by Max Lockwood
Clara wondered if her rejection of Dante was about not wanting to hurt Cooper or because of her feelings for Cooper.
Chapter Nine
When Clara returned from her community service, she found Viola sitting alone in the living room.
She was in a sound state of mind, and Clara felt some relief that she hadn't had any further episodes. There had been one time when her grandmother completely forgot who she was, and wouldn’t even let Clara near her so she could remind her who she was. That that would eventually happen and become her grandmother's life in the future left her anxious.
In truth, it had frightened her, too much, when her grandmother not only forgot her but reacted violently when Clara tried to get close to her. Nothing had happened since, but part of Clara was still prepared for it. She had become used to it, going to see her grandmother only to find the old woman with a confused expression before Clara got to talk to her.
Right then, she just returned her grandmother's smile when she saw Clara walk through the door. She was home a little early, there wasn’t really much to do at the hospital anyway. It would be a while till dark, and Viola had a book open in her lap, that she put aside on the chair as she turned her attention to Clara.
"Hello, Clara," she called pleasantly. "How was work?"
Clara hummed. "It was fine."
Truthfully, it was boring, and she was grateful for that. Because the opposite of boring in a hospital usually meant a lot of blood and other fluids that Clara was glad she didn’t have to deal with. There were still people getting sick, not having proper facilities didn’t stop them, but not much could be done for them besides giving them what little medicine was available.
Viola sighed, patting the space on the seat beside her for Clara to sit, which she did. "You know, I wish you wouldn’t work so much. I miss spending time with just you girls, as a family."
Come to think of it, it had been a while. Like, back when she still had to go to school to teach. Clara couldn’t even remember the last time they did that.
… It really had been too long, hadn't it?
"I'm sorry, Grandma. We can have games this evening," she suggested. "It won't be dark anytime soon and it's not a bad way to pass the time."
She had to remember to spend more time with her family, not just going all over the place working. Well, what she was doing was technically, mandatory. It was punishment, after all. But she had to make time for Viola especially, not just focusing all her time on Tessa.
Viola took to the idea, her face lighting up in excitement. "Let me just go get your sister!"
She got up and went off to fetch a reluctant Tessa. She was the one in the family that didn’t like socializing much, though she often did it just to make their grandmother happy. She was pouting, but she still came because it was Viola asking. Clara knew if it had been her, they'd have had an argument before anything happened.
The three of them sat around the table, playing a board game Clara had been able to dig out of somewhere. She couldn’t see Cooper around and assumed he was either out or upstairs. If anything, he didn’t bother them, so it was exactly as grandmother wanted, just the three of them.
Tessa acted moodily and wouldn’t take to it. They had to coax her every time it was her turn to make a move. Clara would have gotten impatient with her if this wasn’t usual for her sister. She was still on the meds, and Clara wasn’t taking chances like before. When she took the pills, Clara was there to see her swallow, staying with her for some minutes to be sure she wasn’t just hiding them in her mouth, before leaving her alone. But she was being good about her meds, and Clara was learning to be more patient when it came to everything else.
Viola was worried, though. "What's wrong, honey?" she asked, voice full of grandmotherly concern. "Are you not enjoying the game? I could find something else if you'd like…"
Tessa held her silence for about a second, before sighing and crossing her arms across her chest.
"The game isn’t my problem, it's this whole thing. I don’t like pretending everything is normal when there's blood still staining the streets from the attack."
Right. While Tessa had been throwing gruesome predictions left and right and acting downright smug about them at times, she hadn't been anywhere near the action. Well, besides the time Clara had that woman; the one she'd accidentally shot out on patrol who chased her with a knife. But Clara had been her target, then. She'd just run off with her sister. If Clara had left her sister alone, she probably would have just followed behind her. But she didn’t want to leave Tessa alone, so close to curfew.
Still, the recent attack was leagues away from what went down before. Clara understood how her sister felt. She had been the one out there, seeing what the world was like, while Tessa only dreamt it. That attack had come too close to home, closer than Clara liked. She just didn’t know what she could do about it.
"It's best to try and maintain a sense of normalcy so that everything doesn’t fall apart completely," Clara told her. It was the best piece of advice she had, what she'd always used. "You might not like pretending, but at least try for your own peace of mind."
But Tessa was shaking her head. "I don't want things to be normal—life now is much more interesting. I'm just sick of my mundane life, stuck inside the house all day hidden away."
Clara blinked. Well, she hadn't quite been expecting this from her sister, though if she was being honest with herself, she should have.
Tessa pretty much stayed inside their house. After the death of their parents in an accident about a decade ago, Clara couldn’t remember a time when Tessa willingly left the house for anything. That is, until recently. Already, Clara had come across her outside, twice, and on her own both times. She was also talking to random people, trying to incite them for something though Clara wasn’t sure yet what.
