Augustus slipped outside and took care of the bill. When he returned, he told her to wait and he’d take her home with him. One dicey taxi was enough for the night. He’d already have an earful when Irish Colleen woke in the morning to the aftermath of his decision.
“She’s really leaving, then? For real this time?”
Augustus nodded. He slipped an arm over her shoulder. “I’m out of better ideas. She can’t stay here.”
“No,” she agreed.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Not really.” Evangeline chewed her lip. Several raw spots betrayed the trail of carnage, and she sucked on the resulting blood. “Hey, look, you need to tell her Colleen didn’t mean that. She can’t leave thinking that.”
“I already did,” he said. “She knows, but…” It doesn’t matter, he almost said, but it did. He’d spent his short life convincing himself not to sweat the details, but he knew better now; that every spoken word left a mark, for better or worse.
“Colleen will never forgive herself for it.”
“She should. We’ve all done things, and said things, we shouldn’t.”
“Well, she won’t.”
Augustus sighed. “I know. Hey, I need to have a few words with Maddy, in private.” He pulled out his leather wallet and slipped her a few dollars. “Go hit up that vending machine and park next to the magazine rack, okay? I won’t be long.”
Evangeline held her hand out and blinked hard a few times. He laughed and handed her more money.
“Mama will kill me if she knows I’m eating after midnight,” Evangeline said with undisguised glee. Her combat boots echoed like gunfire as she skipped toward defiance.
Augustus found Madeline looking through the bag. “She did okay. Evangeline.”
“Good. You can buy whatever you need when you get there.”
“I don’t need much.”
He tucked her hair behind her ear. “I know.”
“I know you hate this, Aggie.”
“This,” he said. “But not you.”
“You did everything you could. Everything you promised. Sometimes things just don’t work out.”
He wasn’t so sure, but what she needed, on the verge of this new life, were reassurances. “Everything is going to be okay.”
Madeline kissed the corner of his mouth. “You’re the only reason I tried as hard as I did. You deserve to be happy, too, Aggie. Don’t let them use you, or tell you who you are. Find someone who will love you for the best parts.”
He laughed. “I’m not even thinking about that right now, Maddy.”
She mussed his hair. “But you will, you dope. You will.”
Augustus looked around. Though there was no one else but the three of them, that made it somehow worse. A void. “I don’t like the idea of leaving you here until morning.”
“Don’t be a doofus. My friends will be here soon.”
“Maybe I should wait until they arrive.”
“Nonsense,” Madeline insisted, and she made it sound like exactly that. “You’re going to go home and get some sleep, and in the morning you’ll register for spring term and get things back on track.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Don’t like it when it’s served back, eh?”
He smiled into his lap. His cupped hands seemed useless and he didn’t know what to do with them. Or his words. “You call me when you stop in Atlanta. And when you stop in Charlotte. When you get to D.C.”
“I will.”
“All three.”
“I will!”
“And every day after until I’m satisfied you’re not the hostage for some guerilla resistance leader.”
She saluted him. “Yes, sir.”
“Okay.” He said the word for himself. A decisive point, a path to goodbye. Okay.
Madeline’s arms flew around his neck. Her hot breath burned, but she was real, and she was here, for a few more moments at least.
“I love you, Aggie. Even if you are a big dope.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I love you too, Maddy.”
“I’ll get settled and take the test, I promise.”
He nodded but didn’t press. She wouldn’t take the G.E.D. test. Hard as it was for Augustus to come to acceptance, he accepted it now. The traditional life was not for Madeline Deschanel. The best gift he could give her was the wings to soar.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay until your friends get here?”
She pulled a candy bar out of her jacket. “Go. Before you change your mind and suck me back into the seventh circle of hell.”
Augustus waved at Evangeline. She waved back, blew a kiss to Madeline, then barreled for the door.
He flashed a smile at Maddy. She returned it.
“Merry Christmas!” he called out. She mouthed the words back and waved.
That was the last time he saw her.
Twenty
The Letter
Charles sat at the old master’s chair in the parlor. The grandfather clock in the corner said three, but the thing hadn’t run right for years, and he guessed it was closer to four.
He wished he was at Ophélie then. There were two formal offices in the family plantation, one on the ground floor, where most business, public business, was performed. But the third floor was the heir’s office. It sat just below the belvedere and overlooked the entire property. From the third floor, you could still see the Mississippi, and to the back, miles and miles of cane fields stretching into the swamp. The office was long enough to have views of both.
As a child, Charles would sit at his father’s feet and play with his toys while August sorted through leather books filled with stuff Charles didn’t understand. He didn’t want to. When he was heir, he would have other people to do the things his mind couldn’t comprehend. But those were the whims of a little boy, and he was a man now.
This summer, when he turned twenty-one, he’d make the office his. Maybe take down that old bird painting, the Audubon. Original or not, it was dry and boring, and Charles wanted to transform the office of the heir and bring it into the future. A Black Sabbath poster with a nice gilded frame might do the trick.
