The Seven Boxed Set

by Sarah M. Cradit

  Colleen’s voice was stiffer when she replied, “Fine.”

  “I thought she needed me, but who she needs is her sister. You’re her best friend, Colleen, and I’m way out of my league. Last time I was out of my league, we lost Madeline.” With the words out, a sob choked him.

  “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. That is not on you,” Colleen said. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think she went home, and I think if she’s left alone we might regret that.”

  He quickly told her what Evangeline confessed to him, and once she promised she was on her way to Vacherie, he cradled the phone and closed his eyes. He needed to breathe, now that he was alone. To compose himself so he, too, could head home to Ophélie.

  Augustus didn’t know how long he sat like that, but he was jolted alert by a knock on his office door.

  Carolina shyly stepped through. He hadn’t seen her in several weeks, not since he’d left her in his bed.

  “I don’t suppose you wanna see me, but I’ve given you space and now I have some things to say to you, and I’m not going to leave until you’ve listened.”

  Augustus nodded. He didn’t have the energy to turn her away.

  “I’m not mad,” she said. “I’m confused. I was there, too, and for several hours I feel like I saw the real you.”

  “This is the real me,” he said. “Focused. Alone.”

  “It’s who you want to be, because it’s safer.”

  He bristled at the suggestion. “Not everyone loves talking about their feelings, Carolina.”

  “Did you listen to anything I said that night? You’re the only one I’ve ever told about Daniel, and what that did to me. I know the appeal of safe.”

  Augustus threw out his hands. “Maybe this is a safer life for me. It doesn’t change anything. It’s my choice.”

  Carolina came around his desk. She knelt before him and took his hands in hers. She pressed them to her face, then kissed them. “You think so little of yourself, when I think the world of you.”

  “You don’t even know me,” Augustus said, but his heart ached at her touch, which brought him back to when he was most open. Most vulnerable.

  “There’s many ways to know someone,” she said softly. “I know you in the best way.”

  Augustus stood, and her hands fell away. “It isn’t you. I just don’t have anything to offer anyone. You deserve so much more than someone like me can give you.”

  “You don’t want to open yourself to someone.”

  “Can’t, or won’t, there’s no difference, and this won’t end with anything other than me breaking your heart, and I don’t want to hurt you, Carolina.”

  “My heart is already broken,” she said, standing. She wiped her hands on her skirt and straightened her spine. “It was broken when I met you. It will stay that way, like yours. I just thought we would put our broken hearts together and make something a little less broken.”

  “I’m no good for you.”

  “As long as you believe that, you won’t be good for yourself, either.” She stretched on her toes and kissed him. “But I said what I came to say, Augustus. I hope you find your peace.”

  Seventeen

  You Can Close Your Eyes

  Maureen lost her focus every other sentence. She didn’t see the point in reading books. They were just words, lots of words, they weren’t real and people who said books were an escape were the worst kind of fools. All books ended. You couldn’t hide from reality forever.

  Elizabeth attacked the assignment with fervor. She was almost finished, and they weren’t even supposed to be halfway through. Complaining to her mother did nothing but make matters worse.

  If you were on the same level as the state curriculum I’m supposed to be teaching you, you’d be reading different books.

  Maureen could always count on her mother to remind her of her failings.

  Great Expectations, the book was called, but she failed to see how the poor boy and his spoiled rich girlfriend made for great literature.

  “Why, Maureen?” Peter asked as she groaned and threw the book across the room for the tenth time.

  “It’s no Shakespeare,” she agreed. Madeline and August looked at the discarded book with pathetic expressions. Useless, both of them.

  All of them.

  A baby—her baby, another baby, it no longer mattered—cried in the distance in enthusiastic agreement.

  You still have all that money from Virgins Only Club. It’s more than you’ll ever have until you get your trust. You could…

  Nothing. She could do nothing. This world was not designed for young women on their own.

