The Quiet Kind Of Beauty -Marauder Era

Chapter 34

"I don't believe myself enough to say."

They met each other's eyes.

"You've changed." Her mother realised sadly, the blue of her eyes becoming glassy.

Clara swallowed and looked away sharply. "I had no choice."

"You always have a choice."

Clara exhaled through her nose, jaw clenching. "I have a choice now. After my friends helped me. After I spent years being told what to say, what to wear, and what to eat."

Pain flashed through the older woman's eyes. "I'm so sorry for what Joseph has put you and your siblings through." Her voice became brittle. "Your father is lost. He..." She grappled for the right words. "He hasn't let himself accept the fact that I am no longer there."

"That doesn't excuse anything!" Clara cried, unable to stop the words from jumping forward.

"And I would never suggest that it would!" Louise assured firmly. "It doesn't. It will never."

"Then why are you trying to tell me things that don't matter!" She replied, voice cracking. "It's too late for redemption."

Louise's voice was strained. "I'm not asking you to change the way you think about him, Clara. Only you truly know the pain he's caused, and I don't want you to think I'm asking you to overlook it."

"Why are you here?" Clara demanded, seeing the flowers slowly start to decay, their stems shrivelling up and dropping around her. The bright colours were being replaced by a dreary gray, which grew closer to the two women.

Her mother's face battled many emotions, eyebrows furrowing as she settled on one of resolution. "You have questions." Louise said finally, voice determined.

Clara clenched and unclenched her jaw.

"There's someone who has the answers." She whispered, hand twitching as the gray climbed up her legs.

Clara felt her heart in her throat as she watched the colour leave Louise's legs. "Who?"

Tears filled Louise's clear eyes as the gray reached her throat. "My boy," She croaked, as if it was holding her in a choke hold, tears spilling over and falling down her cheeks. "My sweet boy..."

The pain in her voice stirred something inside of her. One moment she was facing her mother a few feet away, and the next, Clara's small arms were wrapped around her mother's figure, face pressed into Louise's sternum.

Clara could do nothing but wait for the gray to reach Louise's face, could do nothing but listen to her mother repeat, "My boy. My sweet girl." over and over again, like a broken record, voice breakable and indescribably agonised.

Clara asked whatever controlled her dreams to end her pain, a lone tear sliding down her nose and staining the cotton of Louise's shirt.

And true to fate's cruel nature, Clara felt Louise's legs slacken. The pair slid to the ground, knees hitting the scratchy, dead grass. Louise's limbs slowly began to lose tension.

Clara clutched onto her mother until the broken record came to the end of its track, her last note hanging in the air like a goodbye cut short.

~*~

Like all the other times Clara dreamed, her emotions rattled inside of her chest the minute she opened her eyes. Unlike all the other times, there was only a single tear gathered at the inner corner of her eye.