Forever Yours, Phoebe Grey

Burning Liquor

Christian's POV

Ana's hands dug into my palm and I tried not to flinch. Dr Flynn sat across from us in his office with a clipboard in hand and his glasses precariously balanced on the tip of his nose. "Six months is coming up fast." He noted solemnly. "Have you made any decisions about how you're going to handle things with Elwood?"

A tear dripped down my wife's cheek and she dabbed it with a crumpled tissue. "Jose is going to keep him for a while and we'll see how that goes. We haven't taken him to visit her just yet. It never felt like the right time." I pulled her close while she tried to choke back sobs.

John nodded. "Why has it never felt like the right time?" He eyed me but I refused to speak. This was Anastasia's session. Mine would come later that week and she needed to heal before I could find my own peace.

She sat up and her cheeks were chapped from the near constant crying. "I mean, how could it be? Phoebe is his mother and she's... how is a boy supposed to handle that?" Doubt crossed her face and I worried that John's line of questioning would turn her off from therapy all together. Though we had a long road ahead Dr Flynn had helped the two of us recover from the blunt of trauma we'd endured.

If only Teddy would book a session.

Dr Flynn readjusted in his seat and moved on. "Ana, you and I spend a lot of time talking about how you've felt since but, and I have heard it from Christian, I would like to hear your perspective on how we got here. Where do you think this began for your daughter?"

I closed my eyes and tried to shut out what I knew would come next. Reliving Phoebe's agony time and time again in my own sessions had fried my nerves but hearing about it from Ana's lips would field dress my corpse and leave parts of me to rot.

"Well, Phoebe was such a happy baby and even when she started school she loved learning." Ana clung to me and I tried to suppress my overwhelming urge to flee the room. "Then when she and Ava were taken life became about getting them back. It was so overwhelming and honestly it was like the fear of what was happening and where they were took over every aspect of our lives. We neglected Theodore and didn't go to work. It blocked out all the sunshine. The world went dark."

He nodded and made a note on his board. "I understand this is hard for you, Mrs Grey. But please tell me about the day you got Phoebe back." My foot tapped impatiently. A decade had passed and we were still living with the fallout of what that horrible man had done.

Ana's nails found their way back into the same gouges but I endured the burning pain. In fact, I embraced it. "The detectives called us all into the station at three in the morning and we all assumed the worst. I mean, they'd told us the statistics. After two months the chances of finding them both alive were so miniscule that I was almost positive we were there to identify bodies. The detectives sat us down and told us that they'd gotten the girls back and I had never been more happy in my entire life. Elliot and Kate got Ava back first and she looked fine. There were some twigs in her hair and dirt on her clothes from when the two of them escaped but otherwise she seemed okay." Ana hunched over and gasped for air.

"Shh, baby, it's okay. You don't have to keep going." I pushed back the burn in my throat.

My wife sat up and shook her head a few times to regain composure. "I'm okay. I'm fine." John looked to her expectantly so she cleared her throat and kept going. "Then we got Phoebe back and she was so much worse off. That monster had pulled out teeth and beaten her within an inch of her life. There wasn't a visible inch of her skin that wasn't bruised whether they were new dark ones or old and yellowed. Ava told the officers that she had been raped so Elliot and Kate got her checked out and did all the testing. But Phoebe insisted that she wasn't and I believed her. I mean, I'm her mother and I figured that she would remember if it happened and tell me. Just as she started to heal we realized she was pregnant with Elwood and I didn't know what to do but she was so level headed and strong. It didn't bother her who the father was or that she was thirteen or anything else." I offered her a new tissue and she used it to blow her nose.