The Seven Boxed Set

by Sarah M. Cradit

  “How?” Augustus asked.

  Half her mouth curved in a smile. “I changed the subject to something more fun. No one really wants to talk about a dead kid, anyway. The novelty wears off quick, and your friends move on, so you have to do the same.”

  Augustus’ hand moved across the blanket. It tickled the side of hers. “I’m sorry you felt so alone.” He thought of Madeline; how he’d never understood her, not really, but had sensed how deeply she needed someone to understand her and be her protector, so she could protect others.

  “I see you doing it, too.” Carolina turned to look at him. “Your magazine. Sleeping at the office. You don’t want anyone to see you moping, because you don’t want them to worry, but you also don’t want to go there. You can’t win.” She slid her fingers over his. “I know you think I’m a silly girl, with not much to offer. I’m not blind. I know you don’t really wanna see me, Augustus, but that’s why I keep coming around, you know? Because I wish someone had seen how alone I was and hadn’t ignored me when I said I was fine.”

  Augustus leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips were soft and warm, and after the initial shock, she fell into the kiss. He’d never done it before and wondered if what he was doing was right, or if she would think he was a fool with no technique.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but her arms were wrapped around his neck and they fell back diagonally across his neatly made bed, where no one but he had slept since he was a baby.

  Carolina maneuvered her body atop his. She peppered his cheeks, his chin, his forehead with kisses, moving her lips across his skin like silk passing over.

  Augustus didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t have time to make sense of it, or the experience to evaluate where this was leading. He knew only that he didn’t want this, but also that he did, so very, very badly. He was sick with how terribly he craved the touch of another, and to know the love everyone around him, except him, had known.

  Carolina’s hands went to work on the buttons of his shirt. His arms hung at his sides and he had to do something, so he ran them across the soft cotton of her sweater. When they found flesh, he moved her sweater up and over her head. She helped him free herself of the fabric and tossed it away, somewhere.

  She bucked backward. Her arms strained behind her back, and then her bra, too, fell away.

  Augustus stared at her. He’d never seen a woman nude before, not even in a magazine. He wasn’t interested in such things; felt they cheapened what was real. Carolina. She really was so beautiful. He didn’t deserve her affections, or her concern, but she was here, and tonight, she was his.

  They rolled around in an awkward attempt to rid themselves of their pants, tangling in the moment, in the kisses, in the heat between them. When there was nothing left to separate their flesh, Augustus knew this next move was his, but he was terrified of disappointing her after all she’d done for him.

  Carolina tugged at him, and he maneuvered until he was looking down at her this time. Her soft, milky breasts, her golden hair. He’d never given very much thought to what this first time would be like, but not even in his fleeting considerations had he imagined how hard his heart would beat, and how much he’d feel for someone he hardly knew.

  Her hand reached between his legs. Augustus gasped. She’d sensed, as she sensed so much else, his fears and gently addressed them. Perhaps it was her encouragement, or perhaps years of animal instinct bred into every last organic creature, but Augustus found his way inside her and the world erupted into controlled chaos.

  Everything fell away. His pain. His fear. His self-control.

  “Just be,” Carolina said as he moved within her; as she ran her fingers over his flesh, claiming him.

  * * *

  Augustus woke before the sun had crested over the east lands.

  Carolina’s face was nestled into his chest. Her long, silken hair fell over his bare chest in waves. She snored softly.

  The halo around the night before had fallen away to reveal the reality that had kept him from such moments all his life.

  He carefully untangled her and slipped back into the clothing he’d worn the day before. The sloppiness of this was close to horrifying, but he knew what he had to do, and if he didn’t leave now… if she woke and looked at him again, as she had last night… he’d be lost.

  Augustus looked at her one last time, and then let the door click softly behind him.

  * * *

  Colleen said nothing to Carolina when she snuck back in that morning. She almost reached for her friend when she heard the soft crying, pressed into the pillow but still obvious, but something hard in her heart prevented the gesture. If her friend didn’t want her advice, then she didn’t deserve her comfort.

  Colleen’s heart ached at the coldness, but she couldn’t will herself to be a bigger person.

  Carolina never explained where she’d been. When they were called down to breakfast, Carolina rolled out of bed with a heavy sigh, but came down as well.

  The whole family was there. All except Augustus.

  Carolina’s eyes darted around looking for an explanation, but she said nothing.

  “Wonderful, now that we’re all here, I have some news to share,” Irish Colleen said. Maureen and Elizabeth, hands linked for the usual Grace that started meals, dropped their hands and exchanged looks.

  “Is someone hurt?” Evangeline asked, in a panic. “Dead?”

  “The news isn’t always bad around here, Evangeline,” Irish Colleen chided. “You probably see Augustus isn’t here this morning. That’s because he’s been busy, down at Sullivan & Associates attending to business.”

  “What business?” Colleen asked.

  Irish Colleen folded and re-folded her napkin. “As you children know, it is within your right as a Deschanel, to claim a property when you become an adult. The heir’s line gets first pick, and certain properties follow certain rules. None of you have done so yet, but you could, if you so choose. Charles will live here at Ophélie when he marries and has a family of his own. As the second son, Augustus has the right to claim Magnolia Grace, on Prytania, in the Garden District.”

