Chapter 4: After The Storm
1589 Words
The first month after the wedding, Anna didn’t leave her parents’ house.
At first, she told herself it was just a phase, a strategic retreat. But it wasn’t.
The Quinn estate sat far enough from the open city to feel insulated, surrounded by iron gates, trimmed hedges, and security cameras that blinked like they had eyes watching.
No reporters and strangers were pretending to jog past with phones raised. Inside these walls, the world seemed to pause. By the third week, it stopped feeling like a refuge and began to feel like a burial.
The house felt too big and too quiet, like it was holding its breath. The rooms she’d once played in now seemed like part of a museum.
Danielle claimed the guest room across the hall, bringing in an air mattress, noisy snack bags, and a pile of terrible rom-coms that were just good enough to distract her.
Evelyn lingered nearby with bowls of soup, fruit smoothies, and advice she tried to pass off as casual conversations.
Barry started coming home early, pouring himself a drink, and disappearing into the study, where he stared at old paperwork as if the numbers might eventually tell him where everything had gone wrong.
Anna stayed upstairs.
She had lost eight pounds she could not afford to lose with her already slim figure. Her cheekbones sharpened, and her skin dulled. She stopped wearing makeup because she hated her face in it.
Everyone had already seen her stripped raw with the veil ripped away, mascara streaked down her face, and mouth open in a soundless scream. The image had been paused, replayed, and used as a joke, a meme, and a trend all over the internet.
She had become a headline with a designer dress.
Meanwhile, Abel tried everything.
In the first week, he sent dozens of flowers until the foyer smelled like decay. Roses, lilies, and orchids. Notes written in that soft, looping script she used to know too well.
Anna didn’t read a single one; Evelyn had the housekeeper toss them all before the petals had the chance to fall.
By the second week, it was letters. Handwritten and smudged with what looked like tears. Couriers dropped them off quietly, as if shame could be polite. Danielle collected each one and fed them into the backyard fire pit, watching the envelopes blacken one by one.
Week three, a voicemail.
Abel’s voice shook through the kitchen speaker while they stood listening. No one moved. He cried openly and apologized endlessly. Promised to sit alone in the cathedral every Saturday until she came back.
Barry listened in silence, deleted the message, and left the house without a word.
Abel did not send another voicemail after that.
Week four came with a necklace. Diamonds delivered in a velvet box by armed courier. Anna opened it, stared at the cold glittering stones, then closed the lid and handed it back with a word. The courier nodded like he understood more than he was paid to.
By the second month, the world had moved on.
New scandals replaced old ones. New brides cried on camera, and Amanda sold her story to Vogue, photographed in the same blood-red dress, her stomach rounded and unapologetic.
Abel’s company started to collapse under the weight of lawsuits and investigations, but he was still in it, even when he almost got pushed out. Paparazzi snapped him stumbling out of clubs at night, drunk, suit creased, and eyes vacant.
Anna didn’t see any of it. Inside her parents’ house, time stopped being what it was.
She wandered around in old college sweatshirts and mismatched socks, eating dry cereal out of the box, sitting on the floor like she couldn’t remember what chairs are for.
Therapy happened twice a week. The doctor spoke gently and carefully. He used words like "trauma," "public humiliation," and "acute grief."
He prescribed sleeping pills.
Anna flushed them down the toilet the moment she got home.
Some evenings, she stood in the cold, rain soaking through her clothes, staring at the dark trees and wondering if the numbness could be forced through exposure.
Other nights, she lay awake until dawn, replaying the moment the cathedral doors had burst open and the weight of the grief of a wedding that never was.
By the third month, Evelyn started to worry in a new way.
Anna’s collarbones looked too sharp, her wrists too delicate. She wasn’t dieting, but Evelyn still cleared the cabinets of old detox teas and expired laxatives, because mothers don’t wait for troubles to arrive before preparing for them.
One gray February afternoon, Evelyn found her in the old sitting room.
