A dark chill nipped the air of the somber Council chambers. Pierce, Pansy, and the others wore drawn, haggard faces, permeated by sleepiness from being woken to news that changed all their lives. No one in the family, present or otherwise, was from a time before Ophelia, and each of them quietly processed what life now would be like without her.
Colleen started with the vows, though she wasn’t feeling any of the words. Words were just words, but they meant something when Ophelia said them. Ophelia had revived this ancient process for the family and turned it into a powerful binding agent at a time when the family was content to live disparately; to dwindle into obscurity, having forgotten where they’d come from. Who they were.
“And enlightenment through governance,” Colleen finished and low voices repeated the words, sounding exactly as she felt.
“I don’t get it,” Pansy cried. She dabbed at her eyes, but her handkerchief was already soaked, and no longer doing her a bit of good. “I just saw her. She was…”
“Pansy, darling,” Pierce ventured. His hand twitched, but it stayed put. “We’ve known the truth for a while. Even if we weren’t ready to accept it.”
“No, Daddy,” Kitty replied. She hung her head low, bedecked in lace mourning garb so fine that Ophelia would have chastised her for trying too hard. “She’s always been old. I thought she’d be old forever.”
Eugenia and Cassius exchanged looks, but didn’t offer their platitudes. Like their half-brother, Pierce, they seemed to know that to say something was worse than saying nothing, when their pain was so far beyond their control.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Colleen told them. She needed them to understand she hadn’t strong-armed herself into this precarious role, even if deep in her heart of hearts she’d always desired it. But no internal desire was strong enough to sway the stalwart mind of Ophelia Deschanel.
“We know, dear,” Eugenia said. “That’s not how this works.”
“I thought it would be you,” Colleen said.
Eugenia smiled sadly. “Maybe once, you thought that. You’ve known for a while what she intended. I think we all did.”
“What’s done is done,” Cassius rejoined. “We can lament, or move on. All in favor of moving on?”
“That’s Colleen’s job now, calling us to vote,” Pierce said and had to look away to cover a fresh batch of tears.
“I don’t have much to say. I’m sorry, I’m just still in shock,” Colleen said. Her eyes fell over the row of darkened portraits, their ancestors either gazing down in love or judgment. Maybe both. She’d seen them all watching them for years, but now they were watching her, and she’d never felt more supported, and yet more alone.
“We all are,” Eugenia said, so pleasantly that Colleen began to feel guilty for taking a role she always believed was meant for her older cousin. “And you most of all, I imagine. You were her darling, Colleen.” She shook her head. “And on your wedding day. I wish I were offering my congratulations under better circumstances.”
“Yeah, congrats, cousin,” Pansy said, sniffling, and her sister offered the same words.
“I can’t think about that right now,” Colleen said. “We have so much to do.”
“Nothing that can’t wait until we’ve laid her to rest,” said Cassius.
“Oh, God.” Colleen sighed. She buried her face in her hands. It was all so much, so terribly much, thinking of her beloved aunt shoved into the family tomb with the piles of familial bones. “We have to coordinate that, too. I’ll… I’ll do that first thing, when the funeral home opens.”
“It’s fine, dear. The Sullivans will handle this, as they handle everything.”
“For lawyers, they sure seem to possess a broad set of skills,” Kitty remarked. She blew her nose into a lace doily, and then screwed her face up when the remnants ended up all over her black satin gloves.
“It’s how the estate was set up, from the early days. They’re not simply our attorneys, they’re our lifeline. They manage anything we need, and they’re paid handsomely, in times of peace, and in times of need. So it was before, so it always shall be.” Pierce’s bloodshot eyes regarded both his daughters with gentle scrutiny. “It will be okay,” he said, maybe more for himself, to give him the strength he needed to support them, too. “This day was always imminent, and now it’s here, and that’s that.”
Colleen had to assume some sort of control. To say something to refocus their attention. Ophelia would know what to do.
Child, I wasn’t born knowing every little thing, you know. Start with what you do. Build your castle upon that.
“We are six now,” Colleen began, because to start where she did know meant returning to the basics. “We’ll need to select a seventh.”
