by M. O'Keefe
“My mom died when I was eighteen, and Hoyt was already working at the farm. I didn’t know how to run the farm, the bookkeeping and the paperwork. Mom did all of it. And when she died I was just so lost. So totally lost. Smith wasn’t good at that stuff, though he tried. We both did. But then Hoyt kind of stepped in. And he offered to do more and then still more. All the stuff I didn’t know how to do or was scared of—he just took over. And then I don’t…I don’t really know how it started, but it seemed like…we were dating. Like I was his, already. And that’s what I was used to, you know. I was like an appendage—first my mom’s and then Hoyt’s. I didn’t know how to be my own self. And I was really alone and really scared and when he asked me to marry him, it seemed like the right thing to do.”
“You were eighteen.” I nodded. “Did you love him?”
I smiled and tried to stop my tears. “I don’t know anything about love, Dylan. All I know is survival. And I didn’t think I was capable of surviving on my own. But I did like him at the beginning. I…I wanted to be in love. And my mom, over the years, had sort of convinced me that being alone was the worst thing that could happen. Being alone meant no one loved me and I was terrified of that.”
“Then what happened?” He tucked a piece of hair back behind my ear and I flinched away from him.
“Annie?”
I closed my eyes. “Please…I’ll answer all your questions, but please don’t touch me.”
I felt him move back, pull up a chair so he was close, but no longer close enough to touch. I dragged in a ragged breath.
“Then we got married. A little civil ceremony at the courthouse and for…I don’t know, a few months, everything seemed fine. Happy, even. Or maybe I was just forcing myself to believe that. To want that to be true. It’s not like I had any scale with which to measure that, you know?” I thought of those evenings on the porch, learning chess with Smith. Or when he taught me to drive. Those were my happy times at the farm. So few and far between, like flowers growing out of asphalt. Since running, though? That evening in Tiffany’s trailer with the buckets and the hangover the next day. Cleaning up that field. Skinny-dipping. All those conversations with Dylan on the phone. How sad that those were really my happiest times.
“Annie?” Dylan said, pulling me from my thoughts.
I cleared my throat. “After a while Hoyt stopped me from going to church. Or into town if I had to. What few friends I had, he didn’t like and I…stopped seeing them. Stopped seeing anyone. And then he had me fire Smith. We were already isolated out on the farm, but he turned it into a prison. And I didn’t even realize.” I turned my face away.
“Do you need a drink?” he asked.
I shook my head. I felt like I was going to throw up. “The first time he hit me,” I said, “it wasn’t even strange. It was like he’d been conditioning me to expect it. Like he spent months making sure that when he smacked me and told me it was my fault I would believe it. That I wouldn’t even think it was all that shocking. It had been over a chicken potpie that was still frozen in the middle or something. And he hit me and I…I just picked up the pieces of that potpie he’d thrown. The whole time my cheek was on fire and I’d bitten my tongue so bad I was swallowing blood.”
“Jesus,” he breathed, and I tried very hard to tell myself that this was not my shame; it was Hoyt’s. I did not have to be embarrassed that I’d been hit. That I’d been systematically hurt. That I couldn’t see a way out of it.
And maybe someday I’d believe that with my whole heart. But today was not that day. I was embarrassed. Embarrassed that I’d trusted a man like that. Married him. Held myself accountable to him. Let him do that. Over and over again. And I’d convinced myself it was okay.
“How long did this go on?”
“Four years. Until…he wanted to sell the majority of the land to an energy company to put up windmills. And I agreed only so far—”
“Is it your land?”
I nodded.
“Annie, it’s your farm?”
“Yes.” I snapped, hearing everything he wasn’t saying. About how I’d been a coward to leave all my land behind. That I should have been stronger and gotten Hoyt to leave somehow. I knew all of this in my gut, but running with no plan and nothing but fear and three thousand dollars had, at the time, seemed smarter. Easier. I’d left my legacy behind, my livelihood and the only home I’d ever known. The truth of it sat like a ball of fire in my stomach. “It’s been in my mom’s family for three generations and I didn’t want to sell any more of it. And I wouldn’t change my mind.”
“What did he do?”
I put my hand to my throat as if I could still find the bruises he put there. I wanted to dig my thumb into one of those black wounds and remind myself of the pain. “He strangled me until I passed out on the kitchen floor. And he left me there. Went to bed. Just…like I was nothing. Like he could do anything to me and it didn’t matter. And I sat on that floor and had to convince myself that it wasn’t true. That I did matter.”
It took hours. Days to build up that courage. To believe I mattered. That’s how far he had pushed me down.
Dylan stood up and paced away from me, hands locked on his head. I watched his agitation as if from a long ways away. I felt increasingly numb to the whole thing. To all of it.
“I waited a few days and then ran.”
He turned, his jaw clenched so hard I worried he was making gravel out of his teeth.
“What about divorce?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“It’s your land, Annie!”
“What’s the good of it if I’m dead?” I cried.
“I have lawyers, Annie. Good ones. Ones that can keep you safe and get you free and make sure he crawls away with nothing. Goes to jail and never comes out.”
“I don’t have money for that, Dylan.”
