AnnaAnger has never been more clearly evident on someone as it is on me at this moment. As I watch my father waltz into a club full of men who could kill him simply by flicking their wrists, I wonder what his motive must be. If he has been tailing me, and I know he has because he showed up at my apartment the night I flew in from Minneapolis, then he knows what a mistake this is. Alan is here, and if father's plan is to get Alan to see that we still keep in contact, then it's working."What are you doing here father?" I snare at his pungent face. Now that Alan and I are over, something father doesn't know because I bullshited the story of me going over there in the first place, I want him gone even more.After I got home, I was broken. Alan had said some horrible, but truthful things to me and the last thing I wanted was to come home to father sitting comfortably in my armchair. He did what I figured he would. Questioned my trip with the Kings. I told him the very basics. The inter
AlanI had always assumed I had strength. The strength to move towards my goal as a teacher. The strength to move to a whole new city. The strength to say no anytime someone would offer me a drink at their dinner party, or a small get together. I had no idea that strength, real strength, came from pain.As I sit in my small blue plastic chair sipping on my overly stale coffee and listen to other people talk about what they have endured. What they have gone through, the horrible things they have done to get that last sip, or last hit. I realize that strength, real strength is a small part of what I would need to keep fighting my demons.It has been a week since I have been back in New York. I did what I was meant to do. I went to work, came home, graded papers, said hello to Delilah every morning, saw Laynie and Jared a few times for dinner, everything that was expected of me.What I didn't do, was relax. My mind couldn't. I was too wrapped up in what I had found on my first day
AnnaMy phone vibrates in my palm once more. I can't answer it, I won't. I already know it's Alan. He has been calling for the last three hours nonstop. His words form last night are still raw and I don't know if I could stand to hear his voice right now. Alan finding out the truth last night has brought me to where I am today.I await the guards to finish frisking me and lower my gaze even further when the lead guard comes over and starts telling me the rules I have already learned. I am let into the room, a different one than the one I am used to being in and wait. Today is the day Jed gets out, and my nerves have given me both jitters and anxiety. I am not only nervous for Jed, I am nervous for me.A loud ringing sound starts, and I look around to see where it is coming from. The sound stops when a door opens, and I see two guards flowing in, followed by my brother. He looks different, almost happy. His long dirty blonde hair is brushed back, and his eyes are bright and vibrant.
AlanChaos. I've never truly understood the word until now. I've grown up in a house full of people all talking at the same time. I've had over thirty students yelling at the top of their lungs for a sound proof test the school was doing. I've been in a circle of both equal parts nervous and excited football players, preparing themselves for the big game. I've had noise, I've had excitement, I've had an uncontrolled environment. What I've never had, is chaos.I get in the car and drive after the ambulance carrying the woman of my dreams. My mind a flurry of thoughts and images of every moment we have ever spent together. I thought when detective Stephanson told me, Laynie and Jared the entire story of Anna's past, that I was heartbroken then, but nothing is compared the pain I feel in this moment.Thoughts of this morning come rushing back to me as I arrived at Jared's home. Detective Stephanson was there, I had recognized him from when Jared and Laynie were attacked last year i
AnnaSix Years Later"Sweetheart can you tell your father to come in here and grab the steaks?" Laynie asks her daughter Molly. Molly runs out to the back-yard hollering to her father that mommy said to get the 'sticks'.Laynie and both laugh which causes me to hold onto my enormous belly. I am currently eight months pregnant and I swear if there was a way to get this baby out sooner I would do it. Laynie walks over and closes the sliding glass door shut after Molly left it open."So how are you feeling?" Laynie asks coming back to the kitchen and grabbing the salad out of the fridge. We decided to have a barbeque at Alan and I's home for the fourth of July weekend. Shortly after everything went down six years ago, Alan and I got married and bought a house. I fought it at first, but Alan soon convinced me that we knew each other all our lives, we didn't need a timeline for marriage.Jared and Laynie are here with their three children, and Jed will be here soon. We invited Alan
VOLUME ONE: GUILTPrologueHave you ever had a moment of complete irony? I once looked up what the definition was. According to Siri irony was, and I quote,"a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result". Irony is amusing? I don't think so. Irony can be cruel and hurtful and completely damaging. For me anyways. You see six months ago I would have thought Irony was just a word in the English Dictionary that everyone knew, but couldn't exactly put words to explain. Now I know what Irony truly means, I'm living it.LayniePain slices through the back of my head at an alarming rate. I can hear a voice in the background, but am unsure of what it is saying. My back lands hard on the kitchen floor. God, I hate our hardwood flooring. Of course, Jared had to have the most expensive hardwood floor that cost sixteen hundred dollars a square foot. I'm not sure why, but when we moved in, he was very specific about what
LaynieYou know when your asleep but not really? I once took a psychology class in college. I learned a couple of important facts in that class. One, I am not meant to be a psychologist, at all. Second, slow wave sleep is stage three and four of the five stages of sleep. It is in this stage that you find yourself asleep, but when and if your jolted awake by something, you are unsure of your surroundings. You are not sure where you are for a moment, you have no idea how long you were out, and it takes you a second to remember what woke you up. I was definitely in the slow wave stage. A hand suddenly grabs my mouth as I shoot out of bed. Still not having any idea what woke me up I struggle with the hand tightening on my mouth. Thrashing in bed I managed to look to my left and notice Jared is being detained by two men. What the hell is going on? He looks a little sluggish trying to fight these men off and it dawns on me that he is still drunk. Looking back at the man responsible for my
JaredMy head throbs, my back is on fire, and I have no idea what's going on. It feels worse than the time I woke up hungover after my twenty first birthday party. My best friend Alan threw me a surprise party. Laynie and Anna weren't old enough to drink yet, so we celebrated with a few college buddies. We all woke up feeling like death and were in the middle of grocery store parking lot with homeless signs stapled to our stomachs. We never did remember what the hell happened the night before.I try to open my eyes but they are so heavy I just keep falling back asleep. Around the third try, I finally get enough strength to open them just slightly. What I see around me surprises, and put me at ease at the same time. I'm in a damn hospital. No one around to ask why, but I can finally pin point the smell. When my mother died of breast cancer I was in the hospital with her every day until her last. Being only seventeen, I ended up skipping school quite a bit. I had to. I was the only one