Annie Reads

“We’ve been trapped in this house for the last four years with no option to escape. He doesn’t allow me to have a phone, a bank account, or any of my own money. I can’t even go grocery shopping on my own. He takes care of that by ordering online and picking it up on his way home from work. I have no family and now no friends to run to for help and every person who has met my husband thinks he’s the most charming man and would never believe what he does to me behind these four walls. They see a hardworking, successful realtor and a generous man that volunteers his time. I see ugly put-downs, rage, hard fists, and the black and blue bruises he puts on my body. And now, I see my five-year-old daughter’s arm in a cast. Something I vow never to let happen again. It’s taken me months to accumulate that little amount of money by returning hundreds of his beer cans and liquor bottles to the depot between our house and the school and stealing change from his pockets whenever I think he won’t notice. Even then, it was a neighbor who made up the bulk of my savings by paying me twenty bucks twice to feed her cats while she was away for a couple of weekends. I had to sneak over to her place while he was at open houses so he wouldn’t know I was helping her. The only reason this will even be possible is because Chloe turned that magical age of five years old and that meant kindergarten. For the first time since we got married six years ago, I have my own car.”
― Reese Rivers, Unbreak Me