by Max Lockwood
"Has he talked to you about it?"
"Well, sort of…" He'd basically just told her to come up with a good answer or he would leave. But he'd just found her in bed with Dante, so she'd felt too guilty to even be mad at him, realizing she'd been hurting him unknowingly and he'd stuck by her anyway. "Even Viola asked me about it, but… I don’t know. It's just not a priority now, with how crazy everything is."
There was a short, somber silence before Tessa tried something like a smile.
"Once you've found your peace, you should let Cooper know how you feel before he slips away. He really is a good man, Clara. Just stop running away and face him like you do everything else."
Clara almost smiled. She would never have pictured herself having this conversation with Tessa of all people.
"I'll think about it."
Tessa gave her an unbelieving look, and she did crack a smile then.
"I promise to think about it."
The real question, though, was whether she could know true peace ever again. She really didn’t think so, not with everything that had happened, but her sister was talking to her, so Clara wasn’t going to refuse her.
Clara and Tessa joined Cooper in the garden to bury Viola not long after their talk. He'd finished the digging, and by the time they made it outside, it was to find him climbing out of the hole he'd dug. It was a good-sized hole, and his shirt was heavily soaked with sweat. He panted for breath, planting the end of the shovel against the earth and leaning against it in exhaustion, but he didn’t move to sit down as they came up.
She felt her throat clog up when she saw the dirtied sheets lying down in the hole. It really didn’t look like it could be her grandmother's body, but she took a deep breath and stilled her denial. It would be a pain to go through at this late stage, and she didn’t plan on crying here when they finally buried their grandmother. She'd thought of it, but hadn't thought it would come this soon, she'd imagined they'd have to worry about her disease eating her mind before she died.
At least Viola died knowing who she was, who they were. It was a weak consolation, but one nonetheless.
They'd already decided to say a few things, with just the three of them, and she decided to go first.
"Viola was… the glue of the family. It was thanks to her that we could stay together at all. I probably would have ended up in foster care, Tessa would have been shipped to an institution. But she stayed with us and looked after us with everything she had. She meant a lot to everyone she ever met."
Her voice lowered down to a whisper, and she knew that was her point to stop before she ruined it by crying. The others still had their own words to say, and she would let them before allowing herself to break down.
Cooper went next, adding in about his own love for Viola.
"She welcomed me into her home and was just completely amazing from the first time I met her. My own mother couldn’t possibly compare to the love I got from this woman even when she didn’t know me, all because I was friends with her granddaughter. She laughed at my worst jokes," he added with a light chuckle, "and supported me in times of need."
Clara got emotional as the speech continued. Hearing Cooper speak so highly of her grandmother filled her chest with warmth, because she could tell by his words that he loved her, too. She felt a little guilty for trying to alienate him like he wasn’t family when to Viola he clearly must have been.
Tessa didn’t say anything. Clara didn’t think she could handle it without crying, really, and she was probably trying to avoid that, too.
Clara glanced at both of them, her sister, and her best friend, and felt the conviction in the words she'd given to Tessa before. They really were going to be all right, even with Viola gone like this, because they weren’t truly alone, not just yet. Somehow, they would get through this trial.
After they had all said their piece, they stood for another moment of silence. Tessa moved closer to Clara. She was taller, so she couldn’t duck her head into Clara's shoulder standing up without hurting her back and neck, but she did take Clara's hand as she pushed their arms together. Clara could feel the light trembling in her body, and she gave the too thin hand in hers a light squeeze. Then Cooper was there, encircling an arm around both their shoulders and squeezing them together a little.
Once the moment was over, he let go. They each buried an item with Viola that meant something to them—a jumper Viola knitted for Cooper one Christmas, a pack of her favorite cigarettes that Tessa found and a dress of Viola’s that Clara loved.
They said goodbyes, and Clara took Tessa inside while Cooper covered the grave.
Chapter Twenty-Four
They took a few days, but not all that long, to give themselves time to rest and regroup. Tessa was a lot calmer than Clara had expected her to be after they buried Viola, and most of her anger dissolved. A bit remained, just less painful and more manageable.
It was only a couple of days, though. They didn’t want to wait too long and let the connection die out. While things were still fresh in people's minds, they decided to go ahead with their plan.
Clara and Tessa called a town meeting.
Most people from their street showed up, and Clara knew it was because they pitied the girls.
How many of them had been there to see them in their worst moment? Clara was pretty sure most of their neighbors didn’t even know them, Tessa especially, but what happened had definitely put them on center stage. She could see people all around the room giving her looks of sympathy and pity, and she had to clench her fists not to react to it.
It wasn’t their fault that it had happened. She probably owed a lot of the people there her and her sister's lives, because she'd only taken down the one enemy then stood dazed, watching Viola crumple and Tessa fall apart. If the people fighting on their side hadn't been competent, she and her sister would have made easy targets.
