Becoming Anne Again

Chapter Twenty-One

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It was odd, being here and not in a police station, with a stoic detective and someone else rubbing her arm—she didn't know who that was. Or the FBI agent who refused to leave her side, until he did because he had to, they made him—all people and places where somehow it seemed okay to spill her story. Not in a living room in Cape Cod, to a family whose life had never been more violent the ocean on a clear summer's day, or to a childless couple whose horror was watching their child die.

Anne wondered if she should stop. If she should shove it all down again, but there was that part of her that told her she had no choice, that if she kept id down she would explode and kill someone and then she would just prove to everyone she was nothing more than a statistic, wouldn't she? But that didn't keep her from feeling like her heart had stopped beating, and her breaths became significantly more shallow. But then Matthew held her closer, and she focused on the beat of his heart. She remembered some girl who was convinced she was in love saying that your heart beat in sync with people you love, and she could have sworn that her heart had slowed down to match his beat. Thud, thud, thud.

"I wasn't in a lot of good homes, but that doesn't really matter," Anne said, drawing her knees into her chest. Those words put a chill into Samantha's heart, because of course it mattered. "I was ten when they took me in. And—you know how you just know something is wrong? I don't know, I used to make up stories about how it was the ghost of some murdered lover, or something," she said, screwing her eyebrows together. She had to focus or she would never say what she needed to. "Everyone pretended to be happy—there were seven of us." The tears began to fall again, but this time they were silent. "I remember the first time they brought a guy in. He, he made me do things, and then I thought it was my fault." Her voice began to shake, but dang it, she needed to keep going. "Some of them were more violent than others. One of them had a thing for fire," she said, laughing bitterly, and holding down the urge to vomit.

Samantha couldn't do the same. She run to the toilet, just in time for her to heave more violently than she ever did when she was pregnant. Anne followed her with her eyes, but if she stopped, she didn't know if she could start again.

"The Mrs. O'Keafe was the worst. At first, she was nice after they were—done with you. She would give us lemonade and cookies and stuff if we were good," Anne said, her mouth going dry.

There wasn't a person in the room whose blood didn't run cold. The O'Keafe's had become a household name, like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. They remembered the blurred pictures, the warning before the videos that what they were about to see would be too graphic to sensitive viewers. They remembered the alliterative phrases used in the article—"house of horrors" namely. They remembered the mug shots and the bloodied children, and that was when perhaps the most horrific thought occurred to Matthew. What if he had seen Anne on the television, but she had been beyond recognition?

Diana had begun to trace every visible scar on Anne's body, that had just been a scar before it was something more. Some of them were raised bumps like razor burns, but other were dark circles and others crevices and valleys that Diana now knew held a thousand lifetimes of pure terror.

But Anne still didn't stop. "But Mrs. O'Keafe became more violent, and I was scared to breathe. She used a rubber hose because it didn't leave marks—she did a lot of strangulation, stuff. If you didn't comply, it got really bad. I remember I dropped a knife so she—she made me sit in the chair, and then she started—cutting me." Her heartbeat picked up, and her breaths were quicker, and this time Matthew's own beat couldn't provide a steady tempo to follow. "I would have died, but then I met my girls." She sniffled, but she sat up a little straighter. This was for them. "Sadie and Hannah. They were so little. Seven and eight. They didn't deserve any of it," she breathed out.

"Neither did you," Diana cried out, and Anne watched her best friend's lip quiver.

"Doesn't matter," she said quickly. "I knew I needed to protect them. But, but then the FBI got closer to finding them, and then they needed to get out of the country. So they sold us all to psychos. Like, real psychos. Apparently they got a lot of money from me. Red hair and all that. I tried to save them," she said, and this time she couldn't stop the sobs. Matthew couldn't help but pick her up again and cuddle her, and she couldn't help but bury herself in him again.

Samantha felt numb.

And then she didn't, and every single horrible thing she had done to Anne—every harsh word, every unwelcoming stare, every undeserved verbal jab, came flooding back to her, and she realized, in the story of a people who had been involved in the "crime of the century" she had somehow become a villain. She wanted to puke again.

"I didn't know!" Anne cried, a bit louder, her hands clutching onto Matthew's shirt. Later, when Samantha tried to wash it, she would see that it had been stretched out beyond repair. Matthew would still wear it though, and Anne still buried her face in its cloth. Whenever she cried for two little girls the world had forgotten. "He took me and was torturing me and I didn't know Sadie and Hannah were there," she cried. "Oh God, it's my fault."

"No!" Samantha wasn't sure if she had ever seen Matthew as passionate, and he certainly wasn't back in the days when they were just two kids in love. This was different. He held Anne fiercely to himself, his arms wrapped completely around her. "None of it was your fault, and it never will be. Whatever happened there—it was their fault. And I promise, as long as I'm living, I will never let anyone touch you again."

Diana wanted to say something, but there was nothing she could possibly say. Her throat felt like it was closing in on itself, and she burst into tears, despite her desire to keep it together for her dearest Anne. Mrs. Barry scooped up her own daughter in her arms, wondering if this was the right thing to do, and Mr. Barry sat in that chair, just as stoic as before. Diana insisted that she wouldn't leave Anne's side, and she didn't, not when the sun shone against the sea green waters, or the blue jay started to chirp outside their window. Finally, though, the Barry's had to draw her away, and Anne wiped her eyes to hug her goodbye. The family promised to call if they needed anything, and then they left.

Anne felt completely drained, and as a result, completely numb. Samantha offered her some breakfast, and she said a thank you before once again falling into silence. Despite the fact that she had not gotten a particularly small amount of sleep compared to other nights, just the outpouring of emotions was enough to make her exhausted. All of her movements felt slow and mechanical, her eyelids drooping shut even as she lifted her fork to her mouth.

Samantha and Matthew both stood in the kitchen, completely at a loss as to what to do.

"We need to get her a psychiatrist." Matthew finally broke the silence, leaning his head against the doorframe. Samantha only nodded her head, any previous bravado having suddenly faded away.

"What if we're not enough?" She whispered, her arms crossed over her chest and her shoulders hunched over.

"What do you mean?" Matthew asked sharply. It was precisely the kind of question that Anne had feared, and he had a feeling it would hurt worse than if they just dropped her and ran.

"I don't know how to help her!" Samantha said, and old selfish desires to protect herself emerged—momentarily. But then they died out, because there was a tiny teenaged red head on her couch, who had curled up into herself and was, and, from the looks of it, was trying to rest.

"I'mguessing a lot of people said that to her," Matthew said. He supposed he was abit harsher than needed, but recently he had come to be that way when it cameto all Anne related things. It was a funny definition of love, but maybe it wasone nonetheless. "We'll figure it out. 

I know this chapter is short. Let me know if you prefer shorter or longer chapters, and remember to vote and comment if you enjoyed the story!