The Seven Boxed Set

by Sarah M. Cradit

  This wasn’t the first, or even second, time her judgment had been compromised recently. Was it this town? Her family? Her?

  Or was it all of these things?

  She couldn’t wait a year to fix whatever inside her had fundamentally snapped. She was not herself, and there was nothing in the world that left her feeling more helpless and alone than losing the trust she had in who she was.

  Colleen bent over the wheel. She gasped inward and trapped it there.

  Scotland was there now, waiting. Beckoning. Promising.

  Fourteen

  The Agreement

  Charles had to check twice to see if the girl next to him was breathing. She was, as it turned out. He wouldn’t leave until her eyes at least fluttered open. Maybe he was a murderer, but he was also a gentleman. He shuffled back into his clothes and waited.

  She rolled over to her back and her hand fell bowed in an arc above her head. She groaned as the sleep left her. “Where you going, Daddy?”

  “Don’t call me that.” The remnants of a burned letter reformed, in the pit of his stomach. Shelly. And my daughter.

  She grinned through her closed eyes. “You liked it last night.”

  “Did I?” He’d been so coked out of his brain, she might have called him the King of England and he would’ve cheered her on. “Home. I need to get home.”

  “But why?” she whined and let the sheet fall away, a clear temptation that wouldn’t work. Once Charles lost interest, the thread snapped and could not be re-woven.

  “Shit to do,” he said and searched around for his wallet, which had fallen out somewhere in the throes of passion. He spotted it, bent to grab it, only for her arms to slide in from behind him.

  “Don’t go.”

  Charles hated the clingy ones. Above all else, it was a scene like this that caused him to create his one-and-done dating rules. Every now and then he met a girl who surprised him, who could handle the sex without all the extra fluffy shit, or the weirdness of the morning goodbye. Women like that were rare. Most of them married lucky men.

  He wasn’t in the presence of mind to deal with this one at all. He mussed the top of her head, which, even as he was doing it, felt silly and strange, and then winked at her and left.

  Charles didn’t know what she thought of any of that and didn’t care.

  * * *

  Charles found Irish Colleen roaming around the large servant’s pantry near the second kitchen. She stood at the door making silent assessments, shaking her head.

  “What are you doing, Ma?”

  “Your sisters and I will be moving out this winter.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  She waved her hand. “I’ve been spending my time, each day when the chores are done, in each room deciding what should come with us and what should stay.”

  “Take it all,” he said. “I don’t care.”

  “That’s just foolish,” Irish Colleen chided. “We’ll be downsizing. Maureen, Lizzy, and I don’t need much.”

  “Cordelia and I don’t need much, either.”

  “You will.”

  “By then, all this food will be spoiled.”

  Irish Colleen scoffed. “I’m not taking anything from the pantry, silly boy. I’m trying to decide what to make for dinner.”

  “But you said—”

  “Did you enjoy your party?”

  “We need to talk about that.” Charles wiped his palms, already greased in nervous sweat, down his trousers. “I know you don’t want to tell me about Franz, but I need you to, Ma. You owe me that much.”

  Irish Colleen’s whole body sighed. She leaned forward and retrieved a jar of pickles. “What’s done is done.”

  “What’s done is not done, because she’s not my wife, yet, and I still have a choice.”

  She patted his arm. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

  “Mom.” Charles licked his lips. His throat throbbed. “You have to tell me. You’re asking a lot of me, and I’m delivering, but I won’t go into this marriage not knowing.” He could tell her that Franz had kidnapped Elizabeth, but what good would it do? And anyway, he and Maureen had their own revenge for that old coot.

  “For Pete in the night.” Irish Colleen sighed and set the jar down. “This won’t make marrying her any easier, you know.”

  “There’ll be nothing easy about marrying Cordelia no matter what.”

  “Fine. Very well. Grab a bottle of sherry from the top shelf, will you? And two glasses.”

  * * *

  “John Hannaford, Franz, and your father were the best of friends. John was a financier, and you know about Franz. His textile business was still in infancy then, but he did well from the start. He had some money he brought with him from Germany. The Hendricksons were something there, but the war changed things, he said, so he started a new life here.

  “The three were inseparable for years. John was at the bedside of your father’s first wife when she died, right at August’s side, and Franz handled all the funeral arrangements. Franz wasn’t always the ruthless man he is now. Or perhaps he was, and what happened between the three men is what brought out the devil in him. I can’t say.

  “You know your father was an older man when he met me. He was almost fifty by the time you came around. Of course, he never expected to become a father so late in life. Eliza was supposed to have a whole passel of children, but God had other plans for her. John was around the same age as your father, then, and Franz about a decade younger, if memory serves. But still too old for what he chose to do.

  “John had this sweet daughter. Oh, what a sight she was! Name was Daisy Mae, and if she didn’t look every bit of that name… Daisy’s mother had died giving birth to her, and John did his best to serve both roles. He was a good father to her. A good man. When this all happened, she was about sixteen, I want to say. Still had another year or two of high school left, if that’s any indication that this child was still that, a child. Certainly too young for Franz to be roaming about and messing with her.

