AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Andrea told the man that was tailing her that day—Beast, a Nomad Judge— to hang back and, when he argued with her about it, she'd pressed him to simply stay back "just far enough" so that she didn't feel crowded.
There was nobody there but her, the dead—all of which at least appeared to be resting in peace, and one other living soul. She was fairly confident, for the moment, that she could handle herself against the living. The tiny pistol, small enough to hide from view with her loose flowing shirt, gave her an added boost of confidence. She doubted that she would ever need to fire it, but it would slow someone down if she required such a thing.
Liberty had two cemeteries which, perhaps, was a surprising number of cemeteries for a place so small and inconsequential that it did little more than dot the Georgia map. It really had more than that, if someone were to decide, for once and for all, where the outlying communities between Liberty and Union really belonged. Of the two main cemeteries, though, one was the final resting place of the essential "haves," while the other was the final resting place of the proverbial "have nots." The one for the wealthier people of Liberty was surrounded by a high fence and, Andrea always imagined, was protected under something like maximum security. The other, through which she walked today, easing her way through the tall grass that would be mowed sometime later in the week, was the one where everyone Andrea had ever known—and everyone she was ever likely to know well—resided in their final rest.
The hotel was really doing well. It was doing better than expected.
Despite the fact that the lodging sign for the Liberty exit was a great deal less attractive than the lodging signs for some of the bigger exits along the road, they were drawing in people. It was possible that, in that long stretch where there was nothing, people were just happy to find a place to stop—especially at hours when they were regretting not realizing that the last big exit had been the final oasis before a long, dry stretch of nothing. It was possible that people liked the idea of the "mom and pop" feel of the Liberty Inn instead of the big box hotels and hotels that they could have chosen some miles back or some miles in the future. It was possible that the people who stopped assumed that such a budget-friendly sign would mean a budget-friendly price on their room—and they were right. It was even possible that some word got out about the amount of chrome and leather that haunted the place, and some people were beginning to make it part of their travel plans just for the added novelty of taking a room among a mass of bikers, old ladies, and tarts—which would explain some of the odd, touristy-type pictures that some of the occupants were taking while staying there.
Whatever the reason, the Liberty Inn's few running rooms had been almost always full since the day that they'd opened. There was an ongoing scramble, as well, to get the other rooms ready to go. They'd expected to keep very few occupants, and they'd even wondered if the rooms would ever be needed, but it seemed like they needed them now.
In addition to the hustle and bustle of the hotel, which was providing employment to any club affiliate that wanted it when not occupied with their other livelihood, the Liberty Café was drawing in a crowd from the road, and from town, morning, noon, and night. Carol was at risk of running herself ragged and, to avoid such a thing, she'd happily welcomed in a flood of young tarts that were willing to bus tables, deliver meals, fill glasses, take orders, and even help prep and cook food for the chance at a couple of off-hours drinks with a brother that held their interest.
Even Negan's whores were busy, but Andrea thought that most of them were making the most honest money that they'd made in years. There was little time to fuck, honestly, with everything else they had to do, and they'd been practically turned into the housekeeping staff for the hotel. If they wanted to turn a trick or two with an interested customer, everyone turned a blind eye, but most of them were too busy hauling laundry to the laundry mat—at least until the Liberty Inn could get working machines—scrubbing rooms and bathrooms, and doling out shampoo and soap.
Merle was personally seeing to it that the whores got paid well. He seemed to have a silent, unspoken mission, to lead the women back to employment that gave them options. He wasn't against whoring, really, if that's what a woman wanted to do with her time, but he at least thought she ought to have the financial freedom to decide if that's what she wanted.
In the hustle and bustle of things, table meetings that had been discussed with neighboring clubs had been pushed back and postponed indefinitely and, possibly, until the new year. Things seemed, for the most part, to be at peace, for the moment, between the clubs. Whatever bad blood had led to earlier attacks seemed to have cooled down, at least temporarily. They were keeping their eyes open, and they were being careful with an influx of bodies around town that remained unusual for Liberty, but some of the urgency seemed lost with the business of so much else to do to keep everyone occupied.
In the busyness, there was healing.
Still, somewhere in the back of all their minds, they felt like there was some kind of dark monster slumbering. This had happened in the past. Trouble had surged up between the clubs. Hits had happened all around. Trouble had bubbled up, bubbled over, and burned some of them. Then it had gone underground, again, to slumber until something stirred it once more.
The table meetings would happen—in Union because the town could offer temporary housing to more brothers when they started to come from neighboring states and a variety of different clubs—but they would wait for a while longer. Instead, they were keeping open communication and open invitations for friendly visits.
And they were keeping tails in place on all the old ladies and children.
In all the hustle and bustle, it was easy to lose people for hours. They were running errands, doing work at their other jobs, and simply trying to keep all the plates spinning. As long as tails were doing their jobs, nobody worried too much about the brothers that would seemingly drop off the face of the earth for a while.
