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Step Four: Realizing the Significance of Umbrella Racks

Derek remembered his mother better than Edwin and Marti combined. Sometimes he was afraid that he remembered her better than George too, but then he would see his father stop and stare at things like the umbrella rack or the door to the living room closet or the stain in the wood next to the couch and Derek wouldn't be afraid of that anymore because he knew exactly why George was staring.

Derek knew every instant of the life he had with his mother and father and he knew that everything in the house from the way the tacks on their corkboard were always arranged to the way that there were always more magnets under the fridge than on it had something to do with the fact that even though George had moved on—even though he was in love with Nora and he had two step kids, he still cared.

She was still present in Derek's house through the ghostly inklings of love that still perpetuated through George's heart and transcended into the daily routine he had become accustomed to performing.

Derek remembered how he would wake up to the sound of a crying baby and a screaming toddler. He remembered the soft sound of her cooing to Marti. He remembered how she would dance with Edwin to make him feel better. How his mother would never fail to sing to Derek when he couldn't sleep.

He remembered how happy George was all the time. Even after George had lost a case she knew how to make him feel better with just one word.

They were a loud and happy family and he had been happy.

He used to hear her laughter all the time.

Derek could not hear his mother's voice as he ascended the stairs to Casey's bedroom. He couldn't hear anything. No crying babies, no screaming toddlers, no music and laughter, no smoke alarms because she burned the pancakes…it was just silent and although Derek had gotten used to it he was never more aware of its presence in his life.

He stopped at Casey's door and looked around, face and eyes set with a dangerous emptiness and apathy. Just before he opened the door he thought to himself, there aren't as many pictures as there used to be, but he shook the thought out of his head. He had other things to worry about.

He had a girl he needed to worry about. And she wasn't dead.

"Well, hey there, Basket Case."

She was sitting on her bead looking through swatches of different colored paints. Her head shot up at the sound of Derek's voice and she narrowed her eyes. Maybe she didn't need him this time. Maybe it was the other way around.

"Derek, get out of my room."

Derek looked around. The walls used to be green. A light pale green. It was Marti's nursery when she was little. Edwin's too. Casey didn't even know how much history her room had. It was just a four-walled hideaway for her…not anything to be sad or happy about. Just four white walls with a bed, desk, and dresser.

Derek shrugged and sat down on the bed beside her.

"Wasn't always your room," he stated without much thought.

Casey rolled her eyes. She was tired of hearing the same old thing from Derek. She couldn't use the game closet, she couldn't sit in his stupid chair, she couldn't use his pancake mix—and why? Because it wasn't always hers. As if she wasn't already angry enough, she had to hear the same old stupid story again.

"Well, Derek, if you haven't noticed it's my fucking room now so shove off. I'm trying to figure things out."

"Things about Noel?" he asked quietly.

Casey looked up quickly from the paint swatches. She knew for a fact that Derek had skipped school to hang out with some college friends who'd graduated. She figured he wouldn't find out about the fight she had with Noel. She frowned.

Guess news travels fast…she thought.

"Derek, why don't you mind your own business?"

She watched him carefully as he stood up, shrugged, and began walking back to her door. It was weird. Usually he would stay and keep on talking to her. Usually he would try to get the story out of her and then he'd become a brother and tell her everything would be okay. He wasn't doing that though. He was leaving her behind.

She didn't like it when people left her behind.

"Derek, just—God….wait a second, okay?"

He turned and watched her as she debated within herself whether or not to open up. She looked at him. His hair was short but still in disarray, he stood in a slightly cocky way on he could, but his eyes didn't have their usual glint. Casey didn't know what to think about that, but she knew she didn't like it.

So without even thinking about what she was doing, she did the only thing she knew she could to get the glint back in his eyes, because for some reason unbeknownst to her that glint was an important part of Casey's day. Without it everything was shitty. Almost unbearable.

Casey had one consistent thing in her life and that was Derek. She couldn't let Derek become just like every other normal human being she knew because that would wrong. Everything would fall apart. So in order to keep things like the space-time continuum of her life from collapsing Casey laughed at Derek and she grinned and said to him that he looked like Emily after the eighteenth time he had turned her down since he was being so pouty.

"What?" he asked, grin spreading itself across his face.

And Casey was relieved.

Derek walked over to her bed and sat down on it again, only slightly registering the closeness he had with Casey. He had come upstairs thinking he would have to fix her because he had seen her broken so many times, but he was beginning to realize that Casey was the type of girl that learned from her mistakes. She was stronger than he had anticipated. Already able to make stupid jokes and laugh only a few hours after she broke up with her three-month boyfriend? That wasn't the Casey that first moved into the Venturi house almost three years ago.

Derek looked down at his hands as Casey started talking about what happened in the caf, and she was laughing the whole time. She started talking about her fight with Noel as if it was the stupidest and funniest thing she had ever taken part of.

And as Derek listened to her laugh he was surprised at what he heard.

It was something much better than silence.

It was music and dancing and the sound of a happy home. Derek watched her as she stood and began reenacting the situation in the caf, even dawning a bad imitation of Noel's voice whenever she was talking for him, and Derek couldn't stop thinking about how happy George was with his mother.

And that feeling, the feeling he was so scared of, came back, but Derek didn't care. He didn't try to ignore it. He wasn't even afraid of it. Instead of all that, he got off the bed and hugged her. He hugged her because for some reason he knew she needed it. At first, because she was so confused, she didn't hug him back it only took her half a second to wrap her arms around his neck and bury her face into his chest.

"How'd you know I was just trying to make myself feel better?" she whispered, warm tears bleeding through Derek's shirt.

Derek shrugged. He didn't even know the answer to that. All he knew was that he was aware of why he was in that room hugging Casey McDonald, trying to make sure everything was okay.

All he knew was that the sound of her voice—her laughter—made him think of the umbrella rack and the closet in the living room and the stain on the wood next to the couch.

All he knew was that Casey McDonald made him happy.

And he wasn't scared.

He wasn't scared at all.

Actually, he was the opposite. Derek was enlightened. He finally knew why it was so hard for him to just treat her as a sister. It wasn't because he loved her or he liked her or anything like that, but because there was something there between them. There was a bond there that could never be normal.

There was an unspoken attraction and chemistry. A "vibe".

And that did not scare him in the least.

Unfortunately, it was pretty much the equivalent of Freddy Krueger to Casey.

Thanks so much to my three lovely reviewers, what you said was GREATLY appreciated on my behalf. I hope everybody liked this chapter. Please review.

Cheers.