Strange in Skin

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Strange in Skin Page 24

by Zook, Sara V.


  “Who else?” I whispered, afraid of what they were about to tell me, afraid that Emry was going to slip away from me suddenly. It was as if I could almost feel myself releasing my grasp on him. Carlin finished her cigarette and then exited the room to dispose of the butt.

  “When he was a teenager, he was accused of another’s boy’s death, another so-called friend of his,” Buck said. “But what happened with that?” I felt a few of the papers fall from my fingertips as they spread out on the floor, but I barely noticed. I was too focused on the information Buck was feeding me now, things I didn’t know, that Emry had never bothered to tell me.

  “He got out of it,” Buck continued. “It helped that he was under eighteen, too. He gets these top of the line lawyers. It baffles us how he does it. He has the same one defending him now that defended him against that.”

  “He got out of it,” my father added. “Only to be able to do it a second time. But this time, he won’t get away with it.”

  “He’s not a good person,” my mother said softly. “He’s a monster.”

  “Do you really want to end up like anyone else that’s been close to him? Dead or just end up used and alone again like his ex-wife? I thought you were smarter than that.” Buck clenched his jaw together as he examined my reaction again. What was my reaction? Horror? Complete shock? All of the above? I felt devastated unlike the pain I had felt before. I was confused now in a different way. My mind was spinning and buzzing with all kinds of thoughts and voices. My mother was hurrying to gather up the papers that were still falling from my released grasp on the floor. My eyes darted from my father to Buck and then over to Carlin who just leaned against the wall staring elsewhere other than toward me.

  Could this be true? Was Emry Logan not who I thought he was? Was there the possibility that I was so infatuated by his sudden interest in a person like me that I was blinded from seeing him for who he really was, the monster they were all telling me he was? No, I scolded myself. He had taken me to Evadere. He had shown me his secret and this remarkable new world that no one else knew existed. None of the other stuff mattered. Or did it?

  “He’s just using you,” Buck continued. “You’re just someone to make him feel better about himself, to get under our skin even more because you’re the daughter of Pastor John James, because you’re my friend.”

  “I hardly consider us friends, Buck,” I snapped. “Seems like that blew up a while ago.” He narrowed his eyes at me, obviously disturbed and angry by my remark.

  “Show some respect,” my father yelled out. “The man is here as a favor to you.” “Really? Or is it a favor to you?” I yelled back. “Or perhaps it’s a favor to Mrs. Anderson?”

  His face twisted as I’d hit a nerve. I couldn’t deal with this any longer with all of them in front of me, staring at me, watching my every move. I had to get away from them to think. My mind was spinning as I felt a gush of dizziness come over me.

  “I’m sure his ex-wife thought he was some sort of a saint, too,” Buck blurted out. “Maybe you should go have a little chat with her and let her tell you about who Emry Logan really is.” Emry couldn’t have committed such crimes. He was an honest man, a beautiful being, and this world wasn’t good enough for him. Surely they had planted all of this against me, one thing after another. Maybe they had been onto him for years now trying to get him locked up. He wasn’t a bad person. He wasn’t. These were the bad people standing in front of me trying to get me away from Seneca, away from Emry, to go with Carlin, of all people. They were making good attempts at trapping me emotionally now by playing these little mind games on me. This is how they worked. I should know this by now. They had never been on my side, always against me. They had been scheming, and they wanted me out of Seneca no matter what it took. Mrs. Anderson wanted me out of her way so she could get rid of Emry once and for all. I was a problem. I had to be dealt with. Carlin should take me away. She was well-educated on culture. The entire thing made me sick as my stomach now churned with the heavy weight I felt pressing down upon my shoulders, trying to force me to my knees.

  I knew what my heart felt. It ached for Emry. He loved me, and I loved him. We belonged together. I shouldn’t listen to any of this. My eyes moved to the police record that my mother now handed Buck, and I watched as he stuffed it back into the envelope. It had said he had pleaded guilty to all of the accusations of theft. Why would he do something like that if he was innocent?

