Strange in Skin (7 page)

I could see Mrs. Anderson’s house clearly now in the distance. She was outside standing in her
yard with a pretty white lace shawl wrapped around her head. Pieces of her brunette hair were
sticking out of the sides. She laughed suddenly, the sound echoing over to where we were, and then
she lightly touched the side of a man’s face who was standing in front of her. I squinted a few more
times to confirm who exactly it was.

“Pastor James?” Buck mumbled, just as surprised as I was.

Pastor James, my father, was standing there in the yard not seeming like a pastor but simply an
ordinary man now, a man that was uncomfortably close to another woman, a woman that was not my
mother.

I watched the two of them obviously conversing, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying to each
other. Then suddenly Mrs. Anderson took a step up on the wooden porch stairs and turned with an
outstretched hand toward my father. He stood there for a moment before stretching out and taking her
hand in his own and together the two of them walked up the stairs to the front of the porch together.
My heart felt like it was going to leap right out of my chest. I gasped and then covered my mouth as a
shrill, piercing sound had started to escape.

My eyes were glued to the front of the house. I couldn’t move, feeling as if my feet were cemented
to the ground. They conversed for a few more minutes in front of her door, and then suddenly my
father bent downwards and kissed her hand. He held it for a moment longer before she gave him a
kiss on the cheek. He then turned away to head toward his car. Mrs. Anderson watched him leave
before removing her white shawl and going into her house.

What in the world was going on? Had I really just seen what I thought I had? My father, the loving,
respected, honorable Pastor John James was having an affair? I felt that familiar lump return to my
throat. My entire body felt heavy and weighed down. Clenching my hands together, I could feel the
nails digging into the palms of my hands. Fury overtook every emotion as the strongest now. I wanted
to stand up and scream at the top of my lungs.

“Anna,” Buck whispered. “That wasn’t what it seemed. It couldn’t have been. Anna? Anna?”

I wasn’t listening to what he was saying. I could only feel the rage overwhelm me as the tears began
to sting my eyes and rush furiously down my cheeks. I found the strength to stand up, turn and start
running as fast as I could down the driveway again.

“Anna!” Buck called after me. “Please wait!”

I couldn’t turn around and face him. I couldn’t look at him and have him see the shame in my eyes,
shame for my hypocritical father’s actions. All this time, all these calls to our house and him running
over here, all for this. I wanted to throw up. This couldn’t be happening. Not to me. Not to my family.
Somebody else’s, but not mine. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be.

I ran even faster, my boots skidding lightly over the hardened ground beneath each step. Before I
knew it, I was in the field again. My lungs were burning from the sprint, but I barely noticed it. The
ache in my heart was so great. And then suddenly my legs gave out on me, and I crumbled to the cold
ground in the field, the tall, thick weeds sticking out around me, and I began to sob violently and
threw my face into my hands on the ground and just surrendered to the sadness that filled every aspect
of me. I had never felt so betrayed in my entire life. My own father, the one who had raised me to be
different, to follow the Bible, was committing such a sin as adultery.

What was to become of my family now? How could I go back there and face them all? Was I going
to tell my mother and brother, or would I just go on about my life as if I had never been there, never
seen that? My mother wouldn’t be able to go on. My father and the church were her life. Our
reputation would be ruined. It
was
ruined. Buck now knew, too. I couldn’t face any of it, didn’t have
the strength to. This was too much for even me to bear.

I heard Buck rush to my side, felt his hand on my back as I still had my face buried in my hands as
the tears freely flowed. “Anna, please,” he begged.

 

He wanted me to get up, to look at him, to talk to him. There was no way that I could. I couldn’t get
up and go home. I wanted to stay here on the ground and freeze to death in this field.
“Leave me alone,” I cried. “Please, just go.”

 

“Don’t be silly.” He wrapped his arms around my back and gave me a gentle hug. “Just look at me
for a moment, will you?”

