Page 15 of Nineteen Eighty

And this, Colleen thought, more than anything else, was why she needed to come home. Because, for all their arguments and differences over the years, Colleen wouldn’t have changed any of it. She wouldn’t have wanted another mother, and she wanted her own babies to get this older, softened version of Colleen Brady Deschanel for as long as God gave them. She didn’t want them to miss out on whatever good years she had left.

The matters of Charles, of Maureen and Soren, those weren’t hers to solve. She could be there for both of them, in whatever ways they allowed.

We’ll sell the house, Mama. I’ll move you into The Gardens. You can have your own wing. You never have to even see me, if you don’t want, but when you do, I’ll be there. Noah will be there. Amelia, Ben, and Ashley will be there.

Colleen caught her mother watching her over the table. She smiled. Colleen returned it. What went unsaid behind the gestures was bigger than both of them had words for.

Colleen had needed her mother more than she wanted to admit, over the years, and now, it was time to let her mother need her.

* * *

SUMMER 1980

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

VACHERIE, LOUISIANA

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

WASHINGTON, D.C.

PARIS, FRANCE

CHAPTER 6

Dreams

They’d been playing a game in Paris. Connor, the mischievous game master, and she, Elizabeth, the eager participant.

Connor had embraced the planned elopement in exchange for latitude to perfect some mystery in the grand finale. He was a strategist, her fiancé, who had secretly, but enthusiastically, played games like Chainmail and Dungeons & Dragons with his boyhood friends, and saw every challenge as a carefully orchestrated series of moves. He promised Elizabeth he’d already made the arrangements for their “spontaneous” ceremony, but the catch was, she’d never know precisely when the moment was, until it was upon her.

Elizabeth had never been much for surprises, but after her initial fear of the unknown, she fell into playing alongside her love, even making comments like, oh, the Eiffel Tower, this must be the moment! A cruise along the Seine? Come on, Connor, even a non-seer could see that coming!

He loved her little predictions, and if the smile left his face for a moment in Paris, Elizabeth never saw. Instead, what she did witness was the Connor she loved, vacillating between boy and man; between a youthful curiosity that brightened her day, and a heavy seriousness in his love that made her stomach do flips.

But she loved these places more when he didn’t drop to his knees with their rings. She adored the soft blurry evenings along the Seine, the Notre Dame holding court in rich gold lights. She was in awe of the ironwork of the massive Tour Eiffel, both standing at its base and atop the observation area, where she could see most of Paris, glittering and beckoning.

Elizabeth hadn’t realized she had this in her at all, this romance. This love of things beyond her small world, which had sought to strangle her in all its inevitability.

All the bakeries were a wonder to her, with their delicious delights. Her favorite thing to do, from the apartment they were renting just off the Rue de Rivoli, was watch tourists read books in the Tuileries gardens, with their café au lait and croissants. After a week, Connor showed up with a couple of books he’d picked up in a small bookstore and said they were going to be the tourists reading, drinking, and partaking in the garden, and from that day forward, that was their morning tradition. Their welcome to the day.

After a few weeks, they settled into something resembling a normal life. Elizabeth picked up a little bit of French, enough to order her meals and ask for directions. Connor, who felt he had a responsibility to keep her entertained, tried to plan every day, but she gently assured him, between kisses, that it wasn’t necessary. That they had all summer, and even the quiet moments, when it was only them and their thoughts, were a balm to Elizabeth’s tortured soul.

For whatever reason, her visions were on pause in Paris. Not that she didn’t already know what the future held… or at least the most salient points.

Elizabeth woke early that morning. Connor snored softly at her side, still exhausted from her rush of hormones the night before. Her desires came and went, and they were not concurrent with her love for him, which always grew, never waned. But when she craved his soft hands running across her own flesh, she craved them utterly. Totally. Until she was so blind with this desire that it was all she knew.

She settled into the small alcove she’d made into a window seat, nestling into the cushion as she eased the curtains aside. Down below, Paris was already alive. It was a city that rarely slept, passing between tourists and locals, back and forth. The palace of the Louvre caught the sun in her peripheral. It was one of the only things quiet at this hour. It was the most massive estate she’d ever seen, and a wonder to her senses. She wanted to go in and explore. Spend days there. Connor promised they would.

A man on the street below caught her eye. It wasn’t that he was looking at her—which was odd enough, eyes locked on her from all those floors down, tinged with a strange intensity—but how out of place he seemed. Not just in the city, but in this time, this place, this… year. He had a shock of bright red hair that looked dyed, but she’d never seen any color like that from a bottle. A soft, jagged scar marked the side of his face, near his temple. But even stranger was that it appeared the man was carrying a… sword. A rather large one, from what she could see, sheathed in an aging leather scabbard, swinging from a thick belt that belonged in a museum.

But he did not. He was young… her age, maybe, even if his intense gaze belied a wisdom so ancient it confused the signals between her eyes and brain. The familiarity in the way he watched her was equally unsettling, as was the strange sensation that she knew this man. Perhaps had never met him, but knew him all the same.

No, not a man. Not human. Not like you, anyway.

Where did those words come from?

Elizabeth’s breath caught, and she backed away, steadying herself.