Colleen leaned into his touch, allowing her own temporary surrender to a man she hardly knew, and yet her soul had danced with him in a past life, another time. As she closed her eyes, she was sure of it, and had no care at all for how unlike her this feeling was. She’d taken a leap of faith. She’d let go. “Maybe we don’t need words.”
* * *
Later that night, when the clock chimed the witching hour, she slid under his cotton sheets, wordless.
He moved within her, silent, demanding yet soft, like the whisper of silk.
“Merry Christmas,” Colleen murmured against his chest, as she fell into sleep against the sweet scent of her lover’s musk.
Twenty
I Would Die, I Will Die
Elizabeth froze at the sight of Connor in the family room with her mother. Irish Colleen had called her down, and Elizabeth assumed she’d been summoned for chores, or some favor or another. She had her driving permit now, and though it wasn’t the same as a license, Irish Colleen had no trouble breaking rules when it suited her. She’d sent Elizabeth to the grocer four times already that week.
She stopped breathing. She remembered doing these, these… interventions for Charles, when he was much younger and there was still a remote chance of correcting his course. It was much smaller than the one Irish Colleen arranged for her oldest son, but Charles’ drug problems had been no secret in the family, whereas Elizabeth’s were at least somewhat well concealed. Enough that it had apparently taken Connor snitching on her to reveal them at all.
Elizabeth said nothing. She’d say nothing when they confronted her. They couldn’t prove it. Even Connor’s suspicions were only that.
“Well, are you going to stand there catching flies with your tongue, or are you going to help Connor with his school project?” Irish Colleen chided.
“What?”
“Remember?” Connor said. He strained his eyebrows from behind Irish Colleen, urging her to play along. “The one where I have to go to City Park and find one of each tree listed with the Audubon Society?”
Oh, Connor. You can do better than that.
Elizabeth didn’t want to see him. She should, because she was the jerk, not him, but there was nothing easy in making amends and she didn’t have the words for whatever he was going to say. She’d imagined apologizing to him for striking him, and nothing she conjured sounded close to adequate. Maybe because she was still sore from it all herself.
But she was curious why he was sitting in her family room after how things had ended, so she forced herself to smile. “Right. Let’s go stare at trees, then.”
Connor waited until they were a block away before he said anything. “Sorry for the surprise in there. I figured if I called, you wouldn’t want to see me.”
Elizabeth swallowed a lump in her throat. She didn’t deserve him. Not now, and maybe not ever. “You might’ve been right.”
He smiled sadly. “It’s okay. Everything will work out, Lizzy.” He started walking again, and she followed, but noted they were headed in the opposite direction of the park.
“Where are we going? Not the park, obviously.”
“No, not the park.”
“You’re not gonna tell me?”
“No, and you’re not gonna ask anymore.”
“Oh? I’m not?”
“No,” Connor said. His smile was tight, but warm, as was his gentle look from his peripheral. “Because you owe me.”
Elizabeth pouted as his side, but she let him take her hand, and even laced their fingers tighter.
They rounded onto Decatur, and she hardly had time to read the sign outside the building before Connor ushered her in.
But she caught enough.
Methadone Clinic.
“Connor, no.” She tugged her hand away and started back for the door. “This is bullshit, you tricked me! What’s wrong with you?”
Connor’s expression didn’t change. He took her face in his hands and looked her in the eyes. “Elizabeth Deschanel, I love you more than anyone else in the world. More than my parents. More than Thomas.” He spun her around, and she found herself before a mirror. She wondered, later, if the clinic put it there for everyone else who’d been coerced into coming. “Look at yourself.”
“I know what I look like, Connor! I see myself every day!”
He rubbed the outside of her arms. She saw him behind her left shoulder, in her reflection, but he pressed his face to hers and made her look directly into her reflection. “No, you see what you wanna see, whatever keeps you from seeing the truth. I’ll leave here with you, Lizzy, I’ll walk you home, but first I’m asking you to look.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she hissed, shifting around from foot to foot. He wasn’t going to leave until she did it, though, so Elizabeth sighed and focused her eyes directly forward.
What she saw shocked her.
She blinked, looked again. Blinked until her eyes hurt.
She couldn’t make it go away.
And how hadn’t she seen it until now? She looked at herself every morning in the bathroom. The house was full of mirrors, and she must have caught her reflection four, five times a day, easily.
It wasn’t so jarring that she saw someone else. She had the same mousy brown hair and wide eyes, and her cheekbones were still soft and round. But there were hollows beneath them where none previously existed. Dark bags rimmed the underside of her eyes, which seemed to—there was no other word for it—droop. The spots around her mouth were new, like freckles, but they weren’t freckles.
“I would die if you died, Elizabeth. It’s as simple as that. So you can’t die. I swear on my life I will help you find another way to stop the visions, but it can’t be this. This is killing you. And it’s killing me, because you die, I die.”
Elizabeth wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t cry, or every last bit of what she’d stopped from hemorrhaging into her life these past months would break through the dam holding it back. She wanted to say something to this hag in the mirror; this woman who was her, looked like her, but wore the weight of the world in every sickly pore.
