The Tombstone

The End

One month later
January 1997....

  "Alright Stephanie. Can you explain one more time. Go over every point again. What happened during those nine months of your captivity?" One of the two police officers asked her as the three of them sat in an interview room.
  "I've already told you everything that happened. Three times," she exhaled as her nerves began to rise. She was sick of them asking her the same questions:
"What happened in those nine months?"
"Did he make you kill any of the girls?"
"What did he do with the bodies after?"
"Why did he keep you instead of killing you too?"
"Did you know the man?"
"Was he really your father?"
"Who started the fire?"
And then the other big question that came next:
"Why did you stay?"
"Why didn't you run away those nights he took you out?"
"Did he force you into anything else?"
"Who was he really to you?"
Questions came from left and right, right and left those weeks that unravelled after her rescue.

  "We know Steph. But we need to make sure we have every detail. Everything counts," the female officer, officer Rollins spoke in a gentle voice while the male officer, officer Cullins sat next to her and nodded slightly.
  "Ok, I'll explain again," Stephanie spoke before the officers nodded again and pressed the tape recorder once again. She took a deep breath, thought about the burning past she left behind as she began to recall it again. "It all started a few years earlier. When I felt someone was watching me."

...

  She pushed through the large, heavy doors that led out of the police station a few hours later. After explaining the whole thing to them for the fourth time. Every. Single. Detail. Although, she didn't tell the exact truth for everything, like for explain, who started the fire. But it was only that one thing she bent a bit.

  She walked down the three, hefty cement steps that led to the station and down. Trying not to trip like she usual did on the steep steps. But that was only going up, down was much easier. After the last step, she headed towards her left and turned the corner to the other side of the building; near the parking lot. Steph wanted to go for a walk before she headed home, something she liked doing recently after being bombarded with questions from the police. But the only thing worse than the police were the reporters. They had recently died down since it had been about a month since her escape, but there were a few little sneaky ones trying to get as much of a story as possible. Trying to get the 'real story' as all of them would say, although Steph knew that was not true. They would just twist around the truth, to get a better story than what was already there. A fake story.

  The first few days to week back was the worse. Reporters camped out on the Mantler's front lawn, hoping to get an interview or at least a few words with Stephanie, her mother, or anyone surrounding/related to her case. But neither Amy or Stephanie spoke to the reporters, the only words saying 'respect our privacy.' But that didn't stop them, not at all. After all, this was Tompton, and no one had privacy in their town.

  As the weeks turned to a month, the press started to catch on that they weren't going to get a story, or at least not from them anyways. So they stopped, most of them, but some still hung around.

  As Steph then turned the corner toward the parking lot, she headed toward the path that would lead her to the lake. Sparrow Lake.
She had been spending a lot of time there recently. Mostly because no one went there often, giving her a nice place to relax and just think. She went back to writing in her notebook as well, but tried not to write about her ordeal. She had lived with it for nine months, she didn't want to keep having to live with it. Carry it around. She already had her mother for that.

  "Steph! Stephanie!" A familiar women's voice shouted from across the lot, coming from the far end, near the path she was heading for.
Ugh. Now what does she want?
Steph spoke to herself. It was only her mother. She slowly dragged her feet towards her, in the direction of their car. Steph and her mother hadn't been of good terms ever since she escaped; mostly because of her father. Steph was pissed, angry that her mother had lied about her father too. Bringing her back to the reason she was mad at her, and the reason she ran away from her in the first place: she lied about her grandparents being dead. And then to top it off, she lied about her father being dead. All those years. For her whole life. A month had already passed, and Steph still didn't want to talk to her. She tried to avoid her at all costs, which was a bit harder without a license or car, but she made do.