“In the attic I can’t hear the babies cry in the middle of the night,” Anne grinned mischievously.
They didn’t notice Sophy peering around the doorway, watching them as they scrolled through the Netflix offerings. The grin on her face didn’t conceal her hopes for the pair.
“Why did you have a meeting with your advisor?” she asked when she had to enter the room with the heating pad.
“He wanted to know if I could tutor somebody,” he answered his sister.
“Another history student?” Anne asked.
Shaking his head, “No,” he answered her. “He has a business student that needs to take an accounting class. He’s a good student, but…”
“Not an accountant,” Anne finished.
“Exactly.”
“I’m surprised that Charles didn’t ask you to tutor him for the other American History class he’s having to take.”
“He did. We start next week,” he told Anne, smiling down at her.
“Well, somebody is going to be busy,” she replied. “My own student secured my services for both her English Comp Two class and the Survey of British Lit class she’s taking. I got her to agree to meet me on Saturdays since I’ll be spending a good chunk of my time in the schools for my student teaching placements.”
“But you’re studying to be an Art Teacher,” Sophy interjected.
“I am majoring in Education,” she answered. “But I double minored in Art and English to double my chances of getting a position. Later I might go and get certified in History, but right now I’m watching my budget. I already passed the English Praxis tests last semester. I’m going to take the Art and Education certifications this semester.”
Derek exchanged out the ice pack for the heating pad, handing the pack over to his sister to return to the freezer. He knew she would be returning shortly with warm chocolate chip cookies unless she decided to get creative.
Leaning back against the armrest, Anne closed her eyes and found herself falling asleep in the silence she hadn’t gotten that much of over the holidays. Derek watched her for a moment before turning the T.V. on low. The last thing he wanted was for her to realize that he’d been watching her sleep.
Chapter Forty-One
Student teaching was completely different than Anne expected. It was easier for her advisors to get her into an English classroom for her middle school placement than it was for them to get her into an art classroom.
Within the first week of her first placement – at a nearby middle school – Anne found herself thrown in head first as her supervising teacher had to call in sick for a week. After a quickly improvised grammar lesson using their workbooks, Anne was able to gather her lesson plans and finish out the rest of the week with a much more entertaining – for her – lesson.
It wasn’t easy. She didn’t have the eighty or so names learned yet for her four classes. While the teacher had a seating chart, even Anne knew that the students had been adjusted while the chart had not been.
The substitute teacher practically sat at the teacher’s desk and read a book while Anne taught.
Even then, Anne loved the challenge. She loved how these students actually did what she requested of them, for the most part. She loved the order and chaotic order and the disorder that varied throughout the classes.
It was so much better than what greeted her when she returned ‘home’ each day.
“Anne!” Mary would nearly always call out. “Where have you been?”
“At the middle school,” she called back.
“It’s after five!”
“School lets out at 3:15.”
“So? You should have been home at 3:30!”
“I’m not allowed to leave campus until 3:30, and this week my supervising teacher had late bus duty, so I had to stick around until 3:45.”
And then, Anne didn’t add aloud, I went and hid in the library for an hour so that I could get some work done in peace. She still had handouts to finish designing and she wanted to look over and review what her supervising teacher wanted her to teach the next day.
“Who is going to cook supper?” Mary whined.
“Send Charles out to get some fried chicken,” she suggested, turning to make her way up the stairs. “In fact, didn’t you get my text telling you that I was going to be later than usual?”
“I haven’t checked my phone all afternoon,” Mary whined. “The boys kept me busy.”
Anne sighed, “Thankfully, I sent Charles the same text.”
One afternoon, Anne returned while Charles and Derek were having their tutoring session. She’d expected to see him, smiled softly, and started to carry her bags up to her room. All she wanted was a break from nouns and pronouns and grammar rules and everything else having to do with the parts of speech.
“Anne!” Mary called out from the other room. “Where have you been?”
“The same place I’ve been for the past five weeks!” Anne called back, stressed at everything else she was having to deal with to prepare for her last week at the middle school.
There were the observations of three other teachers in different subjects. There were the write-ups about the observations for the three other teachers. There was getting her lesson plans cleaned up and put into her portfolio for her mid-semester meeting with her University Supervisor.
But the huge thing, the thing that was hanging over her head, was her second observed lesson with her University Supervisor. The feeling of being overwhelmed wasn’t helped by the sinus infection that was threatening to cut her off at her knees.
“Well, you don’t have to yell at me,” Mary sniffed.
Rolling her eyes, Anne looked over at Derek for a moment. She caught him watching her and sent him a smile that was more compressed than the one she had previously directed at him.
“What’s for supper, Anne?” Mary called out not thirty seconds later.
Turning towards the doorway where she could see Mary stretched out across the sofa, Anne took a few deep breaths. If she did anything else, or said anything, without that moment to collect herself, there was no telling what she would do or say. Or throw.
Between clenched teeth, her good mood from the day now blown, Anne replied, “I don’t know. I don’t have time to cook right now. I have to put my finishing touches on my lesson for tomorrow. I only came home because I left something in my room.”
