It reminded me of Bellanger. The kind of smile he wore whenever he was photographed on the heels of a breakthrough. Triumph.