  “This was the first falling out that I recall, between your father and Franz. He told Franz to keep his hands and eyes off John’s girl, and Franz told him to mind his damn business. But this was the kind of man your father was, Charles. A grown man messing with a young girl was his business, and he made it so. He finally went to John about it, and John flew into a rage. This was a calm man, mind you. I never saw John angry, not for long. But August told me John turned into another man altogether at the news one of his best friends was trying to woo his child. He told Franz if he didn’t stay away, he’d kill him with his own bare hands. Oh, John.”

  Irish Colleen finished her sherry and held the glass out for Charles to pour her another. She continued on as he refilled the glass.

  “I don’t know if I can say this next part, but here it is, anyway. Franz raped that poor girl. Oh, he’d say later she wanted it, but she was bloody and crying when she found her father and told him what happened. God help that poor girl, and God rest all their souls.

  “To make matters worse, John found out this assault happened in his own office! Poor sweet Daisy Mae had been waiting for her father, spinning around in his chair, as children do, and Franz had come in, locked the door, and let the devil take him over. She’d screamed into his hand, and no one beyond heard a thing. Not one thing. Lord, I never thought… never imagined I’d have to tell this story ever again.”

  Charles reached across the table and covered his mother’s shaking hand. “You’re doing fine.”

  “John… I suppose you can imagine how John reacted. He flew into a rage. He called August and said he was going to confront Franz and would appreciate some backup, but he was going even if he had to go alone. August was all the way out here, an hour away, but he said he’d come… I’ve wondered, so many times, if only he’d been closer. How things would have turned out differently. How very differently.

  “When August got to Franz’s, the deed was done. John was lying in a pool of blood in
the back garden, with Franz pacing back and forth before his body. Franz said it was self-defense, but your father couldn’t find any sign of a weapon. Franz had always been the weakest of the three, weak in character and in all other ways. The bloody rock discarded by a nearby tree. This is where it all went wrong for your father. He should have called the police and ended it there. Sent Franz away. I was pregnant with you at the time, over six months, and when he told me later about everything that came next, I had such great pains that I thought I was losing you. And I told your father, we could have taken Daisy Mae in and given her a life. It didn’t have to be this way.

  “Franz convinced your father to help him, and I know your father regretted this to his dying day.”

  And beyond, thought Charles with a shiver.

  “They put John into his car and drove him out of town, along the river, searching for a levee break. When they found one, they piled bricks on John’s gas pedal and sent his car, with him inside, right into the Mississippi. They found him two days later, because the front of the car got stuck somewhere in the bank. Police investigations weren’t what they are today, and no one questioned how the front of poor John’s head was missing. No one questioned it. Your father, who could convince anyone of anything, just like your brother, Augustus, saw to that. John’s death was ruled a suicide. And two days later, poor Daisy Mae, well, she jumped from the bridge near where her daddy had gone in, and she was gone, too.”

  Irish Colleen crossed herself. She used her arm to brush away the tears.

  Charles felt the puzzle pieces coming together. His father’s words to Maureen…. Elizabeth’s choppy revelations to Franz. Perhaps his father wasn’t the stand-up man Charles always believed him to be, but unlike Charles, who had taken several lives with his own hands, August was guilty only of making a bad decision to help a friend. Surely Charles hadn’t gotten his murderous tendencies from his father… and if not him, then from who?

  “What does this have to do with me marrying Cordelia?”

  “They made a pact,” Irish Colleen said. “August never said this, because he wouldn’t want to upset me when my job was to keep you safe until you were born, but I suspected he feared Franz would kill him, too, if he hadn’t gone along with helping. You see, the only thing that could guarantee your father wouldn’t say a word to anyone was his complicity. Once John was in the river, Franz told him that if he said anything, Franz had August’s fingerprints on the rock, too. He’d moved it, after all, at Franz’s beckoning. August realized too late that Franz had been playing him the whole time. And then Franz made him swear that their firstborn son and daughter would marry, binding the families, and their secret, for life. That this was the only way to guarantee the secret would stay a secret.”

  “That’s some medieval shit,” Charles said. “Why did Dad agree to that?”

  “I asked him the same thing. I thought of my child, of you, in my belly, and I hated your father for deciding your future for you. But the children are not the product of the sins of their fathers, and August helped me see that.”

  “But why does it matter now? Dad is dead. Franz can’t hurt him.”

  “Dead men’s reputations still matter, Charles. You carry his reputation in you, in the honor of the heir to the kingdom of New Orleans. Do you really want this case re-opened? Your family dragged through the mud? We could lose everything.”

  “They can’t send us to prison for something Dad did.”

  “I’m not talking about prison. You think you’ll be the darling still, if people believe you’re the son of the man who murdered John Hannaford and drove his sweet Daisy Mae to fling herself from the Sunshine Bridge? People still say her ghost haunts there.”

  “People say a lot of dumb shit,” Charles said. He couldn’t believe this… that he was hostage to the machinations of the man who had harmed a child, killed his best friend, paralyzed his mother by fear, bribed his other best friend, and then got away with it?

  No. Franz would not get away with any of this. The worst of the lot, and he was still out there, doing as he pleased, enjoying the spoils.

