“Was it ‘Storms Never Last’?” Taryn asked. “Anna Rose and I were talking about that one as we watched this storm.”
“No, it was ‘Hard Rain Don’t Last.’ It talks about holding on until morning,” Jorja answered. “It’s an old song, too, but I’ve kind of leaned on the lyrics for the past ten years.”
“Don’t stand there as stiff as a board and ready to run when it thunders again,” Taryn fussed at her cousin. “Face your fear of the storm. No one is going to hurt you when me and Anna Rose are close by. Have a seat and join us.”
Jorja did what Taryn suggested without argument, but she sat on the edge of the chair with her back as straight as a rod. “Thank you for that.”
Anna Rose reached over and patted Jorja on the shoulder. “We may fight and argue amongst ourselves, but Lord help anyone who tries to come between us.”
“You don’t know how tough this is for me, even with y’all here with me,” Jorja whispered. “What I want to do is hide in my bedroom with the blinds pulled down and listen to music with my earbuds.”
“Breathe in. Breathe out. Enjoy the sweet smell of rain and think about how it’s making everything all clean and pretty. You can even try to imagine it washing all the past away and leaving nothing but pure joy in its wake,” Anna Rose said.
“I’m trying, but ...,” Jorja muttered.
“Getting past those feelings takes time,” Taryn told her.
“Kind of like baby steps. You take a step and fall on your butt, but you get up and take another one anyway,” Anna Rose assured her.
“How do you two know?” Jorja asked.
“Long story,” Anna Rose answered. “But I went to a lot of meetings for abuse before I could move past it, and sometimes even yet, when those feelings of helplessness come back, I go to a meeting.”
“Someone abused you?” Jorja gasped.
“Yep,” Anna Rose answered. “I started dating a fellow photographer about five years ago, and at first, he was wonderful to me. It was an amazing time—he was the most romantic guy I’d ever met. I didn’t even notice how we slowly stopped seeing my friends and then my parents and even Nana Irene over the next year. Then, one evening, he wanted to go out to dinner, and I wanted to stay home and work on my photographs. We argued, and he hit me more than once. I fought with him and finally got my hands on a butcher knife I’d been using to cut carrots and held him off.”
“You didn’t use the knife on him?” Taryn couldn’t picture her sassy cousin letting any man control her.
“No, but I called the police,” Anna Rose answered. “They stayed on the property while I got my things together and left. I didn’t file charges, because I’d told myself—just like you did, Jorja—that I deserved what I got.” She stopped for a breath and then went on. “I told myself that I had brought the whole thing on myself by letting him manipulate me. He texted me the next day with all kinds of apologies and begged me to come back to him.”
“Did you even think about going back to him?” Jorja asked.
“Nope,” Anna Rose answered. “But it took me a while to rebuild my self-confidence. Good God! I had let someone else determine what I would take pictures of and slowly tear me down until I thought I was worthless as a woman and as a photographer. That’s where the meetings came into play. They helped me so much. I figured out that there were other people just like me and that, together, it was possible for me to regain what I’d had lost. People often consider abuse to be something like what you went through with Ford, but there’s also mental abuse from manipulation, with or without being hit, or what Taryn went through when she found out she had fallen in love with a married man. It all falls under the same category of abuse.”
“Did you tell Nana Irene?” Taryn asked.
“Did you tell her about your married man?” Anna Rose shot back at her.
“I did not,” Taryn answered. “Other than y’all, I’ve never told anyone.”
“Do you trust yourself to get into another relationship?” Anna Rose asked.
“Nope. Do you?” Taryn fired right back.
“Not yet,” Anna Rose answered. “Maybe not ever.”
“Looks like all of us have trust issues,” Jorja said, “and justly so. But y’all handle yours so much better than I do.”
“We talked about our issues to someone instead of burying them inside our hearts and letting them fester.” Taryn hoped that what she and Anna Rose had told Jorja wasn’t too much for her new fragile selfto endure. “Anna Rose went to meetings. I just cried and cussed. We’ve all felt pretty stupid about the choices we made, but we don’t have to let those mistakes define us, do we?”
“I’m not going to,” Anna Rose declared.
“But you still flirt and date and have one-night stands.” Jorja covered her ears when another clap of thunder rattled the windows. “I can’t even think about holding hands with a guy.”
“Again, I got help and you haven’t until now,” Anna Rose scolded. “I’m way on down the road after my heartbreak, and so is Taryn. We have trust issues, but we started working on our problems right after the troubles started. You turned to religion when a lot of girls who experienced what you did would have drunk more, partied more, and probably self-medicated—anything to take away the pain and guilt of what happened.”
“I wanted Jesus to forgive me for the choice I made to go to that party,” Jorja whispered. “I never even thought about drinking or doing drugs.”
