The Kidnapper's Wife

78. After - Public

Hi guys! I've gotten some reports that chapters 78 and 79 can't be accessed even after following me, so I am reposting them as public chapters! Enjoy!
-Morgan

"So what happened?" I look Connor in the eye.

"What do you mean?"

I sense he's buying himself time, he knows exactly what I mean.

"I mean how did you and Anna go from happy runaway bride and groom to chained up like a dog?" I spell it out for him.

"Anna and I never had a change in relationship." he says quickly, "But. If one of her many other suiters and her had a falling out. I could maybe surmise why that might be."

"And?"

"At first, Anna was delighted to escape the reign of her abusive parents. She was happy in the cabin I'd built her, and everything was as close to perfect as we could have hoped. We had great times together. Just living life. Talking. A true...friendship. But Anna, of course, is a teenager. Living in a cabin in the woods had sounded glamorous, but she came to realize it wasn't quite as excited as she'd expected."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Living in a cabin, as it turns out, is relatively monotonous. We spent our time farming, hunting, improving the cabin, cooking, and other such survivalist activities. But Anna grew restless. She wanted to go out in town. She wanted to shop. Eat out. Drink. Party. She wanted social interaction with other people."

I don't say anything, waiting for him to go on.

"But Anna didn't understand the gravity of her situation. There was a national manhunt in progress for the two of us. If even one person saw her and thought about it too hard....it would all be over."

I nodded in understanding.

"She became increasingly more agitated as time went on, calling the house a prison. And eventually, when she started getting the headaches, she used that as extra ammunition in support of going out. She needed medicine, she said."

"Anna was convinced that no one would recognize her with her cropped brown hair, self tanner, and the set of colored contacts I'd gotten her. I could wear my fake beer belly and mustache and beard, no one would know."

"But I didn't want to risk it. So I told her that I would go get the medicine for her. I made her tell me the symptoms of migraines, backing up what she said with google. But the problem was, Anna wouldn't cooperate. She didn't know the way back to the road. I'd blindfolded her for the first 2 miles of our walk. So every time I would get ready to leave for the doctors, she would follow me out of the house."

I began to understand some of what had happened.

"I bet that made you angry. Did you ever hit her?" I asked, hoping to catch him off guard. It didn't work.

"Certainly not. However, when I told one of her suitors about her behavior, he was less than pleased. I believe he may have lost his temper...more than once. I tried to stop him of course, but there was only so much I could do."

"Right. So that's why you chained her up then."

"That's why her suitor chained her up. He realized the danger she was to herself and he couldn't allow it. He only kept her chained when I would leave. He would come and chain her up. He couldn't stay with her, or else he would have just held her down himself, but he had work of course."

"Of course." I put special meaning behind my words, making sure he knew that I knew there was no suitor. Connor was talking about himself.

"So I'm sure Anna didn't like all this. The losing of...the suitor's...temper. And the chains."

"No of course she didn't. Whereas before she wanted to escape to be social, now she wanted something else entirely. She wanted to go home. She cried about it all the time. Being around her was miserable. Once she and I had been...friends. Not anymore. Now we were enemies, forced to coexist. I tried everything. I brought her presents to make up for...her suitor. I cooked her favorite foods. Or I tried the reverse. Or well...her suitor did. He punished her for acting so intolerable. For being so entitled. But none of it worked. She was slowly becoming despondent. The tears stopped and were just replaced with nothing. She wouldn't speak. Would barely eat. She tried to escape whenever she could. Not caring that it would probably result in her death, lost in the woods in the mountains in the winter. I actually think she had become very depressed. Possibly even suicidal."

"I had to set booby traps so that I would hear the door open and could go catch her when she ran, but she figured them out. So she had to be chained more often, her suitor said. For her own protection."

I sat back in my chair, realizing we had reached the end of the story. So Connor had taken Anna to the woods. At first she'd been the perfect little mistress. But she got bored. And Connor couldn't let her go. Not even if he had wanted to. It would have destroyed him.

Suddenly, I wonder if there's more to this than he's telling me.

"Connor did you..." I try to think how to phrase the question so he'll answer it honestly, and stop mid sentence.

"Yes?" he prods.

"You promised to be honest with me right?"

"As much as I-"

"Yeah yeah, I know, you're case. But I mean, you wouldn't really lie to me." I stress the word really so he knows that I don't mean the stupid suitor stuff.

"No." he concedes, "I will not lie to you."

"When Anna got...difficult." I begin, "...did you ever....did the suitor ever think about getting rid of her?"

Connor sits back in his own chair now, considering my question carefully.

"Her suitor wasn't a killer Jade." he finally says.

I'm surprised to feel relief spreading through me, but I can barely register the feeling before he speaks again.

"But I said I wouldn't lie. There were times when the suitor got very angry, and I did sometimes wonder if he might have lost control a little bit. If he might have gone a little too far. And if he might have...I hate to speak ill of him like this, but I have to admit that I wondered whether he might have hoped that somehow he would accidentally take it too far, and make things simpler."

I pause to take that in, feeling sick to my stomach. "You thought that the suitor might accidentally on purpose kill Anna."

There's a long pause before Connor slowly shakes his head up and down.