  “I’m going to talk to him,” Charles said.

  Irish Colleen’s hand shot across the table. “No! Don’t you dare, Charles. I trusted you with this, because you’re right, you deserve to know. But I won’t have you rocking this boat! As long as that man lives, we have no choice but to live up to your father’s end of the pact! Don’t you see? It’s the only way.”

  No, thought Charles. Not the only way.

  * * *

  Augustus was nervous. He couldn’t say for sure what had prompted him to stand forward as the hero of this tale and fix Ekatherina’s necklace. He’d done it without thinking, and now he had it, sitting upon his knee as he drove home in tortured silence.

  He wasn’t himself then, nor was he now, as he held the new and improved cross tight in his fist, standing outside the finance office.

  Augustus paid the jeweler double to expedite the service. He couldn’t bear to face Ekatherina again, knowing he was the only thing standing between her and her mother’s heirloom.

  He hoped he hadn’t done too much. Afraid it would break again, this time he’d had the whole thing coated in fourteen-karat gold, and as an extra touch, one he was beginning to regret, he’d added in several tiny emeralds, the birthstone of both Ekatherina and her mother. He wasn’t supposed to know that, and she might hate him for it.

  Ekatherina took the repaired necklace in her hands. Her eyes marveled, a hint of moisture giving them a luminescent quality.

  “Your birthstone.” His voice cracked. “I hope that’s all right.”

  “This is too much,” she protested. Tears forged a wet path over her porcelain cheeks to her brilliant smile. She clutched the cross in her hand, the way a child would hold a beloved toy. “You do too much.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Like it?” Ekatherina’s eyes closed as she brought the cross to her chest. “I love it. I am in your debt.”

  “No,” Augustus said quickly. “You’re not. I didn’t do this to make you feel like you owed me anything. I did it because I knew I could help you. I wanted to.”

  “Why?”

  Why. Augustus had been asking himself this very thing. The necklace was only the most recent thing to cause him to put his own feelings and behaviors into question, but it started when she’d come through those doors with her worn clothing and serious, determined face.

  “I want to help you and your family, Ekatherina.” Who was speaking? It wasn’t him… it was another man, the man, perhaps, he should have been.

  Her smile faded. Eyes narrowed. “I’m saving money. I can do it.”

  “But I can do it faster.” He didn’t know anything about romance. Nothing about sensitivity, or the subtle language of love. He’d failed both in loving and in not hurting Carolina, and he didn’t know what he was feeling now, but he pushed him and his words forward, despite his deep reservations. “Marry me, and I’ll do anything for you.”

  Ekatherina’s hands fell to her lap. “What did you say?”

  Take it back. Tell her you shouldn’t have said it, or pretend she heard you wrong. This is madness, pure madness. You hardly know her! You’re not the marrying type. She doesn’t love you.

  “Marry me. Marry me, Ekatherina” he repeated, louder, with more confidence. When she gaped at him with her shocked face, he added, “Maybe I’m not what you pictured for a husband?”

  Ekatherina’s head shook. “No, it is not that.”

  “Then what?”

  “You don’t love me,” she said. “And I am broken.”

  “When I see you, I don’t see someone who’s broken. I see someone whose spirit is bigger than anything that tries to bring it down,” Augustus said. “You deserve everything in this world, Ekatherina. I’m not… I’m not a romantic man. I can’t give you that. But I can keep you safe and secure, and I can and will bring your family here. You have my word.”

  �
�I say no,” Ekatherina said. “Because you regret.”

  “I won’t regret it,” Augustus insisted.

  She shook her head. “I do this myself. And when I marry, I do for love.”

  I do love you, he tried to say, but didn’t know if the words lodged in this throat because they weren’t true, or because they were.

  “Good night, Ekatherina,” he said and left.

  Fifteen

  The Walk

  Evangeline found out about Augustus’ proposal to Ekatherina by accident.

  She opened a piece of mail addressed to him, but only because it looked like junk and it was her job to sort the real mail from the advertisements. It was no advertisement, though. She turned the letter over in her hands, which was in fact a bill, and the amount owed sent her eyes flying wide.

  Evangeline waited for him to get home and jumped from her seat in anticipation when the door opened and closed.

  “Four thousand dollars at Brennan’s Jewelers? What the hell, Aggie?”

  Augustus looked perturbed at the immediate assault. He set his briefcase aside and took his time hanging his coat before her took the paper from her. “Why are you opening my mail?”

  “I didn’t know what it was!”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I thought it was garbage. You know, junk mail. I always check first, to be sure.”

  “Didn’t see the jewelry store on the return address line?”

  “I did, but… why would you be buying jewelry? I thought they were sending you a flier.”

  Augustus tucked the bill inside his blazer. “You should be sleeping. Don’t you have a seven a.m. class?”

  “So that’s it? You’re going to deflect, so you don’t have to tell me?” Under her breath, she added, “Never cared about my bedtime before.”

  Augustus heaved a great sigh. “There’s nothing to tell. I may have asked Ekatherina to marry me, and she may have said no, and so now we move on.”