Ch 8:

Woody awoke to the sound of a car barreling up the driveway. He rolled out of bed and lurched up, looking out the window and staring in mute surprise at the person walking nervously up the pathway to the wrap around porch. Pulling a shirt over his head as he fumbled down the stairs. He opened the door and looked at Grace as she stood apprehensively in front of him. The light was just beginning to peer over the darkness of the night, turning the sky pink.

"Grace?" he said in surprise, "What are you doing here?" she swallowed hard and brushed a stubborn bit of hair from her face.

"I was thinking…" she stammered, "About what you said at the funeral…" she looked deeply into his eyes for a moment, her emerald eyes so much like her younger sisters seemed to be searching his for any bit of forgiveness he had. "Can I come in… please?" she said finally, he said nothing just moved out of the doorway and let her pass silently.

"I was thinking about what you said, at the funeral, and you were right… we all just watched and pretended that it wasn't real… she was sick… we all pretended that her swallowing all those pills was an accident… we all know it wasn't… we told ourselves so many lies we can't keep track anymore… then with you." A lone, large tear fell down her face. "We stood there, knowing what your father was doing to you… and we did nothing… we just watched hoping it would end on its own… but now we know men like him don't stop, do they?"

Woody had a hardened look on his face, he looked down into his coffee. "No they don't." he said lastly with a shuttering sigh.

"You never complained…" she stammered as more tears poured down her face.

Gently he wiped away a onslaught of tears that had come on suddenly from her face. "I never had any place too, besides its over… Dad was shot by that punk, Annie died from a fall from a tree… Mom died of cancer, the rest of us have nothing else to do but survive… and hope we find our happy ending." He echoed Jordan's words with a feeling of pride, a feeling he hadn't felt in a long time.

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Woody was back in Boston by the next afternoon, after a strained goodbye to his hometown and his brother, he boarded the plane with Jordan by his side and a new outlook on life. But something in the pit of his stomach unsettling and undefined. He still had to know, what it was that happened, he wanted to know if she was going through her moods or if she simply fell.

He had to know. But one sickening thought raced through his mind like rain.

Could he handle the truth?

And know he began to rummage through her house, all the way down to the bathroom garbage can… he found a clue.

A pregnancy test.

He made a sound that resembled that of an animal struck by a truck. He felt all the blood rush to his head.

"I can NEVER have a child Woody… never." She had once said to him with conviction.

"Why not?" he asked indignantly, looking in her eyes that looked almost hysterical "Why don't you want kids?"

"You know how I get, what if I get angry Woody… I broke a cutting board in half… what kind of a person does that? What if I loose my temper…what if?"

"Ann, calm down, your not going to kill our hypothetical children, Okay… as for the cutting board it can be cleaned up, see, Its already looking better." He had teased picking up the board that had fallen on the floor, onions scattered over the tile floor. She had seemed relieved at his soothing, but he saw the scared look in his eye.

As he crawled into the bedroom, he searched for the one thing that he was sure would tell him the answers he needed. Her dream journal.

Once she had told him that to know her was to read her dream journal she had kept since she was a little girl. She once had a dream that a thousand butterflies had landed all over her body. Once, she had a dream that her skin turned inside out and another where she was a famous author but had only spoken one sentence ever, but when she said it everything that was ever needed to be said was summed up. He could still remember the sentence. I wished on a fallen star. He found it in a drawer by her bed, still neat and tidy.

He opened it to the last entry September 16th 2005, only a week before her death.

I had a dream that I was standing in a field with one tree… I climbed the tree… and as I got higher, I felt better, when I reached the top I saw my life laying before me and I knew I had turned everything upside down… I had come to a foreign place in search of an old love… and lost miserably, for he loved someone else… and I had seen a dream that had fallen away, it left with my sanity and reasoning. So for whatever reason I had, I leaned back and my world tilted and I fell back down towards the ground staring up at the beautiful sky. And everything was ok.

Woody shut the book… he could see her at the top of that tree, he captured her falling toward the ground and kept her there, in a freeze frame, a cinematic measure that would never allow her to touch the ground. He had wished on a fallen star, and found his answer, there was no puzzle left to solve, no riddle left, he was a detective with no more clues and the answer he hadn't wanted.

Annie had killed herself.