Page 67 of Nineteen Eighty

“I don’t care about your bastards running around without a care to who they really are. But I’m concerned about yet another child in the world who could later come back and threaten everything you’ve built for the children you did want.”

Charles swirled his pasta on his plate, jaw clenched. But it wasn’t Cordelia he was angry with. For perhaps the first time in his life, he was angry at himself, for his own actions. He was drawing the logical line between cause and effect, and the results were painful.

“I’ve given that bitch so much money,” he muttered. “So much.”

“Well, she’s too far along to get rid of the runt anyway,” Cordelia said, with a delicate bite of her spaghetti. “Frankly, I’m surprised you let her live.”

This whipped Charles out of his sulk. “Sorry?”

“Well, you killed her husband, so why not her?” Cordelia dropped her fork and gave him a knowing look. “Oh, come on, Charles. It’s me. Why, even now, do we have to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about? Haven’t I proven my loyalty to you by now?”

Charles flailed around in his inability to find a suitable comeback. The children were spending the weekend at Irish Colleen’s, and he appreciated that his wife had at least waited until it was only them to approach this conversation, despite his lack of readiness for it.

“I don’t need your formal acknowledgment. But I would appreciate, at least, some acceptance of how well I’ve kept your secrets.”

“You sure ran your mouth about Ekatherina.”

“Oh, please, Lisette didn’t believe it. And it was fun to see her little tiny face shocked. Don’t you think?”

Charles resisted a smile. The sweet naiveté of Lisette had worn off quicker than he wanted, and he, too, sometimes liked poking holes in it. He set his own fork down, having given up on finding his appetite. “I don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“How you… know… how you think you know all these things.”

“That you’re a stone cold killer?”

“Fuck’s sake, can you keep it down?”

“You think Richard and Condoleezza don’t know?”

“There are others on staff.”

“Whom you pay exceptionally well to not care,” Cordelia countered. “And to answer your question, it wasn’t so hard. I’m no witch, like some of you. I figured everything out the old-fashioned way.”

Charles crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. He could’ve gone his whole life never having this conversation, but now that it was here, he had to admit, he was fucking goddamn curious about the woman he’d made his wife and her almost supernatural ability to suss out the worst of him. “All right. Go on.”

Cordelia took a sip of her wine. Smiled. “All right, then. That teacher. Evers. This one’s easy, because all of New Orleans knew about it. Not right away, of course. It took some time for the rumor mill to catch up, and it only happened after they found the man. Everyone speculated it was your name and money that turned the police off your scent, but, of course, they don’t know what your brother can do.”

Charles poured another glass of cognac. Waited.

“The degenerates who hurt Evangeline were a little harder to connect, but not much. My father was the one who found out about what happened to her. If you must know, I think he was buying cocaine from some of that crowd, but he heard about the runaways who assaulted Evangeline and when he told me, I remembered something I’d read in the news. I went down to the library, to confirm my memory, and I was right. Not that a house fire is uncommon in those worn-down, forgotten neighborhoods, but it was awfully convenient how all their escapes were magically blocked off.”

“They got off easy.”

Cordelia’s face lit up. “Yes, they did. All right, and then there’s… oh yes, Colleen’s professor. Well, her fall from grace at Tulane is no secret. She was wronged, as women often are in these situations. When I heard he’d driven his car into the bayou, well, I thought, this isn’t the action of a man who continuously gets his way in life. And I considered the timing as well, that it happened after Colleen left for Scotland. When she was far enough away she’d never hear the news. Has she ever? Figured it out?”

Charles paused. Then shook his head. “Not to my knowledge.”

“Good. Better that way,” Cordelia said, nodding. “Now, Ekatherina was tougher. I had no evidence, or honestly, any reasons to suspect you of anything, despite your history. Women die from childbed complications all the time, as Lisette did… and no, I know you didn’t kill her. We weren’t even home. But, Ekatherina, she’d broken your brother. I know how that ate at you. Truly, it was a guess.” She winked. “A very lucky guess, as it turned out. That one took some real balls.”

Charles shifted in his seat. Of all of them, this weighed heaviest. But he was absolutely certain that had the woman lived, she would’ve run his brother right into the earth. Charles would have to visit him at the family tomb. He didn’t need to be a seer to figure that out.

“Then there was the matter of Catherine.”

Charles stiffened. “I told you—”

“The affair. Her strange disappearance. Again, just a guess, at least at first. But I checked with the hospitals in Boston, and there was never any record of Carolina Sullivan giving birth in any of them. Funny, that. Of course, she could have used a midwife, but with her issues? She’d want a doctor present. Yet on the same date listed on their birth announcement for Robyn, there was a Kitty Chanel who did give birth. To a daughter. And I thought, well Kitty… Cat… Chanel… Deschanel. Wishful thinking on her part, seeing as you were already shackled to me and she didn’t have the courage to leave her own pathetic husband. And also not entirely too clever. Jane Doe would have even been better.”

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