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There were a few things that Anne was well aware of when it came to living with her sister and her brother-in-law.
The silence that echoed through Kellynch Place was starting to wear on her sanity as she found herself talking to herself more and more often than she felt was healthy. At least at Mary’s house, Anne could feel useful.
“Are you sure it’s okay if I move in early?” she asked over the phone as she packed up yet another odd item on her list.
“Anne,” Charles’ voice sounded over the speaker phone, “I’m surprised that you didn’t join us right after your father and Elizabeth left.”
“There was a lot of stuff I had to do.”
“Well, feel free to join us anytime,” he assured her. “Mary and the boys will be thrilled to see you.”
“I still have to finish up some things, so I’ll be in and out all the time.”
“You also need to get settled in before the Fall semester starts. I wish I could help you, but I have to take these summer classes to hopefully get back on track.”
“You only missed one semester,” his sister-in-law reminded him. “How could we predict that Mary was going to have severe post-partum depression after Little Henry was born?”
“Don’t you let Mary hear you calling him Henry,” Charles needlessly reminded her.
“I know, I know. Around Mary, he’s Baby Walter,” Anne sighed. She felt bad for that kid for when he’d be old enough to decide what name he wanted to go by. “But his first name is still Henry.” And she didn’t want to point out that she had little faith in men named Walter at this current moment. “I’ll be by on Wednesday to get myself situated.”
“I wish I could be there to help. I have class until noon and then I’m meeting my new history tutor so that maybe I can actually pass that class this time. He’s coming in for the day so he can get some scheduling issues sorted with his advisor and agreed to meet with me afterward. Those dates just get twisted together in my head and I need all the help I can get.”
“At least you won’t have to deal with history when you start working at your father’s furniture store,” Anne reassured him. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
She didn’t want to admit that she’d lost some weight with all of the lifting and moving she’d been doing for the past six weeks. Well, her body was looking more toned than it had been, and her clothes fit a little differently, even if her clothing size hadn’t changed.
“Still...”
“Charles,” she interrupted. “It’ll be fine. I’m just tired of being in this empty house. I have only a few more things to finish on this list, pack up my things, and then I can vacate the premises. Mr. Shepherd and the real estate agent,” she didn’t want to say his name aloud, “said that the Crofts would be perfectly happy and agreeable to moving in sooner. They’d like to get settled in before the Fall semester begins as well.”
“I’d love to know how Ed Worth knew a pre-law professor,” Charles mumbled to himself. “Anyway. If you do need some help, I’m sure I can figure something out.”
“No,” Anne insisted. “You have finals coming up soon. You need to focus on that so you don’t get even further behind.”
She was proud of how she didn’t react when Charles said Ed Worth’s name. The last time she’d heard anything about the real estate agent was back in North Carolina where he was handling rental properties.
It wasn’t possible that Derek was in town too... was it? She could easily guess why his brother had set up offices here.
“Thanks, Anne. I’ll see you soon,” her brother-in-law’s voice said, drawing her away from her wayward thoughts.
“Bye, Charles.”
Sometimes she wanted to admit that talking to Charles was weird. Anne knew that he had been kind of interested in her before that fateful campus visit Mary had made. But at the time Anne hadn’t been interested in dating anybody after the disaster that had been the ending of her relationship with Derek Worth.
If she was honest with herself, and she wasn’t sometimes, she kept his number just in case he called. Occasionally she would still pull up his contact information and would be tempted to send off an e-mail or a text or call him and see how he was doing.
She had even looked him up on Facebook to see if he had a profile and ‘stalk’ him a little. He didn’t. At least not an account that she could find.
Anne’s own account went unused mostly except to see the pictures of the boys that Mary would constantly post. She had unfollowed Elizabeth after the various elitist ‘I’m better than you’ posts got to be too much for her to ignore.
Certainly, on occasion, Mary would post the same types of posts. Or the ‘I’m ill and nobody cares’ posts that were mere cries for attention more than anything else.
Charles would complain about classes – especially the history class that he couldn’t seem to pass – and other things, post pictures of the boys, of his hunts he took with his father – they never shot anything – and other important business people, and shared posts from the Musgraves Furniture Facebook page.
