The truth about the ‘Miracle Babies'

Josephine Morrow is Girl One, the first of nine babies conceived without male DNA as part of a scientific experiment in a commune called the Homestead. Years after fleeing the cult, Josie’s mum disappears, forcing her to reconnect with her dark past.

- SARA FLANNERY MURPHY

I learned about my mother’s disappearance from the evening news. I looked up from my textbook when I overheard my surname and recognised the exact cypress tree that grew outside my bedroom window. From that point on, my life turned into a stream of simple equations. How long my mother had been missing (one day). How long since I’d had an actual conversation with her (just over a year). The cost of a bus ticket back to Coeur du Lac, my adopted hometown ($15). The amount left in my bank account after spending fifteen dollars ($110.67). How doomed I would be if I abandoned Chicago for longer than three nights (very: I had four exams looming within the next few weeks).

For a while, I lost myself in these calculations and the illusion of stability they offered. This was my standard coping mechanism: turn everything into problems on a checklist to be neatly solved, then filed away. If I pulled it off just right, I could focus on the question of how many pairs of jeans to pack (three) and keep my panic at bay.

But when I arrived back in Coeur du Lac, Illinois – Heart of the Lake, with no lake and no discernible heart – I stood in front of the shell of my childhood home in the balmy twilight, and everything in me crumpled. Something bad had happened here. Something bad had happened again, and this time it involved my mother.

The footage on the news and the photos in the papers hadn’t prepared me. The wreaths of yellow caution tape around the porch railings looked weirdly festive, like an interrupted birthday party. The porch still stood, but a narrow gash through the living room wall exposed blackened brick, hanging guts of insulation, snaky wires. The rest of the house looked more or less the same. That was almost worse: the untouched parts. I took a deep, shuddering breath.