Anna was sitting on the floor, legs crossed in silence, surrounded by wedding magazines she’d refused to throw out. Glossy pages were scattered, the ones that contained smiling couples, designer dresses, pastel cakes, and beaches she’d never walked on.
She was tearing them out one by one, feeding them into a black trash bag slowly, like erasing each image might make the entire incident vanish with it.
Evelyn knelt in front of her and gently took the magazines from her hands.
“Sweetheart.”
Anna’s voice came out low and hollow, like it hadn’t been used in days.
“I can’t breathe here, Mom. Every room reminds me of the times I was happy. Every hallway knows exactly what I lost.”
Evelyn tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her touch soft and light.
“Then we’ll leave. Let’s go anywhere you want, today and right now.”
Anna shook her head. “They’ll still find me, Mom. It just takes one more picture of my face for it to make it to the headlines again. I need somewhere no one’s looking.”
Evelyn was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “Lakeview.”
Anna looked up.
“The Blue Heron,”
Evelyn continued. “I still own it, quietly. Under shell names, and no one has traced it to us in years. It’s a quiet town, no press, and no one will pick up interest. You could stay in the restaurant. Run it, if you want. Just for a while.”
The word settled slowly in Anna’s chest.
Lakeview.
A town with still water, tall pine trees, and a restaurant full of strangers who wouldn’t recognize her face.
For the first time in months, Anna let herself cry, and this time, it didn’t break her.
That evening, she told Danielle. Explaining it in detail with so much enthusias
Her sister’s eyes went wide. “Dad wouldn’t like that idea. He’d always told us to avoid that town for whatever reason.”
“I know.”
“He’ll probably protest, Anni.”
“Very sure of that.”
Danielle looked at her slowly. The sunken cheeks, the quiet stare, and the way her fingers wouldn’t stay stil
“You’re actually being serious?” she asked.
Anna nodded. “I’m vanishing, Dani. And if I don’t leave now… I might vanish completely.”
The next morning, Anna showered properly. She dressed in jeans and a sweater that hung loose on her smaller frame. She walked into the kitchen, where Barry sat at the table, eyes locked on financial pages like they could hold the world together if he stared hard enough.
“I’m going to Lakeview,” she said. “To run Mom’s restaurant.”
Barry didn’t look up right away. Then he froze.
“No, Anna.” He said it as if he were sure he wouldn’t think of it.
Anna’s voice stayed calm. “I’m not asking for permission, Dad.”
“That town is off-limits.”
“Why?”
His jaw clenched as he held on to the papers a little tighter. “Because I said so.”
She stepped closer, voice steady. “I’m not a child anymore; I’m asking for a space to breathe. A place where my face won’t make headlines as soon as I step out.”
Barry finally met her, yes. Something old flickered in his eyes. A shadow of something he hadn’t said yet
“There are things buried in that town,” he said quietly. “Things I hoped you’d never have to touch.”
Anna didn’t flinch. “Then let them stay buried. I’m not going there to dig up secrets; I’m going there to find peace within myself.”
Behind her, Evelyn stepped into the room, arms folded and gaze locked on Barry.
He sighed, long and heavy.
“We’ll talk about it,” he said at last. “Not today, but we will.” Anna nodded.
Although it was not permission, it wasn’t refusal either.
That night, snow started falling, slow and silent, like it was scared of waking the house.
Anna stood by the window of her old bedroom, wrapped in the folded blanket she used to drag around when she was little. It still smelled faintly like cedar and soap and something that felt like home.
She watched the snow gather on the ledge. The trees blurred into white. The world seemed quieter under all that softness, as if it were waiting for something.
She didn’t know who she’d be in a month. Or what Lakeview would bring. She just knew she couldn’t stay in between much longer.
One day, she’d leave this house behind.
One day, she’ll become someone else entirely.
But first
She had to disappear.
And Lakeview was very, very good at hiding people. And maybe, if she was lucky, their secrets too.
- Writer