  I closed my eyes. My head spun, and I felt the vomit starting to rise in my throat. My eyes looked at all their faces. They were staring back. Or were they? Their eyes became a blur as I suddenly felt very lightheaded and hot all over. Tiny white specks flashed before me, intruding on my line of vision.

  “Anna?” I thought I heard my mother cry out. “Anna? Are you all right?” Emry Logan wasn’t a murderer. Emry Logan was a beautiful creature of the supernatural world. Emry Logan was all mine. They couldn’t have him. They couldn’t make me abandon him now, not when he needed me the most, even if it meant staying in the same town with him, just so he knew I was with him.

  I took a step forward, the sudden heat that radiated through my veins, through my entire body and the white dots flashing in front of my pupils getting the best of me as I collapsed onto the hard, wooden floor.

  Chapter 16

  I was back to my old self, the boring, routine-oriented, Anna James. Over the next few months, I had become accustomed to everything that had made up my life before Emry had stepped into the picture and confused me, made me someone I was never meant to be. I had come to accept the fact that him and I would never be together again. Our relationship had been doomed from the very beginning. I had no idea why I had been so adamant about pursuing it. I had been naive and foolish. I had allowed him to get into my head and mess me up. Perhaps the mystery surrounding who he was, the magic of it all mystified me. I would never forget Emry Logan or Evadere, but I had to think of it all as if it were merely a dream. It was the only way to move forward. Besides, it really did feel like a dream anyway, so that made it slightly easier.

  I slowly started spending time with my parents again. I scolded myself for having been so mean to them about the whole adoption ordeal. The holidays helped to remind me that no matter who had given birth to me, whoever they were weren’t able to take care of me or didn’t want a child, and so why should I even waste an ounce of time thinking about where they were, who they were, what their reasons had been. I had made it this long without knowing any different. John and Helene James were the ones who had given me a home and plenty of love to grow up with. They never told me to get my own place or pay rent. They simply loved me for me, and had totally forgiven me despite my having treated them so badly. All had been forgotten.

  Carlin had spent only a few more days with us after our last little family meeting we had had the day I blacked out in the living room. Buck had caught me before I could fall and injure myself. They had taken me to the local emergency room, and the doctors there, after a thorough evaluation of my heart and brain, determined dehydration and fatigue combined with emotional disturbance had caused my little spell. The entire time I was there, I felt it utterly ironic how they had to rule out my heart and brain first. They would have been the first things I would have thought to be disastrous, but no. I was healthy and had regained my strength in a few days after allowing my mother to nurse me back to health again.

  There hadn’t been any sort of effort made to make amends with my aunt. She had just packed up her things suddenly one day and headed down the stairs, her suitcase in hand, her stilettos on her feet. “Do you know anything about this?” she asked me, holding up a torn and dirty, little dress. I was sure my flushing red cheeks had given my guilt instantly away. Oh, how I remembered that dress and how I looked in it, everyone staring in the prison. It was a shame I had ruined it beyond repair.

  “Anna, do you?” my mother demanded after I had kept silent. Carlin still held it up in the air almost as if rubbing it in my fac
e. I couldn’t blame her for being angry about it. It had to have been expensive.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Sorry?” She raised her eyebrows and gave me that annoyed look she seemed to always get when talking to me. “That’s all you have to say?”

  “You did that?” my mother asked, as if horrified that I could be capable of such a thing. I shrugged. “Yeah. I used it to get into the prison.”

  “This was part of your little disguise?”

  I pressed my lips together. I did feel somewhat genuinely apologetic now. That had been the best day of my life. Emry had kissed me in that dress. I immediately shook the memory from my mind. “Yeah.”

  “You took this out of my closet and then put it back looking like this?” Carlin was now shaking the dress clumped up tightly in her hand at me.