Well, she'd heard from Cooper that no one else on their street died, because they were all so well prepared, though a couple of people got injured and it was a little more serious than the last time. It was still a better outcome than she could have imagined. It probably helped that the invaders hadn't had any idea that they had a plan to deal with their intrusion. If they'd made any preparations of their own, they could have done a lot more damage.
That was part of why she was so adamant about doing this. Though Cooper had shown his disapproval enough times, she'd ignored it. Once they realized their friends weren’t coming back, they'd assume something went wrong. The next time they sent people, they would have more caution, a plan in place, and it could mean disaster for Clara’s town and neighbors. If they could catch them by surprise, it would give them a whole lot of advantage.
Well, that was if she could get people to agree to their plan at all. But she was hoping with the pity they felt, even though she hated it, they might actually think about this because there was no way she could do this without a lot of people on board. She got to thinking, with Cooper's continued disapproval, that a lot of people might end up not liking the plan and she couldn’t have that.
They waited a few hours for more people to come in, and as Clara watched, she could see them mingling and talking, and more eyes kept flicking over to her and Tessa, who sat calmly beside Clara, head ducked down and hair hiding most of her face.
Good. If more people knew, more of them would be willing to listen.
Finally, they called the room to attention, and Tessa stood, bringing most of the eyes in the room to her.
"I'd like to speak," she called out loudly, lowering the murmurs in the room, and capturing everyone's attention.
Clara had some reservations about her being the one to speak. But then, she'd done it before and held the public attention with nothing more than her words. Though her looks back then, when she first left the house and started a crowd in the town square, could have done a lot toward attracting the attention.
Though she wasn’t very stable, Clara allowed her to address the room,
remaining seated.
"As some of you know, there was an attack on our street some days back. My sister and I hadn't gone far from our house when their car came, and our grandmother was out with us. When they opened fire on us… my grandmother jumped in front of me and got shot. We buried her two days ago, in a small hole we dug in our backyard."
Clara listened, feeling her heart clench at her sister's words. She really was good at this, displaying a solemn air without letting out her true emotions to everyone in the room, though Clara would guess her emotions were as erratic as her own. The sympathetic glances intensified with every word she said.
"My grandmother gave up her life to save mine," she continued. "But I don’t think she had to do that. None of that had to happen, and it wouldn’t have if those invaders hadn't come into our town, our street, and attacked us. My grandmother was sick with Alzheimer's, she was forgetting herself little by little every day, but she still deserved to live a little longer, and she would have if not for them."
Anger slowly bled into her voice, mingled with grief. The emotions were real, but Clara had the feeling revealing them was partly calculating. Clearly, Tessa had the same idea she did, and it made her happy that they were on the same page at least.
"I can't just let it end like this. They've already sent people to our town several times, twice my street was attacked, and I no longer feel like locking myself up in my room, and waiting for these people to come again and destroy our lives even more. I know this is a lot to ask of all of you, most of you don’t even know who I am, but if you haven't already lost something to these people, if we sit back and do nothing, chances are high that you will at some point."
Clara stood up beside Tessa, wrapping an arm around her as her body shook, the emotions getting the better of her, but she couldn’t blame her sister. It would work to their advantage either way, but the grief was still too new to both of them.
"I am asking you," she pleaded, her voice wobbly. "I am asking all of you to help us in our revenge. If we do nothing, these people will keep walking all over us. We've done something about it, both times the people that came to our street were taken down, but what happens when they come back with more firepower because we let ourselves grow lax? We can't allow that to happen. We need to stop them before they decide to come to our town again, doing as they please like we're all somehow beneath them. I will not let the life my grandmother left to me go in vain, but we can't do this on our own, so we are asking you for your help."
At the end of her speech, she ducked her head to hide her face behind her hair again, obviously fighting the urge to break down crying. Clara held her sister close, but when she looked around the room, she thought this might actually work out for them. Once she'd convinced her sister to sit down, she faced the rest of the room.
"I've managed to source the attack back to Mawdsley," she explained. "Tessa and I plan to go there and get our revenge, but it's not something we can do on our own. We still have the car that our attackers left, and we have the weapons they brought with them. The vehicle is big, so we can take quite a few people if they're willing to join us. Whether or not we get anyone, we're set on going as soon as possible, before they bring another attack here."
Low murmurs traveled through the room before someone in the crowd spoke up.
"It's unethical to go into someone's town and kill them all, isn’t it? Can we really just do something like this?"
"I used to agree," Clara said. "But then they all killed my family and neighbors. They attacked a hospital with sick and wounded, and though they didn’t kill anyone there, a lot of people in that hospital were there because of a previous attack from these people. They took whatever medicine and supplies we had at the hospital when the situation there was bad enough."
The murmurs rose as she mentioned the hospital. The news of the street that got attacked had spread, of course, even without her mentioning it when they decided on the street patrols. She could see a few people in the crowd get excited, and she felt a curl of satisfaction in her chest.
