She cried harder.
She heard a knock on her door a few minutes later. She angled her head so she could see who it was, and Dante came into the room. He paused when he saw her crying, then walked over to the bed and sat beside her. She sat up, wiping ineffectively at her tears, as more came replacing what she wiped away.
"Hey, Clara," he murmured, trying to comfort her, putting an arm around her shoulders in the most innocent touch they'd ever shared. "Whatever you're crying about, do you want to talk about it?"
She shook her head, letting him hug her. Though she would have preferred Cooper, Dante was big and warm. He must have washed up because he smelled clean and familiar, and Clara leaned gratefully into his warmth.
"That's fine then. No talking. Just calm down, okay? Whatever it is, if you need my help, you have it. I owe you for letting me stay here."
Through her window, Michelle saw them from next door. Clara opened her eyes with her head on Dante's shoulder, and she could almost imagine that their eyes met across the distance. Michelle looked angry and disappeared from the window.
Clara had a bad feeling about it. Sure enough, moments later, there was a loud banging on her front door.
Chapter Twenty-One
Clara and Dante listened to the loud banging, wondering how to handle the situation.
They couldn’t ignore her for long. Michelle obviously didn’t want to be ignored, beating on the door almost constantly without a break, not giving any mind to the people she annoyed with her behavior. Clara wanted to be annoyed with her, but the only thing she could feel now was dread. She was too exhausted to deal with her irate neighbor just then.
Michelle had been knocking for nearly a minute, and Clara wondered why no one else had gone to open for her. She had pushed Dante off as soon as Michelle disappeared from her spot at the window, horror painted on her face. Dante had followed her gaze and guessed what happened, but he hadn't moved either.
It was not going to be easy. Already she had been pissy, and then all she had was speculation. She didn’t know the whole story, wouldn’t assume Dante was just there to offer Clara comfort. Michelle would see it as proof of his duplicity. If she hadn't been ready and willing to listen to excuses before, she definitely wouldn’t be now.
Dante sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair and then pushed himself up. "I'll speak to Michelle. Just stay here. You don’t need to get involved."
Nor did she want to, but it was undeniable that she already was. Still, she let him go and he went downstairs to answer the door as she stayed where she was. Her tears had stopped, at least, but she only felt worse at this point.
What would Michelle do? What would Dante say to her? He had experience with dealing with her moods, but Clara didn’t think the woman had ever been this bad before. She was always careful to keep everything in the house, so that Clara only heard it a few times when she babysat for them or Dante told her. It could just be the stress of their new life, but Clara didn’t think it contributed such a large part of it.
The noise stopped downstairs. Clara waited. Moments later, Michelle burst into the room.
She looked different from when Clara last saw her. She had been angry and ready to kill then, but the intensity now seemed to have multiplied. Or maybe she just hadn't remembered it well. Michelle stomped over to the foot of the bed, hands fisted at her sides, teeth bared in anger. Clara didn’t even flinch. She'd already seen an almost similar look in someone so much more frightening, and crazier, too. At least she knew Michelle wouldn’t try to kill her, though she wouldn’t put the other woman past trying to hit her.
"You! How fucking dare you!"
Clara winced at the sound of the screech. She threw a look at Dante, who just shrugged helplessly behind Michelle. Her family didn’t need this. There were enough problems without adding more to them. But she didn’t think Michelle could be convinced to move this outside. If anything, Clara looking over at Dante only seemed to make her more inflamed. Clara held back a put-upon sigh.
"Don’t you look at him! You witch! You ruined my marriage!"
She did sigh then, giving Michelle an annoyed look. "You were doing that just fine on your own, last I saw. Your husband was sleeping on the streets, he came here last night for shelter and slept on the couch. Whatever it is you think you saw happening between us just now, you are wrong."
She kept her voice level, wiping at her cheeks to remove all traces of tears. Michelle made a rough sound that she might have meant to be a growl but only came off as ridiculous. Clara arched an eyebrow and Dante sighed from behind Michelle, sounding exasperated.
"We weren’t happy together Michelle, we never were. You just wanted it so badly you never saw it. It wasn’t Clara's fault."
"But you're sleeping with her," she spluttered, turning an incredulous look at him.
"I am not sleeping with Clara," he said distinctly.
A half-truth. It might not be happening right then, but it did happen before. Clara bit her lip and kept silent and still on her bed.
Michelle watched Dante for a moment before turning back to Clara. She didn’t look any more pacified. She probably just assumed he was lying and dismissed his statement.
"You're evil," she said to Clara, trying to lash out.
It was a poor way to go about it, though. Clara did have some sympathy for the woman, and her guilt wasn’t gone. She had a feeling it never would. She let herself soften, letting the words flow over her back because she had seen so much in a short time that she had a feeling she was only starting to see what true evil felt like. Michelle, in her sheltered life, still had no idea how much the world around her had changed, locking herself up at home now that she couldn’t stand to put up with the world outside it.
