Her Name Was Annie by Beth Rinyu (the little red hen read aloud txt) 📕

I wasn’t sure if she ever would be. Tommy would always tell me how his parents really never paid her much attention, always leaving her with her nanny to tend to her while they went off and hobnobbed with people they deemed important to his father’s career. Tommy was super-close with his sister, even given the big age gap between them. In a way he kind of became the father figure she had been lacking in her own dad. Dominick, on the other hand, would tease her relentlessly, and she would avoid him at all costs—another reason why she and I got along so well. Even though I knew I had to get home, my heart led me in the other direction toward the Cavlan estate, a decision that changed my life and my future forever.

Chapter 23

I WAS SPEECHLESS, reaching over the table and grabbing her hand as the tears rolled down her face. “His brother raped you?”

She nodded. “Then he wrote to Tommy and told him I was the one who had come on to him.”

“Did you tell him what really happened?”

“I poured my heart and soul out in a letter to him, telling him everything. He wrote back to me and said to never write him again. He called me a liar and a tramp.” She dabbed her eyes with a napkin, reliving the moment as if it were yesterday.

“Did he know you were pregnant?”

“Yes, but he never even acknowledged it in his letter back. He was just so enraged in thinking I cheated on him with his brother. He refused to believe he raped me. He allowed Dominick to have this pull over him. I knew he’d never take my side over his.”

My heart ached for her. She was just a kid at the time, and I couldn’t imagine how sad and alone she was. “Did you tell your parents what had happened?”

She nodded and another surge of tears streamed down her face. I offered her my napkin and gave her time to pull herself together. “I don’t know what hurt more, Tommy not believing in me or my mother and father.” She stared up at the ceiling and blinked hard before finally locking eyes with me once again. “They told me I was making the rape up as an excuse for disgracing the family by getting pregnant.”

“But you were pregnant before he…” I couldn’t even say that ugly word.

“Yes.” She reassured me. “Tommy was the father. You were conceived in love or at least what I thought was love at the time.” It all started to come together. The man in the ocean—Thomas Cavlan was Tommy, my father. If there was any positive in this entire heartbreaking story, it was at least my father wasn’t a rapist. Instead he was an irresponsible asshole who had no faith or commitment to the girl he was supposedly so in love with. He was no better than his rapist brother, in my opinion.

“My parents were so angry. They sent me to live with my aunt in Massachusetts, far away from California, where no one knew me. Once I started showing, I wasn’t allowed to leave the house because my aunt didn’t want people talking. It was a whole different world back then.” She sighed. “If it had happened fifteen or even ten years later, then maybe I could’ve…” She let out a deep sob and pulled it together quickly. “Maybe I could’ve kept you,” she finished.

“Please don’t feel guilty about what you had to do. You were just a child yourself, and I swear to you, I had the best life ever.” Her eyes brightened with that affirmation.

“I talked to you every day while you were in my belly. I just knew you were a girl. There was never a doubt in my mind. I even named you…Annie.”

I suddenly remembered the locket on the beach that day with the name Annie etched on it. I cleared my throat, wanting to get to the bottom of how her past had come full circle to that day on the beach. “Thomas Cavlan…he drowned in the ocean. I watched him take his life.”

She nodded. “He had tracked me down a few months ago. I didn’t want to see him, much less talk to him after the way he had just dismissed me all those years ago, but I needed to hear what he had to say.” I was hanging on to her every word, just as enthralled by this as I was about her past. “Seems like his brother still can’t keep it in his pants. There were rumors of him raping one of his interns swirling around months before the media broke the news. I don’t know why, but something made Tommy actually believe it could be true and maybe his brother who he had been so protective of all those years wasn’t the man he thought him to be.”

My phone beeped with a text message, and I instantly became angry with whoever it was trying to reach me. I was so into this conversation, and I didn’t want her to lose the courage in telling it. When it beeped again, I held up my finger for her to pause. “I’m so sorry, just one second.” I pulled my phone from my purse and read the message.

Kara: Just checking to make sure you’re ok.

Kara: Just reply with a yes or no, please!

I typed out the word “yes” and hit the send button, throwing my phone back into my purse. “I’m sorry, that was my daughter checking up on me. I don’t know when I became the child and she became the parent.” I smiled.

“She sounds like a wonderful girl.” She smiled back.

“She really is. I’m very blessed.” The emotional connection to her that I had been trying to block since I had sat down was slowly taking over me as I listened to her story, and it finally occurred to me for the very first time, Kara was also a