"I want justice for those in my town that died at the hands of the people of Mawdsley. I know that other people have suffered the same, and we shouldn’t allow it to continue, or it might never stop until they rob us of all we have, and kill and harm plenty more of us than they already have. I want at least ten volunteers who are handy with a weapon to go along with us."
Clara got the support of sixteen people, including Felicia, her sister, and Dante. They all stood up and moved closer to the front, the murmuring was growing in the crowd as they did. Clara glanced at Felicia and her sister with a look of gratitude that they were willing to do even more for her and her family than they had already.
She waited for the noise to die down a little, everyone else in the room mingling, as the volunteers converged around her and her sister, with Felicia's sister moving to sit beside Tessa and murmur some words to her. She had been the one to give her an evaluation and hand her the medication, so if there was something wrong with Tessa, she would be the one to know.
"We’ll leave the next day by car and be there for nightfall. Hopefully, we can head in and out quickly and get back home as soon as possible."
She got nods of agreement from the people around her, and she sighed, allowing the tension in her shoulders to relax.
The meeting ended and everyone went home. Clara said goodbye to the volunteers, and Dante walked back home with them. She was thankful that he was willing to support her when he'd just gotten his family back, considering how dangerous it was.
"Don’t sweat it, Clara," he'd said when she told him this. "We were something to each other for years, but I'd like to think we're friends now. Of course, I would help you with something like this. You let me in your house when I had nowhere else to go."
When they stopped in front of her house, Michelle had been coming out of theirs. Dante gave her a hug with Michelle in full view, and she didn’t get mad. She hugged Clara too and gave her condolences before they each returned to their respective homes.
Clara noticed when she and Cooper were about to go to sleep that he was lying awake on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She wanted to stay up as long as possible and had ended up using one of their smaller candles. She hadn't slept all that well lately, but if they were going to go ahead with this plan, she'd have to get some real rest, but she couldn’t if he didn’t do the same.
"Come on, Cooper, you can go to sleep—we’ll have a long day ahead of us tomorrow."
He was silent and unmoving for a moment, before suddenly sitting up, leveling her with an intense look that surprised her.
"Cooper…?"
"I'm sorry, Clara. I have something I need to get off my chest."
She waited for what he wanted to say, getting the idea that this was something serious. He got off the bed and stepped closer to her, and Clara had to stop herself from taking a step away, his suddenly strange behavior making her wary.
"If we die tomorrow, I want you to know now that I'm in love with you."
Clara was stunned. This was the last thing she'd expected him to bring up. She could have said she already knew because he'd already told her this, but she found herself confessing what she'd come to decide, finally.
"I love you too, Cooper. After Viola, I got to thinking, seriously, and this is something I wanted you to know if the worst-case scenario happened."
He stepped closer, and she could see the hope clearly written on his face, but she held a hand up to stop him. He moved closer anyway until only a little space separated them.
"I'm too broken to know what I want right now. Beyond wanting you to know that, I hadn't thought that far ahead.
"Then we can figure that out together after tomorrow," was his answer.
Unable to help herself, Clara leaned forwards and kissed him. It was a surprise, a pleasant one, how very right it felt to be doing this with Cooper, to have his arms going around her waist to drag her body closer to his own. She ran her fingers
through his hair before clenching a fistful, and they tangled together on the bed, the candle getting snuffed out, and pulled the blankets over them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They planned for everything up to the time they'd be leaving. It was a short trip, so Clara put together some food for everyone that would be going along. Tessa took some time, kneeling in front of their mother's grave, and Clara waited for her to be done with what she was doing.
She took some time to mentally prepare herself. Her heart was beating faster than normal, and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She couldn’t believe they were going to go along with this. She wasn’t sure if the emotion that made her shake was anxiety or excitement. When everyone else in the house was ready to go, they headed out.
Clara and her group gathered together the few vehicles that were still functional and divided them between them. They'd been lucky to find other cars because apparently, the police had been hiding them from the public for some reason. The tanks got filled at the gas station, with several cans filled with gas stored so they could take them along.
She had been under the impression they had no cars besides the one truck until she got the message they'd be adding more cars by some officers. She distributed the supplies she'd brought, and they got in their cars and headed for Mawdsley together.
Clara and Felicia rode in the same car together, Felicia in the driver's seat because Clara had never driven a car before. She’d never found a reason to, because she used to have a bike that she preferred using anyway, and after that, if she wanted to go anywhere Cooper was there to drive her. She would have loved to be with him, or Tessa, but she and Felicia were taking one of the smaller cars, so she'd made sure the two of them stayed together so Cooper could look after Tessa.
They hadn't talked about what had happened between them, and she didn’t know what they were to each other anymore. But their closeness hadn't changed, at least. She put it out of her mind, to think on later after they got their mission done.
