Dear Anna

by Katie Blanchard

  “Half?” He squeezes the table edge.

  “Half,” I confirm.

  “Why do you deserve that? You don’t even work.”

  “I didn’t. I do now. But, you’re correct in the marriage you did support me financially, making me a dependent. I get a least three year’s worth of alimony, I believe.”

  “What?”

  “Or half of everything, and I leave you alone.”

  “I’ll fight it.” His jaw pops in frustration.

  “I suspected as much, so we will just get together in court when we can.” I point around the room. “I know you are rather tied up these days.”

  “You bitch,” he spits.

  “Murderer,” I correct, but he assumes that I accuse him.

  “I am innocent.”

  “Slit her throat,” I state without the presence of who.

  “I did not.” He looks around nervously as other visitors and inmates are taking an interest in us. John’s an embarrassment, and it infuriates him to feel like others are witnessing him in this state.

  “Dumped her body,” I continue, only this time I do direct the accusation at John.

  “I won’t give you the divorce. Do you know what is happening to me in here? I haven’t slept for days. I was raped by two guys the first night I was in here, and they keep trying to hunt me down again and get me alone. And now you want to come in here and ask me for a divorce? What happened to for better or for worse?”

  “I’m not asking you, John. I’m telling you. I filed for a divorce. If you fight it, I’ll wait it out until it goes through. I won’t have your name attached to me anymore. And the guys who raped you? Let them have you. It wouldn’t be the first time that you stepped out on our marriage, would it? You want to come at me for the line ‘for better or for worse,’ then how about forsaking all others?” I feel a small burst in my heart to know that the universe has a funny bone, and it’s somewhere in John’s stolen asshole virginity. “You always did want to try anal.” I laugh.

  “Goddammit, Medeia.” He slams his fist on the table. The guard starts to walk over.

  “Goodbye, John. Take your papers with you, won’t you, dear?” I stand to leave. The guard takes John by the arm.

  “I warned you, tough guy. Not in my visiting room, back to your bunk.” He lifts John off the chair by just one arm. There’s no way that John can fight him back.

  “Sir, will you kindly make sure he takes these with him?” I tap the papers on the desk. After looking down at them, the guard smiles at me as he plucks them up with ease and delight.

  “Certainly, ma’am. And good for you.” He has a wide grin, and I return the gesture.

  “Goodbye, John.” I look into his eyes. It’s at that moment that I confess through that look that I put him there. I tell him with my eyes that I’m the reason he got it up the ass by some bullies in the big house. I’m the reason he has no friends who want to associate with him anymore. I am the reason he won’t be coming home.

  But, just like John, he doesn’t listen when I talk.

  Medeia’s Journal

  Dear Anna,

  You got what you wanted. I’m leaving John. How does it feel? I wish you could tell me.

  Medeia’s Journal

  Dear Anna,

  Did you realize that John had isolated me from everyone I loved? If you had known, would you have stopped him? Was the act just part of your plan to get me prepped and ready for the life of solitude in a mental facility?

  I am curious about your part in the plan to have me committed to the mental hospital. Were you just the motivation behind it, or did you have a hand in plotting the whole thing?

  Medeia’s Journal

  Dear Anna,

  Christmas is over now, and you didn’t thank me for your gift. Manners, my dear.

  Medeia’s Journal

  Dear Anna,

  I live a whole new life now, but you’re still here. Our redemption is coming up fast — John’s trial. There are riots in the street for your justice. I think about telling them that it has already been served, but they would never listen.

  I watch as your mother gains glory in her fame from your demise. Would you like me to take her out?

  She smiles for the camera and puts that GoFundMe cash she raised for a search party to find you to good use on her vanity. At least you were someone else’s cash cow, instead of always being the one to milk the teat.

  Medeia’s Journal

  Dear Anna,

  The trial is tomorrow, and this will be the longest letter that I write to you. The more I talk to you here the closer I feel, but honestly, who knew you better than me?

  Your mother wants justice for her ‘precious little princess,’ but she didn’t want to be near you when you were alive. I watch the moment she slammed the door in your face over and over in my mind every time I see her on TV screaming for your justice. How could she be so cold? You would have benefited from the kind of love that my mother gave to me, but it didn’t save her in the end, either.

  We’re on a rollercoaster with the men we have chosen in this life—your mother, mine, you, and me. Your mother never stuck with anyone long, but never gave up hope that the next guy coming was going to be the one to save her. You were a product of a one-night stand that she didn’t want to be reminded of. You weighed her down when it came to her future. She couldn’t get far with a baby around, so to please the man in her life at the time, she relinquished you to her mother. Your grandmother fought for you, at least.

  My mother was too far into a bad situation to turn around and admit she made a mistake. Call it foolish pride that she clung to, but she chose us instead of herself. She believed staying was better than being on her own. She didn’t think she could provide us any better life on her own. She was different than your mother, yet her fate was worse. She laid cold in a puddle of her blood because the lover who was supposed to protect her got mad.

