Page 3 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

Augustus settled a dishrag over his pajamas and rotated his daughter to a better position to feed her. Ana latched on to the nipple of the bottle immediately, sucking hungrily. He released the breath he’d been holding; the one attached to his fear she’d stop eating, stop trying, stop living, just like her mother. “You don’t have to stay here. I’ve got everything under control.”

“Oh yeah? That why you were up all night long?”

Augustus swiveled the bottle higher so Ana could have better access. “Most parents don’t sleep when their babies are young.”

“Most parents aren’t shy about asking for help when they need it.”

“When they need it,” Augustus emphasized.

Elizabeth dropped the spoon into her empty bowl with a loud clang. “You going to work today?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Elizabeth rinsed her bowl without using soap and dropped it in the dish rack. One more thing he’d have to attend to later. “I guess I should be asking, are you going to stay at work?”

Augustus ignored this question. Instead, he breathed in the soft, baby scent of Anasofiya’s hair as she drank her breakfast. Real. She was real. Alive.

“That’ll be Mama,” Elizabeth said when the bell rang.

Rory and Carolina’s apartment was lovely, modestly appointed but sumptuously located around the inner edge of the bustling green of Boston Common, now in full bloom for spring. They were high enough to have some privacy, while still overlooking the flurry of activity in the heartbeat of Boston.

Colleen noted the apartment had three bedrooms, an important detail that would matter later if she was successful in her plea.

A sinking sensation ebbed and flowed through her, as she thought of Evangeline, mere miles away, oblivious to the fact Colleen was in the area at all. It would be so easy to call her for a lunch date, or to stay at her small apartment in Cambridge and catch up into the early morning hours.

But she had more pressing matters here, and to explain them to Evangeline, no matter how bad she might want to, was out of the question. This wasn’t her secret to share outside of the people required to know to enact the proper plan. Her only motivation for telling Evangeline would be to have someone to confide in, and that wasn’t good enough to bring someone else into the already convoluted affair.

Clancy was big enough to run around on the shag carpet, while spouting off quite a few words, stringing together a handful of complete sentences. He was a lovely toddler, a head of soft blond tufts, eyes full of muted mischief.

Before revealing the intent of her visit, Colleen muddled through the required pleasantries and catching up. Rory did well enough to hide his surprise at Colleen’s quick marriage, but was less effective at burying his shock when learning about her daughter, Amelia. He said, with a light sting of accusation, that Colleen had forgotten there were people who loved her; people who might want to know about the major events altering her life. In crafting her new life in Scotland, it hadn’t only been Colleen’s family who were left in the dark.

Carolina’s reaction was appropriately tender. She seemed well past whatever jealousy or fear she had toward Colleen, where her husband was concerned, and that left Colleen’s heart happy. The couple’s body language strongly indicated their closeness and there was something even more powerful in the glances cast on one another when the other wasn’t looking. Rory and Carolina’s marriage may have begun for the wrong reasons, but, either through the strife of Clancy’s hard birth, or something else, something Colleen may never be privy to, had forged into something far more impenetrable and meaningful.

They were both eager to meet Amelia, and Colleen wished, briefly, she’d brought her on this trip. But it was better to leave her in New Orleans with Irish Colleen, so Colleen could focus all her attention on the task at hand.

It was only two days, after all, though two days felt an eternity when her heart was thousands of miles away.

Well, half her heart. The other half sat at her side, prepared to do anything he needed to help her achieve her goal. Several lives depended on their power to convince Rory and Carolina.

When they asked when she’d start going by Colleen Jameson, she explained that her name was already changed on all official paperwork, but that publicly, when representing her family, she would always go by Colleen Deschanel. When she’d learned this was a requirement of any magistrate of the Deschanel Collective Council—something Ophelia never had to contend with, having never married—Colleen initially feared this might be a point of contention in her young marriage. But Noah was delightfully understanding. He knew what their marriage license read, he said. He knew who they were.

Noah and Rory hit it off right away, and Colleen realized, somewhere in the midst of them reciting current sports team rankings in New Orleans, and reminiscing about old haunts unfamiliar to her, that the world of the Jamesons and Sullivans had been more tightly knit to one another than the Deschanels had been to either of them. The Sullivans might today live comfortably amongst the blue bloods, but they’d started as blue collar men with big dreams, and their clients, and the city, embraced their proletarian roots as proof of what hard work and a vision could produce.

Carolina set a tray of lemonade on the coffee table. She disappeared into the other room for a moment, and when she came back, the pitched sound of cartoons—The Flintstones—followed by Clancy’s squeal, replaced the silence.

“So,” Carolina began, a careful smile hardening her soft features. “You said you had something important to talk to us about?”

Colleen and Noah exchanged wary glances. Time was running short, if this plan was to work.

“Something has happened back home,” Colleen began. “Something… requiring your full discretion, regardless of what you decide here today.”

“Of course,” Rory insisted, Carolina nodding at his side. “You know you can always trust in our discretion.”

“Yes, I know,” Colleen said. “But this particular situation involves your brother.”

Rory’s eyes twitched. “Which one?”

“Colin.”

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