Page 54 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

“Eugenia didn’t get to finish, because the phone lines died.”

“They know what to do. This isn’t their first hurricane.”

Colleen gazed at him, eyes red. “We also don’t want it to be their last.”

“What do we do?” It was Noah’s turn to ask the question.

“Nothing,” Colleen said. “We do nothing, because there is nothing. Nothing we can do. Not from here.”

Noah dropped to his knees, bowed his head, and began to pray.

Augustus was on his forty-second iteration of the song. He was surprised he knew the words at all, and wondered if he was even getting them right. More than likely, he’d filled in the blanks with made-up words and made something new, which was okay, too, because a song was a song, and maybe it was better if Ana had something that was hers, and not the hand-me-down of a dead aunt.

“Augustus.”

He didn’t look up. Connor had been trying to get his attention for a while, but if he stopped singing, Ana would cry, and if Ana cried, Augustus would cry.

“Let me take her for a bit.”

“It’s quite all right,” Augustus replied, rocking his sweet daughter. It was then he realized her head was damp. Covered in it. “Is the roof leaking? Where’s the moisture coming in from?”

“The roof is fine, darling,” Irish Colleen replied, and he heard in her voice how she held herself back from saying what she really wanted to say, and he both loved and hated her for it.

“You’re crying,” Elizabeth said. “You got it on her.”

“Lizzy,” Connor cautioned.

They could both go to hell, as far as Augustus was concerned. Elizabeth, for her flip comment, Connor for trying to protect him. Neither of them knew what he faced every day as the father of Anasofiya Aleksandrovna Vasilyeva Deschanel. They pandered to him, coddled him, and sometimes even scolded him, but that was not the same as knowing. As living it.

But he supposed he was crying, and he had gotten it on her. When he went to wipe at his face, there were so many tears that they must’ve started ages ago, and he wondered if everyone in the attic had a front row seat to his mental collapse, or just his snarky sister.

Connor pressed his hand to the dusty ground and pushed himself up. Without asking, he slid his arms, gently, under the cradle Augustus had made for Ana, and, without asking, he took her into his arms.

“Rest for a bit. I’ll give her back. Promise.”

Connor carried her to the corner, where he pulled the cover off an old rocker and eased himself into it, holding Ana tight to his chest, supporting her head. All the things Augustus taught him.

Augustus didn’t register his mother standing, or coming over, but when she slipped her hand through his arm, he understood that things in the room had shifted. He was no longer the parent, but the child. It wasn’t a suggestion of permission, but an order.

Augustus looked away, into the darkness, still crying, but this time he knew about it and could do something. He closed his eyes and, for the first time since he was a boy, searched for God.

As Elizabeth watched Connor tend to Anasofiya, she was rocked with another powerful vision.

Connor, asleep, holding their daughter.

Connor, exhausted, holding their son.

Elizabeth swallowed a painful breath. It trapped in her chest.

Danielle.

Tristan.

Her children.

Elizabeth would die young, but first, she would live.

Soren went down to check on the damage when the banging on the door started.

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