broken // branded sequel // heathers au

one

Elody's POV

I decided recently that I will figure out why my father killed Giselle. I don't care if asking about it gets him to disown me. It would be easier that way.

My understanding of my father is slim. He's just not a good man. He's killed at least twice and if judging from my mother's beliefs, it's been far more than that. But the other murders were ones that the police couldn't pin on him or nail him with because of the statute of limitations. One of the latter cases is of Heather Jessica Chandler.

She was killed in the Fall of 1988. But by the time the police had learned that it was murder framed as a suicide, it was Spring of 1999. Over ten years had passed, so they could only prosecute him on the murder of the sister I never met.

On top of being a murderer, he also beat the ever living hell out of my mother before and during her pregnancy with myself and Auden. He abused her for their whole relationship. Even in the late 80s, he was not kind to her. This only worsened as they got back together in the 90s. I found at that even now, while he's imprisoned, he still hurts her.

He grabs her hand and squeezes. She told me once that he digs his fingernails into her palm. A reminder of I'm still here and you're still mine. She always believed the lies he spoon-fed to her. Reading Giselle's diary, my mother used to have more strength. It got beaten out of her. Day after day, he wore her down to the point where she just couldn't fight anymore.

I once asked her why she never tried to escape in Connecticut. She explained that she did try to escape, but that my father caught her. After that, she said, she was locked into a bedroom. She can still describe the room in detail. From the mini fridge to the on suite bathroom, the way the light shone through the curtains of windows drilled shut.

This is where she stayed for her entire pregnancy until she was rescued and my father was arrested. But my father was smarter than the police gave him credit for. They went inside a fast food restaurant with no drive-thru, giving him a good chance to escape. My mother said that they were yelling after he dumped his slushie onto her, which annoyed her enough to headbutt him. She reached for napkins and my father grabbed her hair, colliding her forehead with his knee. He broke out of his handcuffs and ran to ask for a ride to the ER as my mother had passed out but once they were there, he hot wired an old car and drove to Florida.

My mother woke up and just as she did, her water broke. When she saw a doctor after he was rearrested, they explained it was likely the stress of her situation. Being locked in one room, only to be carted a lot of places and abducted by her husband for the second time. It was traumatizing. Though my mother always claims it wasn't. She says that she honestly didn't want him to miss out on all three births of his children. He wasn't there for Giselle's, he was too busy playing dead. But because he abducted my mother, he was the only one there for the birth of Auden and I.

I'm getting off topic. The point was to talk about my dead sister. In any other circumstance, my mother would have been charged with being an accessory to a murder. But it was made so clear by Giselle's written account of her life with our parents that our mother's mental health dropped dramatically, so she wasn't even charged. She wasn't sent to a hospital or anything, she was sent home to take care of eight month old twins.

She recounts that the judge looked at my twin and I, that's when he softened. He saw two wriggly blonde baby girls in a stroller my mother had by her side in court. When asked why she didn't bring anyone to watch us, she sadly said that nobody came.

She still tells how she begged the judge to not send her away as he learned she was present for Giselle's murder. She still has the paper she read.