Chapter 8: Truth

"I had a difficult childhood," I started, keeping her hand in mine, unable to let go, as if we were magnets with some unknown force keeping us together...

"I had an older brother, Jory, and I was always jealous of him. He was always so graceful and acted like I was an idiot, that I didn't know anything. He did everything right; I never did anything as well as he did. He was a dancer, just like my mother. She had worked years to live up to her dream, but after my brother was born, she gave up her fame.

"I was about nine when we got new neighbors, a lady who wore black all the time, even a veil. I soon learned she was my grandmother and she did something my parents didn't; she acted as if I existed. I learned the man my mother had remarried was really my mother's brother. I could never get over how sick and wrong it was. My grandmother's butler, John Amos Jackson, warped me into thinking I should admire my great grandfather, Malcolm Foxworth.

"I was told the tale of Malcolm and his wife keeping my mother, her brother, and her younger brother and sister locked away in an attic for three years, where they were starved of sunlight, food, and love, poisoned until the youngest son died, their mother falling in love with the glitter of gems and green dollar bills. My mother, her brother, and sister escaped and found a doctor who took them in, a doctor who fell in love with my mother, but she married her dancing partner, Julian Marquet, Jory's dad. She never loved him enough, and after he killed himself she made herself love Jory more because of the way she had treated his father.

"Her younger sister died and my mother went to get revenge on her mother, trying to steal the young, handsome husband my grandmother had remarried after her first husband had died and had no choice but to return to her parents, where she locked her children away and gradually began poisoning them. My mother succeeded in her goal and soon was carrying the evidence of their affair: Me. My father died in a fire and my grandmother was considered insane, but she had gotten out and made promises to me. John Amos Jackson tried to manipulate me, something in which he succeeded.

"He had all of my family convinced I killed my own pets. My mother adopted a little girl whose mother had died, Cindy. I hated Cindy because it meant she was stealing away whatever love my mother had left for me after Jory. So I cut her hair, threatened her, was mean to her. Called her a whore and slut later on in life. My mother fell and hurt her knee so she was in a wheelchair for a while. And I was GLAD. I had thought that if she could no longer dance, then she would have time for me. Instead she was typing away on her keyboard, typing away about her true past.

"John Amos Jackson convinced me to lock my grandmother and mother into the basement of their house, then he lit a fire. My grandmother died saving my mother, and I was taken to a psychiatrist until high school about. There is so much about my life that I cannot explain in such short time...I had a hatred against my mother and her brother for their relationship, disliked Jory since he was 'perfect', as well as Cindy. I stole my brother's wife when he became paralyzed, then she left. I thought I was in love with Jory's nurse, but then again she went to Jory. So you see? I am cursed to anyone who remains too close to me for so long. If I were you, Annie, I'd get away from me, now."

Annie had not spoken the entire time, listening politely. She stopped and looked at me.

"You just need someone to love."

That was all she said. Nothing else was said as we continued to walk along the beach, both of us lost in thought.