Free Cornered by Ariana Gael Page B

forty-minute drove to his neighborhood, the whole scene with Jerry replaying in his mind. Something was up, that was for sure, and Frank was going to get to the bottom of it.
    Luckily, Annie’s car was in the driveway when he pulled up alongside it in the driveway of their aluminum sided townhouse. It was the house that they’d bought after they had gotten married and Frank had finished his time with the Army reserves, and he had always been damned proud of it, having paid it off in only twenty years instead of thirty. Now, though, a sick feeling in the middle of his stomach made it look puny and insignificant. This was a house that held a secret, one that it seemed everyone knew but him. The thought of even his co-workers knowing that something wasn’t right in his house when he himself had been left in the dark made him want to vomit.
    In his mind, he wanted to race into the house and throw open the door so hard that it knocked a chunk of plaster out of the wall where the knob had hit it. But in reality, just getting out of his car took all his strength and climbing the front stairs left him winded. He barely had the energy to open the door, let alone slam it. By the time he stood in front of Annie, he wasn’t a powerful, angry man, he was simply sad.
    “What is this that Jerry’s talking about at work today?” Frank demanded, surprising Annie so much that she almost dropped the dinner she was bringing to the dinette table. “He’s goin’ on, running his mouth about Michelle and what happened to her, and then he’s just apologizing because I didn’t know what he’s talkin’ about!” Frank’s blood pressure was so high that his red face worried Annie. She stared at him, open-mouthed, literally praying for the words to say.
    “Oh my god,” Annie began, setting the hot glass pan on the table’s surface without caring about scorching it. Her hands went to her mouth as she stood silently watching Frank’s face, instantly worried about how this would affect him. “What did Jerry tell you?” she whispered.
    “Nothing! He wouldn’t tell me nothing. He just kept saying that he was sorry, over and over, and he said something about how he couldn’t imagine something like this happening since he had two daughters of his own. What the hell’s he talking about, Annie? And I want the truth!”
    “Oh, Frank...”
    “Don’t you ‘Oh, Frank,’ me! I want to know what he’s talking about! Did something happen to Michelle?” Frank was already losing his voice from the effort of yelling, his shouts echoing off the paneled walls of the small dining room.
    Annie’s face crumpled as tears poured down her cheeks. She nodded silently, gasping as she held back a sob.
    “What is it? What happened to her?” Frank yelled, angry tears of his own forming in the corners of his eyes.
    Slowly, Annie told him the details through her tears, the horrible situation from almost a year ago still as painful as the day she’d first heard the news from Michelle’s friends. She watched Frank carefully for any sign that he couldn’t absorb the truth they’d hidden from him.
    “You see why we didn’t tell you?” she asked quietly. “It took Michelle weeks to even tell me, weeks when I could see her getting so thin because she wouldn’t eat and all that time, having her roommates call me for help every day. We were all so scared for her, and she wouldn’t even tell me what happened. When she finally did, she made me promise not to say anything about it to you because she was scared for you.”
    “Scared? Why would she be scared for me?” Frank demanded.
    “Michelle knew how you’d react, that you’d charge down there to that school and beat that professor until he couldn’t remember his own name. And in your condition...”
    “Don’t bring my bad hip into this! This has nothing to do with my health!” Frank bellowed, pointing a worn finger directly at Annie. “I can’t believe you did this.”
    “Me? What did I