Page 1 of Nineteen Eighty

Prologue: Irish Colleen and the Seven

Colleen Deschanel, known as Irish Colleen to her family and friends, walked past the faces of her seven children and nine grandchildren, as she did every night of her life. There were more grandchildren on the way, and she sensed the next decade would bring even more. If Irish Colleen had whispered hope back into the Deschanel family with her blessed fertility, then her children had delivered the long, comfortable exhale of relief.

She no longer felt like the young mother who’d been challenged with the upbringing of unusual children. All her babies were grown, and no longer needed her, if they ever truly had. Irish Colleen, only two birthdays from her fiftieth, wondered where the years had gone. Not because her life had not been filled with memories worth making, but because she couldn’t recall exactly when she’d begun to feel old.

Forty-eight, going on eighty.

Irish Colleen had hardly been more than a girl when she married a man who was already looking down the barrel of his own twilight, giving him that which he both needed and wanted most: heirs. Seven who lived to maturity, but more pregnancies than she liked to recall now, when it no longer mattered. She’d brought the promise of a future back to the Deschanels at a time when the hope had all but winked out, and for that, she was a hero among them, but that didn’t make her one of them. She would always be Irish Colleen, never just Colleen. Always “the help August married,” and never August’s wife. She’d stumbled, faltered, many times along the way, but by the grace of God, she’d reared the children he so desperately needed, and now they were each living their own lives, most rearing their own babes.

Charles was thirty now and about to become father to his fifth child. The last four, all girls, all of what he’d wanted most. Irish Colleen believed he loved Nicolas, but Charles had always been driven more by his passions than his loves, and his need of daughters, as she saw it, came from a well that had two pockets. They reminded him of his own perceived failures as an older brother to five sisters, and also of the daughter he would never know, because Irish Colleen had seen to it that his dalliance with a teenager didn’t ruin his life. She’d never know if that decision had been the right one, but she was certain he’d have none of these babies if the first had lived.

If she had one regret, it was forcing him into a marriage with Cordelia. His misery traveled the only way it could when it rolled off his icy wife, toward his son. And while Irish Colleen had offered, many times, to raise Nicolas herself… to give him the nurturing he deserved, and that, perhaps, she hadn’t given enough of to Charles… while she’d made this offer in earnest, he’d refused it in equal seriousness. Nicolas was his son, and the sooner he learned to harden himself, the more capable he’d be of existing in an unfair world.

She wanted to ask Charles, her spoiled, tempestuous baby, what he could know of an unfair world, born with gold spoons hanging from his pouty lips, but she understood that he’d seen his own share of pain. Some invited, some not.

Augustus thrived as a father. As time went on, he learned to wade in deeper waters, to take more risks. To let Ana fall and scrape her knees, and sting herself on the beautiful roses in his garden. She was a lovely child, full of life, but also so much like her father. Quiet, introspective. But Elizabeth couldn’t help him forever. She had her own life to lead, and Augustus’ careful balance of work and fatherhood hinged on the constancy of her presence over the past five years.

Irish Colleen had an idea of how she could help her son, but he would need to come to her first. There was a question only he could ask. He’d never appreciated, or followed, unsolicited advice.

And he would. Come to her. This she knew, in her own unique form of magic known as mother’s intuition.

Unlike Charles, who seemed thrilled by the idea that his mistress might continue to produce child after child to please him, Augustus insisted one was all he’d ever want. Charles’ quest for joy and perfection was never-ending. In Ana, Augustus had found his absolution alongside his happiness.

Colleen had, more and more, been talking about moving back to New Orleans. Her little family unit, now five strong, had thrived in the damp lowlands of Scotland, but the frequent travel home to oversee the Deschanel Magi Collective was taxing, and Amelia would be going into pre-school soon. Noah was preparing to defend his doctoral thesis, and Colleen had a decision to make, about where she’d pursue hers.

While Irish Colleen had been eager to see her namesake run off into the world to find herself, as a woman separate of the family she seemed determined to live and die for, she was just as eager to have her coming back home now. Home, where she could love on her grandbabies, Amelia, Benjamin, and little Ashley. Where, perhaps, she could even have tea with her daughter, woman to woman, and enjoy their relationship in a way age and circumstances had never previously allowed.

Evangeline, in her typical fashion, had quietly finished her graduate program, and just as quietly decided not to return home. She said she was entertaining job offers, but hadn’t landed on one, and had nothing pushing her to do so with expediency. Over the years, Irish Colleen had learned to interpret her daughter’s calm lack of enthusiasm for something other than apathy, but it didn’t mean she understood it. It didn’t mean she understood Evangeline, her only child who had not met someone to settle down with. At twenty-six, she seemed in no hurry to do so, despite that her best childbearing years were behind and not ahead.

She’d brought that woman home last Christmas. Cassie. Irish Colleen knew Cassie was just a friend, but she also knew there were other women that Evangeline had dated and even loved. This flew in the face of what Irish Colleen believed to be right and true, but she was less concerned with the sin and more with the possibility Evangeline might never carry her unusual way with the world down to others.

Irish Colleen had spent years not understanding Evangeline, but only now was she beginning to accept that she didn’t need to. She wanted only to be a part of her child’s life, not to mandate the path.

Maureen was finally pregnant with her second child, but that didn’t warm Irish Colleen’s heart. Not at all. To the opposite, Irish Colleen was quite sure her daughter hadn’t renewed her husband’s interest in the marital bed, so it could only mean one thing.

There’d been rumors, of course, over the years. She’d heard the name LaViolette bandied about, but never more than a whisper, and Edouard, despite his many faults, had been a good father to Olivia, who had just celebrated her sixth birthday and was every bit the ball of fire her mother had been at that age. He doted on her, even if he neglected her mother. And to hear him talk about the coming child, one would never know it wasn’t his.

But he knew. Everyone knew.

Irish Colleen began her descent down the stairs of Magnolia Grace. They’d had Olivia’s party there earlier, and she decided to stay the night. She told Augustus she’d take Anasofiya to Montessori in the morning.

“Nana?”

At the top of the stairs, Irish Colleen saw a shock of red hair running rampant around a pale face. “What are you still doing up, sweetheart? You have school tomorrow.”

“What are you still doing up, Nana?”

“I’m old, and old people sometimes forget to go to bed.”

Ana scrunched her face. “You’re not that old. You don’t have wrinkly wrinkles, or… or…”

Irish Colleen didn’t have the slightest idea where her granddaughter was going with this, so instead she swept Ana into her arms and peppered her cheeks with kisses, set to the sweet sound of the little one’s giggles. She was tall for her age, but otherwise reminded Irish Colleen of her deceased mother, Ekatherina. Lean. Beautiful. Haunted.

Yet, she also looked like her great-grandmother, a woman she’d never know. Irish Colleen’s mother, Enid, who was long gone, but now lived on behind the eyes of a smiling child who was four and a half, going on forty.

“Want me to read you a story?”

Ana shook her head. “I can read my own stories now.”