Page 8 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

“Look,” Colleen went on, trying to shift the tension back to spirited discussion. “I’m not trying to create trouble between all of us. I did consider a Deschanel. Evangeline, if you want to know, and I think, I hope one day, she will be sitting here with us. But the timing was wrong, and besides, the last thing I wanted was for all of you to look at me and see my first decision being, in your eyes, an act of nepotism.”

Cassius and Eugenia both cast their eyes away. Pierce picked at his fingernails, and Kitty scribbled furiously in her notebook.

Only Pansy met her gaze. “Colleen, you can’t win in a game that was never designed for you to win. Ophelia is the only one of us, in this country, to ever hold the magistrate role, and while we all know Ophelia is a queen, she ain’t the only one capable of steering this ship. She chose ya for a reason, cousin. We gotta respect that.” She looked at her father, sister, aunt, uncle. “We do respect that. Evangeline would make a fine member. So would Luther, even if he is young. But he ain’t the youngest, and if we’re gonna make a world for our kids, we gotta let them into it, too.”

Colleen listened gratefully. Pansy was the most unlikely ally she could think of in this room. Colleen suspected she’d never liked her, for one, and, like her mother, Pansy was headstrong and wasn’t much for the dust and cobwebs of tradition.

“Pansy is right,” Cassius said, another strange bedfellow. Colleen always suspected Pansy and Cassius to be the two least likely to support her, but so much else had changed, so why not this, too? “We can’t tell you to make a choice and then pick it apart. Ophelia has only been in her grave a few months, and we dishonor her with this infighting. It has to stop.” He looked at Colleen. “She chose you for a reason. You have my support.”

Pierce nodded for a few seconds, choosing his words. “Maybe this is why she picked you, Colleen. We all liked to think of Ophelia as old guard, but I remember her listening to your new ideas, about science and discovery, and let’s not forget she could see the future.”

Others nodded.

“All of it,” Pierce went on, and several laughed. Colleen folded her hands in her lap, unsure of where this was going, but no longer anxious. “So, surely, she saw you picking Luther? Right? And if she thought this decision was problematic, would she have chosen you?”

“You can’t change the future,” Eugenia countered. “No one knew that better than Tante Ophelia.”

“No,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean she didn’t endorse it.”

“Frankly, I don’t even know why this ancient tradition still exists,” Kitty offered. “The Collective. The Council. We meet every quarter to talk about nothing. When’s the last time we even pulled the broader Collective in for a meeting?”

“The Collective meets annually, or when there’s a need,” Colleen reminded her. “The tradition isn’t designed for them to be a constant part of things.”

“Our annual numbers last year were…” Kitty flipped through her notebook, consulting her fastidious record keeping. “Twenty-two. We had twenty-two people show up for the annual briefing. That twenty-two includes us, by the way, so fifteen. And why? Because there’s never anything to discuss.”

“Until there is,” Colleen said.

“Until there is,” Cassius parroted. “Ophelia revived this old tradition from our French ancestors for a reason. Things weren’t always so peaceful for us. Most of us weren’t alive the last time the Deschanel Curse swept through the family. We should be happy that our problems are that of a normal family, and not of the magical persuasion. But one day, they will be. History is cyclical. We’ve been in a period of peace for far too long, and we all know it. Ophelia knew it. She spent her whole life warning us of it and was the only one who never forgot where we came from, and why this”—he gestured around the table, at the ancestral portraits, the wall sconces—“was necessary.”

“Amen, Uncle,” Pansy said, head lowered, hand in the air.

“We’re way off topic at this point,” Colleen said. “Here’s the thing, everyone. It may be my decision, but as my first decision, in what will be a long line of them seeing as this role has the longevity of a Supreme Court justice, I don’t want this to create a divide. I care what you all think. I do. So, I’m making the decision to put it to vote. We’ll go with a simple majority, though I’ll sleep better if the verdict is unanimous.”

Eugenia smoothed the lapels on her smoking jacket. Few women could get away with dressing as she did, crossing over the gender roles at her own pleasure. She was a force of an individual, and an even more so, as a woman who had no time for what feminists were trying to accomplish, because she’d never cared much for what men thought of her, her family, or her decisions. Colleen respected the hell out of her. She wanted her approval, more than any of them, because only in Eugenia’s presence did Colleen ever find her own attempts at successful self-awareness lacking.

“All in favor of Luther being our seventh Council member, raise your hand and say ‘aye.’”

Pansy was first, throwing her hand in the air with dramatic aplomb, followed by Cassius, and then Pierce. Eugenia shook her head and then raised hers as well, which left only Kitty.

Colleen looked at her younger cousin. “Kitty?”

“I don’t have to like it,” Kitty replied. “And I don’t have to support it. But I’ll respect it.” She left her palms spread across her notebook.

Colleen sighed inwardly. “Very well.” She raised her own hand. “Five for. One against. If Luther agrees to the appointment, then we’ll induct him as our seventh member, thereby making us whole once more.”

“We’ll never be whole without Tante Ophelia,” Kitty countered, venom interlacing her words. Her eyes, glassy with tears.

“I thought that, at first,” Colleen said, as she tried hard to separate emotion from fact. She’d never seen her aunt cry, or show any emotion beyond passion, and the best way to honor her was to continue with the same strength. “But if she believed we’d all fall apart when she died, well… she wouldn’t rest easy at all. She built all this to outlast her, not to crumble at the first sign of a challenge. Ophelia’s last words to me were ‘now, go and do as you are born to do, so that I can die with the peace of possibility.’ I would give her that peace. Would you?”

Kitty tapped her pen and looked down.

“The peace of possibility,” Eugenia mused, running her tongue over her bold burgundy lipstick. “How very Ophelia.”

“How very,” Cassius agreed, hanging his head in solemnity.

“For Ophelia,” Pierce said.

“For all of us,” Colleen corrected. “Ophelia gave us a gift. She gave us this. Each other. We can honor her by not letting it all be for nothing.”

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