  John told you about my mother, you helped him plan little things to say to spark instability in my recovery, but I won’t hold it against you. You didn’t know her. She was everything. Things you couldn’t dream of being, and things I’m too far gone from achieving myself. You judged solely on your love for John, and that emotion is beyond itself a powerful thing. You turned yourself into a calculating person to satisfy the itch to be with him.

  I changed once for his love as well, so I can understand that part of you.

  Then there’s you and me; tangled with the same man, but our relationships were so different. John adored you. He didn’t batter and berate your self-esteem until you molded into a lifeless doll. No, he championed you, adapted to your evil, manipulative ways, meshing them with the ability he already possessed. You were both on your way to becoming a powerful entity together. You were made for each other in a sick way, but like all the others before us, I didn’t want to play the tragic part in your love story.

  I broke the pattern.

  I’m free, but you still chain me.

  I see you in my sleep. Jane shakes me awake to silence my screams. Sometimes she sits with me for hours before I fall asleep again, constantly telling me that it gets better. Can I tell you about Jane?

  She’s wonderful. The strength she has. She also broke her pattern, took justice into her own hands from her abuser. You wouldn’t like her. You didn’t have the backbone to take down your torturous mother, you became her, instead — a whore.

  I hope you find peace where you are. For me, I will roam the rest of my life with the cross attached to my back, and you tucked into my pocket safe from the world’s knowledge.

  Forty-Five

  The trial day has finally arrived. I make my way to the courthouse after debating all night about coming at all. I refuse to be on the witness stand. John’s lawyer, Dennis, believed it best I didn’t as well. John may have started the whole situation, but I was the catalyst moving its direction, and now I need to see the ending.

  Jane flanks my side. I don’t know if I would be able
to make it through this moment without her. We park in the parking garage and walk toward the front of the building with our arms linked. When we come around the corner, we see the protestors with their signs and hear their chants of justice for Anna.

  In a world that was once John’s playground, he is despised by all who lay eyes on him now. Strangers spit toward him as he is escorted inside for his judgment to begin. They shout and wave their homemade signs in his direction.

  “Why don’t you slit your own throat?”

  “You should get the death penalty.”

  “Look at her face, John, I hope she haunts your dreams.”

  Their brutality causes me to wince. If the police had looked harder for another suspect instead of closing the case so quickly, they would have found me, and those would be the words ringing inside my ears as my hands are clasped together in cuffs.

  “Come on.” Jane nudges me forward. We are not without our own judgment as we walk up. An older lady decides to shout my identity to the crowd, and they gather around to offer me their opinions on my life.

  “If you could have fucked your husband better maybe she’d be alive.”

  “Excuse me?” Jane screams.

  “Maybe if she paid attention to what her husband was doing, she could have saved this girl’s life.” The old lady looks at me as if I’m a pile of shit. I want to smile and kiss her cheek and tell her that I am the monster that lives under the bed waiting to grab you in your sleep. I’m the face in the morning of every mistake you’ve ever committed. I am the one who took her life. I passed judgment on them and punished how I saw fit.

  I stare her down, and she bustles away out of my sight. I wish her death and pray that I have the powers bestowed in my dead heart to cast such a spell.

  Jane pulls me forward. “Ignore the old bat.”

  We make our way through the entrance and the metal detectors, then we are directed to the courtroom. I lean on Jane while we walk, feeling my legs begin to give way underneath me.

  “Oh god, Jane,” I sputter at the door. “Where do we sit?”

  There is a John side, and there is an Anna side. There is no I-hate-both-of-them side.

  Jane hesitates, as well. “Uh. I’m not sure. Is it like a wedding? Do they each have sides?” she whispers as people push past us, annoyed that we are in their way of seeing the show.

  “Well, Anna’s side is insane. Let’s sit on the other side—” she doesn’t say John’s side— “to stay away from the crowd.”

  “Toward the back, please,” I add weakly.

  Among the audience in attendance to this shit show stands a crew of Anna’s Angels, each decked out with their own personalized printed photo t-shirt. I laugh inside my head. The group is led by Anna’s mother, who didn’t give a damn about her child when she was alive. She’s eating up every second of this fame. Each time I see her on the news she has something new in the way of a makeover. She finally got veneers to cover the immense gaps in her teeth—years of drug use, no doubt, and their consequences. Her wig is off-centered as I watch her raise her hands high above her head holding an 8x10 framed picture of Anna. Nails, freshly done. Had to look stunning for all the cameras.

  I take note of the picture in her hands; it’s Anna’s senior picture from nearly five years ago. Her mother couldn’t even bother to have a more recent photo. How can anyone believe this woman’s story? How does she have an entire three rows of pews donning this ridiculous apparel? It’s amazing what a human being will do for attention, even a few minutes of it.

  As I scan down the line, I meet Samantha’s face four rows up. She’s rolling her eyes at Anna’s mother. I watch her shake her head, filled with abhorrence, as she turns back around in her seat. Thank you. Someone else understands. She catches my eye when she turns. I stare with my mouth open.

