Persuaded

by Alicia J. Chumney

  Softly, she answered, “Supporting cast.”

  Turning his head slightly, he questioned her further.

  “Well,” she drew out, using the hesitation to gather her thoughts coherently. “Sometimes, especially these last five years, it’s felt as if my entire purpose is to make things easier for my sisters and father. I’m in the background making certain that Father eats and that laundry gets done.”

  Letting out a sigh, she quietly released her frustrations. “You’ve seen the laundry room in Mary and Charles’ place, right?”

  “Yes?”

  “They have been married three years now. Two children under the age of three.”

  “I know that. Little Charles just had his second birthday and Baby Henry Walter is barely nine months old.”

  “Hard to think that two and a half years ago I had to drop out of that Biology class. That class I didn’t even realize you were also taking.”

  “I didn’t want you to know,” he admitted. “I usually turned around to talk to a classmate the second you walked in the room.”

  “That’s really beside the point at this moment, isn’t it?” Anne retorted, glancing over at him again. “What’s done is done and can’t be undone.”

  “What does this have to do with laundry rooms?”

  “Mama taught my sisters how to wash their own clothes. Separate the whites from the colors. Don’t wash brand new reds with the whites because everything will turn pink.” Shaking her head, Anne left out a chuckle. “Mary tested that theory once. Bought a brand-new pair of red pants. Threw it in to wash with all of her underwear, white socks from assorted family members, a few of father’s white undershirts. The whole nine yards. Elizabeth was so pissed when she realized that all of her socks had been ruined. Mama just laughed, deducted the new clothes from Mary’s allowance, and made Mary wear all of the pink clothes she had ruined. Until Mary complained to Father a week later.”

  Derek was too tired to laugh like he wanted to, but he also didn’t want Anne to strongarm him into letting her drive again. He remembered that she didn’t like driving in the dark. Besides, they would need to pull over soon to find someplace to stop. None of them were in the condition to continue driving.

  “What happened next?”

  “Mama got sick so I took over the laundry duties,” she answered, looking out the passenger window. “It was easier that way. Back then Elizabeth did her own part and Mary was only fifteen and couldn’t drive yet.” Shaking her head at the memory of giving Mary driving lessons during the younger girl’s Junior year was the last thing she wanted to think about at the moment. “At least Elizabeth handled the grocery shopping then.”

  “I remember,” he interrupted, noticing the bitter tone Anne’s voice was starting to take. Reaching over, he placed a hand on her thigh, a habit they’d started so many years before. Realizing what he’d done, Derek jerked his hand back, uncertain if Anne was even aware that he’d attempted to comfort her. All he could see was her crossed arms and the blank stare she shot out the window.

  “I came back from Chicago for Winter Break,” she whispered, not betraying her reaction towards his simple gesture. “The place was a mess. My sisters and father output more mess than the maid service could handle. There were warning letters about the disaster zone that had gone unopened on the counters along with bills and who knows how old sticky glasses of what used to be juice on the counters. I spent a week making the place presentable enough before the maid service was willing to return to the house. They hadn’t even noticed that the service hadn’t come to the house in six weeks.”

  “Anne…” he whispered, uncertain what he could possibly say.

  Looking at him, she continued, “The only time in my life I’ve felt as if I was more than a supporting character in my own story was that summer with you and that semester in Chicago. I returned that December and have been washing clothes and doing dishes and cooking meals and taking care of babies that aren’t even my babies ever since. At least with classes, I get a break.”

  Sniffling, she returned her face to stare out the passenger window again, only offering Derek the back of her head.

  “Anne…”

  Shaking her curls, she said nothing. Just grabbed her purse and pulled out a ponytail holder. For the first time all semester – at least when she wasn’t working or coming in from her student teaching placement - he watched her pull her hair back into a bun. Admittedly, a messy bun, but it was considerably tamer than the curls she had let fly loose.

  “No!” he loudly hissed, pulling over off of the road before removing the rubber band from her hair and throwing it out the window. “Don’t hide again. Don’t pretend to be that emotionless Anne who everybody relies on. Not with me.”

  “Derek,” Anne sighed, shaking her head even as she refused to look at him. “I’m the supporting cast in this story. You heard Charles. It doesn’t matter how much we’ve been talking when the others have been focused on Isa’s pursuit of you.”

  “Anne…”

  “She’s been chasing after you for months and you haven’t rebuffed her. Probably because you didn’t want to have to deal with the fallout of actually rejecting Charles’ sister. I know you two are friends, but…” Drawing in a breath, “They all think that you are her boyfriend.”

  “But Anne…” Derek tried to protest. “Anne, I…”

  “No,” she whispered, pretending to focus on the scenery that she couldn’t see outside the window. “What I want doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered,” she bitterly spit out.

  “And what about me? What about what I want?”

  “It’s too late.”

  They lapsed into silence as Derek pulled back onto the road, unaware that their quiet conversation hadn’t gone unheard by the person pretending to sleep in the backseat.

  “I wish things could be different,” Derek whispered ten miles down the road.