"I understand your anger," she said slowly. "But it should be something that you work through with Dante first. My grandmother and my sister are both mentally ill. You have known this for a while, Michelle. Please leave my house before you cause them any agitation. Please."
Michelle just sneered. "I hate you, Clara. To be honest, I kind of always have. I wish you would drop dead."
She didn’t mind that Michelle hated her as much as she seemed to think it should. But Clara had known for a long time that she didn’t like Michelle, or there were more parts of her that Clara despised than she liked. She must have noticed Clara was unaffected because she glared.
Michelle moved to step forward, probably to hit her, but Carlson grabbed her arm. She made a sound of anger, trying to tug out of his hold, but he didn’t release his grasp.
"I'm sorry Clara," he said as he pulled Michelle out of the room.
She protested, but he dragged her behind him. She complained all the way, loudly enough that Clara heard her even from her room as he took her out of the house, even once they were outside. She was sure most of the neighborhood caught the commotion and wondered if Michelle would care, once she came back to her senses.
Clara moved off the bed. She watched from the window as Michelle and Dante fought outside their own house. When she opened the window, she could hear some words in all the noise they kept throwing at each other.
"You're a disgrace to our family!" Michelle was shouting, for once not caring who was watching. "You don’t deserve time with our children."
"You don’t get to decide that—"
"I am their mother! I decide everything!"
It wasn’t true, but Clara winced, knowing Michelle would do anything to make sure it became so. If she had her way, Dante would never see his children again. Clara could see his stricken face from her vantage point, and part of Michelle's smug face at having gotten a reaction she favored from him. He didn’t have a comeback for that, just staring at Michelle, and for a moment, she stared back.
"You're welcome to live with Clara. Good riddance! But you'll never see the kids again."
She was moving, heading for the house while he stood frozen. He followed a moment after, a moment too late. Dante fought to get int
o the house, but Michelle slammed the door in his face.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Clara and Cooper sat quietly together out in the garden. They could hear Dante crying inside, and planned to give him some privacy.
She was feeling numb about what had just happened, but it wouldn’t last. She would never have wished for it to happen; for Dante's sake, for his kids' sake, she would have rather Michelle remain in the dark forever. It wasn’t nice of her, but the current situation was worse. Michelle, in her selfish pain, wasn’t even thinking of her children.
How did she expect to get food for them in the long term? Clara could admit she wasn’t around a lot, especially not recently, but she hadn't seen the other woman leave her house any other time but to start an argument with Dante lately. Clara had no idea what their food situation had been before, or what it was now. Did she realize her baby was too young to eat solid food? She'd gotten from Dante, once, that Michelle didn’t breastfeed. Not that there were no other alternatives. Clara didn’t know if she had reverted to that. Did Michelle even know how to look after children? Especially the baby?
Would she know how to be the provider? Before she was the primary breadwinner, but considering she earned money through something she loved to do, looking after two children was different. She would be struggling to get food for them from then on. Also, there was much more that children needed than just food. Clara herself didn’t know to take care of children twenty-four seven, but Dante did and how good he was at being a dad was the one thing that impressed her about him. He did it without complaint, even giving everything up once the baby was brought home.
Michelle had just taken it all from him so cruelly.
"It's crazy that family problems still exist when everything else is so chaotic," Cooper muttered.
Clara was brought out of her thoughts, and she eyed him in her peripheral vision. After watching the fallout between Dante and his wife, Clara had felt bad. She couldn’t give her emotions a name yet, but they weren’t positive. Neither could she stay in her room, so she made her way outside. Her grandmother and sister were already in their rooms, thank goodness, but she made her way outside. Cooper, who had been sitting unobtrusively in the kitchen, had followed her.
They were the first words they had spoken to each other that day, and it was hard to believe how everything seemed to get worse by the minute. Clara sighed, wrapped her hair around one hand and tugged lightly.
"There's not a lot we can do to shield our emotions. Just because the world is pretty much ending, doesn’t mean feelings don’t exist and can't be hurt."
Michelle hadn't exactly overreacted, though Clara thought her actions were a bit much. Alienating others this early on, when things were bound to get worse, could only hurt in the long run.
Clara didn’t think Michelle was acting rationally or even thinking about the long-term. Either that or she overestimated her own ability. She didn’t know what was out there; she hadn't seen what Clara had. She had no idea how thoroughly she was shooting herself in the foot by being so stubborn. She couldn’t just leave her house because she had an infant to take care of, Clara wasn’t even sure how much food was still in that house. But surely it couldn’t last them very long? Could Michelle even cook, having been the worker of the house instead of the house maker?
Not that she wasn’t allowed to feel. She had every right to be mad at both Clara and Dante. But if she had been thinking more about her kids than her hurt pride, she would have talked to him more and come to some compromise. Instead, she had jumped to the worst-case scenario.