  Could she place me from the trinket shop? She lends me a half smile — an apology for having such a shitty friend. I bow my head.

  “What was that?”

  “I’m not sure,” I tell Jane. “I think I was just given some weird apology from Anna’s best friend.”

  “How can that be Anna’s best friend? I thought Anna was all looks.” She glances back at Anna’s mother to confirm the vanity trait.

  “That’s not what she looked like before,” I answer her mind’s questions.

  I gaze upon the jury perched in their judgment box, higher than everyone else. There are a plethora of middle-aged women who read their Bibles front to back every year. John doesn’t stand a chance in hell at winning this case. They don’t like adulterers or the kind that approve of the activity under any circumstance.

  “Anna was a model human being who volunteered at many organizations...” While the attorney describes her to everyone, I lose count of the groups she participated in. Funny, in all the time I followed her she didn’t once reach out to the poor and needy aside from taking her mom some overpriced groceries. I did some digging of my own into Anna’s background when it was finally free from suspicion and found that the first married man that she had an affair with was a pastor. Instead of thumping people with Bibles, they thumped on it like rabbits. She may have presented herself as a model citizen on the outside, but inside lingered a pure evil.

  John’s lawyer’s opening statement sets out to slander Anna’s name.

  “Miss Trayor had a history of manipulating married men into getting things she wanted from them. Whether it be a car, money, or some other material item, she made a lot of enemies that way, but John wasn’t one of them. My client is innocent. Miss Trayor’s seedy past led to her demise. Someone framed John to get back at her for the past.”

  It might make a little headway with some of the overly stuffy broads behind that box, but to me, it was just plain tacky. The prosecutor shakes his head, he has seen it all before in his line of work, but I bet this tactic was just a little too much for even the strongest of hearts. John’s lawyer continues.

  “We don’t have the evidence to prove the allegations, but enough of Miss Trayor’s past on record to give reasonable doubt to Mr. Moore’s involvement in the crime.” I bow my head into my hand and shake side to side. John found the most expensive idiot known to man.

  The first witnesses that the prosecution calls to the stand are his strongest on the list, professionals who can explain the evidence found at the crime scene and the drop-off site in extensive detail and layman’s terms. They are poetically versed in their science, impressing all the people in the room. Even John is impressed by the way they speak.

  “The body was found near the woods by the warehouse, after investigating some tire marks and finding Miss Trayor’s car still at the warehouse, we decided to gain a search warrant for the building. Upon entering, we found a mattress stained with blood. That blood proved to be Anna Trayor’s.

  “The blood splatter on the cardboard boxes and floor surrounding the mattress, show that the assailant was above her at the time of the attack and sliced her neck from left to right in a quick swipe.”

  “The toxicology reports indicate that Anna Trayor was drugged with prescription anti-depressants acting as a sleep aid, the same brand that was readily available to Mr. Moore through his wife’s medicine cabinet.”

  “Rigor Mortis began to set in at approximately two hours after Miss Trayor’s demise, and this allowed us to take in account how her body was positioned during the attack. It was a neutral position. There was no struggle. She knew the person above her. And it was indicated, in my professional opinion, that the killer was a lover because of the proximity of secondary blood splatter from the attacker’s face dripping back onto Miss Trayor’s.”

  “The DNA samplings on the knife and the semen found inside Miss Trayor’s body came back a perfect match for Mr. Moore.”

  “It was found and noted that Mr. Moore did have a violent past, having spent three months in prison for an aggravated assault charge. On the day of his arrest, his wife was there with a bruise on her face that she did confirm came from Mr. Mo
ore striking her. He was also found with a gun that he legally cannot own.”

  I bounce my foot off the ground; to an innocent bystander it merely looks like a nervous tick, but inside I’m finally bouncing like Anna with joy as all the scientists hammer the nails into John’s coffin. Without a single doubt, these were John Moore’s fingerprints. The fingerprints found in a perfect grip formation on the knife. They even hold the knife up and demonstrate how a killer would use it. Some of the ladies on the jury gasp as they watch in horror as the forensic expert explains how her throat was slit. I love how close they come to the truth; science is a marvel. The only part they are missing is me.

  John’s lawyer flailed at cross-examining the forensic experts and going so far as to insult one when he questioned his background.

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but I’ve been in this field for a near forty years now, before all of the advancements in science. I can confirm without a doubt that it is your client’s fingerprints holding the knife in the exact position it would take to create such a wound upon the victim’s neck.”

  John sank in his chair with each testimony, but he got even lower when the witnesses were brought up to provide the motive.

  Forty-Six

  “I want to call Samantha Davis to the stand, please.” I sit up straighter at the sound of her name, and Jane follows suit.

  After being sworn in, Samantha begins to give the jury and judge something that the forensic experts couldn’t provide—the story of Anna and John’s relationship. I love this girl’s high morals. I hope for great things in her life. Probably not friends, because she’s on the stand singing her dead friend’s sins like a canary, but great things, nonetheless.

  Samantha sits on the stand without an ounce of fear haunting her.