  “I said sorry.” I hated having to repeat myself, especially to her.

  She eyeballed me for a few more moments before tossing the dress my way. It landed on the floor in front of my feet.

  “Do me a favor and throw that in the garbage for me,” she said in a calmer voice as if her despair over her dress had just been a show.

  “Anna, you should pay your aunt for that. What are you doing, Carlin?” my mother asked her, turning her attention to the zipped suitcase she had been carrying.

  She stopped at the closet behind the front door and pulled out a thick, fur coat and tossed it around her shoulders. “I think my time here is done.” As if she had done her duty and was off, like some sort of soldier She was such a phony. Her intentions of making amends with my mother didn’t seem to have brought them any closer. Perhaps the two of them were incapable of being anywhere near close like sisters should be. It made me a little sad. Though I couldn’t stand the mere sight of my aunt, they were biologically true sisters, and here they were, almost strangers, yet they had been under the same roof all this time. It just didn’t make sense to me that Carlin couldn’t forgive my mother or whatever it was that was preventing her from being truly nice for more than an hour at a time. Maybe she was just a moody, selfish person who couldn’t get over herself. I was sure that no one would be able to guess they were related if the fact hadn’t been stated aloud. Carlin was nothing like her sister, and so here she was, running away again. Maybe my words of telling her I hated her had struck a nerve and gotten to her somehow. The more I thought about that, the more I doubted it. I was sure Carlin had felt the same exact way about me. She had always hated me, and so we had that mutual feeling in common at least.

  “Please stay,” my mother begged her. She could kill people with her kindness. Carlin smirked as if she didn’t believe her sister really wanted her there anyway. “You’re all better. It’s been fun and all, but I don’t think I can take Seneca for one second longer.”

  My mother sighed and opened her arms to hug her sister, realizing that nothing she said could keep her here. Maybe deep down she wanted her gone as much as I did. The thought of her leaving overjoyed me.

  “Thank you so much for all your help during these difficult times.” She hugged her tight as I saw Carlin glare at me over her sister’s shoulder during the embrace.

  “She sure didn’t make things easier on you,” Carlin hissed. I clenched my jaw together and felt my fists tighten into little balls again. It was as if she could always start a fire of fury within me and then continuously dowse it in gasoline as more words spilled out of her polluted mouth.

  “The past isn’t worth thinking about,” my mother said, almost as a reminder to her sister. “It’s a dark evil that can creep up on you if you let it. What’s ahead in one’s future, that’s what we should always be looking to.” Carlin pulled away from her sister and gave her a look as if she thought she was crazy. “Whatever you say, sis. Tell John I said thanks for the hospitality and stuff. I already told Matthew goodbye upstairs.”

  “Anna, tell your aunt goodbye, too,” my mother instructed, turning around to look at me. I uncurled my fists and let my arms drop to my sides. “See ya,” I quickly blurted out. My mother gave me a disapproving look.

  Carlin smirked. “Bye, Annie.”

  Ugh! Good riddance I wanted to scream, and don’t show up for another decade or two. I watched as my mother and aunt exchanged a few quiet words and then Carlin picked up her suitcase and headed outside and down to her car parked along the road. I quit watching after that. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of actually seeing her off. It seemed like a waste of time. I could be doing something else of more value, like lying down on the couch and listening to the peace and silence of her no longer being in our home. And so that had been the last I had seen of Carlin. And life went on as it had before she had ever shown up.

  The weather was turning a little warmer now, the wind dying down slightly as winter was now thawing out into spring. The ground was still soggy from all of the freshly melted snow, but you could sense everyone anticipating the warmer season as cabin fever had gotten the best of the people of Seneca.

