Strange in Skin (29 page)

I dried my hair and ran a straightener through it quickly. I was feeling anxious already, the
adrenaline making me jittery and unable to stand still. One final look in the mirror. I sighed,
dissatisfied but knowing it was probably as good as it was going to get today. Without allowing
myself to stay in this room for a minute longer in case I’d try to talk myself out of going, I reached for
my purse and headed for the stairs.

“Anna?” I heard my father say when I had reached the final step.

I stood still, not knowing if I should turn around. He’d notice I was wearing makeup. He’d force me
to go upstairs, sabotaging me before I even got a chance to leave the house. My heart beat faster. I
started to turn around and look at him. He was sitting in a recliner in the living room with the lamp on,
reading his paper.

“Are you on your way out?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
He didn’t bother to ask where. “May I just speak with you for one moment, please?”

His tone of voice was a lot nicer from the last time I had been face-to-face with him. I wasn’t quite
sure how to react. I took a few steps forward, careful not to get too close to the lamp thinking that the
more I was in the shadows, the more difficult it would be for him to see my glistening lips and black
eyeliner.

“Helene told me that you two had a conversation the other day about … well, you know, you having
been adopted,” he said.

 

I sighed again. “I’d prefer not to talk about it.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” he went on. He took his reading glasses off and looked up at me. “I just don’t
want you to get the wrong idea. We thought it was better not to tell you, because we didn’t want to
hurt you. You’re still our daughter is what I’m trying to say. You always will be and nothing will ever
change that. I hope your heart still feels the same way.”

“It doesn’t,” I snapped.
He actually looked hurt by my comment. “Anna …”

“No.” I put up my hand for him to be quiet. “Under different circumstances, I might be actually
listening to you right now, but you and I both know that things are different.” Life was too complicated
to go back and make any sort of attempts to rekindle anything with my father. “I have to go.” I turned
to leave, expecting him to interject, to block the doorway with his body until I told him that we were
still all a family or something, but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything at all.

There weren’t many cars in the parking lot when I had reached the prison. It was still fairly early
yet. My stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn’t bothered to eat any breakfast. Probably not the
wisest choice, but too late now. I was already here.

I parked the car as the panic settled in once again. Had my father followed me? I was being
paranoid, but for good reason. The realization that I had no plan terrified me once again, and I tried to
push the emotion out of my body, pushing it down into the depths of my stomach so that it couldn’t
totally control me. I lifted up my hand. It was already shaking.

I got out of the car. The sun felt good on my back. It actually wasn’t too cold today. Maybe I was
just sweating from being so nervous and wasn’t a very good judge of the temperature. I started pacing
around the parking lot trying to think. Again, I came up empty handed. So I started to just walk around
the prison. My boots shuffled against the sidewalk that had been freshly salted. I walked past
windows of the prison, fully aware that someone may recognize me.

I got off the sidewalk and began going through the snow. It wasn’t very deep on the one side of the
prison where the wind had made it drift. I stared down at the cold ground as I went, down at my feet.
Then I glanced up at the huge building towering above me and the frustration settled in. What was I
doing? I can’t just waltz on in there. They’d probably arrest me this time. This was just plain crazy
and a really bad idea. I started picking up the pace a little. I decided I would walk completely around
the prison and then head back to my car. I was already halfway around anyway. I looked up just then. I
froze dead in my tracks.

Straight up ahead of me was a fenced-in recreational outdoor area for the inmates. There were
basketball courts and picnic tables. And more importantly, to my surprise, there were actually people
out there this morning. I squinted my eyes in the sunlight to try to get a better look. There were a lot of
prisoners out there. A flicker of hope swelled in my heart, bursting through the frustration. I walked a
few yards closer to get a better look.

“No!” I gasped, a smile instantly appearing on my face. It couldn’t be. It was. There sitting on the
edge of a picnic table with his back almost against the fence sat Emry. He was slouched over like the
first time I had seen him, his hair in his face as he sat there perfectly still. It was definitely him. Joy
shot through every inch of me. Fate. This was truly fate today.

It took all I had not to run over to him. I had to move casually so as not to draw too much attention
to myself. I knew I would only have a few minutes at most until someone did realize I was standing
there, but I’d take it.