“I suppose you’ll want a Deschanel,” Pansy quipped, but the venom in her words didn’t make it to her heavy eyes.
“It’s not my choice alone.”
“It is, though,” Pierce said, with a degree of firmness. “It is your choice. We must all vote, of course, but the magistrate has both nomination power and final say.”
“I intend to change that. What good is a Council if only one has any real power?”
“And you can, if you want,” Pierce replied. “But you’re right. We need a seventh, and quickly. Do you have someone in mind?”
Colleen could scream, and might if it served her in any way. “No, Pierce, when I went to bed last night my aunt was still alive and everything was still fine.”
“Our aunt,” Eugenia said. “Don’t feel as if you have to do this alone, Colleen.” She reached across the table and laid a hand on Colleen’s. “We are with you. Aren’t we, brothers? Nieces?”
The rest replied with nods and soft confirmations.
“Nothing has to be decided now. We have no serious matters to vote on,” Eugenia went on. “Colleen, it’s your choice where we go from here, but you might consider calling this meeting to an end now, so we can all go back home and tend to our grieving families.”
Colleen nodded. Her throat was swollen from crying. Nothing was right in the world, with Ophelia gone. She was the compass, guiding them. The glue, bonding them. Who was Colleen, but a third child in the heir’s line, newly married, still in college, about to become a first-time mother, with more distractions than a magistrate had any business with? Who was she to lead this family?
“Colleen?”
She nodded. The grandfather clock chimed five. “We’ll adjourn this meeting for now. Finding our seventh is a top priority for me, no matter what else might be going on.” She rose. “I’ll stop by Sullivan & Associates when they open in a few hours. If they’re going to handle the final sendoff for our family’s matriarch, there are some details they’ll need to get right.”
They waited to see if she was finished speaking before they, too, stood. Even in their grief, there was an order, a way of things, and everyone in the room clung to this tradition as a lifeline through the chaos of loss.
Ekatherina died in the early hours of December twenty-eighth. Her doctor, only the evening before, had said that while she wasn’t improving, she wasn’t getting any worse, either, and he suspected he was close to being able to declare her officially out of the woods. The Deschanels were so distracted with the death of their matriarch, the birth of Anasofiya, and the fresh nuptials of Colleen that none of them had the presence of mind to press further for details. Ekatherina’s illness was something all of them, even Augustus, thought was the product of her own resentment, something most had stopped trying to understand and were now simply angry.
Augustus had Anasofiya in a bassinet in his room while he dressed for Ophelia’s wake. He was adjusting his tie when the sounds of harried activity down the hall caught his urgent attention. He opened the door to see machinery being wheeled by racing nurses, and the doctor blew by without a word.
Charles and Elizabeth appeared in the hallway, wearing the same shell-shocked expression. Without a word, they all bolted in the direction of the bedlam.
Augustus would never forget what he saw next, despite spending the rest of his life searching for ways to rid himself of this final image of his wife.
The doctor had climbed atop her with the electrical paddles. He was so unprepared for this moment that he was still wearing his pajamas as he first screamed at them to charge, and then, after several unsuccessful attempts that left Ekatherina flopping on the hospital bed, he threw them into the corner and began desperate chest compressions.
The three siblings were frozen in place by the shared vision.
“Doctor, we have to call it,” one of the nurses said. She exchanged a look with another, who just shook her head.
“No! She was fine last night, and there’s no medical reason for this!” His face fell down upon Ekatherina’s
“Doctor, she was gone when we got here. She’s been gone a while.”
The doctor ignored her, caught in a frenzy of his ministrations.
“Her face is already starting to show the signs of rigor mortis. Doctor, look at her.” The nurse again turned to her peer and it was then she saw Augustus. “Oh, no. Mr. Deschanel, I—”
Fire swelled within the belly of Augustus Deschanel and it launched him forward. Charles caught him before he could fling himself on the bed, and Elizabeth joined in just as he rolled his head back and began to howl.
“Ekatherina!” Augustus screamed her name as he fell forward, held aloft only by his siblings. “Ekatherina!”
