Love Hurts

Love Hurts by Brenda Grate Page A

Book: Love Hurts by Brenda Grate Read Free Book Online
Authors: Brenda Grate
Tags: Romance, Travel, Italy
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think so.”
     
    “Okay. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and take out half our savings. If I don’t do it now, Rob will lock everything down. Once I leave, whatever I take is what I’m going to get.”
     
    “That bastard! I hate what he’s done to you.”
     
    Anna patted Jilly’s leg and got to her feet. “It’s okay now. I’m glad. I won’t feel any guilt leaving him.”
     
    Anna pulled Jilly close and hugged her tight. “I love you, baby girl. You know that?”
     
    “I love you too, Sis.” Jilly kissed Anna on the cheek. “You go get some sleep.”
     
    “You too.”  
     
    Anna stopped at the door and turned. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “We’re going to make it, you know.”
     
    She didn’t wait for an answer.
     
    Alone, Jilly thought about Mamma.
     

Chapter 11

    The house was quiet when Anna got home from the hospital. Rob wasn’t up yet. She crept up the stairs and paused outside their bedroom door. She didn’t want to get into bed with him, and if she slept in the guest bedroom he would wonder what was going on. She didn’t want a confrontation before she was ready.
     
    She went back down the stairs and wandered around the house, trying to settle her nerves. Her brain spun out of control and she couldn’t nail down a single coherent thought.
     
    She couldn’t stop thinking about Mamma and how she and Jilly ended up the way they were. She’d always thought they had done pretty well with their lives, but lately wondered if she’d just willfully kept her mind closed to the reality.
     
    In thinking over their childhood, Anna couldn’t come up with a single event that brought about Jilly’s pain and her own inability to open herself up to the people who loved her. That’s how she’d always lived. It was no wonder Rob had sought female company outside of their marriage. She knew her coldness was in large part to blame. As much of a stick-in-the-mud as he could be, he was still a man. Anna pushed aside thoughts of her husband. She didn’t want to understand him. She wanted to be angry and blame him.
     
    Mamma had never hurt them outright. She’d given them food, shelter and the basic needs children have to survive. What she didn’t give them was herself. She held herself back as though she were an ice queen up in her castle ruling her subjects with distant words. There were no cuddles, kisses, and tickles. No bedtime stories or jokes. She and Jilly had grown up in a world of ice in which only their love for each other could melt some of their frozen parts.
     
    By the time they were teenagers and Jilly’s artistic talent in full bloom, Mamma began to get more involved, but with no change in her austere manner. She just became more demanding. She pushed Jilly to do better with her painting, to “go deeper, be honest, dammit!”, until Anna had to scrape up the pieces of her sister and try to put them back together again. She gave and gave until she felt like nothing more than a pale image of herself.
     
    Jilly at first complied with Mamma, happy to have gotten her mother’s attention at last. Mamma wore her down until finally Jilly snapped. They would scream and yell at each other until Anna, in desperation, intervened, only to feel the blast from both of them. Their house blew hot and cold until Anna was in a perpetual state of anxiety. She never knew which way the temperature would go until she’d stuck her wet finger up to test the air. She took to keeping to her books and studying, only emerging when the shouts would no longer allow her to concentrate.
     
    Soon after this period, Jilly began cutting. Anna only became aware of it after it had been going on for some time, she suspected at least six months. Despite the turmoil and the cutting, Jilly continued to paint, constantly trying to win Mamma’s approval, which never came. She finally gave up once she had the approval of the now most important person in her life. Matty didn’t care if Mommy painted, as

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