Annie
Now my father was being just as silent as he had been when I was a teenager. Tonight, he had told me, was my night. Tonight was the night that I started the conversation instead of him regaling everybody with stories of his misadventures as a doctor. It was sink or swim time and he was perfectly happy to be the one to throw me into the middle of the lake.
I’m afraid, though, that the Hansons took his silence as more of a kind of aloofness rather than his way of staying out of everything as best he could. They may have even taken it to mean that I had something up my sleeve or told him something about them that had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth. Yes, there I was. Annie Lawrence the evil witch. The traitor. The suspicious figure. Always has something up her sleeve. Normally, I would have tried something to defend myself against things like that. But tonight I didn’t. Perhaps I could have if Taylor would only come back from the far away place he was in, lost in his mashed potatoes and gravy seemingly and reassured me as he always could with his cheeky smile. Perhaps if there wasn’t an empty chair next to him meant for Parker, I could have.
At least tonight we didn’t have to sit there with that secret on our shoulders, if nothing else.
Even still, I wanted to hide in my mashed potatoes myself.
Yes, I was the evil one.
I kept my eyes lowered to the various food on my plate. The minutes trudged by and the silence continued on, interrupted by nothing. Not even a “please pass me,” which I’m not quite sure how we all managed. Perhaps none of us were particularly hungry that night. With the prospect of what was to come after the meal for me, I certainly wasn’t.
It wasn’t until I had managed to choke down all of my bread and some of my salad, about halfway through the meal that I felt my father, sitting to my right, elbow me almost sharply in the ribs. I jumped, surprised and rubbed at my side, letting myself glare at him slightly, but his attention wasn’t on me. He rubbed his hands on his napkin and pointed subtly in the other direction.
I turned my attention to the doorway of the room to see the very person I feared most standing there, shifting his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
“Parker!” Mackenzie exclaimed happily.
That caught the attention of everyone who had yet to notice him, including Taylor who was still swimming around somewhere in his mashed potatoes, in a daze. His pleased surprise showed on his face as his lips broke into a hesitant smile and he moved his chair over slightly to make room for his brother.
And that was when the silence ended.
“Would you like some potatoes, Parker?” Diana asked, holding up the too-big bowl of potatoes she had made (how someone can manage to make too much for a group of thirteen people is beyond me).
“Want to sit here, Parker? It’s closer to where all the food seems to have gathered,” Zac offered. He was sitting across the table from me. It was a nice effort and I smiled my thanks at him without him seeing me. His attention, an almost awed attention, seemed to be on his brother’s brother.
I wondered at that. Whatever tension there had been with Parker around, of which there had only been small traces large enough to feel but not enough to be truly noticed as was probably the point, seemed to have melted. As everyone talked to him, seeming to be relieved to the extreme that he had come out of hiding to join them for their meal, it was interesting to note the way they treated him, something I had also noticed a little bit of at the picnic. In some ways, it had become almost as if Parker truly was no different from Taylor. I guessed this was because the Hanson children were simply used to welcoming new additions into their family, there being seven children. To them, sometimes it seemed as if Parker simply made eight. It was true that the idea of him wasn’t exactly a comfortable one. But as far as Parker himself went, it hardly mattered who he was and what he represented.
So what made it so hard for me? It was true that new brothers and sisters were much easier to incorporate than new mothers. Especially ones that stole certain brothers out of close knit families without warning. I was sure they were all under the impression that I had kidnapped him, although according to Taylor if that was truly the way they thought of me, then he was thought to be a willing participant in the kidnapping scheme. I wondered what it would be like if my own brother, Parker Whitney, had been taken away by some strange woman claiming to be his biological mother and how I would feel toward her. Even if she did try things to make me like her. But I had a feeling I never would no matter how hard she tried. Still, was there no room for accepting that she was a part of my brother’s life?
God, I felt arrogant thinking of that.
I noticed that everyone had silenced once more and when I looked up again, everyone was staring at Parker almost reverently as he scooped mashed potatoes onto his plate. He seemed to notice the moment my eyes laid on him and he looked up, avoiding looking at me, but looking at everyone else at the table, only now noticing that he was being stared at.
“Carry on,” he said simply, making a vague gesture reminiscent of something Captain Piccard would do aboard the starship Enterprise.
A few laughs and everyone did so, apparently too happy that he was there to remember the uneasy tension from before.