What other choice did I have? I was so completely humiliated. I tried to calm down, the pain so
agonizingly deep though. I couldn’t inhale properly, and my breaths were coming as short gasps. I
turned to face him, standing up with his help, but I couldn’t bear to look him directly in the eyes.
“Anna, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong.”

“She kissed him. They held hands!” I yelled out in disgust, another sob escaping along with the
words.

 

He hugged me tight then, my face pressed against the shoulder of his coat. “Listen to me, you have
to calm down.”

 

“And then what? You’ll just take me home.”

“Yes,” he said. “You have to go home. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I don’t believe what I
saw. I don’t believe it for one moment, and I don’t think you should be so quick to doubt your dad
either.”

He was lecturing me now? I pushed him away and began stomping back toward the car
“Where are you going now?” he asked, not in such a hurry to catch up as he was before.

“To the car. Take me home!” I shouted, wiping my wet face and runny nose with the back of my
hand. A peculiar, numbing sensation took the place of the rage, and suddenly I was a little calmer and
no longer crying. I just felt empty all over. My heart throbbed with an ache I had never felt before.

I saw Buck’s car up ahead. I didn’t bother to turn around to see where Buck was in relation to me. I
opened the door on the side of the car and slammed the door shut, closed my eyes and leaned my head
against the headrest. I tried to picture Emry in front of me. There was no plastic screen between us.
There was no one else around us. There was just me and him together and alone at last. He was
staring at me with those big blue eyes and smiling with a dimple suddenly appearing in his cheek. I let
the memory of him overcome everything else flittering recklessly around in my head, and for that
exact moment, I felt some peace in my soul.

Chapter 4

My father wasn’t home when I got there. I was thankful for that. I hadn’t said another word to Buck
and didn’t even say goodbye when I got out of his car. He sat in front of my house though, waiting to
make sure I got inside okay. I had hoped that most of my tears had dried by the time my mother would
see me, but I was sure my face was slightly puffy from my recent breakdown.

I attempted to open and close the front door as quietly as I possibly could so she wouldn’t come
running over to me right away. I even made it up to my bedroom and changed into my pajamas and
collapsed on my bed in the darkness before anyone noticed I was home.

“Anna?” My mother pushed open my door a little, the light from the hallway making the room glow,
but not enough to get a good look at my face. “I didn’t hear you come in. How was it?” she asked.
“Did you have fun?”

“I had a lot of fun,” I answered in a flat tone.
“Buck’s such a gentleman, isn’t he?” She stepped into the room a little closer to me.

I didn’t answer. My mind was still going a million miles an hour. I found it difficult to concentrate
on giving my mother the kind of responses she wanted.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, realizing I wasn’t interested in talking.

“No, we ate. I’m actually feeling really tired. I think I’m just going to go to bed.”

My mother sat very still on the edge of the bed for a moment hoping I’d change my mind and want to
give her more details about my date with Buck, but I didn’t. She got up and headed toward the door.
“Okay, honey. Goodnight.”

“Night. Oh, mom?”
She turned around.
“Where’s dad?”

“He’s at a meeting at the church right now. He’ll be home soon. Why? Did you need to speak with
him?” she asked in a more quiet tone.
“No, just wondering,” I quickly said, watching her shut my bedroom door.

I laid there in the dark for a while, trying to sort through all the different emotions I was feeling at
the same time. I turned onto my side and curled my knees up to my chest and hugged myself into a tight
ball on the bed. The tears came on again as I pictured my father hand-in-hand with Mrs. Anderson. I
tried to squeeze my eyes as tightly shut as they would go to make the images disappear, but they
wouldn’t.

I tried to make the sudden sobbing stop, but then I realized that I could let it all out here. I didn’t
have to pretend to pull it together for Buck or hide the barely dried tears on my face from my mother.
No one could hear me as I buried my face in my pillow. No one could see me. I could let it all out. I
needed to release all the tension somehow or I was going to explode.