  There was one character from the book she was not nearly so annoyed with, and as the story went on, her focus improved whenever Miss Havisham was on the page. Old, bitter Miss Havisham, roaming about her decrepit mansion in her rotting wedding gown, pining after her Compeyson. Now that was an image that made sense to Maureen. Was she not on that path? Doomed to be an old maid, her wealth irrelevant where it mattered most.

  “Ah, yes, this drivel,” Jean declared, turning his nose at the book splayed across the floor. “We tried to keep this from reaching our shores, but the Yankees and their ideas ruin everything.”

  “Pip,” said Fitz. “Pip!”

  “Hush, you fool.”

  Jean’s snide comment, as with all his words, was unwelcome, but it did blossom into an idea… a wonderfully delicious idea, perhaps the best Maureen had experienced since moving to this old tomb.

  The attic. She’d never been up there, because if anything in the world was haunted, it would be that dark, musty room forgotten by time.

  Like Miss Havisham.

  Maureen leaped off her bed with an energy she’d forgotten was possible.

  “What are you up to?” Madeline asked, suspicious.

  Maureen didn’t answer her.

  She went off in search of an old wedding dress.

  * * *

  Colleen, never the breaker of rules, broke every law, both the ones she knew and didn’t know about, to get home. New Orleans to Vacherie was an hour without traffic, and her cautious driving often added even more time. She did it in forty-five minutes.

  Her car came to an abrupt stop several feet short of the front porch. She was jerked forward. As she came back, she nearly fell from the car after releasing her seat belt. She ran to the house, realizing she’d left her car door open, but she left it flapping and heaved open the door to Ophélie.

  Irish Colleen appeared in the foyer. Her hands were covered in flour. “I wasn’t expecting you home so early.”

  “My afternoon classes were cancelled,” Colleen lied, breaking yet another rule. She brushed the stray hair off her face, praying her mother didn’t see through to the truth.

  “Shepherd’s pie for dinner,” her mother replied and returned to the kitchen.

  Colleen raced up the stairs, tripping halfway up. She lost a shoe and kept moving, hobbling in her new, uneven gait.

  Evangeline’s door was unlocked. Colleen darted around the empty room, searching under the bed and in the closet. Her heart sank into her feet. She imagined finding her in her bed, reading, yelling at her to get out of her room already.

  Colleen stopped outside the bathroom door. Steam traveled up and under the door. Her shoe-less foot squished in the damp carpet. With a jagged intake of breath, she went to turn the handle and wasn’t surprised to find it locked.

  She strained on her tiptoes, feeling up around the top of the doorframe. Her mother had hid the key there for years, making the idea of any real privacy an illusion, like so many other things.

  Colleen closed her eyes and slipped the key in.

  What she saw next turned her into someone else altogether. She compressed her horror at the scene, stuffing it deep into the compartments of her brain where such things went.

  But she opened another that she’d closed not so long ago.

  Colleen kicked through t
he flooded bathroom and dropped to her knees at the side of the tub. Evangeline’s arm dangled, streams of red upon soft flesh, dripping into the current created by Colleen’s intrusion.

  “Evie, I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.”

  Colleen didn’t look at Evangeline’s face. She couldn’t. To do so would send open all the compartments keeping her sane, and she had to be strong for her sister. Failing her was no longer an option, and really, it never had been.

  She hadn’t done this in so long, but it was like riding a bike. You never forgot the rush of power flowing through your palms and into the one in need. The sensation was almost erotic in its unbridled intimacy, and there was nothing Colleen could compare it to, nothing that came close to capturing the connection forged when she healed.

  Colleen trembled as she held tight to her sister. Evangeline was alive, but her pulse had slowed to blips of intermittent energy, and the transfer of blood to and from her heart was inconsistent. Soon, if she didn’t focus, it would stop altogether, and there’d be nothing she could do.

