Colleen Deschanel, known as Irish Colleen to her family and friends, walked past the faces of her seven children, as she did every night of her life.
Charles’ icy eyes penetrated from his senior picture. She had better pictures of him… less overtly hostile, ones betraying a softer side to her hardened son. She should replace this with one of those, but as she thought of him living his loveless life, in his hollow ancestral home, she didn’t deserve his smile. The brutal intensity of his gaze reminded her of her role in his unhappiness. One hand of her penance.
Augustus’ picture was no better. If Charles was fueled by his rage, Augustus bottled his sadness and turned it into steeled determination. His drawn look belied his stoic resolve, his absolute commitment to anything in life that brought results without expending too much emotion. His marriage to the sullen Ekatherina had thrown a wrench into his life that had the potential to break him far more than Madeline had.
Irish Colleen didn’t know which of her sons she worried for more.
Her oldest daughter, her namesake, Colleen, beamed a dutiful, if impatient smile from her spot on the mantle. Taking a picture, like so many things, was a waste of time for Colleen, who was always looking for what was next, what higher bar she could reach for. She’d reached across the ocean this time, and Scotland seemed to brighten her in a way nothing at home ever had. Irish Colleen suspected, even, that Colleen had met someone, though she held out no hope of news, for Colleen was deeply private.
At least she would be home this summer. Nearly a year had passed since she’d last seen her, and Irish Colleen could tell no one of how much her absence hurt, for this pain was necessary for her daughter to spread her wings and grow.
As for Madeline, the next face on her nightly journey, there would be no wings. Irish Colleen said a prayer for her daughter’s soul and moved on.
Evangeline was gone now, maybe forever. Even when she was a baby, Irish Colleen looked upon her fifth child with a sense she was peering upon someone who was not one of them. It was a terrible thing to think about one’s own child, and Irish Colleen spent many, many nights praying for the feeling to go away. But when it did not, she learned, instead, to embrace the “otherness” of Evangeline and push her toward the greatness she was born for. Irish Colleen lacked the education or the resourcefulness to know where Evangeline’s life should take her, but she knew enough to keep pushing. Always pushing. She didn’t know if Evangeline would ever come home. If she didn’t, it might not be the worst thing.
Irish Colleen prayed over that feeling, too.
And Maureen… Maureen, her child, through and through. Maureen didn’t know this, and never would, because Irish Colleen preferred the way her children saw her, even if it wasn’t the entire picture. Irish Colleen was seventeen when she fell pregnant with Charles, and she wasn’t the unwitting pawn others saw her to be. Nor had August Deschanel been her first.
Maureen wasn’t speaking to her now, but she would. When Maureen was a mother, she would finally understand what it meant to sacrifice, and in doing so, give up the foolish dream of deeper happiness. The matter of her marriage to the Blanchard had been, for once, not Irish Colleen’s doing, though she didn’t disagree with it, either. Maureen could do so much worse, and almost had.
Irish Colleen climbed the stairs and made her way toward Elizabeth’s room. Elizabeth was sixteen now, and there was nothing, not in the way her sinewy limbs had turned to curves, nor in the intensity of her knowing gaze, that allowed for a glimpse into the girl she’d only very recently been. Something else had changed Lizzy, something Irish Colleen wasn’t privy to, for once.
She was afraid of her youngest daughter. She always had been, truth be told, but to see Elizabeth become a woman made her danger all the more real. Elizabeth held within her dark truths that had been slowly destroying her, and the shell required to live with such darkness did not come without a price.
Elizabeth wasn’t sleeping. She wasn’t even in her room. She hovered at the end of the hall, not in a nightgown anymore, but in a pair of cotton briefs and a tank top. She leaned over the desk just under the dormer window, which had been a selling point of the house. Elizabeth had loved the dormer window in their house near the cemetery, and there was very little Elizabeth loved. Irish Colleen had so few opportunities to do something meaningful for her.
“What’re you looking at?”
“The rain,” Elizabeth said. She wrapped her ankles together and leaned further forward. “Probably our last storm of the season that won’t feel like a sauna.”
“You’ll freeze in that,” Irish Colleen admonished. She unwrapped her own shawl and moved to drape it over Elizabeth.
“Stop,” Elizabeth said, shrugging it away. “You have the heat jacked up to eighty. I can hardly breathe.”
“Well, I’ll turn it down then,” Irish Colleen said, slighted. “Goodness, you’ve never complained before.”
“What would be the point?”
“Don’t get sassy with me, missy.”
“What do you want me to say, Mama? Shit, you’ve never liked anyone questioning you.”
“Elizabeth! That mouth!”
“I guess I should get the soap?”
Irish Colleen spun her daughter around. Elizabeth fell back on the balls of her feet, glowering. “What has gotten into you?” She touched the back of her hand to her forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”
“Lord in heaven, as if every time I’m cranky it must mean I’m with fever!”
“Elizabeth!”
“Well, Mama, ask me already! That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To get your semi-annual premonition, designed to make me feel even more helpless as I watch you brood through your guessing games?”
“You really are not yourself, Lizzy. I might just call your doctor…”
“You call him and I won’t be here.” Elizabeth crossed her arms. Her eyes glowed in the dark hall, set to the dark tones of the storm outside. She was the storm inside. “I’m tired. Tired of everything. You wanna know what’s happening to our family this year, Mama? Births! Deaths! Two for one special!” She threw her hands up in the air. “There? You happy now?”
Elizabeth stormed into her room and slammed the door.