“Irish Colleen never has to know. None of them ever have to know, Elizabeth. Just us. Only us.”
What hell had she delivered herself to, in the name of peace? What had she traded, in exchange for harmony?
Everything. The answer was everything.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered, finally.
Connor kissed her cheek, but his eyes never left hers in their shared reflection. “It’s okay to be afraid. We can be afraid together.”
“What if I can’t do it?”
“You can,” Connor answered. He looped his arms around her waist from behind, as much hug as promise. “Because we can.”
* * *
Eternal darkness shrouded the lumbering mansion. Everything about the Blanchard home gave off the impression of the utter absence of light. From the way Edouard kept the dimmer switches at their lowest settings, even in the middle of the day, to the dark, imposing curtains, always drawn, and the furniture from another, earlier era, made of dark, heavy wood, half of it covered in plastic. The prevailing scents of old cigars and lemon furniture polish rounded out the measure of the man who had inherited the old home and treated his birthright like a mausoleum.
Maureen tried to unpack her things, but even lifting a shirt from her trunks felt like a monumental effort. Everything in her life was weighted by the quickness in which everything had changed. She was, so recently, young, free, and on the verge of her whole life. She didn’t know what awaited her, but the potential was a bright light beckoning from the beyond. The hopefulness of options.
It wasn’t so bad, at least not at the outset. Edouard was nice enough. More than she expected from the man who had so calculatedly seduced her, used her, and then discarded her when he was finished and ready for the next. He never outright mentioned that her brothers had forced him into the commitment of marriage, but she knew, and he knew she knew. She wished she could tell him it
wasn’t her fault! She never wanted this. Maureen, sophisticated in the art of seduction in her own limited ways, knew all along they were only playing a game and was fine with it. She wanted to link hands with her new husband and rail against the injustice of two brothers who couldn’t mind their own business when the adults were talking. She hated the underlying insinuation that she was a child who needed others to intervene and hated even more the message this sent to the man who was now her husband.
It didn’t matter. Edouard either knew this, or didn’t, but he showed no signs of wanting to take out his displeasure on Maureen. To the contrary, he was resigned to his fate, in a way she wasn’t yet and might never be. He dutifully explained where she could find everything in the house and then told her she was the mistress and could run the household as she pleased. The staff answered to her direction. She wasn’t limited by money, which was hers to spend as long as she stayed within the generous budget set, and he wouldn’t stand in her way when she made decisions about such things as décor and meals.
He had only two rules, and he conveyed them with an earnest graveness.
One, she wasn’t to ever disturb him when he was in his office. This included his office downtown, as well as the one in what he called the east wing of the house. If she absolutely required his attention while he was working, she could leave a message with his secretary and indicate the urgency, though he cautioned her never to express urgency if one wasn’t warranted.
And two, she should never show her displeasure or sadness over his inability to be a loving, doting husband. Love, for him, he said, came from the access to discover her happiness through other means. She would never want for anything else, and that had to be enough. He had nothing more to give, and her satisfaction within the marriage was hers to decide.
Maureen understood she should be happier about this. She’d been willing to settle for a lesser man, Peter Evers, in exchange for a quiet, nuclear life that fit her narrow expectations of contentment. And here was Edouard, a man of great means, telling her she could have whatever she wanted. Could run her home however she wanted. A man who had no desire to control her, or guide her. A man who would turn the other way as she took lovers, as long as her whims never caught the attentions of others. A man who was giving her permission to be a man, but with a woman’s touch.
But it was not until faced with the realization she would never be loved that Maureen finally, utterly, craved it.
Chelsea called earlier, to give her the news that she’d done exactly as she said she would and eloped with Mason Landry. No fancy wedding for Chelsea, either, but the difference was, Chelsea was married to a man she loved, and who loved her. Her impertinence might cost her favor with her family, but she’d traded it for a future no one could sully.
Maureen dropped her blouse on the bed. She’d hung no more than three things in the past hour, in a closet that was hers now, and would be, for all of time. Edouard had given Maureen her own suite, separate of his. She supposed that sent the message of what their marriage would be more than any words he’d said on the matter. But he’d also surprised her when he said, Should you decide you want another child, give me ample notice of the expectation and I’ll make sure to visit your bed until you’re with child once more.
Dutiful sex. This was what would pass for excitement in Maureen’s new life.
She tried to engage him with news of her latest doctor’s appointment earlier that evening, when he’d come home from work. She didn’t ask him about his day, because that was still too raw. It was too distressing to think of those terrible old women running amok, gossiping about Maureen as if she was no more than a commodity.
Dinner awaited him, which garnered a light smile and raised brow. She took this as a good sign, though she’d done no more than choose the dish—pot roast—and instruct the cook to prepare it. But as soon as he sat down to eat, he opened the day’s Times-Picayune and buried himself in the day’s news.
“Husband,” she’d said, from the opposite end of the long table. “How was your day?”