I was almost there and couldn’t contain myself any longer. “Emry!” I said in a loud whisper.
“Emry!” I walked over to the fence and wrapped my fingers around the tiny holes in it. “Emry, turn
around. It’s me!”

As if in slow motion, Emry’s body rose to a more upright position as he turned his head and his
beautiful blue eyes locked on mine. His lips turned upwards in a closed smile, and that’s when I
noticed it. His face. He had a huge black bruise covering his right eye and his bottom lip was slightly
swollen and scabbed as it had been busted open.

I gasped and put my hand over my mouth. “Oh, Emry, what have they done to you?”

He walked over to me with his head down, ashamed that I had seen him like this. He wrapped his
fingers around mine in the fence. The warmth of his touch overwhelmed me. My heart ached to see
him like this.

“It’s nothing,” he mumbled. “I’m so glad to see that you’re all right. I wasn’t sure what they had
done to you. It was killing me.”
“Who did this?” I demanded. “Was it my father? Buck?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It’s fine.”

 

He was being too quiet. Maybe he wasn’t as excited to see me as I was him. This cloud of sadness
drifted around him. I wanted to hug him so badly, to touch his wounded face and ease his pain.

“I had to come see you. I’ve missed you so much,” I blurted out right away. I knew I should be on
the lookout to see if anyone had caught onto my being there, but my eyes couldn’t leave his face. It felt
like it had been so long, like I needed to memorize it all over again or else I’d forget what he looked
like when I was away from him.

“Anna, you have to be careful. Tell me you are,” he whispered, his fingers still gripping onto mine.

“Emry, they’re after you,” I told him. I had to get it all out. He had to know before I wasn’t able to
tell him. “A woman named Mrs. Anderson is leading a group of men who are against you. They think
you worship the devil after what happened with Buck. But she’s like a witch. I saw them perform
some sort of ritual.”

“You saw?”

“Well,” I said, knowing he was probably going to be upset with me that I had put myself in such a
vulnerable situation. “Yes, but they didn’t see me.”
“Anna,” he said in a worried tone.

“Emry, please,” I begged. “Just listen to me. There was another, Lucas Banesberry. He had some
sort of strength too. Mrs. Anderson had him killed, Emry. She’s a murderer, I just know it. You’re the
one who has to be careful. She’s dangerous. She’ll stop at nothing to get what she wants.”

Suddenly I heard whistles being blown and shouting I was certain directed at me.
“Hey, you there!” someone yelled out. “Get away from there!”
Emry didn’t bother to turn around. “Run, Anna. Get out of here. Now!”

I looked at my fingers intertwined around his. The tears started to flow. I couldn’t bear being
separated from him again. He stared at me with those blue eyes which were full of fear as he tried to
urge me to leave.

“Go!” he hissed.
I nodded as the tears dripped from my cheeks. He took his hands away from mine. I turned to go.
“Anna,” he said.
I turned back around.
“I love you.”
The words tore through me and made my lungs feel as if they were suffocating me instead of helping

me to breathe. How could I leave such a beautiful creature as Emry Logan behind, not knowing when
I’d ever be able to get an opportunity again such as this one? I had fallen in love, and he had felt the
same, and now we couldn’t even see one another. It was unbearable.

I started to run as fast as I could through the snowy patch of grass that I had just come through. I
heard footsteps behind me, policemen shouting. I had almost made it back to the sidewalk when I got
tackled from behind. I fell to the hard ground, my face digging in the snowy mud beneath me.

“Don’t move!” he told me.

I recognized the voice immediately. It was Buck. I didn’t bother to put up a fight. It was no use at
this point. He forced both of my arms behind my back, my shoulders hurting from the sudden force.
Then I felt him slap cold handcuffs on my wrists as they cut into my skin. He pulled me to my feet.

“I figured you’d be back,” Buck said.

 

I stared him straight in the eye and didn’t bother to say a word. My heart was aching, but a sense of
joy was somewhere in there, too. Emry Logan was in love with me.

