Morning all I hope you are having a good morning. I woke up this morning with the district feeling that there was something I forgot. No idea what it was that I forgot. In all fairness I could have had a dream I don’t remember where I forgot something and the forgotten something isn’t actually in real life. But I still feel like I forgot something and am running through long lists of everything due this week trying to figure out what it could be. Fun stuff. For now, I am taking a break from wondering and hoping that focusing on something else will cause the forgotten thing to come to mind. Fingers crossed. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
Still can’t remember but I think I find the Anna character interesting. Not sure about the story as this feels like back story for Anna where one of her in-laws pops back into her life to cause trouble later, but I like Anna.
Thursday, November 5th: Their relationship was strained.
Their relationship was strained. It had never been the best. They mostly tolerated each other for David’s sake and each kept their own thoughts locked behind polite smiles. Contact was generally limited to holidays and the once a month family meals. At such time Anna was polite and did her best to fit in. She smiled and nodded along with comments she didn’t agree with and pretended not to feel the sting of jokes that were thinly veiled insults.
David claimed they were just jokes and told her to let them go. ‘They don’t mean anything by it,’ he often told her. ‘They love you because I love you and I hope you love them because I love them.’
They were a family. She was just the married in one and so was different. He assured her they would adjust in time, but they never really did. She pointed out that none of the other wives faced the same sort of comments. David after all had four brothers, all of whom were married.
‘We all grew up together,’ David said. ‘They have known the family all their lives.’
After assuring her that they would come around once they got to know her, the subject was dropped. David would never see that the jokes were intentionally barbed and that no one had any intention of letting her forget that she was an outsider. They stopped discussing it and David certainly never mentioned it to his family. The discomfort was hers to bear.
It was a weight that grew heavier every year.
Then came the accident. In one fell swoop David was gone. A drunk driver running a stop light ended the world as she knew it. There was the aftermath. The grief followed by more practical matters. Anna took care of the practical matters while looking through a haze of grief. It lay over everything distancing herself from the actions she knew had to be taken. She took them but six months later, she couldn’t say she honestly remembered doing them.
Still they were checked off the list as she moved through the necessary elements of death. Funeral arrangements, probate, closing accounts, death notices. Even the eventual clearing out of his closet. She did it all.
Still the insults didn’t stop. The joking bits fell away so there were only the barbs. Anna decided she was done. She cleared the house and put it on the market. Everyone told her it was the right thing to do as it was just her rattling around in it by herself. She never mentioned that she felt as though she rattled around in it even with David there. It was too big for them but it was a status symbol to David. The house showed he arrived. It marked his place in the world and he adored it. She was never comfortable there and found an odd relief in putting it on the market.
It sold quickly and all of David’s family waited to see where she would settle. She knew they were planning to judge. After all the status symbol house was bought to impress them. She knew they would rank any place she took below it, even if they did encourage her to sell.
What they weren’t prepared for was the moving van to load everything she was keeping and head straight out of town. Even then they assumed it was going into storage while she looked for a place that suited her. They were less prepared for her to get into her car and follow the moving van out of town.
There was a stunned silence from the collective family members for all of five minutes. Once they realized she was really heading for the town limits, the calls began.
