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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.
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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 Getting her temporarily withdrawn from her classes was a little more troublesome, but Mrs.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.
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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 the 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.
