Page 8 of Nineteen Eighty

Augustus kicked the soccer ball across the yard. Ana, bounding back and forth across an invisible goal, pulled her tongue between her teeth, challenging him with her eyes.

He didn’t know where she got this moxie of hers. Certainly not from him. Maybe not even from Ekatherina, as he’d never seen that much personality come from her in the short few years he’d known her.

But for all of Ana’s boundless energy and competitive spirit, there were other times where he did see her mother coming through. In the times where she shrank in the shadow of the young girls who could have been her friends. In the long hours she spent reading books above her age level, curled up in her bed, happily alone.

“You lose!” she cried, sticking her tongue out, joy flashing in her eyes, as she blocked the goal and lifted the ball over her head, chucking it back to him from her tiny hands. It only made it halfway, and when Augustus went to retrieve it, she was quicker, and ran it back to her side, claiming now it was her turn to score on him. “Ready or not, here it comes!”

He didn’t really understand the sport. He’d run track for a couple years, and even cross-country, but Augustus had always had bigger priorities. Running wouldn’t start his business. It wouldn’t turn it regional, and then global, blowing it up beyond his wildest dreams.

And now his business was global, and he had everything he’d ever wanted, and more. Ana was the light in his life, and Deschanel Media was the backbone holding this world he continued to create for her in solid form. Though he was nearing thirty, she kept him young and reminded him that sometimes progress came in smaller forms. Sometimes joy could be finding a smooth rock down at the coast, or planting something in the garden with your daughter and watching it grow.

He couldn’t take full credit for Ana’s development. Elizabeth had been a godsend over the past nearly five years, and so had Colleen, when she was home. Maureen often popped in when she was taking Olivia to the park to see if Ana wanted to come. Ana, though lacking in a real live mother, didn’t want for maternal love. As far as Augustus was concerned, Ana had the best aunts on the planet.

But it was time for Elizabeth to live her own life. If all went well, she’d come back from Paris married, and with a new direction in life. Whatever she decided, Augustus would support her, always. But he knew her future wasn’t living part-time in his house, helping to raise his daughter, either.

He was so lost to his thoughts he realized she’d scored on him—landing it in the tangle of bougainvillea wrapping the porch—and now it was his turn again.

“Daaaaaaad! Kick the ballllll!”

He could do this alone, and now, it was time to try.

Augustus smiled at his daughter and kicked the ball.

“I just wish you could’ve come,” Evangeline was saying, stretching the phone cord across three different rooms as she haphazardly tossed clothes, shoes, and everything else into her suitcase. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too. But you’ll be back in New Orleans with your family, soon, and you’ll forget all about me being unable to make it up to Boston,” Cassie said from the other end. “And CERN! Evie! How many people do we know who can say they’re going to work for the European Organization for Nuclear Research?”

“None,” Evangeline replied. Despite that MIT was an obvious candidate pool for the esteemed organization in Switzerland, she was the only one from her program who’d been extended an offer. Over the years, she’d changed her focus from neuroscience to nuclear, with the escalating Cold War at the heart of it. If her experience with assault had taught her anything, it was that the worst feeling she had ever known was helplessness. She had no heart for politics, but she could understand the science; could help prepare the world for what might one day be a reality.

But nuclear physics was more than a weapon. It was a way to power the world. It was energy. Life.

Just like the Second Line Foundation, that she and Cassie had established three years ago for survivors of sexual assault. It wasn’t therapy. It was encouragement. It was a reminder you could survive and have a whole life ahead of you. That what happened to you was one ring, not the whole trunk. It was stories of survival. A safe place.

“Colleen especially will be so proud of you.”

“Yeah. Maybe. I missed our last Council meeting, and I don’t think she’s happy about that. She doesn’t know yet I’ll probably miss the next one.” Evangeline’s hesitation didn’t come from her nervousness about her sister’s reaction, but from Cassie herself. Something had been amiss with her best friend now for a couple months, and anytime Evangeline asked, Cassie blew it off as Evangeline being over sensitive with graduation looming. Later, she said it was because Evangeline hadn’t bothered to invite her family out, which was true, but also not the problem.

“If anyone understands, it’s Colleen,” Cassie insisted. “When do you move?”

“June. If I take it.”

“You will.”

“You’re so sure of that, are you?”

“Maybe I’ll come with you. Help you get settled in.”

“Yes, please. I’d love that.”

But Evangeline knew Cassie wouldn’t come, because there was something Cassie wasn’t telling her. And her closest friend in the world never would, more than likely, unless the universe conspired to make her.

“Ready or not, Evie. The rest of your life is imminent!”

Evangeline laughed. She threw a couple pointless hair bands in her suitcase and zipped it. “Hey, how’s your dad?”

“Talking retirement,” Cassie replied. “He’d been hoping for the detective job, but there’s only one in our small town, who was supposed to retire and changed his mind. He doesn’t want to hold out for it anymore, I guess. I understand.” Something in Cassie’s tone changed when she said, “He might even move out here. Or so he says.”

“Hey, that would be wonderful! Right?”

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