Chapter 7: Annie's Letter

I sat on the attic floor with my phone light in my teeth and read.

Mama. If anybody ever finds this, I'm not leaving without the baby.

I know how that sounds.

I know you'd tell me to run and not look back, and you'd be right.

But you didn't hear her.

Six years, Mama. They watched me every minute while I was carrying her, and after she came I couldn't run through the woods with a baby.

So I made a plan. Get to the road, stop the first truck, and come back up this hill with the state police for her.

I was almost to the road, close enough to see the mailbox.

There was a truck coming, and I was going to stand in front of it.

And she came after me with no shoes on, screaming Mom. She grabbed my legs.

She's four. She didn't know I was coming back. All she knew was I was leaving.

If I'd pulled loose she would have stood in that dirt and watched me go, with that woman behind her on the steps.

So I picked her up.

I'm not sorry. I'm so angry I can't sleep, but I'm not sorry.

I stopped reading.

I had to put the page face down on my knee for a minute.

All my life I'd thought she stopped because I made her.

She stopped because she wouldn't let me watch her go.

I picked the page back up.

Next time, I'm taking her with me.

The men go down to the river on the Fourth and drink till they can't stand up. Nobody watches the houses.

I'll carry her. She doesn't weigh anything.

There's a fishing road on the far side of the river. I walked it once, in my head, a hundred times.

If I make it, I'll bring her home to you, and you'll love her. She's your granddaughter.

She's stubborn, she hates shoes, and she laughs like Dad.

I taught her my whole name in a song. If she ever says it to anybody, Mama, believe her.

If I don't make it, I'm hiding this in the book, because nobody in this house has ever opened a book.

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