Andrea had been out at the hotel, working from there since she didn't need to be in the office to handle some of the tasks she'd needed to complete for the day, when Miss Jo had come with stock for "Carol's Cupboard"—the space where she sold community goods that she featured in her recipes—and some supplies for Carol to work into future meals.
Andrea had accepted the warm and loving embrace from Jo, and she'd gladly let the woman run her hands happily over the swell of her belly and declare that she couldn't wait to get her hands on the baby that would likely come sometime after the start of the new year.
Andrea's burns were almost healed entirely by now, and though she had a few issues where the skin simply didn't want to stay healed with the quick expansion of her belly, she had learned how to ignore most of the discomfort she suffered. She cared for the skin as well as she could, and she focused on the little one that was growing and doing well—her main concern in, really.
Jo had been looking for Negan, and they'd searched the hotel for him, but he seemed to have disappeared. It was unlike Negan to venture too far from the Liberty Inn. He'd left only a few times, when he didn't announce his departure to catch some sleep in the trailer he was temporarily renting not too far away, because he seemed to find a great deal of satisfaction in dealing with the daily ins and outs of the hotel.
Andrea had a gut feeling, though, about where she'd find him. Maybe it was a sixth sense of sorts.
She'd been right. He spoke to her as she approached.
"Sneakin' up on somebody will get your ass killed," Negan offered. "If I hadn't heard you arguing with Beast all the way from the road, I might've shot you. Then what, Andrea?"
"I'd either be dead or alive," Andrea said, laughing to herself. "But if I'd've seen it coming, I might've shot you back.
Negan was amused. She heard his quiet laughter rumble in his throat.
"You still got that little ass Cowboy that Hershel gave you—what was a it? A few thousand years ago?"
Andrea hummed.
"I quit carrying it for a long time," she said. "But—I started back."
"She had a gun with her that night," Negan said.
Andrea closed the last few feet of distance that stood between them. She looked at the marble headstone.
Lucille Jane Mabry
"Lucy"
"Beloved wife, daughter, and sister."
"May she rest in eternal peace."
The inscriptions above the dates that declared that Lucy's life had been cut too short were familiar to Andrea.
"She always had that .38 Special," Andrea said. "She loved that thing. Said it made her feel like an outlaw."
"She wouldn't have killed anybody," Negan said. "Not Lucy. But she'd have put one or two through a shoulder if she needed to. I think. Didn't do her any fucking good, though. She called me. Said she felt uncomfortable, but she didn't threaten anyone."
"You and I both know whoever ran Lucy off the road that night didn't give her a chance," Andrea said. Her stomach tightened and knotted at the words. It was the first time that she'd spoken candidly about the accident with Negan—alone and beyond the few things said "among family" when Negan had practically refused to hear it. Andrea sucked in a breath of the cool air surrounding them and let it out. "I come out here—well, I try to come about once a month, at least. I clean it off. Leave a few flowers. The vines out here are terrible. They grow wild. I pull them back."
"Must be why it's not in the same sorry-ass state as some of these damn graves," Negan mused. "Thanks for that."
Andrea nodded.
"I loved Lucy," she said. She smiled at Negan. "We had that in common."
He hummed—a half-choked sound escaping.
"Maybe you were better to her than I was," he admitted.
All of his usual bravado was stripped away entirely. He seemed to have no interest in putting on a show for Andrea and the ghosts that possibly surrounded them. He stood beside Andrea, head hung and shoulders hung, looking very much like he'd looked when Andrea had known him as a boy—the leather vest he wore, thanks to his old man's urgings, had seemed too big for his wiry frame at the time. Now he looked older, and he was much more filled out, but he still looked like there was something extra heavy about the cut he was wearing—especially today in the cold November afternoon.
"You would have grown into loving her better," Andrea offered. "You loved her the best that you knew how. Lucy knew that."
Negan set his jaw.
"I was an asshole."
"You still are," Andrea said with a laugh. "Lucy knew that, too. She still loved you, though. Despite it. That's—what we do."
"She wanted to be buried," Negan mused. "Scared of shit like what the hell happened to her; she had a fake ass will she scratched out on a fucking piece of notebook paper. She wanted a real old lady's funeral. Fucking flowers and songs. She wanted brothers to be her pallbearers. She wanted to be buried some damn where so she could have a good view of the highway."
"It's pretty here," Andrea said. "You can see the highway. Lucy loved the idea of the open road."
"And the road killed her," Negan said. "She wanted a home, too. She didn't get her fancy ass funeral. All she got was—they brought her in what was damn near a fucking trash bag, Andrea. They didn't want me to see her. Begged me not to ask to look. A big ass Ziploc bag. Sealed up. Put her in the box. Asked me why the hell I didn't save time and effort and just cremate what the fuck was left—what the fuck somebody started."
