Page 51 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

“Maureen, come on.” Soren flashed her an urgent look. “He knows you’re safe. Now let’s go be safe.”

“I don’t know the address.”

“Then tell me who you’re with so I can find it myself,” he commanded.

Maureen hesitated only briefly before answering, and she told the truth.

Edouard’s light pause was hard to read. “I see. Okay. I’ll be there soon.”

“Edouard, no! It’s too dangerous!” Maureen screamed, but the line was dead.

Soren tugged her, and she dropped the phone, torn between one life and another, as a large metal object slammed into the side of the house.

Then it started to rain inside.

Inside the house. Inside, where she was, and Soren was, but Olivia was not, and Edouard, Edouard was coming, he was coming there, that was, if he wasn’t killed trying.

“Look,” Maureen said as she slipped away from reality. “Look how beautiful it is.”

The last thing she saw before she completely left her consciousness behind were Soren’s terrified eyes looking down into hers.

The world went dark. In the absence of light, all sounds amplified, and Augustus’ senses picked up vibrations of terror in a thousand tiny echoes. Every few seconds, even this was drowned out, by the relentless horror beyond their veil of safety.

Ana slept soundly in his lap, blissfully unaware of how close the danger was. How ineffective her father would be at protecting her, should things get much worse.

An orange ball appeared in the harsh darkness as Irish Colleen lit one candle, and then another.

Augustus met his mother’s eyes across the cool, damp room. He searched for strength and found only fear.

“Let us pray,” Irish Colleen whispered.

CHAPTER 15

Breakdown

Wind lashed the world outside. It whipped through the trees, the carefully tended bird of paradise and lantana. Their blindness to the nature of the sounds, of things unknown smashing into the house, smashing the cars parked along the street, escalated their fears, turning them into an entity all of their own.

For all the cacophony outside the safety of their attic, the silence within was deafening. Nicolas slept, curled into his grandmother’s lap, but woke every few minutes, eyes wide, questions he didn’t quite know how to form sitting behind his anxious gaze. Bea tended to some sewing she said she’d been meaning to get to, while Elizabeth and Connor both stared into the darker end of the attic, wordless.

Anasofiya whined in his lap, so Augustus lifted her to his chest, whispering soft promises of love and safety into her tiny ears. She was so little; this storm, so big. The entirety of her short life had been filled with constant reminders of all the many predators threatening her safety, both big and small, but nothing so much as this, the culmination of his greatest fear.

Irish Colleen was supposed to be the one who reminded them that this was normal; that, like the storm of ’65, they’d endure minor damage, rebuild, and move on. Her failure to provide that reassurance pushed Augustus to the darkest place he’d been since Ekatherina died. It was a place he dared not bring Ana, but he couldn’t leave her behind, either.

Ana suddenly burst into tears. The others in the attic stopped their respective escapes to look, and the attention burned a hole in Augustus. His failure as a father, on full display. His failure as a man.

Irish Colleen started to rise, but he silenced her with a firm look. This was his job. The most important job he had, far more than anything he’d created at an office in the Central Business District.

He should sing to her. But what? He couldn’t remember any songs, though he knew many, and he could cry himself, for all the frustration of this exercise that was over before it had begun.

But then he did remember a song. From Maddy’s collection; the one she played when she’d had an especially awful day and needed to go somewhere else for a while.

Augustus ignored the eyes on him and started humming the first few musical notes to James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.”

Day turned to night. Charles knew this because what little sunlight peeked through the hastily boarded window at the top corner of the musty attic disappeared. He had no concept of time. Was it night? Or had the storm eclipsed the sun?

Lisette whispered soft words to her belly. Reassurances, promises. At least, that’s what he assumed. Charles only heard every third or fourth word, because they weren’t meant for him.

He had half a mind to remind her there wouldn’t be a baby growing in her womb if not for him, but anytime he worked himself up about it, the horrors outside silenced him.

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