  “Me too,” Anne sighed. “We need to pull over and find somewhere to sleep soon. I don’t think either of us can finish this drive tonight.” Reaching for her phone where it had been charging, she started to look for the nearest cheap motel.

  Etta, aware that she had been listening in on something private, something that only Anne and Derek could fully understand, started thinking back on the past six months. She knew Anne, mostly, and understood that she never was one for rocking the boat. It didn’t help that for several months Anne and Derek did not say a single word to each other.

  Then she remembered something nobody else seemed to connect together. For years it had been whispered about. She’d even suspected Charles had attempted to use Anne’s breakup to his advantage, but he ended up married to Mary instead.

  At eighteen Anne had gone through a really bad breakup that left her gutted. At nineteen Derek had proposed to his girlfriend and she had turned him down because they were too young. And there was a year age gap between the two of them.

  They both referenced North Carolina. The Crofts referenced North Carolina. Cassandra Russell referenced North Carolina.

  Derek would watch Anne from across the room when she was busy doing something. And Anne would do the same when Derek was helping Charles study.

  There had been times over the last four months when she would notice them laughing or talking about something, only to move apart whenever somebody else came into the room. The look of disappointment that passed one of their faces whenever Isa interrupted them, purposely wedging herself between them or draping her legs over Derek’s lap.

  It suddenly all made sense. Why Derek didn’t proclaim himself in any way towards Isa, treating her as if she was a younger sister more than anything else. Why Anne would frequently leave the room once Isa started trying to redirect Derek’s attention. The times Anne bailed on their plans, pretending she needed to study or take care of their nieces or nephews.

  He’d picked her up and carried her to his sister’s car that time Anne had twisted her ankle, even as Anne protested that she could still mak
e it to the house.

  They hadn’t known it, but Etta had witnessed the entire event. She had even gone over to visit Charles only to make certain that Anne was okay. She liked Anne. She didn’t want Anne injured.

  Only Anne didn’t return directly to the Musgraves house. A few hours later, Sophy Croft and Derek had brought Anne home. He had even helped her up the stairs, telling Mary that Anne had twisted her ankle and needed to rest it for a little while. He had made certain she had made it to her room before Mary asked Anne to do something.

  It all made her think of something Charlie had once asked her. Even he had wondered why Anne took care of Mary and Charles’ children so much. Why she or Isa didn’t volunteer to babysit and give Anne a break from tending to children that were not her own.

  No. Derek helped her out. Even when he wasn’t speaking to her, he had lifted Little Charles off of Anne’s back as she tried to change Baby Henry’s diaper. He had distracted the little boy while Mary, Isa, and herself were giggling upstairs over who knows what. Charlie had told her about that when they discussed the canceled date.

  Oh, what have we done, Isa? she thought. Is it too late to fix it?

  Part Three

  After

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Sometimes the sinking feeling in her chest was overwhelming. It threatened to suffocate her, robbing Anne of the ability to think clearly. Her complete focus was on that sinking feeling as it threatened to consume her.

  She would rather be numb than deal with the grief connected to the lost potential of what could have been. At least when she was numb she could tackle the tasks at hand instead of dwelling on their broken plans.

  Those were the worst moments. Those ‘what could have been’ thoughts that threatened to overwhelm her when she should have been focusing on her lesson plans.

  At least with a numb ache she could plaster a smile on her face, even if it didn't reach her eyes.

  Every single person thought she was upset over Isa's accident. And sure, she was, to a point. She felt certain that the girl would recover; the doctors hadn't found anything to indicate otherwise. It was a matter of when not if.

  When Isa woke up.

  When Isa claimed Derek.

  When Derek didn't say anything out of guilt.

  When everything fell apart.

  It wasn't as bad as when they had broken up years ago. Maybe because she had lived through it once before and they weren't actually dating this time.

  But the numbness. The sinking feeling. That persisted.

  Anne would rather feel numb and be able to cope than to handle the sinking feeling in her chest that threatened to close up her airways with the sobs that she couldn't let escape.

  Once again, she had allowed herself to begin hoping and dreaming, and it was shattered into a million little pieces that might never get put back together again.

  Derek was it. He was everything she wanted. And he was gone, even as he sat at the dining room table helping Charles with history.

  Getting out her new sketchbook, Anne started to draw. If she couldn’t have Derek, she wasn’t going to give up one of her passions. Somebody else would have to step up and take care of the children who were not her own.

  After Isa’s accident things calmed down. The Musgraves had gotten her transferred closer to home once the poor girl had stabilized, even if she was still in a coma. Getting her temporarily withdrawn from her classes was a little more troublesome, but Mrs. Musgraves had managed it with very little sobbing on her end.

  The longer the teenager was in a coma the more her family worried. They started doing online searches about the impact of head injuries, including the information that the doctors had given them. The potential side effects worried them. Dizziness. Headaches. Memory problems. Balance issues.

  Her sister, her closest friend, was worried about any personality changes that might arise from Isa’s injury. Would she still be the bubbly girl that bounced around singing and dancing as she got ready in the morning?

