Everything I Left Unsaid(86)

“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.