  “That house is huge,” Elizabeth said. She whistled. “Almost as big as The Gardens. Why would he want that?”

  “It’s his,” Irish Colleen said with a light shrug. “And, this morning, Augustus signed the paperwork to make that official. The house is his. He’s moving in today.”

  Carolina cried out. Her hands flew to her mouth to hide it.

  “I don’t understand. It’s a Sunday. This couldn’t have waited?” Colleen asked.

  “It means Augustus is done here,” Charles said. He reached for the breakfast rolls and popped one in his mouth, impatient. “He wants to be his own man. He can’t do that here.”

  Carolina’s cries tugged at Colleen’s heart. She slipped her hand over her friend’s.

  “It’s not you,” she whispered. “It really isn’t.”

  Elizabeth directed her words at the two of them. “Augustus is doing what he needs to do to step away from the past. This isn’t because you had sex.”

  “Elizabeth!” Irish Colleen and Colleen exclaimed at the same time.

  Carolina whimpered and fled from the table. Colleen hesitated for only a moment before she went after her.

  “Car,” she said. “It’s not you.”

  “I wasn’t trying to push him over the edge, Colleen,” Carolina cried. “I wanted to bring him back from it.”

  “Maybe,” Colleen said, “that’s exactly what you did. Maybe you did save him.”

  Carolina wiped at her eyes. She breathed in and closed her eyes. “I’ll never know, will I?” She grabbed her keys and disappeared out the front door.

  Colleen wanted to follow, to give her more reassurances, but she couldn’t bring herself to add deception to heartbreak. Carolina, Rory, Cat. They had all suffered so much in loving a Deschanel, when Deschanels did nothing but cause ruin and pain.

  She knew then what she’d k
nown for a long time, and what Ophelia had tried to tell her for months.

  Colleen had to persuade Rory to move on and away from her. And maybe, just maybe, he’d find a way to love Carolina, and they could be happy. United in their experiences with a family incapable of anything real.

  Elizabeth appeared in the foyer. “He’ll be okay, Colleen.”

  “Yeah,” Colleen said. “But for how long?”

  Elizabeth’s silence was the only answer.

  WINTER 1970

  * * *

  VACHERIE, LOUISIANA

  NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

  Sixteen

  She Needs Her Sister

  Evangeline knew what was in the envelope before she opened it, but what she didn’t know was why she’d received it.

  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is pleased to welcome you…

  She let the letter fall to her desk. She had never so much as taken an application home. The guidance counselor at the high school knew she was interested, but the office workers were about as useful as a vacuum cleaner on the moon. Evangeline wasn’t even sure the woman remembered her name, let alone any nuance about her desires for the future. She might be the smartest Deschanel, but she was far from the one everyone cared about.

  Colleen knew, but Evangeline doubted her sister would bother. Even now, she dropped her eyes when they passed in the hall, except on the rare occasion she chose to berate her.

  Colleen didn’t know what she didn’t know, and sometimes the temptation to spell it out for her was so, so tempting.

  She’d only told one other about her dream of going to MIT…

  Augustus.

  Tell me, if you could go to school anywhere in the world, no limitations, where would you go?

  Evangeline dug her hand around in the key jar for her set. Her birthday present had been the car she insisted she didn’t need, but had already been so relieved to have.

  She didn’t bother leaving a note. No one ever noticed her missing anymore, anyway.

  * * *

  Augustus closed the office door behind Evangeline.

  “Hey, I know we spent a lot of months alone, but people work here, now.”

  Evangeline slammed a piece of paper on his desk with one hand. “Explain this. Now.”

  “Move your hand, and I’ll try,” he said.

  She pulled her arm back and crossed it over her chest with the other one. “I didn’t ask you to do this.”

  “Give me a moment to figure out what we’re talking about.” He smoothed out the letter.

  “MIT!” she yelled. “You sent in an application for me, don’t deny it.”

  Augustus breathed out. He leaned back in his chair. “I won’t deny it.”

  “I don’t need your charity! Your… your persuasion! You don’t think I could have been accepted on my own?”

  “I know you could have, Evangeline.” In that moment, she didn’t only remind him of Madeline, with all her passions and heart, she was Madeline.

  “So you did it anyway? So now I have to wonder whether they see me as an equal or a charity case?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t have to.”

  “Didn’t have to what?”

  “You might be surprised to learn they already knew who you were,” Augustus said. “They’re told about the best students in the nation, and you were on a list. The dean knew who you were immediately when I called.”

  “You did call, then.”

  “I did,” he conceded. “But I didn’t need to do anything. You had a place waiting for you long before I asked about it.”

  Evangeline flopped down in the seat on the other side of the desk. “Why?”

  “Why did I call?”

  Evangeline bit her lip. Her fist clenched and relaxed, over and over, in her lap. He didn’t know what was going on in her mind. When she nodded, her wild hair bounced around her face.