The hours on the clock continued to turn, and I realized that it was very late into the night. My father
had probably come home and was asleep now. Everyone was asleep. Everyone but me. I felt
physically exhausted all of a sudden and flipped my wet pillow over to the dry side. I laid very still
in the darkness for a few minutes longer just inhaling and exhaling routinely. That numbness had
returned, and I was grateful to have gotten rid of some of that stress. I closed my eyes and this time I
did fall fast asleep and didn’t wake up until the sun had come up again.

The proceeding days were almost intolerable. I tried to keep busy, which was the hardest part. I
had nothing to do, but I wanted to steer clear of my father. When he would come in the house, I would
go out and try to get some things down around the store or go shopping alone. Most evenings I would
find myself at the library looking through law books trying to figure out how much trouble Emry was
in and if I could find any information as far as court hearings or the average prison sentence of
convicted murderers, but every state was different and the terminology wasn’t exactly the easiest for
me to understand. I often found myself giving up and slamming the books shut. Then I would just sit
there and mull over how irritable of a person I was becoming, how nothing seemed to be working out
in my life all of a sudden and I would just sit there, arms crossed, sulking. I felt as if I had nowhere to
go.

I would go from feeling sorry for myself to sorry for my mother. It wasn’t fair that she didn’t know.
But then I would get to thinking that it was possible that she did know. Could she be so blind as to not
see what he was doing? Was she actually just letting him get away with it? But then I would feel
instantly guilty every time the thought crossed my mind. The matter of the fact was that in reality
I
had
been that blind. I would have never in a million years thought my father capable of such a
transgression.

Snowflakes floated down from the sky overhead as the sun had already set, and I inhaled the brisk
air deeply and tried to hold it in my lungs as I walked to my car. I watched the lights flicker out in the
library and someone appeared at the front door to lock up. They had kicked me out again. I had stayed
till closing.

I drove home in another one of my moods. It was dinnertime, and I knew I would have to sit at the
dining room table with my father directly across from me. I didn’t know if I could do it without
exploding at him. I was so tired of trying to hide the way I felt from everyone around me. I knew this
wasn’t healthy.

I parked my car in its usual spot in the driveway and checked the mailbox before going up the walk.
It was empty. The smell of sauerkraut and dumplings filled my nostrils as I entered the warm house
and hung up my coat and scarf on the rack beside the front door.

“Just in time,” Matthew said to me, wheeling himself away from the dining room table a little bit so
he could get a better look at me. “Come eat.”
I smiled at him. I was grateful that he had no clue as to what was going on around him. I had to deal
with the situation, and even though I was completely miserable, it was a relief to know that Matthew
would always remain happy.

“Working late again?” my father asked, raising his eyebrows up at me as I passed through the dining
room toward the kitchen.

 

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, refusing to make eye contact with him.

I found my mother with her back turned toward me as she twirled a spoon in a pot on the stove. I
tried to see what else needed done in here to continue to make myself useful and busy.
“Hi, hun,” she said pleasantly. “You’re a popular woman today.”

I eyed her suspiciously.

 

She smiled as she stuck her finger in the pot and then in her mouth. “You got a letter today. It’s on
the table. And Buck called, too. He wants you to call him back.”

I stood there frozen for a moment. Where did she say the letter was? My eyes quickly darted all
around the counter until I spotted a small pile of envelopes. I automatically wanted to run over there,
grab it and sprint up to my bedroom, but I knew that that would only make me look like a crazy
person. I recomposed myself, took a deep breath and tried to walk as calmly and normally as I
possibly could over to the counter. Reading my name, I immediately knew it was Emry’s handwriting
in the same off-white envelope he had sent the last one in, but instead of a return address stating it
was from the jail, it was blank. I felt my pulse rate speed up.

“Who’s it from?” she asked curiously as she continued to stir.

I shrugged. “Probably from Mandi Liswich. I talked to her not long ago. Do you remember her?”
Mandi Liswich was a girl I had gone to high school with that I used to be fairly close to until she went
away to college and then eventually moved out of town altogether. From time to time we would write
to each other, so it was the fastest lie that entered my head.