“Well, it’s almost six,” Mary replied, waving her hand back and forth with impatience. “You can finish your homework after supper.”
“I cannot finish my homework after supper because after supper you’ll ask me to wash the dishes or tackle that mountain of laundry sitting in front of the washing machine that doesn’t contain a single piece of my clothes unless somebody borrowed something without asking. After that, you’ll ask me to read one of the boys a bedtime story because you have a headache and reading to the boys is a critical developmental step towards their vocabulary skills and learning abilities. After that, it’ll be time for me to go to bed so that I can repeat this day tomorrow, at five in the morning, without a finished lesson plan when I’m being observed by the person who determines my grade for this placement!”
Drawing in a deep breath, Anne felt better after snapping.
“Well,” Mary sniffed again, “you don’t have to snap at me.”
“Then don’t ask me what I’m making for supper when it’s obvious that I’m not cooking tonight.”
Derek and Charles sat frozen at the dining room table. Charles, his eyes wide, had never seen Anne like this. Derek, recognizing Anne’s hints of suppressed personality before this, wanted to applaud.
“I got this,” he called out, holding up his phone as he went online to order from the pizza place that Anne would bring pizza home from. “The usual pizza order Anne brings home?” he asked the room.
“Can you add some cheese sticks to the order?” Mary asked, looking at him through the doorway from her place on the sofa.
“Mary!” Anne his
sed.
“What?” the sister shrugged.
“It’s fine, Anne,” Derek interrupted. “As much as I’ve eaten here a cheese stick order, three pizzas, and something for dessert will barely pay you back for all the meals you’ve cooked for me.”
“Ohh, brownies,” Mary hummed.
“What about those cinnamon roll bites they have,” Anne requested instead.
“But I don’t like those,” Mary complained.
“Mary!” Charles snapped this time. “You already requested the cheese sticks,” he hissed at his wife.
“But…”
“No buts. You’ll end up stealing the box and refusing to share them with anybody.”
Softly, from where she’d worked her way closer to Derek, Anne whispered, “We can do the brownies.” She was already starting to feel awful about snapping at her sister. She was living in Mary’s house rent-free and she’d been slacking off on cooking dinner ever since her student teaching placement had started.
“Hush,” he whispered to her. “Mary bought brownies from the grocery store today and ate them all before you even got here.”
Anne turned to look at him wide-eyed. Drawing in a deep breath, she started reviewing her cycle mentally. “Oh,” she breathed, nodding her head. “You might want to order the brownies. Mary will be unbearable if she doesn’t get some more chocolate.”
“Then I’m ordering both,” he stated, looking up at her. “And I’m not taking no for an answer.”
“Too bad you can’t just skip Thursday’s tutoring session. Or subtly hint to Charles that he might get some more work done in the library.”
“Why?” Derek asked, a bit confused.
“Because Thursday just might be more… emotional than today,” she hinted. “You have a sister and a sister-in-law.”
It took him a bit longer before he got her subtle hint.
“I’ll be putting a freezer lasagna in the oven anyway,” Anne pointed out. “Or a pot roast on low heat in the crock pot.”
“Pot roast with potatoes sounds good,” he grinned.
Nudging him, she told him to get that pizza ordered before they started turning into cannibals.
Chapter Forty-Two
The North Carolina trip for Spring Break was Derek’s idea.
“I think I’ll go to North Carolina for Spring Break this year,” he idly answered Charles’ question as they packed up their books. “I have some friends that I’d like to spend some more time with. James Benson recently lost his wife and he’s been living with his brother-in-law and his wife: Frank and Bianca Harville.”
“Where did you meet them?” Isa asked, her hand resting on her cheek as she leaned towards him.
“I was in the Navy with James. He’s about two years older than me, but I think my knee injury would have been much worse if he hadn’t been there. He was an EMT before deciding to enlist.” Derek was momentarily lost as he started remembering. “He has the calmest head on his shoulders, even if he is depressed after Francine’s car accident.”
“Oh, that’s just terrible,” Isa sighed. “I wish I could go with you.”
“Why can’t we all go?” Mary asked from her ever permanent seat on the sofa.
Rolling her eyes, Anne turned back to the cooking therapy in front of her. The art teacher at her high school placement had Anne doing set up today and got frustrated with her when she didn’t know the art storage room as well as he did.
“We can’t invite ourselves on Derek’s trip,” Anne pointed out from her place at the counter where she was cutting up frozen broccoli into smaller pieces for her loaded potato soap.
“Why not?” Derek asked her. “The more the merrier. Hopefully somebody can cheer James up and help distract him from the poetry he’s taken to reading and quoting. I think Byron is one of his favorites, but I know I’ve heard him quoting one of the Shelley’s as well.”
He missed Mary’s confused look and hissed, “What is he talking about?” to Etta who was sitting on the floor playing with Henry Walter.
“Literature,” Etta answered, not looking up from her nephew.
