Now

The feeling of pulling up to Deborah Reeves's house is a sick déjà vu. Just like last time, she's on the porch before I've even killed the engine, in what looks like the same housedress, cradling the same shotgun, the baby doll heads bobbling like drunk birds above her. The only difference is that the day is clear this time, the sunshine bright, making Deborah and her house seem even more like a blight scratched into the perfect countryside.

Whether from reckless bravado or some instinct that it will be okay, I step right out of the car. Deborah raises her gun.

"Wait," I call out. Forcing myself to move slowly, I pull the wig off, then the cap, shaking out my red hair. A sign to her, I hope, that I'm giving her honesty and I want honesty back.

She doesn't speak. She doesn't shoot either.

"We need to talk, Deborah," I say.

The gun is still trained on me, but I know I can get her on my side.

"I came back because I love Josh, and you do, too, and we may be the only two people left in the world who feel that way. You can hate me for being a Synth. But Josh deserves justice, and I think I can find his killer, but I need your help."

At first, she doesn't react. Then, slowly, she lowers the gun. Jerks her head, disappears into the house. The screen door bangs. I toss my wig back into the car and limp up behind her.

Inside, foggy darkness takes over as I pick my way down the junk-strewn pathway between boxes that she's made some effort to restack. It smells just as bad as before. Cat pee, mothballs, sewage, rot.

"What happened to your foot?" Deborah says as I finally make it to the kitchen, where she's stirring something in a small pot on the stove. Her gun rests on the counter. A foot-high Santa figurine smiles at me serenely from the top of the TV, where a Jeep ad plays on mute across the warped screen. A small jungle of nativity figures surrounds the TV, all facing the benevolent Santa.

"I twisted my ankle," I say.

"Sit down, then." She gestures to the chair.

I sigh as the weight comes off my foot.

"So you don't think I killed Josh anymore?" Deborah says from the stove. The smell from the pot wafts toward me. Acidic. Tomatoey.

"No. Do you still think I did?"

"I'm still deciding. That's some balls, coming back here. What's your game?"

"I have a baby. You know. Annaleigh," I begin carefully. My best shot at prying her open is our connection as mothers. "As soon as I was a person of interest in Josh's case, they sent Child Protective Services to take her away. I...hid her. With someone safe. But I have to get back to her. That's why I have to clear my name. Not just for myself, not just for Josh, but for her. My baby. That's what I care about most of all."

"You love that baby?" She clatters the spoon on the counter and faces me. "You're telling me you're capable of that?"

I picture Annaleigh in my mind's eye even as I look at Deborah. "From the moment she was born." God. I haven't let myself think about her very much, but now the floodgates are opening and I could drown in the power of missing her. "She had this face she'd do, when she was really tiny. We called it her ‘mysteries of the universe' face. Her forehead would wrinkle and she'd pucker her little lips. Like she could fathom all these profound secrets, and if she just had the words to say them..." I feel a pressure on my chest and realize it's my own hand, pressing down, like I'm trying to keep my heart from leaping out of my body. "Part of me was so scared. She was so...small. It felt like she could just die, any second. I—"

"Mine died," Deborah says.

"Yes, I remember," I say softly, hoping I didn't just make a huge misstep. "I hope you know how sorry I am."

She turns and rummages in the cupboard.

"Roses are red, violets are blue," she chants as she pulls down two bowls. "She killed not one, but two times two."

...two times two? A quiver dances up my spine, but I don't speak. The moment is too fragile.

"Her name was Shiloh. It was SIDS. You know what that is?" Deborah ladles a thick red substance into the bowls, each move mechanical, deliberate.

I make an assenting sound.

"Then I had Eileen. She made it eight months." Releasing the ladle, Deborah grips the counter and looks at the steaming bowls. "Then Joey. Three months." She turns suddenly. "Hannah made it four months. They did an investigation. It was national news. My husband filed for divorce. They called me a monster. Sullivan's successor. I lost all my friends. Everyone." Her eyes, instead of being full of pain, remain glassy.

My heart is going crazy in my chest. Losing Annaleigh would kill me. How did Deborah survive that...four times? And then I realize...

She didn't.

This isn't a crazy woman. This is a ruined woman. Branded a monster during her deepest grief. Rejected and left alone when she needed mercy. Not judgment.

She turns back to the bowls. "I was acquitted, but just on paper. I thought about killing myself. Instead, I just watched TV. Coward's way out." Her eyes turn to the little TV, still on mute, where a female anchor is kicking off a news segment.

Instinctively, I rise from the chair and make two hobbling steps toward her. Reach forward and cover her hand with mine. The skin shifts over her bones, cold and soft.

"I may not be human," I say, "but I feel your pain."

She looks at me, and for the pulse of a heartbeat, we're just two people. Not a monster and a Bot; just two mothers whose hearts beat for their children. Whose happiness is held in those fragile bodies.

"Now what?" says Deborah in a guttural whisper.

I release her hand and lean my elbows on the counter so that our faces are nearly level.

"Tell me about Laura Pine."

She sighs, then says, "Wait here," and disappears into the next room. After vague thumps and shuffles, she returns with three fat photo albums, each spine marked JOSH LASALA under clear tape. She opens the top one on the counter, and a baby picture of Josh stares back, all chubby cheeks and dimples.

