The Seven Boxed Set

by Sarah M. Cradit

  Charles knew what both of them were thinking; Colin Sr., with his aged wisdom; Colin Jr., with the smug satisfaction of having landed the only woman Charles had ever loved, even if he was blissfully unaware. They had called him here not because they thought he’d say yes, but because they knew they must. A check the box and a close of the folder.

  Knowing this didn’t change his current situation, though. He had no time to think about any of this. He was meeting Cordelia in thirty minutes, and if he bungled his plan, his whole life was forfeit. There was no way he could back out of this himself. He’d appeared before his mother at his lowest and given her his word, and it would be easy to break it to anyone else, but not her. For the first time in his life, she was proud of him.

  But if Cordelia refused to marry him…

  Charles stood. He channeled his father. “Thank you, gentlemen. You’re right, I have a lot ahead of me in the coming months, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t important as well. I’ll give it serious thought and be in touch.”

  * * *

  Cordelia sat alone at a table situated dead center of the downstairs dining area of Galatoire’s. If she’d applied mathematics to the decision she couldn’t have positioned herself more centrally, and Charles struggled to understand the message she was sending.

  “Hi,” he said as he took his seat. His hands fumbled with what they were supposed to be doing. Should he shake her hand? Embrace her? He could kiss her, would kiss her, if she were anyone else. He shuddered at both the thought of making contact with the frigid bitch now, or ever.

  If he didn’t sort this out, he’d be touching her indefinitely. Or, at least until one of them finally leaped off the Crescent City Connection.

  Cordelia turned her cheeks to the right and left, catching the invisible kisses that never came, then settled back into her chair, spine as rigid as he’d found her moments earlier.

  “I’m here,” she said. Her pinched mouth hardly moved with her words. Large, brown doe eyes blinked without emotion, eyes that would be pretty on anyone else. “Now, you’ll tell me why.”

  “We’re going to be married. Shouldn’t we get to know each other?”

  Cordelia’s dead eyes blinked for several agonizing seconds. “You have a different perception of what this marriage means than I do, it seems.”

  Charles had the urge to strip to the nude in front of everyone, just to see if he could get anything more from her than the frozen, disabused look that seemed permanently plastered to her gaunt face.

  “No, I don’t think I do,” Charles said. He ran his hand over the stubble on his chin, which he’d left for her benefit, just one more signal she was marrying a mess and there was still time to correct course. “I’d be more surprised if we had even one thing in common.”

  Cordelia’s mouth smiled, but her eyes maintained their lifeless gaze. “We do have one thing in common. We’d both rather be dead than married to one another.”

  Charles had to remind himself not to feel wounded by such a strong comment. Even from her, it was a sting to the ego. She should be so damn lucky. He was worth seven fucking billion dollars. “I don’t intend to be dead, so let’s make the best of it, huh?”

  Cordelia transferred her gaze off to the corner of the room, not looking at anything in particular so much as avoiding giving Charles more attention. He’d known women like her. Maybe not exactly like her, but he knew the tactic.

  “Since you’re going to be a Deschanel, there’s some things you should know about us.” He pushed forward, before he could lose his nerve. The nagging lilt of Irish Colleen appeared in his ear, like the angel upon his shoulder, reminding him that these secrets were not his to share. Not yet. Those were the rules, even if rules had never been his thing.

  Fuck rules, if rules put him in the bedroom with this horrid creature.

  “We’re a little different,” he said. “Not different in the way you might describe your drunk uncle.”

  “I get it.” Her expression was worse than the eye-roll he heard behind her words. “You’re special.”

  “You don’t get it.” He flexed his hands under the table, wondering where the hell the waitress was so he could order a cognac. “Here, let me show you.”

  Cordelia raised a brow, but she couldn’t look less interested.

  “I want you, in your head, to think of a number between one and ten thousand. Any number, but you need to really fixate on this number and nothing else, when I say go. Okay?’

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m serious. Focus on a number.”

  “Sure. Fine.”

  “Go.”

  Charles so seldom performed this trick that he worried for a moment he might fail. Unlike the rest of his siblings, with their depth of abilities that were useful in all sorts of circumstances, his parlor trick was hardly much of anything. For the heir, he’d sure gotten the shaft.

  “Ready for me to guess?”

  Cordelia shrugged.

  “Eight hundred and nine.”

  The smug look faded away. She didn’t confirm his victory, but she didn’t need to.

  “Don’t look so constipated, Cordelia. I don’t make other people’s thoughts my business unless they have something interesting in there.” He cheered internally at the small shift of the upper hand. He had her attention now. “But that’s nothing compared to what my family can do.”

  “It was a lucky guess,” she said weakly.

  “There’s no such thing as a lucky guess when you’re a Deschanel. No such thing as making a guess at all. All seven billion dollars to my name was a result of knowing exactly where to fucking put the money.” Even if I haven’t a fucking clue about any of it.

  Cordelia grunted and folded her arms. He didn’t read her mind this time, but sensed acutely her regret in coming to see him, which grew like compound interest. He didn’t have much time.