Later that night, I was curled up in a ball on my side of the couch, a blanket wrapped around me.
Matthew sat beside me watching TV and giggling away. I stared at the wall in front of me. I hadn’t
stayed at the prison too long after Buck had handcuffed me. He took me into a little room in the prison
and left me there. It wasn’t long before my father had come down to retrieve me. He told me to stand
up and come on, but we barely exchanged any words, nor made much eye contact with one another. I
followed him outside to my car where he told me he’d have someone drop it off at the house later. I
was to go with him in his car. Again, the entire way home he said nothing, nor I to him. And here I
was, lying on this couch, wallowing in my agony.

This house was just as much a prison to me as the actual prison itself was to Emry. At least when I
was down there, I knew he was there also. Here, there was no one I could turn to. Besides Matthew,
everyone inside these walls were as good as enemies to me now. I pulled the blanket up to my chin,
and after a while, I started to drift off to sleep.

“Anna?”
I opened my eyes.
“Here, Anna, I made you some chicken noodle soup.”
My mother set down a little bowl on the end table beside my head. I closed my eyes again.
“I’m not hungry.”
She sat down on the edge of the couch and put her hand on my knee. “Now don’t be silly,” she said.

“You have to eat something.”
I sat up and faced her. “If there’s something you need to tell me, just tell me.”
Matthew let out another laugh and pointed excitedly toward the cartoon he was watching.

A very serious expression came over my mother’s face. She looked down at her hands as she
crossed them in front of her.

“I’m very worried about you,” she confessed.
“Don’t bother,” I lashed out.

She didn’t move a muscle. “I want you to be careful, Anna. Mrs. Anderson, well, she’s dangerous.
Don’t mess with her.”
She knew about me and Emry now. My father must have finally told her.

“Listen,” she whispered, turning to face me. “I know you don’t want to talk to me like you did
before. I know I’ve screwed things up, but I want you to know I’m still here for you. I know that you
have to be suffering all alone and need somebody to talk to.”

I studied her eyes. I still didn’t trust her. If Mrs. Anderson could have some sort of hold on my
father, how did I know that she didn’t have one on her? No. I couldn’t risk leaking any information out
to her. I started to feel slightly guilty though about snapping at her. Maybe she was being genuinely
nice without any other motive besides worry.

“I appreciate that,” I said.

 

She smiled and patted my leg, satisfied with some sort of answer. “I always thought you’d end up
with Buck Brady.”

I cringed at the mention of his name.
“Buck always seemed like such a kind man. It’s not that way at all, is it?”

It surprised me that she would know that, let alone bring it up to me. I took a deep breath. “It’s like
he’s bipolar. He does have this nice side to him, but then on the other hand, he can be pretty mean,
too.”

She nodded as if she understood. Perhaps my father had a similar way about him. “So now you love
someone else?”
I stared at her, clenching my jaw together. She was trying so hard to get me to open up to her about
Emry. She had always been curious about any type of social life I had, because it hadn’t been much
growing up. But now, I couldn’t decide if she was prying out of that same curiosity or because my
father was banking on her ability to be able to get me to talk. I said nothing.

She laughed and touched my cheek with the palm of her hand. “Of course you do. It’s written all
over your face.”

 

“Funny you would think that,” I said. “I feel so sad.”

 

She swallowed hard. “Well, not so much your face, but in your eyes. They have a sparkle about
them that wasn’t there before. It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me about him. I understand.”
Reverse psychology now? Did she take me as a fool?

“Sometimes love is a hard thing to manage. It interrupts the thought process to the brain.” She
looked over at Matthew who didn’t seem to be paying one bit of attention to our conversation. “There
had been a time when I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Russell, but look at me now, where I am.
There are other people out there in the world.”

Which world?
I wanted to ask. Emry belonged to Evadere, and I belonged to him. This was
something she wasn’t going to be able to grasp even if I could explain it to her. What had happened
between me and Emry couldn’t be described. It was something that had to be seen. Even I had
doubted him before he had shown me. Our love ran deeper than most. I knew things that no one else
knew. I had seen a place so extraordinary and beautiful that it was impossible to duplicate with
words. We now had a history, though barely knowing each other. I was drudging up demons from the
past and virtually putting my life on the line for this love, and what did she know of that? She
compared her and Russell’s flimsy relationship that had happened ages ago to mine and Emry’s?