Save me

8. Avonlea Dinner Party

"It was scary to think of happily ever after. It was scary to think about trusting someone enough to give them your heart now, hoping they wouldn't break it later."
― Rachel Hawthorne

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Avonlea skies were something special, they had this different kind of blue than the blue Annabelle had seen in the city, It was bright and hopeful, it made her feel something other than the deep and cold reminder she was never going to see it again. She closed her eyes smelling the grass and the wind that consumed her senses. It had been so cold for weeks and this had been the first proper sign that summer was on its way.

"Annabelle! can you stop daydreaming please and come Inside!"

Annabelle groaned rolling over on her stomach as the familiar shadow of Samuel causing a cold shadow to cover the sun brought goosebumps to Annabelle's arms. looking up at Samuel Annabelle smiled the grass tickling her arms

"but it's such a nice day!"

"Yes that's why you are coming into town with me to get some supplies for mary, it's Barry's dinner tonight and we just must bring a pie!"Chuckling slightly at Samuels's bad attempt to impersonate Aunt mary, He sticks out his hand out and Anna grabbed it pulling herself up, 

"C' mon m'lady", he joked, "I am not a child Samuel!" He grins pulling her along

"Says who?" Annabelle pinched his arm and he jumped, she loved Samuel, he had been her best friend no matter how far apart they were, he always visited her when he was near London staying at his school, he'd tell her about the teachers and Avonlea, how he missed the farm and the not the nosy neighbours. How his parents were and that he would take her to see the horses someday when her parents would allow it. That was before. Before the news, before he found out. Samuel didn't visit her for a while after she told him. He would still write and send gifts but never in person. Until her parents announced they planned to send her to her Auntie and Uncles house, for her 'Health'. Often she thought back to the day she left London, her father didn't bother to say goodbye, which sounds cruel but honestly, she rathered it because she knew that her father knew it would most likely be the last time, and her father hated things ending. Her mother who was once apparently a sweet young woman, beauty to kill for and smarter than any other girl her age, was now a cynical spiteful woman who resented her daughter. Annabelle realised at the age of twelve that as she watched her mother pull back her skin and layer on expensive creams every night, followed by tight suffocating corsets to sleep in because she believed 'it shaped her waist' that her mother hated her, not because Annabelle wasn't enough, it was because she was too much, Annabelle was to blame for her mother's beauty and youth being 'stolen', 'snatched' Annabelle was a reminder that this was the life her mother was stuck with. One with annual parties that surrounded her father's business affairs, the confinement to caring for Annabelle even though she never really did and filled with paying for creams in poor attempts to erase the effect of time. And so as her mother hugged her goodbye she saw in her eyes that this was a 'new start' for her mother, the death of her daughter, meant freedom, it meant justifiable cause to leave her husband but not just enough cause for her husband to leave her. So as morbid as it was, Annabelle did not feel sad as her mother said 'goodbye' one last time 'promising to visit as soon as things were less hectic here. 

"Oh, there you two are! I need you to run into town quickly"

Mary handed over a list frantically pushing a spoon through a vanilla-scented mixture of cake batter as Anna stared with nothing but love and admiration for her Aunt.  

Annabelle knew deep down Mary had always been more of a mother to her than her own mother ever had, and she had learned to be okay with this fact.

but what truly did baffle Annabelle was how this woman in front of her was even her father's sister, how someone so wonderfully warm was related to something so cold. While Samuels's parents like Annabelle were rich as her father's side were descendants of Dukes and Duchesses, Mary had left with her dowry and found her husband, James, who at the time she believed to be a Police officer in Yorkshire, at first his entire appeal was that he was so 'down to earth as Mary said, yet after he proposed to her, Mary then realised both had been lying about each others wealth, James being James Lancord, the owners of basically every printing press in Europe, and Mary of course from her father's side. Both had hated the cities and James aspired to be captain of a small town, so they found Avonlea, and built a home here. She often envied Samuel for having such opposite parents yet still being related. She watched her cousin pull expressions as he imitated his mother in the cart to town and smiled, she knew the situation of her staying in Avonlea would be short-lived, literally. But she was still so happy to be here. Her fingers brushed against the carved wood of the cart and the smell of flowers lingered in the air. By the time they had both arrived, the sun had disappeared behind the clouds and Annabelle ran her fingers across the goosebumps decorating her skin.