  “Augustus, my brother, he’s an illusionist. He can make you see or think whatever he wants. You might think you like chocolate, but, lady, you’ll be singing the praises of vanilla if it suits him.”

  She rolled her tongue around in her mouth.

  “Colleen and Evangeline? Healers, both of them. Small, big, doesn’t matter. They’ve saved the lives of all of us a few times over. They just put their hands on you and you’re like brand-new, just like that.”

  “Right.”

  “Maureen? Communes with the dead. She’s never alone, because she has my dad, my other sister, Maddy, who’s gone now, and, oh yeah, this teacher she used to fuck.”

  “Charming.”

  “Then there’s my baby sister, Lizzy, who can see the future. I guarantee you she’ll see yours as soon as you meet her. She’s homeschooled now, because she kept predicting the deaths of all her classmates’ family members. You can see how that might put a crimp in her popularity.”

  Cordelia’s wax expression shifted slightly. “Just deaths? Is that all she predicts?”

  Charles tried not to smile. He had her now. “No, those are just the ones that piss everyone off the most. But Lizzy can see all kinds of things, good and bad. Anything, really. Anything at all.”

  “You’re right, you are special.” Cordelia ignored the waiter as he came to, finally, take their drink order. She stood up. “How fortunate for me.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “What a fascinating lie to tell. And why, I have to ask myself, for no one lies for the sport of it.”

  “I’m not lying! I don’t even have the imagination for a lie like that!”

  “My prediction? Your desire for happiness is beginning to eclipse your call to duty, and you’re hoping to weasel out of it, by way of me, but you would only make such a miscalculation because you don’t know me at all, which, ironically, was the guise by which you got me to show up to begin with. I don’t know whether I should congratulate you or vomit on your Italian leather shoes.”

  “I don’t understand a word you just said.”

  This smile was the first
he believed. “Of course you don’t.”

  “What I’m telling you is completely fucking true. I would have told you after we were married, because that’s when spouses are read-in to this shit, but I happen to think telling people after they’re already committed is too-little-too-fucking-late, and more than a little unfair. I wanted you to have a chance to know what you’re getting into.”

  “I know what you wanted, Charles. If you’re going to be a deserter to your own cause, you’ll have to take those cowardly steps on your own.”

  Cordelia’s kitten heels clicked hard against the checkered floor as she left him sitting alone, the eyes of everyone around their table drawn to what they could only perceive to be him being stood up. Him. Charles Deschanel. Heir to New Orleans.

  Which was exactly what she wanted them all to think.

  The heinous bitch.

  * * *

  Maureen tripped over her bed at the shock of the unannounced visitor.

  “Jesus, Charles!” she cried. She righted herself and crawled back up over the comforter. She looked to her right and hissed, “You hush.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “This dickhead Jean, who raped his sister. He’s our ancestor, and he hates it when I take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Sounds like an aces guy.” Charles knitted his brows. “Are you busy?”

  “Didn’t seem like you cared about that when you barged right in without even a knock. What if I was having sex?”

  “Under this roof? Doubtful.”

  Maureen glared. “You did.”

  “I’m an adult, and this is my house.”

  “In age maybe,” Maureen muttered. She hitched her miniskirt, which had crawled up in her fall from the bed, down over her thighs. It wasn’t the most practical outfit for just hanging around, but she was expecting Connor’s brother, Thomas, today, and she had to keep him guessing just enough.

  “Who else is in the room?”

  “What? You and me.”

  Charles planted his hands on his hips. “You know what I mean, don’t be dippy.”

  “Oh.” She sometimes forgot she’d shared this secret with him, and sometimes regretted that fact. But she wasn’t worried about him telling anyone, either, and she wished he were easier to talk to, so she could unburden herself. “Right now? Um, well, Jean is over there giving me the glare of the blasphemer, as I think of it, and Maddy was here a minute ago, and I think…” She looked around. “No, she went somewhere else. I don’t know where they go when they’re not here, don’t ask me.” Mercifully, the baby was quiet today. It wasn’t much, but she’d take a day of silence. “Daddy, too.”

  “Dad? He’s here?” Charles looked around as though he could see August if he strained just right.

  Maureen nodded.

  “Good.” Charles pulled out the chair from her desk and straddled it backward. “I need you to ask him something for me.”

  “You… what?”

  “I need your help, Maureen. I need Dad’s advice, and there’s no other way for me to get it.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “If I can help my son, I want to,” August said. He stood so near to Charles, hand hovering over his shoulder, that Maureen was panicked at the thought that Charles might look up and actually see him.

  “Please. It’s my life we’re talking about, not something stupid.”

  Maureen still smarted from the reaming her mother had given her over her helping Elizabeth. Things had been going well before that, not great, but well, and now she was again persona non grata among the Deschanels. The black sheep. The failure.

