Page 73 of Nineteen Eighty

“Maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s the Council. I’m glad you see it,” Elizabeth said. Their entire relationship, most of her life, had been predicated on an amalgam of her mother’s fussiness over her well-being and anachronistic reliance on the same visions that caused her harm. That her mother could acknowledge this change was almost more important to her than her own self-reflection on the matter.

“I do, Lizzy. If you’re happy, that’s all I ever wanted for you. For any of you.”

“I think we’re all as happy as we can be,” Elizabeth replied. “Even Charles, in his own way.”

“For Charles, happiness will always involve some degree of illusion,” Irish Colleen replied. “But we all find our way through, don’t we?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“And you know your old mother has to ask… when will it be my Lizzy’s turn to give me grandbabies?”

The old Elizabeth would have tensed up at the latest of her mother’s inappropriate expectations on her. But frustration had no place here, between them, in what would be, Elizabeth now knew, the last decade of her mother’s life.

So, she smiled. “Soon, Mama. For Christmas, I delivered the keys to the Coliseum house to Connor. That feels like a good first step in that direction, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, what a wonderful choice! I always loved that house. Very close to our old one, you know.”

“I know, Mama.”

“You’ll make beautiful memories there together, Lizzy. I know it.”

For a while, yes. “Mama, I want you to know… I want you to know that I love you, and you did the best you could with the seven of us. It wasn’t easy to begin with, and we didn’t make it easier on you. But all of us are going to be okay, and it all started with a mama who loved us through the best and worst of who we were.”

Irish Colleen set her towel aside, hunched over the counter. When Elizabeth pulled her mother in for a hug, she saw she was crying.

“My Lizzy,” she whispered, drying her tears on her youngest daughter’s Christmas dress.

“My Mama,” Elizabeth returned and, pulling back, looked her mother in the eye and smiled. “Now, let’s go see Maddy.”

Epilogue: Irish Colleen and the Seven

Colleen Deschanel, known as Irish Colleen to her family and friends, walked past her seven children and eleven grandchildren, as she did every night of her life.

But tonight was different. It was unlike any that had come before.

It had been Elizabeth’s idea, but she’d met no objections from any of them.

Irish Colleen’s entire brood huddled together at Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 just after midnight. The cemetery was closed at this hour, but Elizabeth had wiggled over the wall, opening one of the gates that locked from the inside. Irish Colleen was nervous about breaking the law, but when no one else batted an eyelash, she realized her worries had no place.

She’d never learned the exact time of Madeline’s death. The information was available, but it didn’t matter, because had Maddy died, for her, in the long, arduous seconds between the police arriving at her door and them delivering the news, words she would die thinking about. Much of her had died then, with her daughter. But curling up and rotting away was no option for Irish Colleen, who had six other children who needed her.

But had she seen herself surviving to the ten-year anniversary of this terrible event?

She had not.

But it was, nonetheless, the ten-year anniversary of the seven becoming six.

But they weren’t six, either. They were seventeen. More if you counted the spouses. If you counted Irish Colleen.

And they were all there, whether you counted them or not. Children. Spouses. And of course, Irish Colleen, who never thought of herself as a matriarch but had been called that several times just that night, by all of her children.

There was a chill in the midwinter air. Everyone waited for someone else to start talking, but they weren’t a family known for their words, but their strength.

The strong shall rise again, Elizabeth had said, earlier, reminding her of the family motto of August’s people. Irish Colleen never thought much about this. As an Irishwoman, everything had meaning, and so nothing did. But it was true, wasn’t it? Didn’t the Deschanels always rise again?

Each of them milled around, lost to their thoughts, shuffling over the dead grass.

Charles stood with Cordelia, three of their girls standing at their legs while they hovered at the corner of the tomb in shared silence. Adrienne slept in a buggy that Cordelia mindlessly rocked back and forth. Nicolas was elsewhere.

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