He stared at me, his eyes so sad. “Do you think I wouldn’t give you that money? Do you think I could let you just walk away after you’ve told me this?”
I blinked. “Yes,” I said.
“What kind of man do you think I am?”
I shook my head and turned in the chair, toward the bedroom as if to go grab more of my things. But I didn’t have anything. Nothing. Not even three thousand dollars of stolen money and a box of hair dye.
“I think you should take me home.”
“Listen to me, Annie,” he said, stepping close, but not too close as if the boundaries between us had been rearranged. “Do you really want to go back to that shitty trailer park and hide for the rest of your life?”
I wished I could say I wasn’t going to do that. But I had no other plan. I was…hell, I was just like Ben, hiding and waiting for something better to come along.
“Let me help you,” he said.
“How?”
“We can talk to the lawyers today, Annie. And…I want you to stay in my house in Charleston. It’s safer, Annie. It’s so much safer.”
“No.” I shook my head, denying him, denying myself, because I should have done that a long time ago. The first time I picked up the phone. Every single time afterward. At the very least when Margaret had put me in the blue room, I should have stayed there. So much would be different if I hadn’t been so curious and selfish. If I’d left Layla out of it and just stayed Annie McKay.
“Baby, listen. You got this far, on your own and with nothing. There’s no shame in taking help now.”
“I don’t want you to get any more mixed up in this. I feel so bad for lying to you.”
“Don’t, Annie. Don’t feel bad. Just take my help.”
He kept talking, something about restraining orders, and to my great shame, my horrified disbelief, I wanted to nod and say thank you and yes, please, help me. Take care of these things for me, because I don’t understand them and I’m scared. And I feel so damn small in the face of all I need to do.
It was exactly, exactly how I felt when Mom died and Hoyt walked into the office, looked at the computer, an
d told me he knew how to do payroll. And he could help.
I stood up from the chair so fast it screeched over the hardwood floor. I wished I could say no to all of his help. That I had the resources to do this on my own, but I didn’t. But just because I needed help didn’t mean that I needed to pull him in any deeper. I had to have a fence around his help. For my sake.
For his. I could not rely on him for any more than those things that I could not do without.
“I wish I could say I don’t need your help…but I do. Clearly, I don’t even know where to start. And your lawyers would be a big help. I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“No, Dylan,” I snapped. “I’m not without means. I have money. I’m not as rich as you, but I can pay you back.”
He watched me, solemn and serious, and nodded. “All right. Why don’t you go lie down for a while,” he said. “And I’ll set up a conference call.”
Oh, what an incredible comfort that would be! To go lie down on that bed, curl up in those sheets that smelled like Dylan and let him make a few phone calls.
But it was comfort I did not deserve, and could not take. Not if I had any intention of being able to look myself in the mirror with any kind of pride.
I had to go home.
I took a deep breath and began the painful process of removing all but what was necessary of Dylan Daniels from my life. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “For lying.”
“I understand why you did.”
“You…seem so calm.” I thought that if I’d found out that everything I believed about a person was a lie and that I’d been sucked into something as filthy as adultery, I wouldn’t be quite so forgiving.
“Baby, I’m fucking furious. I’m…crazy pissed, and if I ever have the pleasure of getting my hands on this Hoyt asshole, I will end him. But I’m not mad at you. You were protecting yourself. And that I understand.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For…all of this. For…” calling me. For letting me call you. For keeping me safe. For the pleasure you showed me how to give to myself and the even greater pleasure you gave to me. For making me tell you this secret. For…for helping me now, when I feel so alone. “For everything.”
I sobbed again and pressed my hands to my face. It was over. This was goodbye and I couldn’t believe how sad I was. How grief had carved a hole in my stomach. I wanted to walk away from him with my head held high and perhaps a lying smile on my face, but I couldn’t even manage that.
“Shhhh,” he said, pulling me into his chest. I soaked him in as best I could. His scent. His touch. Everything. I memorized as much as I could for the Dylan Daniels–free days ahead of me. All of them. “Shhhh. Why don’t you go lie down for a while,” he said. “You got about twenty more hours on that birthday wish.”
No. I didn’t. I had about twenty more minutes.
I wrapped my hand around his shirt, feeling his heart pound under my fingers.
“I can’t stay.”
“Come on, now,” he said against my temple. He put his arms around my shoulders. “You haven’t slept much in two days. Take some time.”
I’d taken all the time I could. I’d been greedy. A liar. So much so I didn’t recognize myself. Now that the secret was out, I couldn’t look back at the things I’d done and see any of it that wasn’t desperate and selfish.
I’d played at being Layla and I allowed myself to use this man in a pretty unconscionable way.
“I’ll take your lawyer’s phone number, but I won’t be going to Charleston—”
“You’re going to Charleston.”
“Dylan, please, don’t make me more indebted to you than I already am.”
“It’s not a debt, Annie. It’s help.”
“I used you, Dylan. To make myself feel better. To allow myself to forget that I was married.”
He shook his head, and those sleepy hooded eyes were so sad. So serious. “I used you too, Annie. I have things I’d like to forget too, and for a while, being with you let me.”