  She’d tried to find less risky ways of proving she could be useful. Two days ago, she’d driven into New Orleans to see Augustus, which was a bad decision—she was grounded from driving indefinitely, and waited for her mother to be out for the day with errands—that had potential to lead to good results. She stood in front of him in his big office, her big brother looking so important now, and not at all the soft, sweet boy she’d played with in their garden, and pleaded with him to give her a job. He’d sighed, looked around, and said summer was a slow time, and that she could come back and see him in fall and he’d find something. But fall might as well be a decade, for as miserable as she was, once again relegated to the role of Failure Maureen.

  “I’m going to marry this miserable bitch, and I just need to know why. I need to know why this is my fucking future, Maureen. Dad knows why.”

  “Maureen, please, let me talk to my son.”

  “Daddy, this is between Huck and me.”

  “He’s here? You’re really talking to him?” Charles looked at once like he might pass out or cry.

  This might be it, her bid for usefulness, and there was nothing bad that could come of it. No missing sister. No forced abortion. Just Charles, looking to her, as the only one who could give him what he wanted.

  He’d never asked her for anything before.

  “Okay,” she said. “He can hear you, so just… I don’t know, say what you want, or ask what you want, and I’ll tell you what he says.”

  “Good. Good.” Charles kicked the chair away and leaned against the desk. He gnawed on his knuckle, then rapped it against the wood. “Hi, Dad. I miss you. A whole lot.”

  Maureen listened, and then said, “Dad said he misses you more than anything.”

  Charles bit down on his knuckle again. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “It’s okay,” Maureen said, but sounded about as soothing as wiping a foot across gravel. “What do you want to ask him?”

  “I want to know what to do about this situation with Cordelia. I know Dad knows what I’m talking about.”

  “I do know,” August said, and Maureen relayed everything he said as he went on. “I do know, Charles, and it’s the result of one of my deepest regrets in life. I never should have made a deal with that devil Franz! I should have walked away, when I could… I wasn’t even involved, but I stood by him, and every second I stayed made me more complicit. And then I was in a corner, with no choice but to make a promise. I’d do anything to turn back the clock and fix this, because you’ll only meet misery if you marry into that family. But if you do not, then the rest of this family will know a much greater misery.”

  Charles’ face paled. He dropped his hand, and his mouth parted. “So there is a story. I knew it. I fucking knew it! I need to know. I deserve to know, if this is my burden now.”

  “He won’t say,” Maureen said. She gave her father a hard look. “Huck is right, Daddy. Hell’s bells, if you put him in this situation, then you need to tell him why he has to live with it!”

  “I can’t,” August said, hanging his head low. “My son’s memory of me is all the connection we have left. I won’t tarnish that.”

  “That’s a bunch of bullshit,” Maureen said.

  “What? What is he saying?”

  “Nothing useful,” she said, eyes still burning holes in her father. “Nothing useful at all.”

  “Dad!” Charles cried. “Why won’t you tell me? You did this to me, so why won’t you tell me?”

  “Ask your mother, so I don’t have to see your eyes when you learn the truth,” August said and dissolved from the room.

  Maureen repeated this, and then said, “I’m sorry. He’s gone.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Yeah, it’s total bullshit, Huck. I’m so sorry. Maybe there’s another way to get you out of this marriage.”

  “Any fucking ideas?” His words died in the air between them, too deflated to cut through the sadness.

  “No, but don’t forget, I’m the survivor of the family. If anyone can help you figure this out, it’s me.”

  “Yeah? I’d owe you for life.”

  Maureen smiled. “I just want what you want. To not be shackled by this damn family and their terrible choices for the rest of my life.”

  FALL 1973

  * * *

  VACHERIE, LOUISIANA

  NEW ORLEAN
S, LOUISIANA

  Eleven

  Tantra

  Philip was an excellent cook, and he loved to surprise Colleen with something new after each of their marathon lovemaking sessions. Today, he woke her with a quail quiche, which he confessed to have prepared ahead of her arrival so all he had to do was pop it in the oven.

  Colleen was a little embarrassed at how she always fell asleep after their bedroom play. She was half Philip’s age and should have twice his stamina, but his experience shone through every touch of his hand and flit of his tongue. Colleen had only ever been with one man, and Rory’s experiences and hers had been equally matched. They were kids, fumbling through the motions, guessing where their passion might lead instead of taking confident charge and guiding it through to completion. Philip knew precisely what he was doing. No move was accidental. No gesture wasted.

  A week after their relationship had taken a sexual turn, a line they could never re-cross, Philip introduced her to something he called tantric sex. She was woefully unfamiliar with even the term, which was not a position she was used to or liked, but he was happy to demonstrate. He coached her through the breathing exercises meant to prolong satisfaction, and the sex that was not sex at all, not until the end when, after hours of this, she exploded with an orgasm she thought might kill her.

  Colleen needed to research this practice, to understand it better so that she was not always the consummate student with Philip, but was afraid to approach a librarian with such a book request.

  Later, he told her he was a secret Buddhist; that he attended mass every Sunday like a good Catholic, but struggled mightily with the shame Catholics were meant to feel over every little thing. With Buddhism, it’s quite simple. You get from the world what you send out into it, good or bad. Your goal is not to please a vengeful god, but to attain individual enlightenment, by seeking those things that go beyond the material.