The doctor rocked back on his heels and bowed his head. “Time of death… God, I don’t know. The coroner will need to weigh in.”
“Ekatherina!” Every syllable was a dagger to his heart. If only he’d tried harder, tried better to understand the madness consuming her. This was his fault, he’d done this to her! He’d taken her contentment and tried to turn it into a life he wanted, and it had driven her mad and now, and now… “EKATHERINA! EKATHERINA!” He screamed so hard he felt something break within him, and his voice failed him when he tried again, only managing a hoarse, Ekatherina, Ekatherina.
“Brother,” Charles said, holding firm to his arm. The warmth at his ear told him Charles was close. None of his other senses were doing a damn thing to help him. They’d failed him, as he failed her, and now Anasofiya would never know her mother, never know the woman Augustus had chosen to spend his life with, all because, because—
Augustus climbed the wall until he saw the ceiling and then everything went black.
It wasn’t much of a honeymoon, and neither felt much like celebrating, but they needed their space, and Augustus needed his, and so Colleen and Noah booked a room at the Monteleone for the remainder of their time in New Orleans.
Colleen believed the Christmas Eve Maddy died was the most horrible thing that could ever happen to them. To even consider a worse feeling was both a disservice to their lost sister and an omen no one wanted to invite.
The birth of Anasofiya, the wedding of Noah and Colleen… these things were not enough to lift the pall that arrived first with the death of Ophelia and then, tragically, Ekatherina.
She should have pushed harder with Ekatherina! What did it matter if the woman didn’t want to be healed, the alternative was death!
Consent is all we have to guide us correctly in the world of magic, Ophelia once said, and there was more wisdom in that than in anything else she’d ever said. Being a healer had responsibilities that went beyond healing. A responsibility to know when your healing wasn’t welcome, and to respect that, no matter the cost.
Ekatherina died in a house with two competent healers, and there was nothing now they could do about it. Neither Colleen nor Evangeline had the power to raise the dead. No one in the family did, as far as she knew.
“I wish I could fix this for you,” Noah offered, appearing behind her, as she stood at the window of their suite, surveying the skyline of the city that created her. Created them all.
“I don’t know if I would’ve survived this week if not for you.” Her hands over his were more for him, she told herself, but it wasn’t true, because she meant what she said. Without him, she’d be lost, and this was one more sign that she’d never understood love before Noah. She didn’t want to understand love without him.
There was no after Noah, she decided. If by some terrible twist of fate their marriage was not meant to last, she was determined to never search for it in another. She’d never find it.
“We can postpone both our programs for a while. My doctorate isn’t on a timetable, and you could enroll in a summer term if you’re worried about falling behind.”
“I’m not.”
“Good.” He kissed the back of her head, his lips warm against her dark golden hair. “I didn’t think you were.”
“Two funerals in a week is more than my family can take. And at Christmas. Again.”
“It’s more than they deserve,” he said. “But if they’re anything like you, there’s a strength running through their veins that will get them through this.”
Colleen leaned back into him. “You’re my strength, Noah.”
She saw him smile in the window’s reflection. “I’m part of it.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
“You give me too much,” he countered. “But I’ll do everything I can to live up to your image of me, Colleen.” Noah lowered his arms, wrapping them around her swollen belly. “We’ll make all of this work. I promise you. Amelia, your responsibilities with the Council. School. Supporting your family.”
“I can almost believe it when you say it.”
He laced his hands through hers, protecting their daughter together. “I want to learn everything about your world, because it’s our daughter’s world, too.”
“Slowly,” she said, letting her eyes close for a moment. Sometimes peace could be found by simply blocking out the world. “If you promise to keep an open mind.”
“I promise.”
Colleen spun in his arms and looked up at him. “What you said before, about postponing things. I don’t want to. At least not any longer than we have to. We can leave after Amelia arrives. I’d like her to be born in New Orleans.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I need. Staying forever won’t help them, or us. Sometimes… well, sometimes leading means taking a backseat for a while.”
“Wisdom from your aunt?”