  “You won’t die, Evie. I won’t allow it,” Colleen whispered. The force of her energy sent her reeling backward and she settled on her heels. Tears threatened to break through the corners of her eyes, but she willed them away. They had no place here, where there was only her greatest regret transferred into something bigger: a promise.

  “I promise you, you’ll survive this,” Colleen said, louder now, the words more real as she found her voice. “I’ve got you, Evangeline, and I’m never leaving again.”

  Evangeline moaned in her fitful streaming in and out of consciousness. Beneath Colleen’s hands, her sister’s flesh grew so warm she almost let go. But she doubled down on the force of her grip and grimaced as she pushed as hard as she’d ever done, healing through the combined force of her gift and her love.

  When it was over, she pulled Evangeline’s limp, wearied body from the bathtub and cradled her in her arms. Evangeline’s soft sounds eventually turned to words when her eyes fluttered open.

  “Leena…”

  “You don’t have to say anything. I know what happened, and I’m here now, and I’m never, ever going again,” Colleen vowed. Now that her sister was safe, now that she was certain of this, the tears flowed. Several more compartments long closed re-opened. “I was stubborn and awful, and I’ll never be sorry enough for it.”

  “It hurts so much.” Evangeline’s voice was a whisper, hoarse from the trauma. “I don’t know what to do with the hurt when it becomes too much. I’m too logical for this. I only know of one way to dull what hurts too much to process.”

  Colleen crushed her sister to her chest. She rocked them in the water. “I can’t heal that, Evie, but I can give you a place for the pain.”

  Evangeline sobbed in her arms, rolling herself inward.

  “Evie, I mean it. I promise you, here and now, that no matter what passes between us in the future, I’ll never turn my back on you. There’s nothing you could do that’s bigger than the loss of my life without you.”

  “I’m sorry about Rory,” Evangeline mumbled. “I’m a freak. I don’t know how to talk about things, and then bad things happen.”

  “You’re my favorite freak,” Colleen soothed. “The best person I know. We’ll put our heads together and figure this out. We’ll figure it out, Evie. I promise you.”

  “I didn’t do this so you’d come,” Evangeline said. She wrapped her arms around herself and nestled closer to Colleen.

  “I know.” Colleen kissed her hair. “But I did come, and now things will be different.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, with Evangeline sound asleep in her bed, Colleen went to her sister’s desk and wrote five names on a sheet of paper. She almost left off the name of the young woman, but her gender did not exempt her from the horror of her crime.

  Charles waited in the hall. He wore the stoic, shell-shocked look of a man who had seen war and was ready for whatever else lay ahead.

  Colleen walked by him with her hand outstretched.

  Charles pressed his palm to hers, transferring the responsibility. He didn’t look at the names before tucking the paper into his pocket and didn’t ask her any questions.

  Colleen felt no remorse in the act. She didn’t tell herself he might just try a softer approach, to help herself sleep at night. She knew what would happen, and she saw no use in pretending her intentions, and the outcome, were anything but what they were.

  They each had their roles to play in this family.

  Eighteen

  Two Sides of the Coin

  Charles finished off the last of his Dixie beer. He shook it, upside down, over his mouth, and then tossed the empty can into the backseat. The paper bag on his passenger seat was empty, save for the discarded ring that held the six-pack together when he’d brought it earlier. He should have bought two. He’d remember that for next time. Each time brought new lessons.

  He was getting better at this. His first was a haphazard, sloppy mess born of his rage. Completely justifiable rage, he told himself at the time, and even now, but rage didn’t keep men out of prison, and one day Augustus would meet a judge he couldn’t manipulate.

  The second, that good-for-nothing Ethan Summerland, wasn’t easier, but it was simpler. He knew when he left the house what he’d come to do, whereas with that shitbag Evers he’d convinced himself, right up until the moment of truth, that he was there just to talk.

  He hadn’t said anything at all to Evers; to Ethan, only this: My sisters are off-limits.

  Ethan, sitting on his couch in his boxers, measuring his grass on that ridiculous ivory scale he was so proud of, died wearing the same dumb look he’d perfected in life.