“It was fine,” Edouard replied without dropping the paper. He turned the page. She couldn’t see his face. “But don’t feel burdened with the task of engaging me in small talk, Maureen. I don’t require it.”
Well, maybe I do. “I had an appointment today. About the baby.”
“That’s nice.”
“Do you want to hear about it?”
“Was there anything newsworthy?”
“Not especially, except—”
“Then, no. Feel free to update me when there is something notable to discuss.”
“I didn’t finish. I only meant that the baby is fine, but there is news, about the sex.”
“Oh.” He lowered the paper, just slightly.
“We’re having a girl.”
“Is that news?” he asked. “You’d said before you were having a daughter.”
“No, I only thought that. Mother’s intuition and all.”
“I see.” Edouard folded the paper and set it next to his plate. “I’d like you to consider naming her Olivia.”
Maureen set her fork and knife on the plate. This was the closest she’d had to interest in anything she’d said or done since their wedding day. A light thrill passed through her at the possibility of an actual conversation. “Olivia? Why’s that?”
“Olivia was my mother’s name. She passed away when I was eleven.”
“How?”
Edouard drew his lips tight. “Cancer.”
Maureen tried not to frown. Olivia. It sounded so old-fashioned; she was sure, somewhere, she had an old spinster aunt with that name. There was nothing youthful or fun in it, not like Rebecca or Claire, which were the names she’d been toying over.
Edouard wasn’t commanding this decision, though. He was asking. He’d expressed no emotion whatsoever about becoming a father, other than inconvenience, and everything he’d said on the matter conveyed that Maureen would be handling the parenting duties solely on her own, unless she counted the nannies he was more than happy to pay for.
If she gave him this, would it make him care? Would he see his daughter and think of someone dear to him?
“Or not,” he said quickly. “This is your choice.”
“I like the name Olivia,” Maureen said. She smiled. She hoped he could see in her how easy life could be. How acquiescent Maureen was, and how she would live to please him, if only he’d let her.
“Good,” Edouard said. He returned to his paper, the moment passed.
All moments would be like this, Maureen knew. Fleeting, with the whisper of potential, but the reality of emptiness and false starts. If Edouard had more in him, it was not hers to receive. She was nothing more than the game gone wrong.
She doubted he would be so reckless in the future, though she harbored no illusions that he’d stop hiring young girls and using them for his peculiar pleasures. Whatever he owed her now, it was not fidelity. The best she could hope for was that he wouldn’t end up impregnating another young woman and bringing shame to their home.
Maureen wondered if she was the first, or just the first whose family wouldn’t let it go.
She abandoned her unpacking and stepped into the hallway. Her bare toes recoiled at the aging red and gold carpet, which had long ago lost any semblance of softness. It felt like straw against her bare flesh, as if reminding her that everything here came at a terrible price.
“Daddy,” she whispered. “You can come out now. He’s not home.”
Nothing in response. No sound, or sign, of August Deschanel. No passing wind, or whisper from the darkness.
“Maddy? You around?"
In the days since she moved in, her ghosts had gone quiet. She didn’t expect Jean, or the Ophélie crew, because they’d been gone for a while now, ever since she moved back to New Orleans with Mama. Daddy and Madeline had followed her everywhere, though. Peter, too, though she couldn’t fathom why he’d want to hold on to Maureen, the girl who’d gotten him
killed, instead of, say, his children. But none of them had followed her here, to her marital home.
But, no, that wasn’t quite accurate either.
August and Madeline had both quieted just before Maureen learned she was pregnant. She’d been too caught up in her depressive spiral after losing her job, and her freedom, to notice. She was even grateful for the space she assumed they were giving her to breathe.
What was it Pansy had said to her, in what now seemed a lifetime ago? That she might wish for a time when the dead still talked to her? Maureen couldn’t grasp ever missing that constant intrusion in her life, but now here she was, calling for the dead in an empty house.
Even Peter’s obnoxious refrain felt like a loss.
Maureen had never known real silence until now. She’d never understood how loud the complete absence of sound could be; how it screamed at her until she wished for nothing more than the cacophony of competing voices of Ophélie.
Maureen scanned the line of portraits in the endless hall. All dour, serious men vaguely resembling her husband. Joyless faces, all of them, stretching back through time. And where were they? Did they not haunt the halls of their old manor? She didn’t especially yearn to meet them, but they were better than the expanse of nothing where the noise had been.
She didn’t know why, or how, but she knew, somewhere, she’d traded motherhood for her access to the dead.
She gasped as Olivia kicked. Her hands wrapped around the outside of her belly, which no longer looked so incredible in short skirts, and might never again. “You’re my girl, aren’t you, Olivia? My sweet girl? My baby? Daddy might not ever need you like I do, but I’ll always need you. And you’ll need me, won’t you?”
Olivia didn’t answer. Only the dead had ever answered to Maureen.
And now, even they’d gone silent.
Epilogue: Irish Colleen and the Seven
Colleen Deschanel, known as Irish Colleen to her family and friends, ran her eyes down the row of pictures of her seven children, as she did each night of her life.
Nineteen Seventy-Four Page 20