  Or would she take more time in making decisions? Would Isa be less impulsive and start looking where she leaped, quite literally.

  The surprising part was that James Benson had returned with the Musgraves. There was no telling what his brother-in-law, Frank Harville, thought about James’ move. They couldn’t understand the level of guilt he felt for talking them into going to Limestone Lake. The others had wanted to go to the beach, but he had insisted that the lake would be just as comfortable with fewer people crowding the sand.

  Derek frequently came to visit, reading his assignments aloud to her just to fill the silence in the room.

  He didn’t know if he was surprised or not to find James in the room, reading poetry and novels during his every visit.

  Regardless, Derek and Charles had their usual tutoring sessions at the house and Anne figured out a way to make herself scarce during those sessions. She explained to the others that Amanda needed some more sessions as they got closer to finals. Those sessions just happened to fall during Charles’ sessions with Derek. She was well aware that Derek knew that her tutoring sessions were on Saturdays and Anne was really spending her afternoons in the campus library working on lesson plans for her student teaching placement.

  Occasionally, Derek stayed behind and ate dinner with the Musgraves and Anne. He wasn’t disappointed in Anne’s choice of carry out pizza; she wasn’t about to pick her pizzas based on convenience over quality.

  Etta, her mind full to burst with everything going on, was more subdued. She spent more time in the common room at her dorm studying with Charlie. Once she had expressed her concerns that Isa’s accident had impacted more than just Isa’s head.

  Etta, reflecting further on her thoughts from the long drive back from North Carolina, found herself helping Anne and Charles with her nephews more often. She couldn’t count how many times Anne had given her a grateful smile as she handed over one of the two children.

  It only made her feel guiltier.

  Not as guilty as Mary and Charles should have felt, she reasoned, but even the eldest Musgraves girl was aware that the married couple was too young to have children. At the very least, Mary was not mature enough to have children.

  “Charlie,” she whispered one afternoon in the middle of their study session. “What if she never wakes up?”

  Pulling Etta into his side, he whispered, “She will. Isa is stubborn.”

  “Determined. Isa is determined,” she corrected.

  “No, sweetheart,” he carefully corrected. “Isa is stubborn. You can see that with her relentless pursuit of Derek.”

  Sighing, she shook her head. “I’ll need to talk to her about that. I think she ruined Derek and Anne’s chances.”

  Glancing over at her, Charlie tilted his head.

  “I overheard them talking when they were bringing me back to home,” she admitted. “They thought that I was asleep.”

  Nodding his head, Charlie said nothing as he thought about the way they all had been acting the last couple of weeks. Of course, Anne and Derek were also in the last weeks of their college careers; he had originally suspected they were focused on graduating.

  “I never would have guessed,” he admitted. “I thought they were just friends.”

  “It appears as if their relationship might be more complicated than that,” Etta admitted, telling him everything she suspected.

  It took a week before Isa woke up. To no one’s surprise, James had been in the room reading to her as she came too.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him, looking around the room and trying to figure out what was going on. “Where am I?”

  Hitting the nurse’s call button next to her bed, James explained the situation the best he could.

  “And you’ve been sitting here, reading to me, for over a week?” she asked, confused.

  “Yes.”

  “And Derek?” she whispered.

  “He’s come to visit, but…” he didn’t want to tell her t
he look of resigned sadness that had been about him.

  “He’s busy with getting ready for graduation,” she dismissed quietly.

  They couldn’t know what was going on in her head after that. They could hear her cussing as she dealt with physical therapy that tackled her new balance issues. They were all well aware of how much she despised her extremely necessary cane. Isa constantly found herself bumping into things without that third leg, but without James’ motivation she would have been doing much worse.

  He could help her in a way that he couldn’t help his wife. Helping Isa also assuaged his guilt over suggesting Limestone Lake in the first place.

  But for Isa, he was somebody around supporting her when everybody else went home and returned to their classes or other off-spring or whatever it was they did when not visiting her. He stayed in her room and read to her.

  Certainly, his reading material of choice reminded her too much of her survey literature classes, but James shared the pages with more passion than her professors. They also spent a fair amount of time discussing what he read aloud.

  It was completely different than her interactions with Derek.

  Then, once Etta felt certain that Isa could handle the conversation about Derek and Anne, she came to visit with the intention of having a serious discussion.

  Chapter Fifty

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Anne and Derek collapsed on the sofa in the Musgraves living room as the older couple invited them all, including James – since he was spending so much time with Isa, the Musgraves were suspicious – to dinner to celebrate the college graduates’ achievement. Even the Crofts were invited to join the meal.

  Adding to the celebratory vibes, Charles had gotten his grades in and he had passed the second American History course he needed to graduate.

  It was exactly the type of gathering Mrs. Musgraves loved to see in her home. She didn’t have so many children – seven total, but they rarely talked about Richard – for nothing. She enjoyed having a full house, even if Francesca, Jacob, and Andrew weren’t part of that evening’s dinner. They were stashed away somewhere with a pizza.