“Yuck, I’m all sweaty.” Smiling, she tried to lean away from me. But the effort left her gasping.
I pressed a hand to her neck, felt her pulse beating fast and thin like a rabbit’s, and cursed. Her heart still wasn’t beating right. How much damage had Steve done to her? How long would it take to heal? Would it heal completely someday? What if it didn’t? Had he felt me trying to fight him and gone extra hard after her heart, trying to kill her even as I tried to save her from him?
Gritting my teeth, I turned around. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Steve really did deserve to die.
His jury had gathered on the ground near the porch, huddled together as they tried to decide what to do. But they didn’t have to deliberate any longer. I could end the debate right now, with my own two hands...
Cassie stood on the porch, her arms hugged around herself, sobbing. She was looking up at her father, her expression saying all the words her mouth couldn’t manage to form. Why, Daddy? Why were you so bad? Why did you try to hurt Mommy?
I froze, grabbing my own porch’s wooden railing with both hands to stop my forward momentum.
Cassie. She’d worried for hours that she was going to lose her mother. Now she was about to lose her father. And if we weren’t careful, whatever scarring events she saw tonight would be our fault. Everyone’s in this village.
Especially mine.
Maybe there were times when a leader did need to step in and guide things in the right direction after all.
I cleared my throat, letting the wind amplify it like a microphone through invisible speakers all around us. The crowd grew quiet and turned toward me.
“You know, I was just standing here thinking...well, thinking some not nice thoughts, to be honest. You see, someone I love very much became one of the newest patients at the infirmary today. She’s better now, as you can all see for yourself. But just the thought of her being hurt... Well, I won’t lie. I’d like to see some hard justice done just as much as everyone else here.”
Tarah touched my back between my shoulder blades, as if to calm me. And her touch did ground me as always. But this time the effect wasn’t necessary. I cleared my throat, unsure as always as to what I should say. But suddenly, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have a carefully prepared speech. Maybe being a good leader started with leading from the heart and honesty. And if I spoke what I was really thinking and feeling, then I didn’t have to have just the right words to say all figured out ahead of time.
“But the truth is, it’s not just about who got sick, and who was most afraid for our loved ones,” I continued. “Because there’s someone else here that none of us have been considering much. His daughter.” I nodded at Cassie, who turned and frowned in obvious fear of the crowd. “See, she knows what her daddy did was wrong. But she also loves him, same as we all probably love, or once loved, our parents. And as much as you and I would all like to see some old fashioned justice enacted here tonight, maybe we should also be thinking about her. And our own kids, and the future generations who’ll grow up here. And what kind of history we want to create here tonight. And the kind of story we want to pass down to those future generations.
“Why did we come here in the first place? Because the rest of the world is afraid of us. And because they’re thinking from a place of fear and darkness, they can’t see us clearly anymore. They can’t see with their hearts that we’re still the same people we were before all this normal people versus Clann business got started. They’re just acting out of fear.
“And right here, right now, we’re tempted to do the exact same thing. We’ve all been afraid for weeks now, afraid we or someone we love would get sick and die. Now that we know the cause of that fear, we want to lash out, to take out our anger and fear on him. But if we do that, we become just like them.” I gestured in the direction of the main road, hidden by our protective ring of forest. “We’ll just be letting fear and anger and hatred eat us up from the inside out before we even gave this village a real chance to get off the ground.”
“What are you saying?” someone yelled. “Are you saying we should just forget what Steve did and let him go?”
I took a deep breath and shrugged, reminding myself that I didn’t have to have all the answers here. “I’m not saying that. Personally, it’d be pretty hard for me to have to walk by him day in and day out and not give in to the urge to at least take a shot at him. All I’m saying is to try and think from your heart, not about what you personally want, but about what’s good for everyone in the community. Including Cassie, and Pamela, and the families of those who died, and everyone else.” I paused, considering, then understood. “It’s like healing someone. You’ve got to let go of yourself, of what you personally want. Only then can the healing begin, for each of us individually and for our community as a whole.”
Tarah leaned against my back, wrapping her arms around my waist. And that was the single best feedback on how I was doing that I could ever hope to receive.
Seeing the thoughtful looks on everyone’s faces now, instead of the fear and anger that had burned there before, I finally took a deep breath and turned back toward my house and my girl.
“Nice speech,” she whispered. “But you’re turning into a politician; you already talk too much. Shut up and kiss me already.”
“Yes ma’am.” I bent my head and kissed her. And just like that, I was whole again.
A sudden wolf whistle pierced the kiss-induced fog, and I realized we had an audience.
“Get a room!” someone howled amid more than a few chuckles.
“Can’t you see? He already built one!” someone else called out to even more laughter.
Tarah laughed against my lips, and I had to grin. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Welcome to the public life of a leader.” I turned, blocking their view of Tarah with my body. “Now why would I need a room when I built a whole house?”
“You call that thing a house?” Mike shouted. “It’s nothing but a glorified shack on wheels.”
More laughter from the village.
And that’s when I knew that whatever the village decided tonight, it would be all right. Because even after weeks of fear, and running, and so many lives that had hung in the balance, we could all still joke and laugh together. We would survive this.