“Oh,” Mary replied. “Sounds boring.”
“Depends on who you are talking to,” Etta retorted. “Anne is an English minor, and Derek does read a book whenever Charles is running late.”
“Whatever,” Mary concluded. Turning to Anne, she changed the subject and asked, “How much longer ‘til supper, Anne?”
“If somebody would help me with the salad…”
“Soup and salad?” Mary interrupted, crinkling her nose. “No meat?”
“There’s ham in the soup.”
“But it’s potato soup.”
“It’s loaded potato soup. It has ham and broccoli in it as well,” Anne explained.
“Sounds good,” Derek interrupted. “And I know I need more vegetables in my diet. What can I do to help?”
“Here,” Anne pointed with her knife to the salad veggies she had cleaned and were waiting to be cut up. “If you can cut up those, and dump the lettuce bag into the bowl, that would be a huge help.”
“Gladly,” Derek volunteered, unsurprised when Isa started to help him.
“Tell us more about North Carolina,” Mary asked, bringing them back to the topic she would rather talk about now that the matter of dinner was concluded.
“Haven’t you ever gone with your Aunt Cassandra and Anne?” he asked.
“Why would I want to go to the beach with Anne?” Mary dismissed. “All she did was spend all of her time drawing in her sketchpad and getting sunburned.”
Anne looked around and glanced at Derek. A slight flush on her cheeks told him that she remembered them doing more than just sketching in the sand dunes and getting sunburned.
Anne, after checking out her bank balance, originally declined the trip much to Derek’s disappointment. It wasn’t until Mary and Charles started insisting, stating that they would pay her way, that she finally relented. It helped that Mr. and Mrs. Musgraves had refused her help at watching the boys over the break, much to her relief.
After dealing with high school art students and their high-handed art teacher, she relished the break. It was just pure chance that her placement’s Spring Break fell at the same time as her friends’ break.
It didn’t take much to convince Anne to put aside her unease at somebody else paying her way and to start packing her bags.
Truthfully, she craved the chance to return to the beach. It was her favorite place to be.
Chapter Forty-Three
Arranging six people on a trip was no easy task. There were bags to load into the car. There was the car situation.
Sitting down at the table, Derek took inventory of what they had. In the background, he could hear Mary bellowing from upstairs about what she should pack.
“Anne!” echoed through the house, startling the boys enough that they started to cry.
“For crying out loud!” she grumbled from her place next to Derek.
They had all agreed that she was the best person to help him plan out the transportation issues they were having. There was no way that they would survive a nearly twelve-hour trip in one car in addition to the massive amount of luggage at least three of the girls were bound to pack.
Rolling her eyes, Anne stood up and stretched. “She’s going to ask me about swimsuits again. She refuses to admit that she needs to buy a new one after having the baby.”
He watched as she reached for Henry Walter – he’d taken to calling the baby by both names – before disappearing up the stairs.
“Anne!” he heard Mary call out again.
“I’m coming,” she called back, bouncing Henry Walter slightly to help calm him down from Mary’s screeching.
In front of him, Derek studied the lists that Anne had helped him create.
Etta, Isa – bound to have at least 6 bags combined
Charles – two bags, if that
Mary – min 3 bags, more if Etta or Isa have more than 3
> Anne – 2 bags
Derek – 2 bags
That list made sense once she explained its purpose. It had been Anne’s idea to include the baggage estimates so that they could figure out the car issues.
He understood that they would have to take two cars. It was deciding which ones to take that was confusing him.
Mary and Charles – SUV – we can take the car seats out and leave them for the Musgraves. Con – the seats around the car seats are a MESS! Pro – plenty of room
Anne – car – Con – trunk space is iffy Pro – nice back seat, been recently maintained, new tires.
Etta – car – Con – Cramped backseat.
Isa – same as Etta
Derek – truck – Cons - seats only two comfortably, gas mileage
Derek – car – same as Anne’s car
“Why do you have two cars?” Anne asked him as he added them to the list.
“One is actually Sophy’s car; she lets me use it. I don’t actually like my truck; it has terrible gas mileage. I only have it to shut my dad up.”
But, as Anne was upstairs tending to her sister, Derek stared at the two lists. Shaking his head, one vehicle was obvious. If Charles and Mary did not provide transport, Mary would be pitching a fit. He had been around them enough to understand why Anne did so many tasks without a word; it was easier than listening to Mary.
He hated the fact that Anne would end up cleaning out her sister’s car, but he doubted Mary or Charles would do it.
That just left his car or Anne’s car.
Coming back downstairs, Anne waited until she was next to him before stating, “We’ll have to take Charles and Mary’s new SUV. First, it’s newer than any other car we have and it has new tires. I know that the back seat is already a mess thanks to the car seats, but it’s mostly going to be Goldfish cracker dust and maybe some gummy bears. However, Charles also installed seat covers, so we can easily lift the seat covers out of the car without too much of a mess if we work together. I don’t trust Mary to clean out the car as she should.”
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