What was worse, they even acted as if they’d done her a favor. A favor! Peter was her only hope; her only ticket out of her misery. It hadn’t mattered to her that he was imperfect. That he had already begun to lose his looks and wasn’t entirely loyal. He needed to do only one thing for her, and that was get her away from her family, and she would do everything for him. Provide him with a hot meal each night, a willing and warm bed, and as many children as his heart desired.
Colleen had said going back to school would help, because Maureen was starting high school now and that meant new experiences. Maybe she might have found a sliver of relief if the rules of ghosts, as her father explained them, weren’t working against her. They were tethered to places which held personal meaning for them. In her father’s case, the Deschanel properties he shuttled his family back and forth to. In Peter’s, Maureen imagined, it was probably his home and the middle school, but she’d forgotten he also taught at the high school for the summer students, and when he first hovered above her locker with that sad, betrayed look, she knew her mind was not far from lost forever.
Even without him hanging around her, repeating the same question over and over, charging her with the crime, how could Maureen possibly move on? Her brother had killed her lover and would never see a day of penance from this act, despite the police coming around the house to ask questions. They said it was because Maureen was a favorite student of Mr. Evers and “got help” after school several nights per week, but the air of insinuation hanging over their words suggested they suspected a truth she’d never admit.
One didn’t move on from such a thing, and Maureen’s only question now was how she would survive the next four years.
“I’m sure they’ll find him,” Charles said as he tossed an apple in the air, the last time the police came by. Maureen gaped at him long enough for Colleen to notice and kick her under the table. But how else was she supposed to react to such a cavalier dismissal of the horrible secret they all shared? Charles came and went from whatever debauchery he engaged in, without a care, as if he hadn’t murdered a man. Maureen marveled at how little remorse he showed. She didn’t think it was an act.
Even her father actively avoided the topic, though he now knew what Maureen had done. He’d been there when it all fell apart. Seen the pictures.
How is school, Sweet Maureen? He asked, daily, as if he hadn’t seen his middle daughter pressed naked into the pilings in Lake Pontchartrain.
Charles. Colleen. Augustus. August. They all knew, and they all found ways to shove the truth to the side and form a new one in its place. Maureen didn’t know if her inability to do this was a sign she was more human, or less, but she could no more deny her agony than deny any other truths about herself.
When unsuspecting Irish Colleen wrote a large check to help toward the efforts of finding her daughter’s “most favorite teacher,” Maureen fled the room in tears and threw herself into her bed in agony.
“You have to try,” her oldest sister said, appearing as if she’d been tasked with keeping tabs on Maureen’s behavior. “I know you’re hurting, but Mom can’t know, and the authorities can’t know, and that means we all have to try and bury this inside, no matter how hard it is.”
“Hard? For you? How is this hard for you, Colleen?” Maureen demanded. Across the room, her bedroom door closed, a not-so-subtle chastisement to keep her voice down.
“It’s hard because I love you, Maureen.”
Maureen rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Gag me with your fake love. You’re not worried about me, you’re worried about yourself and Huck. You’re probably relieved he took care of the problem so it went away.”
Colleen shook her head so hard her hair loosened from the bun. “Maureen, that is not true. Not at all. I didn’t know he would…” She swallowed the words, and a strange look passed over her face. “We shouldn’t talk about it. If we talk about it, it becomes real, and it might slip in the course of conversation with others.”
“Should I be shocked you care more about how this looks than how I’m feeling?”
“Your brother could go to prison!” Colleen hissed.
“He should go to prison.” Maureen rolled forward on the bed and focused her eyes on her sister. “I hope he does.”
Colleen backed into the closed door with a heavy sigh. “You don’t mean that. I know this is hard for you—”
“You don’t know a fucking thing about me.”
“Watch it, Maureen. This anger will hurt you and everyone around you. What happened is terrible, but it is done, and when something is done, you gather your wits and you move on.”
“Oh yeah? What if I can’t?”
“You think you’re suffering now?” Colleen stared her down. “Wait and see how you feel when this all unravels and you have nothing left but your anger.”
* * *
While the family went about their lives in New Orleans, back and forth to school, to events, to the various places they spent their time, Colleen had never felt more alone or more concerned for all of them.
Her isolation and concern seemed to pair hand in hand, and she could not address one without solving the other.
The Deschanels had not been raised to talk about their problems. Irish Colleen had impressed upon them the age-old value of “family before all else,” but this was a sentiment that stopped at the point where putting family first meant dissecting the exterior forces plaguing them. Colleen didn’t know if her mother’s insistence on internalizing the family’s woes had started with her marriage to August—whose warmth and kindness were often confusing as these traits sat mostly at the surface; digging deeper required full mining gear and brute force—but she had carried the torch for him long after his death. They presented a tight, brave visage to New Orleans, but behind closed doors, inside the dark, gothic halls of Oak Haven or Ophélie or wherever they were, they were rotting from the inside out.
