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On Anne’s second day in the beach house, Penelope Clay was overheard asking if she needed to return home.
“I don’t know why,” Elizabeth dismissed her while looking through the new clothes she had just purchased. “Anne doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“But you don’t need me anymore,” Penelope pointed out. “Anne does a much better job grocery shopping and cooking than either of us ever have.”
“But Anne is not my best friend,” Elizabeth interjected. “Father only wants Anne here because Aunt Cassandra is coming down for business and will certainly guilt him over leaving Anne in Tennessee with Mary and her in-laws.”
Shaking her head, Anne moved away from the door, unsurprised by the heedless comments her sister and friend were making. Unfortunately, she was also aware that they were true.
And so, from her commandeered workspace, Anne tapped away at each application she could. Even applications for districts that didn’t have open Art or English teacher positions listed. She didn’t know why she had put off the applications until after graduation. It might have been a combination of procrastination and something else, but she suspected it had more to do with her disappointment over Derek.
There was nothing she could do about it. Everybody else assumed that Derek was Isa’s boyfriend all because he hadn’t put a stop to her advances. Certainly, she could wish he’d developed a bit of a backbone before Isa’s accident, but there was nothing either of them could do about it now.
It was all in Isa’s hands.
And so, Anne filled out application after application in hopes of escaping her family. She slightly felt horrible about it, but she was tired of trying to help bail out a sinking ship. She had no intention of drowning financially all because her father and sisters had no budgeting sense.
And that infuriated her. Elizabeth had the head for finances that the family needed, but she had a spending habit formed by their father keeping their bad habits unchecked.
Loans and mortgages and who knows what else and instead of getting back into practicing law, he goes to Florida and acts as if he has the social standing to hang out with the bigwigs who turned their noses up at his appearances and laughed at him behind his back.
It was like high school all over again, but with people in their fifties and sixties.
And Walter Elliot, as oblivious as he was, didn’t even see that the people he considered important enough for him, were doing to him the exact same things he had done to others at home.
No. Anne was fed up with this behavior and she was getting out. She just had to figure out how.
Admittedly, she wasn’t expecting to be filling out job applications while she was in Florida either. She had, mistakenly, assumed that her family would return to Kellynch Place after the semester was over.
She had mistakenly assumed that her father and older sister would be joining Mary and the Musgraves in the stands for her graduation. Instead, they had demanded her presence at the beach house.
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Drawing in a breath, the last person Anne expected to walk through those doors on her third day in Florida was the previously estranged from the family cousin, Will.
Admittedly, the last time she had seen him was that ill-fated Spring Break trip, but she really hadn’t expected to see him in Florida.
“Father,” Elizabeth asked from her place on the sofa. She had chosen the spot in order to block out the table where Anne was working.
“Yes?”
“Is Will coming by today?”
“I think so,” he answered her, not looking up from the newspaper he had delivered.
“Will?” Anne asked, looking up from her laptop and her third application for the day.
“Will Elliot,” Elizabeth answered. Even though she couldn’t see it, Anne sensed the eye roll that had accompanied her sister’s answer. “Our cousin.”
“Oh,” Anne replied. “I wasn’t aware that we were talking to him again. I wish I had known that during my spring break trip.”
“Why would it have mattered then?”
When she tried to tell her sister and father that she had seen Will during Spring Break her words fell on deaf ears. Frankly, she wasn’t certain why he was hanging around them to begin with.
“But I did see him,” she protested, describing him to the best of her memory.
“Well, we can’t prove or disprove it, can we?” Elizabeth snapped, her finger hitting the channel changing button repeatedly and too quickly for her to keep track of what was appearing on the screen. “There’s nothing on T.V.” she hissed, turning it off in a huff.
“We can always go to the boardwalk,” Penelope suggested.
“And miss Will? I don’t think so!”
Thankfully, after ignoring Elizabeth’s impatient tapping for over twenty minutes, the doorbell sounded.
“Anne,” Elizabeth snapped her fingers, “go answer that.”
“I’m in the middle of something. You go answer it.” She didn’t see any reason to interrupt her job application in order to answer the door for somebody that she didn’t really care if she saw or not. If Elizabeth’s strange crush had returned, then she could answer the door.
Anne refused to admit that despite Will being adopted into the family and not a blood-relative, it was still odd to have a crush on your cousin.
“Anne!” Elizabeth hissed.
“I’m busy,” she snapped. “I need a job in order to pay my student loans back!”
“I’ll get it,” Penelope interrupted, getting up and going to the door.
“You better pay attention to our guest and not spend all of your time on your laptop,” Elizabeth hissed, getting up and moving towards where Anne was situated. She appeared to be considering unplugging the computer from the wall.
“The more time I work on this job application, the less time I’ll be hogging Will’s attention,” Anne pointed out without looking up from where she was typing in her education history into the prompt.
Mentally she was wondering why they had her upload her resume if they were going to ask for the exact same information on the application. What was the point of uploading the required resume if she had to input that information twice?
Entering the room in front of Penelope, Will greeted everybody before turning towards Anne.
Standing up, she held out her hand and said, “Anne Elliot, your extremely busy cousin. I’m filling out job applications,” she explained, nodding towards her laptop.
“You look familiar,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Were you in North Carolina back in March?”
“Yes. We stayed at...” she answered, giving him the name of a well-known mid-budget hotel chain.
“Right!” Will grinned, momentarily stunning her with his charmingly lopsided smile. “We ran into each other in the doorway,” he said. Turning towards the room, he added, “Anne’s suitcase caught on a floor divider and I ran right into her.”
Holding back a smirk, Anne was extremely tempted to tell her sister, ‘I told you so,’ but held it in. Elizabeth’s surprised glance with Penelope was enough.
“I hope your trip went well,” Anne politely replied.
“I had to leave early,” Will told her. Hesitating briefly, he added “I got a call the next morning and needed to head back here. I had a patient that couldn’t wait for my vacation to finish and refused to be seen by one of my associates.”
“That happens,” Anne wisely said, nodding her head as if she knew how it was.