And that was the way the rest of the meal went, really. The clanging of silverware against silverware, the content chewing on a delicious meal. It still didn’t feel quite right, but at least it felt complete. We were all there. Nothing was being hidden anymore as long as Parker was sitting there along with the rest of us. No empty plates, no empty glasses, no empty chairs.
At the end of the meal, we all seemed to simultaneously get up to help in clearing the table. But there were no “really, no don’t bother”’s at this meal as there had been before. Instead, everyone cleared their own plate and helped with the rest, wrapping the food up, washing the dishes. And as it went on, my heart beat faster and faster knowing that the moment when I had to finally confront Parker was getting nearer with every clean plate and every tin-foil wrapped bowl.
As I straightened up from scraping the dreaded last plate into the garbage pail that I felt more like throwing up in, I was startled enough to take two steps back when my eyes found a pair of similarly blue eyes staring back at me with a seriousness that still somehow contained a muted humor he couldn’t seem to ever be without. His mouth was set in a deep frown and his hands were stuffed shyly in his pockets. He cleared his throat, his eyes wandering.
“I suppose you wanted to talk to me tonight,” he murmured.
“I was going to try,” I admitted.
The entire kitchen was trying very hard and failing to not notice us off in the corner, quietly conversing with each other. As he contemplated what he was going to say next, Diana said brightly, to distract everyone,
“Who wants coffee?”
A few hands raised and she began setting up the things necessary for making coffee. Everyone watched her with keen interest, keeping myself and Parker in the corner of their eyes.
He sighed and this drew my attention back to him. It really was a strange thing how exactly he and Taylor resembled each other. Though the idea seemed stupid and probably would have proved fruitless, it seemed odd to me that Parker hadn’t called some Hanson hotline as soon as he saw Taylor on television to say that that was his long lost twin brother. There were probably people claiming that everyday.
I wondered briefly what it was like for him to know that he was the only one out there who could swear on a stack of Bibles and still be telling the truth.
“Not tonight, okay?” he said, his eyes wandering to what was in the garbage I was standing over.
My heart instantly fell and when he glanced at me, almost shyly, now reminding me of Collin, I knew he saw it and he looked quickly away.
“When?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“Tomorrow,” he said and I was surprised to hear how readily he answered. I thought perhaps he was going to put this off for as long as he possibly could, but he was clear to see that he had a plan in mind. “My father...he was buried at Riverside, right?”
I nodded, not bothering to wonder how he knew that.
“C-Can we go there?” he asked. “Please?”
“Of course,” I said, nodding.
“Taylor, too,” he said.
“I’ll let him know,” I said. “Or you can.”
He shook his head.
“All right then,” I said. “It’s a date. Eleven?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “Thank you.”
He shrugged and walked away, disappearing up the stairs he had descended upon his dramatic entrance during dinner. It almost seemed like he was running away from me while he still could.
Taylor moved to go after him, but I stopped him.
“Taylor?” I said.
His attention turned to me as he skidded to a halt in the kitchen doorway.
I motioned for him to come closer.
He obeyed.
“Don’t follow him,” I said. “He said he wants to go visit Collin’s grave tomorrow with both of us. Is that okay with you?”
At first I thought he was going to say no, just from the expression on his face at the mention of his father’s grave. He seemed to pale slightly. But eventually he nodded.
“Yeah, what time?” he said.
“Eleven,” I said. “That okay?”
“That’s fine,” he said. “What did he say?”
“Just that he didn’t want to talk tonight and that that’s what he wants to do. Where he wants to talk to all of us, apparently,” I said.
“All of us?” he said.
“Well, I think it’s the closest he’ll ever get to having all three of his original family members present,” I said, realizing as I said it that this was probably the reason he wanted to go there.
Taylor nodded. “That’s cool, I guess,” he said.
“Okay,” I said as he walked back over to his mother and told her our plans. She asked a few questions before nodding in agreement, passing the message on to Walker, who spared a glance my way before also nodding his approval.
As I watched them quietly discuss something, probably Parker and what he could have wanted, I felt another sharp elbow poking into my ribs. I rubbed the sore spot as indiscreetly as possible, turning my eyes to my father. He just raised his eyebrows and nodded to where Taylor, his mother, and his father were standing, soon to be joined by Isaac and Zac, apparently curious as to what Parker had said to me and what I, in turn, had said to Taylor. I just nodded sadly, moving to put the garbage back where I had found it. I had an interesting day ahead of me.
You don't even have to waste ink or buy a stamp.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Four