Maelyn: Draft Preview

Anna Rose was one of three girls and a boy.  Her father Donald was a criminal and a drunk.  Donald took his son Donny out on a crime spree together, the effect would ripple as they often do.  Donald had no idea the extent of the damage he had done.  Her youngest sister Val was not free from Donald’s abuse, he locked her in the basement, and when it was time to eat she ate there, like a dog.  He treated her different because she looked different than his other children, the two other girls and his son all had blonde hair, she had brown hair and brown eyes.  It never seemed to cross his mind that she just picked up her mother’s jeans. 

With all of the dysfunction of the family it was not great shock that Anna Rose’s mother Maggie was also an alcoholic, she worked a steady job and tried to support herself and her four kids, it’s anyone’s guess when she started drinking, but it is certain once her husband was locked up she was an alcoholic.  There was a great deal of rivalry in that house between the sisters Anna Rose, Val and Bella.  At times even outsiders were targets of a rage that burned inside of them.  One incident say a man Maggie was dating stabbed in the back with a fork, another Anna Rose threw a pan of hot peas at Val.  This was beyond the usual sibling rivalry. 

Maggie had a good friend Rachel who came to visit often with her husband and daughter.  Rachel’s daughter, Linda was about the same age as Val and they became very close.  Rachel’s husband, Jack, was a marine with an insatiable appetite for women.  It didn’t take long for him to see Anna Rose as woman when she became a teenage girl, and it wasn’t too hard to manipulate an impressionable sixteen year old girl.  Anna Rose was the babysitter by default, Val and Linda were best friends, naturally when the adults were busy, out, or drinking Anna Rose was the default sitter. 

Jack was a ladies man, he was worldly, had traveled, experimented with prostitutes in other countries.  He married Rachel before he shipped off to war, he was a young, eighteen years of age, still a child in so many ways.  When he returned from war he was grown in many ways and still a child in others, his appetite for women was one thing that had not changed, and a few years later he found himself looking at Anna Rose, not as a child but as a woman. 

Anna Rose was a naïve young girl who never had a stable man to be a good example.  Perhaps she thought an older man would save her from the hell she had lived, no one will ever truly know the reason that Anna Rose got caught up in a relationship with Jack, but by the time Anna Rose was 16 she was pregnant with Jack’s baby.  Jack had promised her the world, and gave her a child instead.  Jack had promised to leave his wife, told Anna Rose she was the one for him, and she fell for it all.  Anna Rose was six months pregnant with Jack’s child, when she found out Maggie was also recently expecting.  Jack’s lies were now brought to light for both women. 

Jack did ask Anna Rose to marry him, but it was too late, the betrayal and hurt she felt, along with the guilt and shame for not seeing the truth of the situation were too great.  She wanted to leave, she wanted to run far away, and she wanted to get even.  She knew she wouldn’t leave unless she did something drastic, something that would cut her ties, and something that would allow her to move on.  One night she gave Jack the key to her new apartment and told him to come back to that night.  Jack came back to the apartment that night to find Anna Rose in bed with another man.  He was furious, hurt, and betrayed, and he hadn’t a clue how to handle the situation.  He stormed out of the apartment, with Anna Rose following him in her silk night gown crying.  Jack couldn’t see past his rage, his betrayal, and his pain, he was utterly self-absorbed.  What he didn’t realize at the time is Anna Rose had taught him a lesson that night.  He would realize that he couldn’t keep playing with women’s emotion.          

      

All the time Jack was cheating on his wife Maggie with Anna Rose, Val was chasing after Jack.  She would be sitting on the hood of the car waiting for him when he left Anna Rose.  Throwing herself at him every chance she could.  It was all he could do to stop that affair from taking root.  Val was the youngest, and even more impressionable, fueled by sibling rivalry and in desperate need of love, she was convinced she was in love with Jack. 

Anna Rose took her daughter Mae and left the state, she traveled south to Virginia where her friend Karen had moved.  Karen had a son Justin and a husband Jake, they had a nice house and hosted many movie nights for the children.  Anna Rose took a job at McDonalds and continued to battle with her emotions towards Jack, she wanted to let go, but still had misguided feelings of love.  Little did she know someone else would push her, not only to let him go, but to attempt to cut him out of their lives forever. 

Val knew what Anna Rose had done to Jack, she knew how devastated he had been by walking in on Anna Rose with another man.  She knew that Jack had proposed to Anna Rose, knew the divorce was in process between Rachel and Jack, but she didn’t care, she loved him.  She wanted to be with him more than anything in the world, he was her one and only true love. 

Rachel new Jack was the father of Anna Rose’s daughter, she knew her husband at thirty years of age, carried on an affair with a sixteen year old.  She wasn’t sure exactly when the affair started, it could have started when Anna Rose was 14 or 15 but there was no dispute that the affair was going on when she was sixteen.  She gave birth to Mae when she was 17.  Rachel knew their marriage was in trouble but never expected him to have an affair with her friend Maggie’s children!  Now she herself had another daughter that was 6 months younger than Anna Rose’s daughter and by the same man.  This was a disaster, it was depressing, and it was infuriating.  She tried to make the marriage work, she tried for the sake of her first daughter then for the sake of both daughters, but it was over.  She knew it was over.       

Jack was in a tail spin all his secrets laid out bare, he lost his wife and his mistress, and Anna Rose had taken Mae with her.  Still, he was a marine, he would improvise, adapt and overcome, and continue on.       

To Be Continued....

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