“It’s not the same.”
“It is exactly the same.”
“Then…I need to go home for both of our sakes.”
He watched me for a long time and then, maybe, he agreed with me. Or maybe he just saw that despite my tears and my grief I was more than serious. “I’ll get the car.”
I shook my head. “You’re not going to take me. Margaret can take me. Or the man who brought me here. Not you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“A clean break. For both of us. Nothing has changed, Dylan. We still need to end this. And I think it’s better to end it now. Like we’d planned before I told you about Hoyt.”
“Everything is different now, Annie. Everything.”
“No. Nothing is different. Not one thing. You just know who I really am. This is how we end, Dylan. The only way for us to end.” He looked like he was going to argue. “Are you forgetting that Ben is down there?”
“I don’t give a shit about Ben,” he snapped.
I lifted my eyes to his and told him what I didn’t fully understand yet, that despite Ben’s crimes, the ones I knew about and the ones I didn’t, I still cared. “I do.”
And I care about you, too much to drag you off this beautiful mountain into my swamp. Even for a minute.
He stepped back, rubbing his hands through his hair. “This is what you want?”
“This is what I want.”
“Fine,” he said, stepping back again. “I’ll get Margaret. But you’re keeping that damn phone. And when I call you’re going to answer. It’s nonnegotiable.”
“Thank you,” I said.
For one long moment the attraction between us, the connection, the desire and all that lust, tied us together in a bond so strong I had no idea how we were going to break it. Maybe it couldn’t be broken. Perhaps for the rest of my life I would feel this way for this man I could not have.
Or maybe, in time, things could be different between us. I could stand up on my own two feet. Divorce Hoyt, see him punished for what he’d done, and then come back here to this mountain. To Dylan. I could pay him back the money I owed him.
I smiled through my tears, pierced by a bittersweet ache.
“There are things you still don’t know,” he said, as if he could read my thoughts. “About me. I’m still not a man to be building fantasies around.”
I shook my head, because there was nothing I could find out about him that would change how I felt. “It wouldn’t matter.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I know you,” I breathed, putting my hand out to touch him, but he shrugged away. Flinched. My heart squeezed at his rejection. My eyes burned.
“No, baby. No. If I touch you,” he said in a voice like a gravel road, “you won’t leave, not for a while. So I’m not going to hug you. Or kiss you. But I want to. Leave here knowing that. I want you.”
I’d never been wanted. Maybe somewhere deep in the recesses of my mother’s heart she’d wanted me, but Hoyt certainly never had. But I believed Dylan when he said that and I held onto his want as hard as I could.
“I want you too,” I said. He nodded once, giving a heavy jerk, and then he headed for the front door. “I’ll get Margaret.”
I knew when he walked out that door he wasn’t going to be back. And that was good. Better. Easier.
My stomach churned. Feeling like I might throw up, I ran into the bathroom. But there was nothing in my body but nerves and regret and half a bottle of champagne. I splashed water on my face and washed my hands. My body smelled like sex and Dylan and I wasn’t ready to wash that away, so I resisted the siren song of the shower.
When I came back out of the bathroom, Margaret was there. Putting all the food in big Ziploc bags. And then putting the Ziploc bags in another bag.
“You all right?” she asked, watching me with narrowed, knowing eyes.
I nodded; words were really beyond me.
“Read
y?”
“Yes,” I breathed. She stuck two of the bottles of wine from the fridge into the bag and some other things. Strawberries. Melon. More cheese. “Here you go,” she said, holding the bag out to me. “You got some cookies and cinnamon rolls. Some of the wine. The good prosciutto. I gave you all the fruit—you’re going to want to eat that soon, before it goes bad. Some of that cheese and a bunch of crackers.”
“I don’t…That’s…”
“Oh, it will only go to waste here, honey. You just take it.”
“Margaret—”
“Please. He’s going to lock himself up in his garage and tell people he’s fine, when we can all see he’s not. He’s always been that way, hiding himself away when he’s hurt. It’s how we all ended up on this mountain.”
“Because of the accident?”
“He was hurt long before that. And he won’t let anyone take care of him. So, let me take care of you. Just a little. Just…so I can feel like I’m doing something.”
I was extraordinarily glad that Dylan had Margaret up here on this mountain with him. Someone who cared. I took the bag of food because I wasn’t sure if anyone down at that trailer park was going to care at all about me and I would take whatever care, comfort, and cinnamon rolls came my way.
I wanted to believe that Joan, Ben, and even to some extent Tiffany would care. But I had my doubts. Life was pretty threadbare down there and we all had our hands full.
So, I took the food.
And when I got in the car my phone buzzed and I read Dylan’s text message with the contact info attached.
This is the lawyer. His name is Terrance, he’s a good guy and he’s expecting your call. I am expecting you to call me if you need me. But I am also expecting that you are tough and strong enough to do this on your own. And you are.
And I took the comfort of that. I clung to it, holding it against my chest so it would give me strength for the days ahead.
Margaret insisted I sit in the back of the black Mercedes sedan.
“So you can stretch out,” she said. “We got a drive ahead of us.”