But Charles wasn’t thinking about Ophélie, or the heir’s office. He wasn’t thinking about summer. He wasn’t even thinking about Madeline, who’d left the house minutes before, maybe for good.
He clutched the letter in his hand. The contents were the real deal. Colin had promised. He’d come through in the end, despite his very strong reservations. He might have even put his future law career at risk to do it, and Charles wouldn’t forget that.
He just wasn’t sure he could open it.
The door clicked. Colleen slipped in and pressed herself against the wall. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were in here.”
“It’s fine.” He rubbed his hands across the stubble dotting his face. “Sit. Whatever.”
“I feel terrible. I can’t sleep.”
“You came to the right party then. Did you remember the beer?”
“I shouldn’t…” Colleen perched at the end of the floral print couch. Her neat hair hung half out of whatever she’d had it styled into earlier that evening. The lamp light revealed a drawn, haggard look. It unsettled him, like a piece of furniture out of place. “I shouldn’t have said those things. I was mad, but not at her.”
“What you said was pretty shitty,” he agreed.
She sighed. “Thanks.”
“But I said shitty things, and Mama said shitty things. Can we just agree we’ve all been shitty?” His tired mind wondered if Colleen would play a drinking game with him. Take a shot every time Charles says shitty.
Colleen nodded. She smoothed out her wrinkled skirt, but she was a head-to-toe mess and the gesture only accented that. “You’re right. When she comes in later, I’ll apologize. I’ll make it right.”
“Oh, she’s not coming back.”
“She’s what?”
“She’s not coming back.”
“What are
you talking about?”
“Augustus drove her to the train station, about…” Charles checked the broken clock. Shrugged. “Evangeline just left, too. Jumped in a taxi.”
Colleen’s face was wild with incredulity. “What the hell, Charles? Are you serious?” She looked around. “What the hell was Augustus thinking? Are you sure?”
“That’s not the kind of thing I’d bother lying about.”
She jumped up. “So, why are you still sitting here? We have to go get them!”
“Take a chill pill, Pocahontas. We’re not going anywhere.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because Augustus did for her what no one else would.”
“No one else did it because it’s wrong!”
“For you,” Charles said. “It’s right for her.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Not usually, no,” he said. “Tonight, I just happen to be.”
“Mama is going to flip her wig when she figures this out!”
“When she wakes up, she won’t be happy.”
“When she wakes up?”
“Yes, hours from now, Colleen, because we’re not gonna wake her to tell her this. If you want to be sorry to Madeline, be sorry. Don’t pull a Colleen and ruin this, too.”
Her head shook, pulling her messy hair further into chaos. “You’re not yourself.”
Charles laughed. “Since when has being myself ever been a good thing with you?”
“You really mean to just let her run off? Not finish school?”
Charles swiveled his chair to face her directly. “You say that word, school, like there’s nothing more important in the world. I have news for you, Emily Post. Not everyone is you. Not everyone wants your life.”
“She won’t have a life without at least a high school diploma.”
“No, Colleen,” Charles said quietly. “She won’t have your life.”
She threw herself back against the couch, apparently defeated. “Now what?”
“Now the world goes on. The sun keeps spinning around the earth—”
“Charles, the sun doesn’t… never mind. Hey, what’s that in your hand?”
He looked down at the crumpled envelope. “This… it’s, uh.” He swallowed. Why not? “I got a girl pregnant. Mom paid her off to get rid of it, but she didn’t, and I asked Colin to help me track down my daughter.”
Colleen whistled her breath out. “I knew about this, Charles. Mama didn’t tell me, but Rory did. A daughter. Wow.”
“Right. Rory. That prick.”
Colleen laughed. “He thought it would win me back. To help me carry the burden, I suppose. Just goes to show he didn’t know why I ended it to begin with.”
“Why did you?”
“Things here were too complicated. Him telling me my brother got a girl pregnant didn’t exactly simplify things.”
“You never said anything.”
Colleen shrugged. “I don’t know, Huck. You’ve never listened to me, anyway, so what was I going to say? Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing.”
Charles clapped his hands together slowly. “Wow, it only took you eighteen years.”
She nodded at the letter. “Are you gonna open it?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Do you know what’s inside?”
Charles turned the manila envelope over in his hands. “An address. I think he got me an address.”
“An address to find your daughter.”
“Yeah.” He set it on the desk. “And then what? If I do, then what?”
“You wanted to know for a reason,” Colleen replied. “Do you know what that reason is?”
He threw his hands up. “Yes… no. Hell, I don’t know! I don’t know, but if I have a kid out there… a little girl… is it right to just fucking ignore it?”
“You really want to know what I think?”
“Yes! For once, I actually give a fuck what you think, Colleen. You’re… smarter than me. About shit like this. So?”
Colleen stood up. She twisted her arms in a stretch and stifled a yawn. The night had taken so much out of them all, but no more than her. “I think you need to know exactly what you want before you open that envelope. If you want to be a dad, open it. If you don’t, burn it and walk away from this. Choose a path. You can’t sit at the trailhead forever. It will eat at you until you can’t think clearly anymore.”
