Page 58 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

“I think it feels insulting to you, after what your mother endured. It makes me seem weak, or even selfish.”

“Evangeline,” Cassie said with a soft sigh. “I told you my truth. You told me yours. All we have are our choices, and we can’t measure our successes and failures and, ultimately, our decisions that led to them from shoes we haven’t walked in. I would’ve aborted me.” She grinned. “I’m glad she didn’t, obviously, but it took more than great courage to keep me. I know my father looks at me every day and wonders if I’m damaged. Oh, he’d never say it. He wishes he wouldn’t think it, either. He’d die for me, a thousand times over. But being a monster sometimes runs in the blood.”

“You’re not a monster,” Evangeline replied, voice firm.

“I know that,” Cassie said. “But I was born from one. And I know that, should the occasion arise, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill one.”

Evangeline thought of Charles, who’d killed, more than once, perhaps way more than once. Was he a monster, when he’d killed only monsters? What would she or Cassie be, if they also took a life, to save others?

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Evangeline said finally.

“Do we have another bottle?”

Charles only half-participated in what Colin called their “old friends reunion dinner.” It wasn’t much of a reunion, or a dinner, but rather a haphazard attempt at conversation as everyone pretended to be okay while picking at food.

The wine flowed, though, and lots of it.

Colin and Catherine laughed with their mouths, but not with their eyes. If they’d been in the polite company of anyone other than the Sullivans, Charles was certain Cordelia’s own dead expression would have given her “charm” away.

It was a farce. An illusion. A bold attempt to restore something that was broken to begin with. They all knew it, but no one said it. No one dared.

“And our counselor, you know, she’s a wise woman.” Colin smiled at his wife from his peripheral. “Really sharp. She said Catherine needed something outside the home. That I have the firm, of course, but not all women want to stay at home all day. I never thought of it like that, until she said it in those words.” Colin talked about his counselor in the way a man who found Jesus might talk about his newfound faith; a little nervous, and a lot hopeful.

“Fascinating,” Cordelia said, face in her wine glass.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way either,” Catherine said meekly. Meekly. Charles had never seen this side of his Catherine. She was the light, not the shadow. She bathed others in her radiance. She didn’t hide behind it. “But, of course, she was right. I used to want to be a writer, as we all know.” Her laugh broke his heart, but when Colin didn’t laugh with her, it gave him hope. Maybe he’d taken Charles’ advice to heart, after all, and stopped looking at his wife as a second-class citizen. “That’s silly, when I think of it now.”

“Not silly,” Colin said conciliatory. Trying. He put a hand over hers.

“Silly,” she insisted. “But I went to college for a reason. I wasn’t a bad student. I liked school.”

“I remember,” Charles said.

Cordelia made a sound, subtle, but not subtle enough.

“Yes, well.” Catherine looked down at her plate and the food she’d hardly touched. “I decided to take some typing classes, and maybe go to business school, if things go well there.”

“Night classes,” Colin said, unable to resist the urge to clarify her words. Some things are just too ingrained, Charles thought. “When I’m at work, she looks after Oz, and then I can come home and give her some relief in the evening. It’s perfect, really.”

“Speaking of perfect, have you seen pictures of Rory and Carolina’s new daughter?” Cordelia said, turning on her best impression of the “human” setting.

Charles wondered when her face would slide off into her meal, revealing her true form.

Catherine visibly paled. She stabbed her fork into some peas.

“What a blessing,” Colin said with a sigh, smiling. “Poor Carolina has had such a rough time of it, and we all thought Clancy would be their last. God works in mysterious ways.”

“Indeed he does. And might be the first Sullivan baby not to be born looking like he stepped out of a potato field!”

Everyone stared at Cordelia, mortified for similar, but different reasons.

“What? Black hair. Green eyes. Am I wrong?”

“Clancy is blond,” Colin pointed out, clearing his throat.

“With green eyes.”

“Yes, I suppose his eyes are green,” Colin conceded.

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