Colleen, like her mother, took up the cross of her family’s survival because leaving it to chance was out of the question. Unlike her mother, she understood their mental and emotional health was as important—no, more—than protecting their reputations and wealth. But trying to crack the heavy veneer blanketing her siblings, which had taken years to grow and solidify, was a task she wasn’t sure she was up to.
Charles had done something horrific. Unspeakable. His laissez faire approach to life hadn’t waned—if anything, he’d thrown himself into his zest for drugs and partying with renewed fervor. Irish Colleen might take this as a sign Charles was restored to himself after a “strange spell of melancholy,” but Colleen knew better. She knew better, and she knew, also, that the harder Charles tried convincing himself everything was all right, the less right things were.
What would be his undoing? Maureen’s hysterics? His own behavior? A roll of fate’s dice? Colleen was ill with the knowledge she carried around, but the only thing worse would be seeing her brother rot in prison. His name might reduce his sentence, but he would never have a family, have a chance to make his life right. If he’d been anyone else, Colleen would have been one of the most vocal proponents of locking him up, and the guilt laced with irony ate away at her.
Whether Maureen provided the catalyst for her brother’s imprisonment, or let the knowledge fester within her, her life would never be the same. Colleen told her she’d get over it, but the words were a lie. She did not need the power of premonition to know what happened to Peter Evers would follow Maureen for the rest of her life, shaping her, for better or worse.
Meanwhile, things grew worse for Elizabeth at school. She couldn’t turn off her premonitions, but she equally couldn’t suffer through them alone, so she continued to share them, and this continued to become problematic not only in the classroom, but also in the broader school system. A young girl with an active imagination and some dumb luck in predictions was a solvable problem. A young girl who had accurately predicted the deaths of at least three people was something else altogether. Her situation wa
s a bomb with a timer longer than the rest of the family’s problems, and so softly ignored. But it would go off, and when it did, the solution would not be as simple this time as switching schools.
And Madeline… every morning, Colleen was certain she would wake up to find her sister gone. Being an empath was no way to live. Colleen prayed no more would be born into this family, for the only ones she’d ever known lived in a constant state of unrest.
She wished she could talk to Augustus about this, or Evangeline. But Augustus had doubled down on his business plans, even more determined, in many ways, than Charles to forget. And Evangeline, the only other child not in some kind of trouble, had taken to acting out at school to get attention in the one way she knew was always guaranteed.
Colleen wondered if she should drop her course load at university. She’d signed up for twenty-one credits, which had required special approval, and they’d tried their best to talk her down. She supposed this was her own way of dealing with everything, but it meant she wasn’t around as often as she needed to be.
“Where are you?” Rory asked. He looked down at her, sweat rolling down the bridge of his nose. A few drops landed on her bare chest.
“What?”
His elbows softened. He bowed his head. “Colleen, I know when you’re here, with me, in the moment, and when you’ve gone somewhere else.”
Colleen turned her head to the side and Rory rolled off her.
He mopped the sweat from his face with his shirt and then looked at her. “You can talk to me. You don’t have to pretend you’re all right just to please me.”
“I’m not pretending, I’m…” What? She was what? Pretending denoted that she didn’t care… that she didn’t love Rory, and she knew she did, she always had, even if her love for him had never quite been as passionate and devoted as his was for her. No, she wasn’t pretending, because to pretend she would need to be present in a way she hadn’t been, not for weeks.
Disappearing. He was right the first time when he suggested she’d gone somewhere else.
“I love you, Colleen, but I don’t want…” Rory swallowed. He stared at the ceiling and drew his mouth tight, a gesture she recognized as his struggle with emotion. “I don’t want you to be with me because you feel like you should. I want you to be with me because you love me, too.”
“I do love you,” Colleen replied, and she knew this was true, even if most of her felt numb to emotions other than worry these days. “I’m sorry, Rory. I know how this sounds, but it isn’t you. Truly. It’s me, and… I can’t turn it off. When my family is hurting, that is. And they are.”
Rory turned on his side. His smile was sad, but warm and inviting. “You can tell me. Anything, Colleen. Is it what I told Charles, about Maureen?”
Colleen of course knew Charles had been tipped off by Rory, but Rory hadn’t really known anything when he told Charles Maureen was up to something. He’d heard whispers, but not specifics. Colleen had no intention of telling him, just as she’d never tell another soul who hadn’t been sitting in the parlor the night Huck came in after disappearing for hours.
“It’s not one thing. It never is.” She pressed her palm to his damp cheek. “You did the right thing, telling Huck.”
“Were the rumors true?”
Colleen paused before shaking her head. This renewed her anger with Charles, that he would put her in such a place, and with Rory of all people. “Just rumors. You know how people in this town are.”
Rory nodded. “That’s the truth.” He angled forward and pressed a kiss to her lips. “You take on a lot for your family. That’s a huge burden for one person. It’s hard enough to see after ourselves.”