She paused at the door, and this time, she did yawn. “You know, the fact you’re actually conflicted over this says a lot. Maybe you’re growing up.”
“Fuck’s chance of that,” he muttered and waved her away.
“Merry Christmas, Huck,” she added before the door clicked closed.
Charles traced his finger over the metal fastener on the envelope. Lifted one edge.
If you want to be a dad, open it.
Lifted the other edge. The flap loosened.
If you don’t, burn it and walk away from this.
His hand hovered under the flap. He could just slip his hand in, pull out the paper inside. So easy.
But you’re a killer. You’ve taken a life. How can a man who has taken a life be responsible for another?
Charles bent the metal fasteners back into place.
He pressed the envelope to his chest.
It was Christmas.
He’d revisit this tomorrow.
Epilogue: Irish Colleen and the Seven
Colleen Deschanel, known as Irish Colleen to her family and friends, peeked her head into the bedrooms of her seven children on Christmas morning, one by one, as she did every morning of her life.
When she swung the door open into the room of her oldest, Charles, for once he was in it. He squinted a smile up at her. She smiled back and closed the door.
Next, she checked on Augustus, who was awake and at his desk. He didn’t turn at the sound of her intrusion, but he wasn’t studying. Her son was bent over, hands wound in his short hair. She started to ask the question, but he wouldn’t want her to. She moved on, but then something caught her eye.
His bed wasn’t empty. Evangeline slept curled in the fetal position in her brother’s usual spot. Curious, to see much interaction from these two at all.
Maybe they would tell her about it later.
Colleen slept soundly under a pile of blankets, dead to the world. Irish Colleen hoped her words had been healing rather than hurtful. She only wanted Colleen to be happy. For all her babies to be happy.
She skipped Madeline’s room. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt a pull to go there last. She needed more time with her middle daughter. There were so many words unsaid, and for so long she’d avoided them, but this was the morning. Today. No time like the present, as her mother liked to say.
Maureen was asleep, but she held her hand out at her side, and curled in, the way one might if extending it to another. She blew her an air kiss and moved on.
Elizabeth hadn’t been in the hall when Irish Colleen began her pilgrimage, but she was there now. The morning light streamed through the hall window and illuminated her youngest. No sweat or shaking this morning, but the pallor in her skin stopped Irish Colleen in her steps. Her lips, fighting for words, chilled her right to the bone.
And then she remembered.
One of us, one of the seven is going to die at the end of the year and I don’t think we can stop it, Mama.
It was December 25. The year was almost at an end.
“Lizzy… Lizzy… don’t say it. Don’t tell me.”
Elizabeth sucked in a jagged breath. “There’s someone at the door for you, Mama.”
Moments later, a knock sounded.
* * *
Irish Colleen wished with every last piece of her faith that she’d been home alone when the officers came by. By the time she’d let them in, the six of her children that were home—she couldn’t bring herself to use the other word—huddled in a mass behind her.
Did they know? Was that part of their witchery, that they knew w
hen one of their own was in danger?
“Mama, no!” Maureen screamed.
Charles tugged her back.
“Mrs. Deschanel?”
“No. I mean, yes, I’m Mrs. Deschanel, but you can’t come in. Whatever you have to tell me, you’ll tell me from there, and then you’ll leave us!”
The faces of both officers fell, melting into the role this aspect of their job never trained them for. “We received a report of an accident an hour ago, off I-59, near Slidell. A van carrying six people crashed head-on into a city bus.”
“The van was carrying a woman we believe is your daughter. Madeline Deschanel,” the other officer said, sharing the weight of this load.
“So you talked to her? She’s alive?” Evangeline cried from behind.
Maureen howled in agony.
The second officer bowed his head. “Those in the city bus were fine. Minor injuries.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the city bus!” Charles shouted. “Tell us about Maddy!”
“All but one of the inhabitants of the van were pronounced dead at the scene,” he replied, shuffling in place. He held his uniform hat before him like he was already at a funeral. “Madeline was among those who didn’t make it. She was gone before we arrived on scene.”
Irish Colleen tuned out the screaming behind her. The tears, the shrieks, the desperate clawing between siblings as they struggled to come to terms with this terrible truth.
“What else can you tell me before I close the door?”
“The young woman who survived the wreck, Julie, told us they weren’t supposed to be in the van,” the first officer said. “They had train tickets, which we found among the wreckage. Headed for D.C., but the train was delayed and she said”—he checked his notes—“Madeline convinced them to talk their friend into driving instead. Julie said Madeline told her she was afraid to go, and if they waited any longer, she might lose her nerve.” He reached inside one of his many pockets. “Her bag is at the station in evidence. Just until we can determine if there was a crime involved in the accident. It’s standard protocol, nothing to be concerned about. We’ll release it to you soon. But I did recover this, and I thought you might want it.”
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