Clara worried a little for the sake of their kids. But Michelle acting so emotionally she hadn't even thought through the consequences.
Well, it wasn’t surprising. Michelle was just like that. She let her emotions rule her most of the time, and currently, hurt pride more than anything was at the forefront of her mind. If it was just hurt over Dante, she wouldn’t have tried to involve Clara in it.
In a way, Clara understood. But she couldn’t help but think how stupid Michelle was being. Not that she was any better, though.
"How are you handling everything?"
Cooper again brought her out of her thoughts. How was she handling everything?
Well, depending on what he meant, she wasn’t doing well. If he truly meant everything, she could explain to him, in detail, all the things that were going wrong and end with the display they'd just watched. There was still plenty to worry her; her family, the town, her work, Dante…
But she just sighed and sent a small smile his way. "I talked to Tessa before I came out here. She'll be staying in her room the whole day, I think the shouting bothered her a bit. But she agreed to take the drugs if only to end her nightmares."
It was the second piece of good news she'd gotten for the day. Of course, it left her anxious about the effect the drugs would have on Tessa and her behavior. It might be too early to tell, whether they were working and what the side effects would be, but she planned on checking up on her sister soon to make sure she was okay, and then keep doing it regularly.
Cooper's eyes moved across her face. "But that's a good thing, right?" he said cautiously.
Clara grimaced. "I just feel useless, having to sit tight and wait for everything to fix itself."
And she couldn’t even find a way to help her grandmother. It didn’t matter that there was no way out there that could help her. It would be bothering Clara for a while.
Cooper pulled her close and she let herself fall into his side. She kept using him for comfort, but could she help that she needed it often? Cooper was the only person she allowed herself to act weak around. Because she knew he wouldn’t judge her for it. That wasn’t to say he would just accept everything. Though mostly he tried to make her feel better, he told her things straight, no sugar coating; not just what she needed to hear.
"I'll be with you every step of the way, okay? No need to let everything overwhelm you. I believe I've told you this before."
She could have told him she would do it anyway. As wonderful as it was having Cooper, she had spent too long being able to do things for her family on her own to break the habit now. She would go to him once things didn’t work out, but not before.
"I just can't imagine how Dante must feel," she muttered, ducking her head under his chin, "with the best things in life taken from him."
She winced when she remembered how he looked once he'd stopped knocking on Michelle's door and gotten inside. That face was going to haunt her for a while, and every time she remembered it she would know it was mostly her fault. Clara was the one that Michelle hated, she just wanted to punish Dante for cheating on her. Clara had thought momentarily about going to talk to her, but decided it was too early. She might just make everything worse instead of better. But maybe, if she let Michelle hurt her, she would be more willing to forgive Dante. It was worth a try, just not yet while she was still so mad.
"Do you want kids someday?" Cooper asked, tentative.
Clara pursed her lips. It had been a while since he asked that, but she imagined he was asking again now thinking she would have changed her mind. And really, with how the world currently was, with how it was going to be pretty soon, it would be better if she didn’t have children.
It had been her dream to start a family of her own for so long, but she had given up on it and left it as that, a dream, for an even longer time. She didn’t just want children; she wanted to be married when she had them. She used to imagine, back when her parents were still alive, the kind of man she would marry, what her wedding would be like. She imagined a lot of girls had the same thoughts by the time they were fifteen.
But then the accident happened, and her dreams had died a slow death. They still existed, but that meant nothing since she had no hope of them ever getting fulfilled. To get married, have two point five kids and her own house in the suburbs with a white picket fence. The few guys she had known to say that had meant it as a joke, but it was all Clara had wante
d, once upon a time.
She didn’t think that would be possible now. Even if she could find someone willing to be in a relationship with her, knowing her family came as a package deal, though the chances of that were low. Not to mention how dangerous it would be to have children just then. Or being pregnant and more vulnerable than she already was when everything was so dangerous.
With the state the hospital was in, could she safely deliver? If something went wrong, all the sophisticated medical equipment people had been depending on for too long no longer existed, she wouldn’t know until it was too late. She could be risking her life.
Also, there was the extra food she would need, and the extra mouths to feed that came after when they were facing possible starvation. Where would she get food for these hypothetical children? She would have to spend most of her time at home to look after their needs until they were old enough to be left alone. So, who would look after her and her family? Her hypothetical husband? It was all too ridiculous to think about.
But Cooper's question was really simple.
"Of course I do—when I find the right person to settle down with." She chewed on her lip and hunched her shoulders. If it happened at all, it would be far away. When everything had settled, and the hostility just starting to build up in the world had died down. Their lives would be back to their old normal or settle into a new one. "But it's not like there's a rush or anything. Dating isn’t top of anyone's priority list right now," she pointed out.
She felt Cooper take a deep breath as he was about to respond when they heard a crash from indoors.
Zero Power (Book 2): Trying To Survive Page 17