"Oh," I breathe. It's Annaleigh, all the way. I never realized how much she looks like him. "May I?"

She nods. I flip through more pictures. An article Josh wrote for the school paper in fourth grade entitled "Why Sports Are Great!" Photocopies of pages from his high school yearbooks. Even his senior report card. God knows how Deborah got that. Something in me says this should be creepy, that she's assembled all this information about my husband. Instead, I feel...grateful.

Then I turn the page, and there's the redhead. Laura Pine, her arm around Josh's waist and his arm around her shoulder. They look young, happy, carefree. But I know how deceiving a picture can be.

"Her maiden name was Wekstein," says Deborah, and in spite of the circumstances, a rush moves through me. I was right. Josh dated Andy's sister.

"Laura got married right out of high school to a boy named Eric Pine," Deborah continues, "but it didn't work out. They were together for less than a year. Then she went to college. Purdue. She and Josh started dating their sophomore year. She never did officially get divorced."

"How do you know all this?"

"Social media. You'd be surprised how open kids can be." And then, Deborah turns the photo album page and I recoil. Laura, with a black eye, nearly swollen shut. The shot is moody, artistic. Her head is tilted, her expression veiled. The caption reads, When love turns to poison.

"I printed that from Myspace. Good thing, because she took the post down real quick." Deborah caresses her finger down the page. "I tried to call Josh. I wrote him, over and over. He never had a good father figure. My Josh needed help."

"Mercy," I say, repeating Deborah's word. The thing she never got but wanted to give. To Josh.

She nods. "Laura broke up with him. And then Josh did a bad thing. He posted a sex video they made together. It's on my computer. Do you want to see it?"

I shiver. "No."

"There was more. Pictures of her naked. Accusations. He made it sound like she was doing the whole football team. Professors, too."

I hear the words Deborah is saying, but as much as I pride myself on my empathy, they're not computing.

"I...don't understand. Why would he want to ruin her like that?"

"She humiliated him. Exposed him. It was more than he could take. Hurt is like dominoes, isn't it? He hurt her. She hurt him. He hurt her back." She delivers this matter-of-factly. "Just like my babies. When they died, it hurt so bad, not just for me. Their daddy. Their grandparents. We were all in pain. And people in pain want someone to knock down."

My heart pounds for Deborah, for Laura. For myself. Domino girls. There for others to knock down.

"And Laura?" Then I remember Andy's millions in donations...to suicide prevention. "She killed herself, didn't she?"

Deborah nods. "All her socials disappeared. Every trace of Laura on the internet was gone, until the memorial page her husband, Eric, made. But I had everything printed and saved." She pats the photo albums.

My husband was responsible for Laura Wekstein's death.

My head believes it. My heart doesn't want to.

The next conclusion is equally as unbelievable.

Laura's grieving older brother made me to be Josh's perfect match.

Perfect.It's a strange little word, because it means nothing without its context. Perfect for love? Or perfect for revenge?

I'm lightheaded. I brace my arms on the counter.

"Look." Deborah points a remote at the TV and turns up the volume. "You're on the news."

"Hi, Jack," says a live reporter in a windbreaker who's jogging after two people who are walking briskly ahead of him. There's a still frame of me in the upper right of the screen. "I'm here at Tenth Street on the campus of Indiana University, alma mater of WekTech CEO Andy Wekstein, the man responsible for designing Julia Walden." He catches up with the first person. "Mr. Wekstein!"

The figure on the right turns briefly. Yep, it's Andy.

"The Synth you designed is suspected of murdering her husband!" shouts the reporter as the camera wobbles. "Your response?"

Andy looks wild, unhinged. "She can't fucking hurt people, okay, you morons? This is a sh—bleep show. That fu—bleep sheriff is a bigot and a disgrace to law enforcement. And you know what? You're all a bunch of vultures! Bleep off!"

It's absolutely bizarre, seeing Andy so out of control. I've seen him emotional before, but never angry like this. It reminds me...

Of Josh.

Bile rises. I have the awful image of being the ball bouncing back and forth between two angry men. The man who made me and the man I was made for.

The image on the TV shifts and I catch sight of the second figure, to Andy's left, hands shoved into her jacket pockets, head down, trying to be unobtrusive. Eden.

"Why?" I say—to the TV, to Deborah, to myself. Each heartbeat hurts. "Why did Andy make me for Josh?"

But my brain fills in the story even as the last word leaves my mouth: Andy made me for revenge. He figured, once an abuser, always an abuser, and after Josh inevitably became violent with me, Andy was counting on me to go public with the abuse. Ruin Josh's life just like Josh ruined Laura's, in a perfect tit for tat. Laura took down her single MySpace post, and maybe only Deborah ever saw it. But a post from me would be seen by one hundred fifty million followers—and that's just for starters. I'm a celebrity; Andy made sure of it. People would care in a way they never would have for Laura.

But there was a design flaw Andy didn't anticipate, wasn't there? Love. I didn't behave like I was supposed to. I kept the abuse to myself. So Andy took matters into his own hands and killed Josh.

Deborah points the remote at the TV and mutes it.

"I think you know why," she says with cold certainty. "Don't you get it, Synth? It's not enough for us to be the victims of their pain." She grips my arm and squeezes with surprising ferocity. Her eyes lock with mine. Her voice is a snarl. "They need us to be their monsters, too."