“We thought she was pregnant with Fiona,” Cate said. “But this is from at least January 1976.” She tapped the edge of the framed image. “Fiona was already a nine-month-old baby at that point. Lily-Anne couldn’t have been pregnant with her.”
Barbara held the photograph up at different angles, as if the light might alter the image. “This photograph was taken even later than that. New Year’s Day in 1977. I knew it was a mistake to frame that silly Time cover, but Tami thought it belonged in the timeline of the Homestead. She thought we’d helped to inspire this shift.”
I exchanged a glance with the others. The same year as the fire. There was a pressure growing around the edges of my skull. “Why is Lily-Anne pregnant in this photo?” I made myself ask.
“It’s too much. I can’t catch you up, I don’t want to revisit all that.” She squeezed her eyes shut briefly, reopened them. “You girls aren’t ready.”
“We know more than you think,” I said. “We know about Fiona’s abilities. We know that my mother was behind most of what happened on the Homestead.”
Barbara processed this quietly.
“It’s our story too,” I said. “We need to know.”
I could see her relent. “You’re right that this wasn’t Fiona,” she said, touching Lily-Anne’s pregnant belly. “It was her little sister.”
A tenth baby. Another miracle, one the world hadn’t dissected and documented. Bellanger’s lost creation.
“At first I was the only one who knew about it,” Barbara said. “Lily-Anne was my dearest friend, and she barely even trusted me with this secret. She was so quiet, staying in one room and sleeping a lot. We thought it was the stress. The rest of us had to look after little Fiona.” She peered at me. “You don’t remember any of this, Josie?”
“I remember that … that Fiona was always around,” I said slowly. “I was jealous of her. For a while, my mom watched Fiona more than she spent time with me.”
Barbara nodded. “We all stepped in and helped when Lily-Anne couldn’t handle things anymore. One day, I was checking on Lily-Anne and she showed me that she was pregnant. Five months along by then. I couldn’t believe it. That’s when she asked me to take the photo. How could I say no? She was glowing. She begged me to keep it quiet from the others, and I did. Dr. Bellanger had been home in Maryland for months at that point. One of his sons needed his attention. He’d just had an operation for his scoliosis and it had finally convinced Bellanger to spend more time with the poor boy.”
Judging by Cate’s small inhalation, this detail stood out to her too. A week ago I would barely have thought about Junior.
“It was the longest Bellanger had ever been away,” Barbara said. “Lily-Anne was so excited for him to come back. She wanted it to be a big surprise for him. She really thought it would be his greatest triumph, the miracle without the medicine. A new stage.” I thought of that triumphant smile in the photograph. “But when Bellanger found out, he was furious. He insisted that she was endangering the baby by carrying it to term without his assistance.” Barbara took a shuddering breath. “Bellanger instantly moved her to his lab, away from the main house, so she was even more isolated. He started her on medications every day, trying to make up for lost time. He wanted that pregnancy under his control, I suppose.”
“Why didn’t Bellanger announce that he was starting a second phase?” I asked. That would have been breaking news, the perfect complement to his plans to share his research, his proposed idea of releasing a medication to induce parthenogenesis. I couldn’t understand why this pregnancy had been hidden away all these years.
“There was no second phase,” Barbara said, impatient now. “Josephine, if I’m going to talk, then you need to listen. Bellanger didn’t have anything to do with that pregnancy.”
“It was a normal pregnancy,” I said. “By a man.” Another layer of reality spread out beneath the known one. A past in which there were men, fathers, hairy and anonymous, who’d brought us to life, provided us with the other half of our DNA, and then vanished.
Cate squeezed my arm, quieting me. “Lily-Anne did it without Bellanger?” she asked. The anonymous men dissolved as easily as they’d stirred to life.
Nobody spoke or moved. It felt like we were held inside this moment, forced to slow down, absorb the meaning, and let ourselves change in response.