Andrea didn't interrupt him. She let him have his grief. As far as she knew, this was the first time that Negan had been back here since Lucy had been buried. Her funeral had been private, and the "family" that had come had kept their distance because Negan had still believed in their guilt. Andrea had come, kept her distance, and watched. In her mind's eye, she could still see the lonely image of Negan standing alone, watching as Lucy's casket had gone into the ground with the aid of only those who ran the funeral home and arranged burials—refusing the support that others offered because he thought he was alone in the world and everyone else couldn't be trusted.
He never would have taken a different patch if he hadn't believed that those who wore the scales of justice—those he'd called family—had turned against him in the worst way possible.
Andrea sighed, when Negan finished. She gingerly extended a hand and patted the slumped shoulder next to her.
"I know you don't believe it," Andrea said. "But nobody in the club would have ever hurt Lucy. I don't know how to prove that to you, but—I can promise you that whoever ran her off the road that night wasn't a Judge."
Negan hummed to himself. He looked at Andrea, though, and she decided to keep to herself the fact that she saw dampness in his eyes—it was probably just a sensitivity to the air.
"Lucy loved you, too," Negan offered. Andrea's stomach tightened again, and she felt the reaction of the baby she carried to her body's response. She touched her hand to her belly, finding the spot where her little one clearly drummed a foot or an elbow against her insides. Negan's eyes followed her movement a second before he looked back at her eyes. "That's why—I know you don't believe me—but that's why the hell I never would've called a fucking hit on you. I didn't. And I won't. No matter how fucking dirty someone else might play. It won't be me, Andrea."
Andrea nodded her head. They didn't know who had called the hit on her—who had arranged for her to be scalded and may have plans for worse. She did believe, though, in her gut, that it hadn't been Negan.
"Jo wanted you to know you're invited to Thanksgiving at the house," Andrea said.
Negan laughed in a sharp, short burst.
"Yeah…" he mused.
"Lucy would have wanted you to make peace," Andrea said. "She would have wanted you to be with your family. To have some peace for yourself, Negan. Lucy wouldn't have wanted you to live miserably for the rest of your life. Not because of her, and certainly not in memory of her. You were an asshole—and she knew that—but maybe you've done enough penitence for some of the things you did while you were married."
"Lucy wouldn't want a damn thing, Andrea, because she's dead."
"We'll all be dead eventually, Negan. Even you. Maybe—the best we can hope for is to make the best of what we've got here. Of the people we have, and the time we have with them. Come to Thanksgiving."
"The whole damn family gathered around the Greene table, sharing turkey," Negan mused. Andrea could hear a touch of bite there. She knew, from her dealings with a good number of men who had trouble with their feelings, at times, that it was something of a defense mechanism.
"It was your home a long time ago," Andrea said. "It's still your home. It always has been. You're the one who left it, Negan. You're the one who walked away from the family. And—you're the only one who can decide to come back. Hershel and Jo have invited you to Thanksgiving with the rest of the family. Whether or not you come, it's up to you." She gestured toward the tombstone with her head. "Talk it over with Lucy. I've talked a lot of shit over with her in all these years. She's a pretty good listener and, if you listen hard enough? Sometimes she helps you figure your shit out. You need to figure your shit out, Negan. None of us are as young as we used to be."
Andrea started walking back toward the road. She stopped when Negan called her name loudly, and she turned back toward him.
"She deserved better," he said. "She deserved—to be like you are now. Settled the fuck down. She wanted kids, too, you know."
Andrea swallowed.
"She did deserve better," Andrea agreed. "You both did. You deserved the chance to—grow the fuck up, Negan. To be who the hell she always knew you were. And—I hope that, one day? We find out who the hell hurt her, Negan, but it wasn't family."
"It wasn't me, Andrea. I didn't put that fuckin' contract out on you."
Andrea smiled to herself.
"I believe you," she called back. She thought she saw his shoulders raise ever so slightly. He smiled to himself, just barely visible over the short distance that now separated them. "Still—I'll let you make it up to me that I even had to think it was you, you asshole."
"How the hell you want me to make some shit up to you that I never fucking did? You always were a needy ass cunt."
There was no bite at all in his words and, instead of offending her, they actually amused her and made her laugh, quietly. Some knots in her chest untangled.
"Come to dinner, Negan," she said. "Come home. Jo always lights candles around the house for everyone who can't be there—almost looks like a four-alarm fire. She always lights a candle for Reynold, Audra, and even Sterling. She lights one for Lucy, too. All of your people. Maybe, this year, you could light them."
Negan didn't say anything, and Andrea didn't press him. Instead, she walked back toward the road where Beast was wearing ruts in the tall Bahia grass and smoking his way through a carton of Marlboro reds.