Maybe, it wasn’t just her sister losing more grasp on reality. Maybe it really was just like she was saying, she wanted to go out more. Though Clara didn’t understand why she wanted to go out now when it was so much more dangerous than it had ever been before. Even in the daytime, there was no guarantee you'd be safe. And this was the kind of world Tessa suddenly found herself interested in?
But… her sister had always been weird. Clara would have rather the world not change at all, but wishes couldn’t turn back time, so she didn’t bother.
"Besides, I'm old enough to make my own decisions and I want to make a deal."
Clara felt her eyebrows shoot up. Viola wasn’t the only one acting lucid. Tessa was always smart, but the kind of things she liked to talk about were of the weird and disturbing variety. Her having a serious conversation wasn’t so strange, but Clara still found herself surprised that Tessa was acting like the adult she actually was.
"What kind of deal?" Clara asked cautiously."
"Can I start going out on my own if I take my drugs?"
Her eyebrows shot up higher. Tessa… taking her medicines without prompting? Well, she had been the one to ask for them herself, but then she got frightened away by the side effects, claiming it made her feel empty. She hadn't been acting too strange, though Clara couldn’t entirely discount it either. But the pills were supposed to help her.
And if Clara didn’t always have to be after her to take them… it would give her some peace of mind.
"I think it’s a good idea," she admitted.
It would be so much more helpful if Tessa could be a little more cooperative. There was some risk in letting Tessa wander out on her own, but she was a grownup and the elder sister. But Clara would take it because she'd wanted something like this for a long time. She viewed it as a stepping stone to recovery for her sister.
Tessa seemed pleased with the response, standing up. "Well, I'm going out."
Clara was surprised again. She didn’t know Tessa meant going out just then. But she'd already agreed, and Tessa was already moving to leave the house, so she couldn’t take it back. She didn’t want to deal with her sister's backlash
if she went back on her word.
"Don’t stay out long while it's dark," Clara called after her, unable to curb her worry.
Tessa simply laughed at her ad left the house.
Clara sighed. Well, only time would tell if this was the best solution they could have taken. She wasn’t too worried, though, not yet anyway. She'd probably go look for her once the sky started to darken if she wasn’t back by then.
"I'm not sure you should have allowed her out, Clara," Viola said disapprovingly.
Maybe not, but Clara was going to need Tessa to trust her if she was going to find a way to get her back to her past self. If that wasn’t possible, then at least to change something so deep rooted, Clara had thought would be with her for years to come. Only Tessa was already acting rational, so Clara thought this would be the perfect moment to help her sister out.
Clara just shrugged and didn’t bother to mention any of what she was thinking. "I can't really stop her—like she said, she's an adult. I wasn’t keeping her inside before, she just never wanted to go out. Maybe giving her more freedom will make her more manageable at home."
Chapter Ten
Clara waited up for Tessa to come home. There was no real way to gauge time, once the sky started to darken, she just knew it was getting late. But there was no sign of her.
Don’t panic. She'll come back.
She tried to reassure herself, thinking the words over and over, but her heart wouldn’t calm down. It felt like it wanted to beat right out of her chest.
With how well the day had been going, how calm things had been when she got home, she'd let her guard down. Catering to her sister's needs was one thing. It was only smart, after all. She hadn't been wrong in the reasons she gave to their grandmother. Tessa was old enough to be able to do things on her own. She'd walked out without the pills, even though she’d been the one to bring her back both times. But letting Tessa have her way when she was still unstable wasn’t very smart.
It had been a gamble. If they planned to survive, they needed to get their act together. Clara wouldn’t always be able to protect her family, and she needed someone besides Cooper to back her up. Viola was too old, so Tessa had to take her position as the oldest daughter in the family. She had to realize the things she kept seeing had never helped her and wouldn’t start now just because she thought they needed it, or because she was trying to one up Clara in some game she hadn't been aware they were even playing.
But Tessa hadn't been taking her meds for who knew how long. She'd had the one pill the night before, but Clara didn’t know if she'd taken any during the day while she was out. She didn’t remember the prescription, it was written on the bottle, but it was definitely more than one pill per day. And Clara had just let her go after she'd taken one in who knew how long?
It must have been a mistake, but she was only realizing it, too late.
She began to get worried around eleven o'clock and Tessa hadn’t returned. The moon was almost at the exact center point of the sky, and though she could have been off in the timing, the darkness was enough of a tell that it was quite late. Curfew was at dark and it was long past that. Maybe Tessa got caught by patrollers outside…?
The anxiety wouldn’t leave her. She paced in the living room, a tiny candle lit and placed somewhere high so she wouldn’t accidentally blow it off with the draft she was building up. They didn’t have that many left to keep wasting, they tried not to use them at all anymore in case there came a time when they would really need it. But with Tessa out so late, there was no way Clara was going to leave it off.
She went to the window and glanced outside, squinting her eyes through the darkness, forcing her eyes to see with the moonlight alone. But there was no sign of anything on the street. Tessa had been right, there was still blood on the street. No one was going to use up precious water to wash it, so they were waiting for the rains to do the job for them. But the remains of the car and the dead bodies of the women that came to attack them had been taken care of long ago. No one walked out at night, and if patrollers ever went through the neighborhood, Clara had never thought to look for them before and she didn’t see any of them now.
