The last time I saw you... You were a
blonde, blue-eyed baby.
Annis.
I was so sorry to leave you. To leave
you with him. I prayed with every bit of my being that he would hold
you tight every time you cried, that he would never let any of your
needs go unmet. That he would never mistreat you, his perfect baby
girl. I prayed that he would never treat you the way he did me.
He lied to me. He promised to let me
go if he could keep you. I made a mistake and I knew what it was
from the moment I left you with him. I gave you up so that I could
go on without him, but I should have known better. I should have
known that I couldn't just give up my baby girl. I should have known
there was no without him.
He gave me a five-year head-start, then
began tracking me like a dog. I don't know how he found me, dearest
Annis. I changed my name. I changed my country. I changed my hair
and my body. He still knew me from the start.
One day you will know the truth. You
will know how he pushed me down in the street and how he pulled me,
screaming, off the sidewalk and into the alley. You will know how no
one blinked, as if I was not even there. One day you will discover
how your daddy crushed my body as he crushed my soul until nothing
was left but splinters of bone oozing with warm, sticky blood. My
blood. You will know how he left the fragments that had once been my
body in a cold and dirty alley in a country that is not your own and
was not my own.
You will discover how he led the dogs
to feed on me and you will not seek revenge for the loss of the first
home you knew in this world, but you will not forgive him.
Annis.
Never forgive him.