“It’s supposed to be the job of the heir, but we all know Charles will never step up in that way. He might settle down and find some stability, but he will never be a caregiver, Rory. He’ll do what his ancestors did and throw money at any problems. If I could turn it off, I would, but I can’t, and, well, I won’t. Between that, and school, and…”
“If you want a break…”
“No. No.” As she said it, she realized she did want a break, but she couldn’t treat Rory as she treated herself, using logic before emotion. A break would signal to him that she didn’t love him as she claimed; that he was lower on her priority list than school, even. And while this wasn’t true, because life didn’t work that neatly, nothing she said would help him see the logical side if she’d just broken his heart.
Rory smiled before he could stop himself. “Okay.” He kissed her again. “I’m gonna go. Call me if you need anything?”
Colleen nodded, though she would never call anyone, not even Rory, about the dark secrets eating away at her heart.
* * *
“The police came by again tonight.” Evangeline tapped her heavy boots into the floor of Colleen’s room.
Colleen hung her jacket on a hanger and sighed. She wanted to turn, to snap that she’d been at school all day and needed a moment to relax before being bombarded.
Instead she turned and smiled patiently. “Yes, and?”
Evangeline chewed on her bottom lip. “This is the third time. You don’t think they actually believe Maureen had something to do with Mr. Evers’ disappearance?”
Colleen forced a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. Maureen was getting extra help from him, and they’re just looking for any information they can get.”
“Yeah, but… he disappeared over summer. Maureen wasn’t his student anymore.”
“They’re just questioning the people who spent time with him, Evie, that’s all.”
“But three times.”
Colleen sighed, and it was at this moment she realized she’d been in character with her family since the night Huck came in, frazzled and guilty. Even her sighs, her tilts of the head, her considered glances… they were all part of this act. “They haven’t found him, and so they’re going back over any lead they can find. The truth is, Mr. Evers probably doesn’t want to be found. Maybe he was unhappy at home and went to start another life. Who knows? But it has nothing to do with us.”
“Then why do you look so stressed about it?”
Colleen dropped her purse on the chair. The anger started in her toes and worked upward, like rays of hot light running alongside her veins. It filled her before she could stop its progression. “You know what? If I look stressed, it’s because I’m taking seven classes while Maureen fails out of basic freshman math. It’s because Huck can’t keep his nose clean for five minutes, and Madeline seems to think she has the skill or the capacity to save the world when she can’t even keep her room orderly! Never mind that Elizabeth keeps predicting the deaths of her friends’ family members.”
Evangeline tensed in the doorway. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are these your problems, Leena? Huh?”
“If I don’t worry about them, who will?” When Evangeline scoffed, Colleen stormed across the room, stopping just before her. “You laugh because you have someone to care about you. Because you have me, who would never let anything really bad actually happen to you. You laugh instead of asking me how you can help me look after the family, because you’re the only other one who lacks the self-centeredness to do it. But you don’t, Evangeline. You don’t offer to help. You don’t come in and ask if I’d like to talk, or if you can help, because you’re so busy worrying about being left out. Grow up, Evie! Grow. Up. You’re the smartest person I know, and you’re more concerned that I’m not paying attention to you, right? That we’re not as close as we used to be, because I’ve decided that putting others first is more important than letting go and having fun? Is that right?”
Evangeline’s eyes filled with tears. Her lower lip trembled. “If I haven’t asked, it’s because I don’t think you want me to anymore. It’s because I don’t think you want me anymore.”
Colleen’s rage faded into the space left where her dearest sister had stood moments before.
Twelve
The Protector
Killing a man hadn’t disturbed Charles’ sleep patterns, but his baby sister’s distress had him tossing and turning all night.
He had never given much thought to why Elizabeth’s plight had always stirred him, when he was rarely moved by the angst of his other sisters. Charles, for all his other faults, enjoyed being a protector, but he’d rarely played that role, least not eagerly, for Colleen, Madeline, Evangeline, and Maureen.
He considered it now, as he watched the clock flip from 3:48 to 3:49.
Colleen had never needed him, or anyone. He’d scared off some kids bullying her in kindergarten, and instead of a thanks, she drilled him with the third degree about not needing his help, and something incomprehensible about feminism. Feminism, at five—if that didn’t sum up Colleen, nothing did. Her strong determination often served to highlight his own failings, and it wasn’t lost on him that she should have been the heir.
But that was some tough shit, because God intended Charles to be the Deschanel heir, and so he was.
Madeline and Maureen had always turned their nose up at him, and when Evangeline trained those wild, intense eyes on him, it was as if she had dissected his intentions even before he’d acted.
They were his sisters, and he loved them. Even liked them sometimes. But being home was like standing in front of the biggest goddamn mirror in the world. Like the mirror the evil queen in Snow White used, except it talked a lot of trash.
Elizabeth surely judged him as well—after all, she was raised by Irish Colleen, same as the other girls—but when she saw him, her eyes lit up and the relief filling them provided Charles with a rare sense of true purpose. It was different than the thrill of a bump of coke, or landing a new, smoking hot lay. Elizabeth was the only Deschanel who looked forward to Charles coming home, and the only one who took the sting off when he did.
One thing all the Deschanel children had in common, though, was that not one of them had asked for the abilities they were born with.
The Seven Boxed Set Page 13
