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Emma and Lily hugged their mother tightly, feeling the warmth of her embrace and the reassurance that she was okay. They had been so worried about her, and it had been hard being apart from each other in different foster homes.
Their mother led them to the kitchen, where a feast of their favorite foods awaited them. Emma and Lily's eyes widened in delight as they saw the spread of chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and chocolate cake.
"Mom, this is amazing!" Lily exclaimed, her mouth already watering.
"I wanted to make sure my girls had a proper homecoming feast," their mother said with a smile.
As they sat down to eat, Emma and Lily couldn't help but feel a sense of relief wash over them. They were finally back together with their mother, safe and sound. It was a feeling they had missed dearly.
"Mom, when are Elyse and Rachel coming?" Emma asked, eager to see her younger sisters.
"They'll be here soon; don't worry," their mother reassured her. She touched her big belly gently, then said, "And then Kyla will be here in about a month or so."
As they finished their meal, Emma and Lily could feel the exhaustion from the day's events starting to set in. They were grateful for their warm beds and the safety of their home.
"Good night, my loves," their mother said, tucking them in. "I'm so happy to have my girls back home with me."
"Goodnight, Mom," Emma and Lily replied in unison, their eyes already heavy with sleep.
As they began to drift off, their mother walked over and grabbed Emma's pillow. She gently fluffed it, then looked at both girls lovingly.
"My loves," she said softly, tilting her head, "there is one thing I want you both to take away from what we’ve been through. I want you always to remember that we are a family, and no one gets to leave us. Only death can part us."
Lily could barely comprehend the words her mother had uttered, and she watched with terror as their mother leaned over Emma in bed and slowly began to press the pillow down over her head. Emma thrashed beneath her, desperate for air as their mother began to press down forcefully with both hands. Every second felt like a lifetime until, finally, Emma lay still. The room seemed to spin around Lily as she looked at her sister's lifeless body in shock. Lily screamed, her voice reverberating through the room as she realized what had happened. Tears streamed down her face as she looked up at her mother, horror coursing through her veins.
"Now, do you understand?" their mother said coldly.
Lily merely nodded, too stunned to do anything else.
Their mother then wiped away a tear and quietly left the room, leaving Lily alone with Emma's corpse.
Chapter63
“Lily never spoke about that day until she became a teenager,” Parker said, his eyes glaring down at Madeleine. I was staring at him, shocked at the story unfolding. Who in their right mind would murder a child? Their own child?
“Lily was the one who called the cops, but when they got there, she didn’t tell them the whole truth—only that Emma had died in her bed. She didn’t dare say anything else; she was so scared of you. She told me this many years later, along with all the terrors you put them through, and that’s when I came to you and told you I wanted the girls. I was going to sue for custody of all four of them. But you managed to stop me, didn’t you?”
She snorted angrily. “You were going to take my girls away. No one leaves me—no one.”
“You murdered Lily when she was just fourteen years old, stabbed her for wanting to live with me, and then you put the bloody knife in my apartment and told the cops to come for me, that I had murdered my own daughter in cold blood. You played the victim and led them in my direction. No one believed me because I had a prior from the time I tried to talk sense into you and tell you that you were being too harsh on the girls. You called the cops on me, and they took me away, and then you took out a restraining order on me, claiming I was a danger to my own children. After that, I couldn’t see them or even come near them anymore. But you wanted it that way. You wanted them to yourself, and then when they grew older, you manipulated and threatened them to stay close to you. Kyla, Elyse, and Rachel all did. But Rachel wanted to leave, and you found out. She called me and said she wanted to move far away, and I sent her the money for the tickets. I prayed she would be able to get away before you could get your claws into her. But she didn’t. You killed her, didn’t you? So she wouldn’t leave you. And then you made it look like it was her husband because he had cheated on her, and somehow, you were able to put the blame on him.”
“The clothes,” I said. They both looked at me. “That’s why they didn’t have his DNA on them. You put a bag of Rachel’s bloody clothes in John’s house with the pizza crust taken from his trash. You put it in the pocket of the pants, thinking it would somehow make his DNA present enough to incriminate him. And you made sure to put the body in his storage unit so he would automatically become a suspect. But there was a song that you hummed, both while dragging Rachel’s body to the storage unit and after murdering John in the hospital, and a homeless woman recognized it. I immediately knew it was you by then, as soon as I understood what song it was. It wasBillie Jeanby Michael Jackson, your favorite singer. It’s quite the earworm, isn’t it? Once it gets stuck in your head, it just won’t leave. But the homeless woman in the parking lot heard you. She couldn’t see who you were, but she could hear that song, and it scared her. I guess you buried Elyse’s body as well? The grave in the backyard was fresh. Why did Elyse have to die? Was she about to leave as well?”
“Yes,” Madeleine hissed. “She had found some guy online in Spain who she desperately wanted to visit. I couldn’t let her go. I knew she might stay there if she did, and then she would be gone. I would never see her again.”
“So, you murdered her instead?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief.
“No one leaves me—no one!” she spat at me.
“So, how did you do it? How did you kill Rachel?”
She stared at us. Parker moved closer with the gun, then yelled, “Tell her how you did it!!!”
“All right, geez, get that thing out of my face first,” she said, and Parker took one step back.
‘Then start talking.”
Madeleine continued: “I waved her down. Knowing Rachel would go that way to the airport and knowing she was about to leave because I had seen the tickets on her computer, I placed myself on the side of the road, parked my car, and pretended to be in distress. Once she stopped, I told her my car had broken down and my phone was dead. She got into my car, then I slammed my fist into her temple, and she passed out.”
