Author's Note: Thanks for all the support I've been given by the LWD fanfic community. It's appreciated!
Disclaimer: I do not own LwD or the song "Stand in the Rain" by Superchick.
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Stand in the Rain
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By the tenth of December it still hadn't snowed, and Casey was already tired of the winter routine – bundle up, bundle down. It was time consuming and time seemed to be the one thing she was running short on lately. Derek had been with them for almost five weeks and was officially no longer just a guest. The financial situation had ceased to be such an intimate concern, as he acknowledged the dissolution of the 'houseguest' title by paying his own bi-weekly rent, as long as his stay was indefinite. And indefinite it was – thus far, at least. The basement bedroom was starting to feel like Derek: another book on the shelf; a few shirts hanging in the closet. The afghan covering the cushions of the downstairs couch was indented where he sat. In the kitchen cupboards, a box of Sugar Crisp and an eight-pack of blueberry Pop Tarts; in the refrigerator, a four-litre jug rather than a two-litre carton of milk.
Every little sign of himself that Derek left around the house, Casey saw as a personal victory. She knew enough of his situation – from Nora, from Marti, from his agent in Toronto – to know that she was intended to be an important stage in his recovery. She chose to ignore Nora's delicate probing ('how are you, Casey?') and continued trying to behave as if this was her life's natural course. Unlikely as it was for Derek to leave anything in the open, there was the rare occasion when he didn't bother moving something back to his room. One morning as Casey sat down to breakfast, she noticed the tattered cover of a well-read novel, half hidden beneath the morning's newspaper. Carefully, she tugged it out enough that she could read the title on the creased spine, and was surprised to see the largely illegible 'Moby Dick' glaring back at her.
Well. Casting all surprise aside, Casey ignored the abnormality of the situation and pretended that it wasn't at all unusual for Derek to show such an interest in the very same classic literature he'd dismissed all throughout his school life. Novels were one thing – just another building block that he was continuing to climb one step at a time – but novels progressed into a jacket laid over the back of the loveseat, and from the jacket to a shirt left on the ironing board, to a half-eaten bag of chips that he'd neglected to close and clip the night before.
Things were changing, she thought, very slowly. It wasn't as if he were really starting to revert from the strange man who cleaned up behind himself back to the Derek she'd known since she was fifteen. There were just little things that were his trademark attitude shining through what Casey considered his "protective shell." It was like Derek had put up a fiberglass wall between himself and everything else – his feelings, the world. There was something there that though she could see through to him she was unable to touch. She wasn't entirely sure that she felt comfortable around the man Derek had become – it wasn't part of her plan; it wasn't what she had chosen; it wasn't under her control. But after years of nagging at him to grow up and take some responsibility, Casey could finally agree that he'd done as she'd asked. It may not have been a change of his own volition, but though she'd never been there Casey could imagine what sort of atrocities he may have witnessed during his years in Africa. If anything could sober a man up, she guessed that would be it. So, the courteous relationship between Derek and Casey continued, uncomfortable as it may have been. Some days, she wondered if it was all a dream, but knew in her heart that this was the result of tragedy. She could vouch for that.
Until December the twelfth, there was a stiff formality in the house, and the relationship consisted mostly of avoidance. They were only together at mealtimes, with Derek making a point to remain in the basement whenever Casey was home, and Casey never venturing downstairs because of a nagging sensation that told her she was intruding. And after five long weeks, still the little girl never said anything to Derek. What Casey couldn't help but think was that this wasn't a functional home, no matter how hard she tried to make it so. The halls weren't filled with squeals and laughter of a child and the kitchen didn't brighten with smiles of a wife and husband. Sam had gone to a child psychologist for six whole months starting that previous January, but there was no real answer for her lack of childish enthusiasm. Depression from missing her father was ruled out, given the man had died before her birth. There had never been anyone else so significant in either Casey's or Sam's lives, and so there were no attachment problems that anyone could see. The psychologist had said, "give her time. That's all you can do," and so Casey tried her best to give her daughter the time that would hopefully bring her out of whatever deadened the laughter. None of this was invisible to Derek, but he knew that it wasn't his business. He refrained from commenting, and Casey refrained from revealing, and this was the silent agreement. At least, it had been, until Marie called Casey pleading a fever, and threw Casey entirely off-course.
