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CHAPTER THREE the unbecoming of anne blanchard
BERNADETTE REMEMBERED THE day they brought Philippa home from the hospital on the morning after she was born. Again, June, fish fly season, and the car was swarmed with the ephemeral insects before Benedict Blanchard even got out of the vehicle to help his wife with her baby. Each of the girls were scattered around the house, eleven year old Bernie had Anne on her hip, Constance somewhere in the kitchen. Mrs Scheer, who lived just a few doors down, her kitchen always open for those who wanted a sip of her bland chai tea, had waddled across the street just before the sun set when Benedict pounded on her window amid a panic attack. He had experienced his wife's labour five times before, but it still sprouted the same wriggling anxiety in his stomach, and he didn't even own the womb that held the baby girl.
There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the willow tree was budding with fuzz. Anne had been the first sister to hold Pippa, and Bernadette noted subconsciously how small the last Blanchard girl was, how her fingernails weren't even the size of rice grains, how her eyelashes barely made it to the thin wisp of a single hair. Her head had smelt of cake, vanilla and sponge alike. So, it was particularly jarring to see her yellow eyes rolling back behind her eyelids, blue lips slightly parted, and traces of foam patching around her mouth. It wasn't incongruous for Philippa to appear dead, after all, she had lived for months in a permanent catatonic state after her first attempt in June, but it was wildly painful to see her truly gone in the photos that plastered the table Bernadette was cuffed to.
"I need a break." Bernadette said, but Horan hadn't heard her, so she pulled her cuffs against the metal to signify a large metal ringing. "I said, I need a break. These are my sisters. . . please."
Ingres Horan narrowed her eyes and turned to face the glass, though she couldn't tell if anyone was looking back at her. "The FBI are already here," she said and Bernadette's neck snapped up to the window. Not out of fear, out of longing to see her friend. There was a soft curve in her eyebrows, a saddened glisten in her eyes. "They've been listening since . . . I'll send them in in ten," somehow, somewhere, Horan's cold eyes softened. "Do you need anything?"
"Just some water, that would be great, thanks." Bernadette said, and it was unmissable to hear how hoarse and dry her throat was from ripping open with her tortured shrieks. Horan nodded, muttering that she'd send it in with the others, and left. However, she left the photos on the desk, and Bernadette knew as well as the next person that this had been done purposefully. It was a tactic, and the eyes were waiting to see how she'd react.
At first, Bernadette refused to give in, and looked anywhere but the photos of her dead sisters. She tapped her foot rhythmically against the slate coloured floor, and crooked her neck so that her eyes penetrated the brown ceiling. There were lines in the wallpaper, like worms were trying to escape. She wondered how many guilty men had sat in the chair she was crouched in, how many creatures the human race had spawned that had danced the line of bloodlust and insanity as if it were a talent, and her heart burst with nervousness. How many women had been in her shoes? A face of natural placation, a disguise that they had weaponized to get away with the crimes that had earned themselves a name as bad as the Kin Killer. For a moment, just a moment, a haunting thought corrupted Bernadette's mind, and she feared that she would never leave the cold embrace of interrogation rooms, of orange jumpsuits or of the grey blandness of imprisonment.