  Charles had gotten one thing right about his first act as protector. The Maurepas swamp was easy to get in and out of, but the only visitors were locals, for there were better spots for the hard-core sportsmen, and more accessible places for the tourism industry. The old Cajuns parked their trucks along the road to drop their lines and nets out there, but the bayou was unrelenting to anything foreign. They’d only ever find catfish and sac-a-lait. Evers had been found, but the swamp had eaten away any shred of evidence. He dropped Summerland even farther into the swamp, and guessed he was lost to the ecosystem.

  The police had never connected the dots on Evers or Summerland. Just as they would not connect them with what he was fixing to do tonight.

  His other learning was patience.

  Two weeks had passed since Colleen slipped him the names, two ships passing in the night. In those two weeks, he’d used his time to follow the five individuals who had wronged Evangeline, to learn their schedules. Relying on that fool Jared for help had been a grave miscalculation during the whole Evers debacle. Had he known how it would end, he would’ve never involved someone else. It was sloppy, and he’d since learned that it set off a chain of events leading him to where he now sat, in the car, across the street from the abandoned house. Jared had told others how he’d investigated Evers for Charles, and some of those others connected the pattern when Summerland went missing. That pattern led to the assault on Evangeline.

  He couldn’t forgive himself, but he could fix this.

  Charles could pick them off, one by one, but their string of disappearances would raise far more eyebrows than what he had planned.

  Charles needed all five of them together, but he couldn’t risk others being present as well. Vengeance was one thing. Any collateral damage would make this murder, plain and simple.

  The girl, Serenity, whose name was about to become highly ironic, was apparently more than just a casual enthusiast of gang rape. She was also aces at stealing food, and tonight, she’d invited her four conspirators to a feast. Charles had watched in strange fascination as she slipped in and out of the various restaurants along Bourbon and Royal, camouflaged in her white cook’s outfit, stealing a plate here and a plate there until her cart was full. She pulled it along, down to the river, along the levee to
ward the Bywater.

  Serenity pulled the cart up from the sidewalk and into an overgrown yard. She tugged it, walking backward as she yanked it over the debris littering the ground. One by one, she moved the plates from the cart to the porch, and when she was done, she was off again, possibly to retrieve more contraband for her dinner party for five.

  Charles would never know. He had no plans to follow her, this time. He had to work fast, because he didn’t know how long she’d be gone.

  He swung open the door to his Trans Am and looked around, cigarette dangling. He took one last long hit of smoke and then flicked it away, into the night. The whole neighborhood was a remnant of something that once was, but no longer. Boarded windows and weeds had claimed the homes and, aside from the graffiti decorating the boards and peeling paint, there were no signs of life. The abandoned old grade school at the end of the block stood sentry over the whole sad mess.

  Charles slinked through the street, reminding himself to stay always aware. No one of importance lived in these homes, but the homeless, like Serenity and her band of thugs, might be camping out. They probably wouldn’t snitch to the police—if he’d learned one valuable thing from that wretch Summerland, it was that the homeless trusted the police less than they trusted their enemies—but Augustus would murder him if he had to solicit his help with this one.

  The cans of gasoline bounced off his legs as he ran. Gas sloshed out the top, dripping out onto the street. When he stumbled into the yard, he made for the back.

  He wished he’d paid more attention in chemistry, or he would’ve been able to come up with something more creative than gasoline. For the briefest moment of panic, he wondered if the police would see this for the obvious arson job it was, but he calmed, realizing the police didn’t care about these neighborhoods. They were forgotten to time, and the homeless, just one more, or less, problem.

  Charles hunched down as he sprinkled the flammable liquid around the base of the house, splashing it up against the wood siding as he worked his way around the foundation. When the first can was empty, he chucked it over the broken-down fence of the neighboring property. He took the second can and slipped through the back of the house, which was not only unlocked but lacked a door entirely.