  During the weekdays, I spent my time helping to manage the antique store with my mother. I really had dived into things there. I believed I had a good handle on knowing all aspects of the business. Antiques still weren’t a passion of mine, but I knew a lot about them, what was valuable, what was junk. Sammie still helped out. She had recently gotten engaged and had asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. I happily accepted. The girl still annoyed me to death, but we did talk often, nothing of too much significance, but I had never been in a wedding before, and so I was a little excited about it. It wasn’t for a few more months, but that’s all Sammie talked about. Her engagement wasn’t even to the two guys she had dated at the same time before. It was to a new guy, someone she had barely dated a month before jumping the gun and getting herself a fiancé. She had met him while in a bowling league downtown. He was at least ten years older than her or more, but she seemed thrilled, more about the wedding than the man was my suspicion.

  I never told Sammie about Emry. No one ever asked me about him. Maybe no one knew, or if they did, they had been keeping it to themselves. I no longer knew anything about him. I had received no more letters from him. I had no idea if he was even still at Seneca County Prison or not. Emry Logan was an unmentionable name. It was as if he vanished into thin air, a ghost. He was dead to all of us now. Sometimes the thought of him fluttered into my mind, but not as often, and I was usually able to get rid of it more quickly and not allow it to control me as it had in the past.

  Buck wasn’t really around all that much anymore either. I guess we had had our little falling out. That was just fine with me. His personality and mine clashed. I would rather we not interfere with each other’s lives. We brought out the worst in each other. No one needed that type of negative energy around to bring them down. And so it was as it was. John and Helene James had their family back together, miraculously so, and it seemed that those few months of darkness in our lives had just been a mere bump in the road. Now it was back to smooth sailing for all of us.

  On the weekends, I would indulge in Bible study groups and church organizations. I was always helping with something, becoming involved and keeping myself occupied. I needed to be around people, put myself out there a little more and help those who needed it. I hadn’t really done that before as much as I should have. I couldn’t say I was really making any new friends. I was mostly dealing with people I had known since I was a little girl and some missionaries would come in for a few days and leave again. Seneca had sucked me in once more, but this time, I was making myself be content with what was to be of my life. I belonged here with my family in Ohio. Only dreamers believed they would ever end up in such a place as Evadere. It had been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I embraced that fact. I would be thankful for having gotten out of Seneca just that once. I had actually been in a completely different world and no one would ever know. It made me chuckle just thinking about the irony of that fact. The one remarkable thing that had ever happened to me, I would never
be able to tell. Who would believe me even if I tried?

  Sundays I tried to fill myself with as much hope as possible from my father’s sermons. He hadn’t been in as much contact with Mrs. Anderson anymore, and he seemed happier himself these days.

  One Sunday in particular, I was feeling inspired at the end of one of his sermons on using our talents to go out into the world and teach others about Jesus, to embrace those talents and put them to use within the community and church. Mostly all of the people had filed out of the building. Only a few stragglers were left chatting to one another as my father stood in the open doorway of the front of the church, the sunlight pouring in. I was just debating in my mind what my true talents were when I caught sight of someone out of the corner of my eye. I immediately stood very still and strained my eyes as particles of sun burned brightly into them as I struggled to see who it was. They had approached my father rather quickly and had been dressed in ordinary every day clothes. Our church was big into dressing up on Sundays. It wasn’t like it was mandatory, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some of our members gave someone a dirty look who came strolling into the building in jeans and a T-shirt. That was considered disrespectful.

  I darted around the pew I had been sitting in and to the far corner where I could shade my eyes a little and get a better look. I ducked down using another pew as a shield. It was a middle-aged man talking with my father. Who was it? I struggled to see again. Could it be? No. But it was. Lauren Anderson, Mrs. Anderson’s son was standing there chit-chatting with my father. I had only seen him a handful of times, but I was sure it was him. He was peculiar-looking and had the kind of creepy face that you couldn’t forget. He had a large scar going diagonally across his face, little black beady eyes that looked too small for his head and slicked back dark hair and a complexion so white, you’d think he was a vampire at first glance. I focused my attention on the two of them. It didn’t look like chitchatting at all. It looked odd and suspicious.

 

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