  Augustus searched for the answer closest to her surface. He couldn’t go any deeper, not safely. “I see your potential, and I know… I know why you’ve stayed. But it’s time for you to think of yourself, Evie. You’re so smart. You have such a bright future ahead. It’s time to look forward.”

  “Like you did?”

  He wouldn’t apologize for leaving the family home. Not even to his sister, who might be the only one who still needed him. “We all have to find our way to move on. You knew before I even asked you what you wanted. I didn’t hand it to you, Evangeline. I nudged you forward on the path you were always supposed to be on.”

  Evangeline’s head dropped, and when he saw her hair shake, he realized she was crying.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said.

  “It’s not the letter.”

  He hardly heard her through the veil of hair.

  “Evangeline?”

  Her eyes were bright red when she looked up. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

  Augustus’ stomach clenched. “I miss her, too.”

  “No, that’s just the beginning for me. You don’t know what’s happened since.”

  Augustus inhaled. He’d known something was wrong with her. First, when she started hanging out with those kids on Dauphine, and later, when she stopped. He’d never asked her why. He’d been so busy with his own problems, so deep in his own head. “You can tell me,” he offered.

  “You think you mean well, and I know you do, Aggie. I know you. I know the only reason Madeline wasn’t lost to us sooner was because you loved her the way you did. You were the only one who ever tried to understand her, and you paid the biggest price,” Evangeline said. The words came out like mud over gravel, heavy and thick. “I came here to help you, and I guess I didn’t realize how much I needed help, too. And then I got mixed up in something, and I played out the odds and… and I made the wrong decision. I should have come to you, and… if not before, then after, but I’ve never been so afraid, or so alone, in my whole life.”

  Augustus leaned forward. His hands were trembling in his lap. He wouldn’t lose another sister. “Come home with me. Magnolia Grace is huge. You’ll have your own space, but you won’t have to be alone.”

  Evangeline’s head shook wildly. “I was raped by four men, Augustus. Four men, who raped me in anger, for something I didn’t do, because they felt entitled to hurt me when I couldn’t protect myself.”

  The stark, naked truth of her words sent a shock through him, piercing him to his seat. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out except a desperate cry. His blood pressure dropped so fast spots speckled the room around him.

  “I relive it every day of my life. I wake in the middle of the night and feel their weight on top of me. I can smell the whiskey and grass on their breath. I can hear the girl, that horrible girl, Serenity, cheering them on, laughing, encouraging them to be rougher. I can’t escape it and going away to college won’t change anything. I’ll still be the girl who couldn’t fight back.”

  All the warmth in his body escaped through his skin. He was cold, a thousand pounds of ice. Tethered to the terrible truth she’d laid at his feet.

  “Them all,” he said through a heavy, cracked voice. The words came out backward. “I’ll kill them all.”

  Evangeline wiped her eyes. “Don’t you understand? Charles doing that is why that happened to me.”

  Augustus’ blood cooled further as the truth bloomed into a clearer picture. He’d gone to Colleen for help, and she’d delegated the task to Charles, knowing full well, full well, what he might do with the information.

  “Come home with me,” he pleaded again. He didn’t know how to fix this one. He couldn’t go back in time for her, any more than he’d been able to do so for Madeline, and this failure weighed even harder than the first. “Come home with me, Evangeline.”

  “There’s no home for me in this world anymore, Aggie.” She stood and regarded him with a hard look. “Not here. Not in Massachusetts. Not anywhere. Not anymore.”

  She raced out the door before he could stop
her. He jumped up and leaped around the desk, across the fallen chair left in her wake. But she was gone.

  Augustus pulled at his hair, at the roots. What had he told himself, after Maddy was gone, and the dust had settled? When he could think again?

  You believed you were the only one who could help her, and that fallacy contributed to her downward spiral.

  He reached across his desk and yanked on the phone. His fingers ripped at the dial on the rotary, and he tapped his foot as he waited for an answer.

  Elizabeth answered on the fourth ring. “Deschanel residence, state your purpose.”

  “Lizzy, I need Colleen. Now.”

  “Augustus?”

  “Now!”

  “Well, she’s not here.” Her voice dropped. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Where is she? I need to know now!”

  “Class,” Elizabeth said. “Are you sure you’re fine?”

  “I’ll be fine when I talk to Colleen.” He pressed the plastic receiver, slamming it repeatedly until a dial tone appeared again.

  He called the operator and asked to be put through to Tulane. Minutes later, he was on with one of the office secretaries, who seemed completely baffled by his request.

  “Do you know how big this campus is?”

  “Then you better get started.”

  Augustus waited ten minutes, then fifteen. When finally a voice appeared again on the other end, it was a very confused Colleen.

  “What is this about? Is it Mama? Ophelia?”

  “Evangeline,” he said, out of breath though he’d not moved from his chair. “I need you to put aside your differences, and I need you to do it right now. I don’t care what she did, it’s not worth losing her.”

  “Losing her?” Colleen repeated. Then, after a pause, “I’m listening.”

  “This isn’t one more thing for you to offload to Charles.”