To that point, the system had been unchanging. On the third day, Casey had asked if he could watch Sam for an hour or two in the afternoon – just until she got home from working the lunch-hour special – and again in the evening until her the eight-o'clock news was finished. She had expected maybe a shrug, a casual "whatever" or even a flat-out "no." What she hadn't been expecting was for Derek to stare at her and bluntly say, "I don't feel comfortable alone with your daughter. She doesn't know me and I don't know her." It was surprising for him to be so honest but it almost relieved her, even knowing that she'd be short another thirty dollars from her paycheck – to go straight into the pocket of Marie Waters, who loved Sam as much as she loved her own daughter.
"All right," she had responded, and that was that. Every afternoon like clockwork, Casey would drive Sam to Marie's house on her way to the station at eleven, and pick her up at one on the way home. In the evenings Sam would go either to Marie's or to Nora's right after supper, and Casey would bring her home again at nine. It was a consistent schedule, and Casey's life wasn't anything if not consistently scheduled. This way there were no surprises that wouldn't be anticipated; no moments in which there were no answers. Her striving for perfection or, as Derek liked to call it, her Type A personality, wouldn't let a slip in the schedule go unnoticed.
But somehow, the schedule failed, and at a quarter to eleven Casey was calling everyone she knew. After hanging up with Nora, who was her last resort and who had a noon meeting she couldn't get out of, Casey had to face it – there was no one to take Sam, and she didn't trust a new babysitter when there was no time to personally test one and verify that they met all of her standards.
Casey had nearly worked herself into a full-blown panic, rapidly pacing the kitchen and puffing breaths as if she were in labour all over again, when Derek made his appearance. Hair tousled from drying uncombed, wearing a pair of sweat pants and an old Maple Leafs t-shirt, Derek came around the corner and into the kitchen without even looking up. Making a beeline for the refrigerator – an Old Derek habit that had reared its ugly head upon his return to a first-world country – he opened the door and was bent over with his head inside for a full minute before feeling the intensity of Casey's stare on the back of his neck. Cautiously, he straightened, peering at her from over the fridge door. For a moment he was reminded of an old annoyance in the way she stood with one hip cocked, the opposite foot tapping, and both hands on her hips.
"Well, spit it out," he muttered, shifting feet. Even after all this time, that look made him feel guilty.
For a long moment, Casey looked as if she were in pain, until finally she burst out, "I don't have a babysitter and I have a meeting after the lunch news and Mom has a meeting at twelve and Marie has a fever and I'm going to be late and I need someone to watch Sam!"
She finished, breathing hard, feeling her own pulse racing in her throat. Derek watched this with a raised brow. "You're asking me? Don't you remember Marti?"
"What?" she asked defensively. "Sometimes people change."
There was a brief pause, and then he shrugged. "Okay."
Casey blinked. "Okay."
And that was that.
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She kept her cell phone on. If there was an emergency of any sort – if Sam fell and hurt herself; if there was a loose dog and it attacked Sam; if Derek was in a car accident; if he couldn't find the Kraft Dinner… well, she was prepared to be prepared. Anticipation was what Casey did best. Sam knew the number, and she had left a sticky note on the refrigerator with phone numbers for her cell, the station, Nora's office, George's office, Marie, a contact at the police station and the house number itself – in case he forgot and needed it on a hospital form. For all her talk of people changing, she justified her paranoia by recalling Derek's disastrous babysitting attempts in their high school years, and telling herself that it was impossible for one to be too prepared.
All throughout the lunch-hour broadcast, she was distracted with visions of Sam bleeding from the head, and fumbled twice with the words scrolling up the blue screen at Camera Left. On a brief commercial break, the camera man asked if she wanted a glass of water and a Tylenol to clear her head. She politely declined. During the meeting, she lost focus more than once when images of Sam falling off the back porch and breaking bones kept intruding, and had to ask for several items to be repeated by the station manager. He frowned at her with concern, but waited until after the meeting to pull her aside.
"Casey," he asked, "are you all right? Do you need to take a bit of time off?"
