Excerpt
The Devil's Daughter
Chapter 1
Wilhelmina “Billie” Banks stood looking in the mirror in her dorm room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just outside Boston. She was wearing her cap and gown, a pair of high heels she had bought for the occasion, the only ones she owned, and a serious expression. She felt as though her life was beginning at that moment. In a few minutes, she would be graduating with her class,
magna cum laude. Without the heels, she stood just over five feet, had a slim figure and delicate features, straight dark hair, and green eyes. Even with the heels and cap and gown, she still looked like a little girl. Growing up, it had always frustrated her that people mistook her for a child at times, especially when she was in jeans and running shoes, with her hair in braids. Today she was wearing her hair in a neat ponytail under her mortarboard with the tassel. She wished that her mother could see her, but she had died when Billie was seventeen, in her senior year of high school, the year before she had come to MIT. She still missed her terribly, especially at times like this. This was the most important moment of her life.
Billie’s mother, Virginia Banks, was the only person in Billie’s life who didn’t think she was a freak. Virginia had been passionate about education, and learning whatever you could. Billie had majored in biology and minored in chemistry, and was a gifted science student. She had come to MIT on a full scholarship thanks to her high school counselor Virgil White, who had encouraged her to apply. He wrote the letter that got her into MIT and got her the scholarship, which had changed her life.
Billie had grown up on her father’s modest dairy farm in Collins, Iowa, with a population of just under five hundred people, northeast of Des Moines. She’d done her chores every day, tending to the cows and helping her father, and then she would study late into the night. Neither of her parents had gone to college, but her mother had taught her that education was everything, even though she herself had married right out of high school and had Billie ten months later. Virginia was thirty-six when she died of breast cancer, but she was a wise, intelligent woman, who had educated herself and her oldest daughter by reading voraciously. Virginia had a passion for French literature, and had always encouraged Billie’s love of science. Billie would have liked to go to medical school but she knew they couldn’t afford it, and she doubted that she could get a full scholarship. She wanted to get a good job now, with a major pharmaceutical company, preferably in research. She had taken summer jobs in local laboratories in Boston, and she worked at the campus bookstore all year long for extra money. She usually spent it on books for herself. When she packed up her things from her dorm room, she had sent several boxes of books home, and hoped her father wouldn’t throw them away. She was taking two boxes of books with her to the student hotel where she was moving that afternoon. She could only afford to stay there for a month at most, until she found a job. She had been studying so intently in the final months of school that she hadn’t taken time to look for a job, so she was eager to find one soon. She would take almost any lab job if she had to as an interim stopgap, but she was hoping to find one in the research department at one of the big pharmaceutical companies. Her Bachelor of Science diploma from MIT was sure to get her a good position. She was planning to go to several employment agencies the Monday after graduation.
When she looked in the mirror, wearing her cap and gown, she saw the same familiar face, but she felt completely different. She suddenly felt more grown-up. She’d gotten her dark hair blown out for the occasion, and it gleamed in the neat ponytail. She hoped she looked mature enough to find a good job. She had lived by her mother’s golden rule, “Education is everything,” a theory her father didn’t adhere to. He thought education was useless, especially for a girl. He hoped his daughters would find husbands, preferably farmers in neighboring towns, and stay near home. He had great hopes for Billie’s younger sister, Michaela. Mickie was a strikingly beautiful girl, worthy of the son of any of the big farm owners nearby. Mickie was a rare beauty and the apple of her father’s eye.
Their nicknames were in lieu of the sons he didn’t have. Mickie was tall and blond, and looked like him. Jim Banks was a handsome man, and she was his pride and joy. He had been born and raised in Collins, his father had built the dairy, and Jim had worked there all his life. Mickie had as little interest in education as he did and she relied on her looks and charm and artful ways to get whatever she wanted, particularly from her father. She knew just how to work him. He hung on her every word, believed everything she said, and lived to make her happy. She was three years younger than Billie, and had been fourteen when their mother died. Billie had done the best she could to mother Mickie during her final year at home, before she left for MIT, but their relationship had never been easy. Unlike Billie, Mickie looked like she was in her twenties when she was fourteen. She was fully a woman, with a spectacular figure. Men all over the county had been noticing her for years, and she’d been boy-crazy since she was thirteen. She’d been nearly impossible to control and Billie fought with her constantly when she entered high school during Billie’s last year at home. She climbed out windows and went to parties at the town hall or other kids’ homes. She was full of life and exuberance, constantly in trouble of some kind but always managing to get out of it. She usually blamed Billie for something she had done, and their father believed her. Most of the time Billie wound up getting punished for her sister’s crimes, which Mickie thought was funny. She had no conscience at all about it and somehow Billie always let her get away with it. Their mother was wise to Mickie’s ways, and could usually guess when Mickie was lying, but once their mother was gone, Billie felt an obligation to protect her sister.
The worst thing Mickie had ever done was steal their father’s truck and run over the dog he loved, killing it, while she was trying to sneak out to a school dance in the next town. She ran over it and kept on driving and went to the dance. Jim Banks had been heartbroken over the dog when he found him in the morning, and Mickie said she had seen Billie do it. Billie didn’t think her father had ever forgiven her. But she didn’t think he liked her much anyway. He thought her fascination with science was weird, and unsuitable for a girl. Billie did all the chores at the dairy that Mickie took credit for. He never hid the fact that Mickie was his favorite from the time she was born. He paid no attention to Billie at all, except to punish her for whatever Mickie blamed on her.
Mickie had been a beautiful baby with golden curls and big blue eyes, and she had her father wrapped around her finger ever since she could talk. Billie knew better than anyone that her little sister had been lying all her life. She never hesitated to sacrifice Billie to get what she wanted. The lies she told were totally credible, with those big blue eyes and the face of an angel. Her lack of empathy for anyone else had always worried their mother. Virginia was Billie’s only defender.
Everything was all about Mickie and whatever her goal was on any given day. She loved clothes and boys and dancing and going out and having fun. She teased the boys mercilessly and half the boys in their school were in love with her, and didn’t mind how badly she treated them. She taunted them, and was a proficient flirt. She knew just how to drive men crazy even at twelve and thirteen, and by fourteen she was really good at it. Boys would come to visit her and they’d disappear, somewhere on the farm. Billie could guess what they were doing. Mickie drove all the boys crazy with desire for her.
After their mother died, Billie found Mickie with the captain of the basketball team where they kept the fresh hay. Billie scolded her for it afterward, and worried about her getting pregnant, and later Billie found the contraceptive pills Mickie had been given by a birth control clinic. When Billie confronted her with them, she said she’d used a fake ID that said she was eighteen, even though she was just fourteen then. But at least she never got pregnant. Billie could only imagine the heyday Mickie must have had once she had left for MIT, and from then on. Their father never tried to control her. There was no stopping her, especially when a boy was involved, and none of them could resist her. She was too beautiful and too sexy.
Boys never looked twice at Billie, even in high school. She was small and skinny and had no figure to speak of. The two girls didn’t even look related, except that they each looked like one of their parents, who looked nothing alike. Virginia had been small, delicate, and graceful, like her eldest daughter. Mickie was tall, slim, and blond like her father. She was the brightest star in the county, and Billie was the smartest, at the top of every class. That’s what got her to MIT, which was just the escape she wanted.
