Becoming Anne Again

Chapter Seventy

A/N Thank you for staying with me and supporting me through my hiatus! I can't promise that I'll be uploading regularly again, so this might just be me peeking back in for a second. I'm going to try though, and I'm hoping that I've gotten through my slump.

This is another short chapter, but it's an important one to set up the next few. Thank you all again. I love you all!

In the end, Andrew Phillips plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of fifteen years. And even though Anne knew prison was going to be hell for the child rapist, and even though she knew when he got out, he was going to be banished to some community of molesters nowhere near kids, it wasn't enough.

Mr. Phillips got fifteen years. Prissy Andrews got the rest of her life.

Mrs. Andrews herself clung to her innocence, but the court found her guilty of failing to take reasonable steps to lessen the risk of abuse, and she was sentenced to two and a half years in correctional facility—the maximum penalty for the sentencing. Indeed, there was a sense of vengeance in the court room that day. A mother's most basic instinct should be to protect her child. When that was blatantly violated, blood had to be shed.

Shortly after sentencing, Robert and Kelly Andrews, parents of Billy and Jane and the uncle and aunt of Prissy, put a for sale sign up on their house. The town had become filled with too many shadows for them to believe they could ever see the light there. The vacation land had become nothing more than a den of monsters, and the family planned on fleeing with their charge to Texas, where Robert Andrews was able to obtain a transfer. And most importantly, where the death penalty was most frequently used.

The house sold quickly, and they were gone.

Anne wondered if Prissy ever knew she was innocent. She wondered if Prissy ever knew she wasn't in love, that she was abused, that it wasn't right, that they were two little girls the world forgot.

These thoughts constantly plagued her. She thought it would be better when Prissy escaped Cape Cod, but it only got worse. Despite her therapist constantly telling her she needed to let go, that Prissy need to help herself, that it wasn't Anne's responsibility, the worry eroded her spirit. She couldn't help but think that Dr. Small didn't understand, that Ms. Keller didn't understand, that they didn't understand the deadly sisterhood that Anne and Prissy were a part of. They didn't understand that when one girl slipped away, a piece of the souls of her sisters were chipped away. When one drowned, they all did.

It wasn't quite like it had been right after the sentencing of the O'Keafe's, or when she plastered herself onto Sadie and Hannah's coffin, begging to be taken with them. But still, she became more rigid, more irritable, and Matthew and Samantha were heartbroken as they watched her drown. Diana felt like she was crying all the time as Anne gradually and unwittingly pushed her away. Anne found her physical attraction growing with her depression, a primal desire that was nothing more than a masked need for control and retaking her own sexuality. Diana deserved better.

As the days became warmer, Anne found herself spending more and more time on the beach.

It was on such a day that Anne found herself standing by the coastline, the water gently rolling against her feet as she stood at the edge of the shore. The water was still ice cold, and her toes turned red from the bone-numbing cold. She didn't care; her eyes were fixed on the horizon, her hands balled inside the pockets of her sweatshirt.

She took another step into the ocean, until finally the bottoms of her jeans were dipped into the water. On instinct, she rose up on her toes, but then she planted her feet again in the water, letting the cold radiate through her body.

She wondered if Prissy used pain to ground herself too. She wondered if Tinisha got her happily ever after, wondered if she made it after she ran. She wondered if SSA James ever got to have a child.

She took another step into the water.

Soon, she was up to her knees, her jeans clinging to her and chafing against her skin. But it wasn't enough, and she found herself peeling her hoodie off of her clammy body, then letting it fall limp beside her, holding onto its sleeve while the rest of the cloth floated listlessly on the water—just like her.

So there she was, on the ocean's shore, her jeans soaked and her sports bra barely covering her. Still, she sank into the water, pushing her hoodie down further until her fingers were digging into the sand, the waves pushing against her chest as she hunched over. The cold morphed into pain, shooting up her body in short spikes, but she forced herself to be still.

She had become so encompassed in her own world of nihilism and pain, literally frozen in place, that she hadn't heard the sound of feet running down to the ocean. "Anne, what are you doing!" Gilbert asked, his voice panicked.

Anne jumped up without thinking, whirling around to stare at him. In her surprise she dropped her hoodie in the water completely, and it was pushed away from her by an ocean wave.

It was the first time Gilbert had seen her in her bra in daylight. But it wasn't the sexual nature of their position that he noticed. It wasn't the way her red hair was spilling over her face, her swollen lips or her wild eyes.

It was the angry brand across Anne's stomach, time having melded it seamlessly into Anne's skin along with the million other scars that had found a place on her body. Slut.

She wanted to throw up.

Blindly, she grabbed for her hoodie, brusquely pushing past Gilbert and racing to her house. "Anne!" Gilbert's strangled voice echoed behind her, but she didn't look back. She just kept going, even though it felt like she couldn't breathe, her cries stuck in her throat even as he vision blurred from the tears that were violently pouring down her cheek.

The door slammed behind her, and Anne had just barely dropped her sopping wet hoodie on the ground before she completely collapsed, curling into a fetal position, her cries bordering on screams as she waited for the pain to turn to numbness.

A/N If any of you are struggling, please know you are not alone. You are loved, and there is hope. I love you!