"New babysitter," she managed, and the station manager nodded. He knew all about Casey's neuroticism. She had personally trained his daughter until Casey felt that the girl was prepared enough to keep an eye on little Samantha at a company barbeque. She paid well, but had psyched his daughter out enough that she took the payment that one time and avoided all of Casey's calls for the next two months. He honestly did feel bad about that, but did make up for it by bumping Casey's pay with a small but unasked for raise.
When the meeting was finally adjourned and the crew invited Casey to Tim Hortons for coffee with them, she declined as politely as she could and hightailed it out of the station. All she could think about was how badly Sam had hurt herself – did Derek watch her well enough? What did they do all day? She'd been gone for hours – well, for three, but who knew what sort of trouble a small child could get into under the watch of a lazy, unobservant man. She'd witnessed his babysitting technique – they had lived together for four years, after all – and the best-case scenario she could imagine involved her pretty baby in ragged clothing, soot streaking her face as she cleaned the fireplace. In typical Casey fashion, she worked herself up over this image, tearing apart her glove compartment for a paper bag before remembering that they didn't have a fireplace. With a groan, she put a bit more pressure on the gas pedal, going from a careful forty-eight to fifty-one kilometres an hour.
Without being ticketed for driving over the fifty-kilometre speed limit, for which she was incredibly grateful – speeding tickets were just so expensive these days – Casey made it safely into her driveway and flew into the house without bothering to lock her car doors.
"Sam? Sam!" she called, kicking off her shoes in her hurry down the narrow hallway to the kitchen. "Derek?" A grunt came from the living room, and Casey backtracked, poking her head into the room. Derek sat in the old armchair – her armchair – staring fixedly at the muted television with the fuzzy picture.
"Where did you get this piece of crap anyway?" he asked, not looking up, but tilting his head to one side as if the skewed angle would make the picture any clearer.
Casey felt a flush rise up her neck and over her face. "Garage sale," she answered, then quickly changed the topic. "Where is she?"
"Samantha?" Finally, Derek looked over his shoulder at her. "She's colouring."
A smile bloomed on Casey's face and she left without another word, heading into the kitchen and swooping down on her quiet daughter at the little round table. "Hi, baby," she said, pressing a kiss to the top of Sam's head, then peered around her shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"Mom-my! You can't look yet, mom! I'm makin' you a picture! Go away!"
"Oh, okay, I'm sorry." Casey grinned, and backed into the hall with her hands up, palms forward. "I'll just go sit in the living room with Uncle Derek. Come find me when you're done." She received no response.
"You know, she's just like you." Derek leaned against the wall just outside the living room. Casey motioned for him to go back in, and followed close behind. She sat in the armchair and he took a seat on the floor, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles.
"Did she talk to you today?"
"Nah."
"Did you do anything fun together?"
"Not really."
Casey frowned. "Derek, what did you do while I was gone?"
"She put on her coat and gloves and went out back. I sat on the steps while she played in the sandbox." The sandbox was exactly that – the cardboard box that the refrigerator had come in, one side cut down and the body filled with gravel. George had been promising to come by and build a real sandbox, with planks on the ground and real sand. There just hadn't been time. "Then we came in, and I made mac and cheese and we watched cartoons for a bit." At her look of disbelief, Derek frowned, exasperated. "Casey, I can boil a pot of water and read instructions."
"I know, I know," she said warily, "I'm sorry. It's just… I can't ever remember you making something more complicated than peanut butter on a sandwich or milk in a bowl of cereal."
"Sometimes people change," he replied, mimicking her words of earlier that day. Casey had no reply, and so they sat in a silence that was reminiscent of the first week when having an unfamiliar man in her house was incredibly uncomfortable. Finally, she looked at him until he looked up at her.
"I kept them," she whispered. "All of the magazines and the papers. I have them all."
For a long moment, she and Derek stared at each other, unable to break eye contact. All Casey wanted to do was reach out and brush the hair off his forehead, but right as she began to lean forward he stood, shaking his head at her as he left the room. A few seconds later she heard the muffled thumping of his feet on the stairs, and a door closing in the basement. She closed her own eyes and leaned back, massaging her temples with both hands. What the hell was she supposed to do now?
