I stand there for a moment, peering through the darkness at her body lying in the grass. There is no rise and fall of her chest, no movement of her eyes, and I am sure that she is dead. I walk over, shaking my hands back into human form and stand over the top of her. It is a shame, she was not that bad looking of a girl.
“You stupid wolf. I’m an Opossum.” She laughs, jumping up and tackling me to the ground.
She straddles me, pinning my legs to the ground, swiping her sharp claw across my face. I whimper and growl trying to get free. She twists her head around, getting rid of the fangs and looks down at me with a smirk.
“Now, I know you dogs are like any other man, but I didn’t take you as a pervert staring at poor girls through their bedroom windows.” She laughs.
“ENOUGH!” I growl loudly and break my arm free, reaching up and grabbing her by the neck.
I stand up, holding her in the air, anger blowing through me. She whimpers, putting up her hands, trying to back down.
“Don’t be hasty,” she chokes out. “How are you going to talk to me about the symbol?”
“What symbol?” I bark.
“The one,” she chokes, pointing down. “The one on the floor where Kyle was killed.”
Slowly the muscles in my face start to untwist, and I look at her for a moment, wondering if this is another sneaky Opossum trick.
Slowly I lower her to her feet and loosen my grip on her neck.
She breathes in heavily, shaking her head.
“Sheesh,” she says. “Way to welcome a girl to the party. Nice muscles.”
“What do you know about this?”
“Just that there was a symbol. It marks the enemy and where they come from,” she says ogling my body.
I let go and look at her angrily. “Fine, I’ll hear you out. But if you play one game, I’ll pop that Weasley head off your shoulders.”
“I’m a marsupial,” she says snidely.
Chapter 4
~ Clarissa
The chair rocks back and forth, back and forth, the old wood of the porch creaking beneath me. The sky is clear, the sun rising above the horizon with sparks of yellow and red saturating the vista in front of me. It is the fourth consecutive day I am here, no sleep, barely any food, just me and the wide heavens in front of me. My heart isn’t healing, not even for a split second, and I wonder to myself whether it ever will again. Out on the hills,
the cows are starting to roam, rising for another day of endless eating. The chickens squawk in the background, and I can barely keep myself from bursting into tears. I am on an emotional roller coaster from hell.
I swallow hard as I hear footsteps in the house approaching the door. I look up as my mother opens the door and pokes her head out, smiling at me as if she is looking for me. I nod, turning my attention back to the rising sun. She grabs another chair and pulls it over to where I am, grabbing her knitting needle and current project from her back pocket. Slowly she began to knit, barely rocking the chair at all, looking up at the sun as it shines over the land, casting the shadow of night away once again. She puts her needles in her lap and waves at me, catching my attention.
“When your mother died,” she says signing to me. “My heart broke.
It broke like I had never experienced before. I loved her with all my heart. But then there was you, this dark-haired, wide-eyed, smiling baby, in need of someone to love you. We took you home, but it didn’t break the spell I was under. In fact, there were moments, those moments I saw her in your face, that it only made it worse. I thought I would grieve for the rest of my life.”
“What brought you out of it?” I sign back, leaning my head against the back of the chair.
“Life,” she signs. “The fact that no matter how sad I was, life kept moving forward. You kept getting bigger. You kept needing me. Now I know you don’t have a baby, but life is still moving forward. You can’t stay living in the past forever. You can’t just roll over and die. You have got to fight back, even if that means letting go of that hurt in your heart.”
I stare at her, thinking about her words, thinking about the meaning behind them. Now, I know what she means. She is telling me to move on with my life, to get back to work, to breathe again, but that isn’t at all the way I am going to take it. The anger and angst inside of me are not letting go and they won’t, not until justice is served. Kyle didn’t die because of some freak accident. Kyle died because of me and whatever I am. He died to protect me, and the men that did it, they deserve a fate worse than death itself.
Ma smiles and signs, “I love you” before picking up her needles, patting me on the shoulder and walking back into the house. I watch her until she closes the door. I turn my attention back to the sky, but the colors are gone. I start to rock again, this time harder, faster, my mind churning through the events of that night. Someone had been lurking up in the house, hiding in the shadows, waiting for me. Why didn’t they come after me after killing Kyle? Why didn’t they use him to get to me in some way?
None of it makes any sense.
If I was the target, then they missed by a mile, and what they did was turn the tide on themselves. I knew Kyle wouldn’t want me to scheme. He wouldn’t even want me to be angry, but I can’t help myself. He was the love of my life. The man I gave myself to. The one I chose, and he was gone, brutally murdered so I can’t even look upon him in death.