What the hell was she going to do?
She needed to get some news on her sister, but the only way to do that was to go outside. Only Tessa had left ages ago and Clara didn’t even know where she could have gone. She had seen Tessa out twice recently, but both had been in the street and surrounded by people. Clara doubted there would be that many people outside, and none of the ones that had been listening to whatever her sister had to say about the future of mankind.
Where could Tessa be? What could she be thinking? For that matter, what had Clara been thinking, allowing her to just go alone like that? Well, she'd been taken by surprise, her sister wanting to leave so suddenly after making their deal. Clara had assumed it would be on a different day, at least earlier in the day, so a situation like the one they were in would not have happened. But when her grandmother questioned her, she'd thought it would be fine because Tessa was an adult. Clara hadn't seen her get around, but she should be able to do it on her own without an escort.
Only, she wasn’t so sure now.
"Dammit!" she cursed, smacking her forehead hard in her frustration. It just needed an outlet, and hitting herself was easier and less messy than throwing stuff. Also, a lot quieter for her grandmother. Viola had tried staying up with them to wait, until she got too sleepy and Clara took the initiative, taking her back to her room. She couldn’t go to sleep like this, though. She had warned Tessa to be back before curfew, and it was way past that. Clara had given up pacing a long time ago because it just tired her legs out and it didn’t really help, but she couldn’t help fidgeting and twitching at the slightest sound. She couldn’t be sure if they were coming from inside, or if she wanted her sister to get back so desperately that she thought she heard something because the slightest noise could mean Tessa was back.
But she didn’t show up, and Clara's anxiety only grew as the time passed. It would be bad, after everything she'd done so they would survive that she would lose her sister now so carelessly. She should have insisted on going with Tessa or sending Cooper with her, but it hadn't occurred to her that her sister would do a thing like this when they'd just made their agreement.
Another possibility popped up, she'd had so many she had lost count, but this one was a possibility. What if Tessa had simply forgotten her way back, once she was late and everything started to go dark? But if that truly was the case, then her job to search for Tessa and drag her home had grown infinitely harder.
"Clara, calm down."
Suddenly Cooper was just there, pulling her hand away from her forehead before she tried to hit herself again.
"But…!"
"I'm sure she's fine," he said comfortingly, taking her by the shoulders and giving her a light shake. "But if it makes you feel better, we can go look for her."
Clara sneered. "There's a curfew, remember? It's way past that and she isn’t back yet…"
"It's better to break it than have Tessa out causing trouble," he countered easily, rubbing up and down her arms.
It would get them into trouble if they were caught. Clara was sure the police were being especially cautious after those women invaded her neighborhood last night. They were expecting more of the same attacks, after some calm while everyone got over the shock of what happened. If it were mostly volunteers out, they might be fine, but if they ran into a cop…
Her past transgression wasn’t forgiven just because she'd done something that benefitted a lot of people.
Still, there was no way she was just going to leave her sister to wander outside alone. She nodded up at Cooper. They'd just have to be careful.
Clara and Cooper took out their flashlights. She'd been saving them for a while because she didn’t have that many batteries just lying around. Clara made sure Viola was sleeping comfortably in her room, and then they locked up the house and went looking for h
er.
They searched for an hour. Only one of them had the flashlight on at a time. The light it gave off was low, but that was good for them. Once they got off their open street, they could hide a little behind buildings, scouting routes before they took them. They searched, and they didn’t find anything.
There was no way to tell where Tessa could have gone. Clara thought it was a tad naïve to think she'd just be out somewhere waiting for them. At some point, they decided to split up to cover more ground. Cooper was reluctant, of course, but Clara's anxiety only grew the longer it took for them to find any sign of her sister.
Where could she possibly have gone? Tessa didn’t have friends nearby. The people Clara knew she'd even called friends she hadn't spoken to in over a decade, since their parent's death and isolating herself at home. Could she have gone to one of her follower's homes? Clara didn’t think so or at least hoped so. Makes no sense
They met up in the town square to report their findings. She was heartbroken when Cooper told her he hadn't found anything either.
"How could she just disappear like that…?” she murmured, her shoulders slumped in disappointment.
Just where could she have gone? Clara tried to think, working her mind hard to come up with the answer. It was her fault, she never should have let her sister out of the house no matter what, not this soon and not alone. If they were still going by the deal, she'd bring it up next time Tessa wanted to go out. That was if she didn’t scrap the agreement altogether. Besides, the way Tessa had bid her farewell, leaving the house was probably part to do with being away from them. They were all Tessa had known for so long, and with her recent fights with Tessa, she could see something like this motivating her.
But then she perked up, an idea occurring to her.
"I have one more place I have to check," she said suddenly, urgently, not caring if it surprised him. "You can go home and look after the house and Viola. I promise if she isn’t there I'll be on my way back soon."