“Something like that.” Colleen closed the shutter on the window and moved to the kitchen for some water. “I’ll fly back quarterly for Council meetings. It won’t impact school if I schedule them around mandatory breaks.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“I’d like that.” She took a long sip. “There’s a short trip we need to make, before we return to Scotland. Sooner rather than later.”
“Where?”
“Boston,” she answered, finishing off her water before dropping the glass in the sink. “To see Rory and Carolina. Huck’s got himself into a world of trouble, and I think I can help him.” She looked up, directly at Noah. “He can’t ever know, though.”
“Okay,” Noah answered. “Boston it is.”
“I know you don’t think much of my brother…”
Noah shook his head and moved closer to her, drawing her into his arms. “He’s my brother too, now, and if he’s in trouble, then we do what’s right and we help him.”
White. The color of his nightmares. The sheet, arcing softly through the air before landing on the corpse of his wife.
He hardly recognized the man who’d flung himself at her body in consuming grief. He heard his screaming voice and didn’t know who had done that. He couldn’t connect with the Augustus from that day, because that Augustus was gone now, and in its place was the empty void where the light should be. Instead, there was only numbness.
Only Ana kept him moving.
She was his reason for waking. For dressing. For trying to choke down a meal, cooked by his deeply concerned mother. For listening, as the Sullivans explained what they’d laid out for Ekatherina’s service. For choosing the dress she’d be entombed in.
When he was with Ana, he could almost forget both the beauty and the horror of his short, tragic marriage.
Charles, Evangeline, and Elizabeth took their turns at his side. He didn’t need them, and he told them as much, but it wasn’t a deterrent. Maureen also came by, passing Olivia off to Lisette before sitting silently at his side. The silence he appreciated. In the silence, one could choose, because nothing was chosen for them.
“This, too, shall pass, son,” Irish Colleen said to him, but there was no value in saying things like this, because of course this would pass. All things did. The belief and knowledge in that eventual passing did nothing to allay the grief shrouding the moment. It did nothing to allay the guilt, that Augustus’ grief was more for the idea of a life he wished to live than for the loss of his wife.
Only in her death could he see how wrong he’d been to marry her.
He no longer felt responsible for what happened. He was wiser than the weaknesses some men were prone to when up against the edge of their emotional capacity. This didn’t exonerate him, it only clarified his role in the matter.
He’d loved her. She’d loved another. He’d failed to understand the extent of her mental illness, and in turn, she’d failed him. They’d failed separately, and together, but the one good thing they’d ever done together now lay in the bassinet at his feet.
Augustus rocked Anasofiya. She didn’t sleep well, and the doctor suggested this might be because she’d never been nursed from her own mother. The wet nurse often left frustrated, returning with milk she’d expressed at home when Ana wouldn’t take to her nipple. Augustus didn’t know if there was any merit to the doctor’s declaration, but neither did he know if his relief in Ekatherina’s failure to nurse—his fear, too, that some of her darkness would transfer to Ana—was any more or less rational.
Anasofiya was his life now. He didn’t know or care if there was another woman out there waiting, because to even travel that path was to put upon his shoulders an expectation that to love and be loved was all there was to live for. He had that now, in a way he could never have with a romantic love. In her few days on earth, Ana had shown Augustus what love meant. In that love, he found the darkest fear of his life.
He would try and preserve the memory of Ekatherina’s happy days for their daughter, but he knew he would never fully shake the worry that Anasofiya had the darkness within her, too. If it took everything in him, so be it, but he would protect her from that. From herself. From her mother’s nature, which made up half of her.
The wet nurse arrived. She quietly knelt by the cradle, reaching for Anasofiya.
“No,” Augustus snapped. He hadn’t intended to sound so harsh, but he wasn’t prepared to apologize for it, either. “I’ll feed her.”
“But, sir, she has to learn to properly latch—”
“I said no,” he repeated. “I’m all she has now, and I need to learn to do this. There’s still enough milk in the fridge?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Bring more when you can,” he said, reaching to take his daughter into his arms. His only real, true love. His reason for living. “In the meantime, please hand me the bottle in the chiller and see yourself out.”