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.
Please don't take me away from my girls. I had no intent or desire to kill my first child. My heart breaks every day seeing Giselle in her sisters. She never got to meet them. I will never watch her go to prom or graduate from college. I will never get to see her walk down the aisle to a husband of her own. I'll never get to see her have her own children.
I know I should have spoken up about what happened. But, your honor, you have to understand that I tried to get in contact with the police. Every time I tried, my husband would hit me. The last time I tried, he locked me into a small room for six months. I was pregnant at the time.
His abuse never allowed me to see a doctor to see if my twins would be healthy. He never allowed me to speak for myself. He never allowed me to even leave the bedroom we slept in. He put a mini fridge in there and a bathroom was attached.
Everyone probably knows that I should have done something to try and leave sooner. What everyone doesn't know is that I was trying to leave the day he killed my daughter. He killed her and threatened to kill me if I didn't do as he said by following him wherever he wanted to go. That is abuse, and to prosecute me for being a victim would be unjust.
The judge took her words to heart and continued to speak to her about the terms of my father's plea deal, since that's why she interrupted in the first place.
Unsurprisingly, he took the plea bargain that was offered to him. It wasn't anything fantastic. Fifteen years in prison if he pled guilty and confessed to the murder of Heather Chandler. He took it on one condition - that he got to see his daughters as often as possible. That only ended up being once a month. It's court mandated as well since it was part of his plea.
The last Saturday of every month, my mother drives up to Columbus with us in tow and we spend the day shooting the shit.
Today is the last Saturday of September. Auden's pissed about going since she wanted to go to a party after the game tonight. But even when she's annoyed, she still makes herself look nice.
I threw on jeans and a long sleeve black t-shirt, throwing on my black converse as well. It was a cold day out despite being September and as such, I wore the one coat I'll wear in the stiff autumn weather. It was my father's, so it's big but it keeps me warm at Auden's games and it's insanely comfortable. I found it on accident after looking for one of my mom's old coats after my own coat ripped.
I put my hair into a ponytail and put on cherry chapstick. I'd need it, since my father always makes me anxious. Anxiety makes me chew my lip. I threw my phone and headphones into one of the large pockets before leaving my room.
Auden exited her room at the same time. "You're not wearing that," She laughed.
I looked down. "Looks like I am." I told her, my voice devoid of the humor she found in my style. Or lack-thereof according to her.
"You're pretty El, you don't have to dress like a school shooter." She said. I knew she was just trying to be nice but it just annoyed me.
She annoys me a lot lately. Auden is a cheerleader, she has a perfect relationship and awesome friends. She says I'm her built in best friend. Which is true. I just get annoyed that she's so perfect.
"I'm just trying to stay warm. Remember, it was you who ripped my coat." I replied.
"That was an accident." She insisted.
"And yet, you still haven't gotten me a new one." I teased her.
"You're a bitch," She rolled her eyes. Just as she said this though, she gave me a quick hug. Then mom called us downstairs.
"We're going to be late!" She yelled upstairs.
"We're coming down!" Auden yelled back. Her voice was loud, it had to be for cheer. She shook her head as she looped her arm in mine and led me down the stairs to the big living room.
The sad part about this room was that you could still see blood stuck in the grain of the wood floor for years. Mom had those boards replaced last year. The blood on the floor was just a reminder that this is the room where Giselle was shot.
Once we were downstairs, mom sighed. "You two look nice." She smiled tiredly at us.
"Elody looks like a school shooter." Auden snorted.
"Going for skin to win, Aud?" I asked her. She was in her cheerleading uniform, fully expecting to go to the game tonight and the party afterwards.
"Gotta distract the other team." She giggled at me.
Then we got in the car to go see our father. Auden got shotgun with her bullshit excuse of I'm older. She's barely older than me, which is why that claim is bullshit. She's not older by years or months. She's older by eighteen minutes.
We started to drive and after a while, I put in my headphones so I could stop hearing Auden whine about how she has to be back for the game. Our mother and I both knew this already. It's why my mom called our father and told him this, which is why she's so anxious. He's not exactly happy that his time could be cut short for Auden's game. Cheer is important to her and it's the only thing she does, unless you count getting wasted in a basement as an extracurricular activity. Which I do not.
After what felt like hours, we were there. We got led into the special room where he had visits with us. No other prisoners were there as my father isn't usually in the general population. People in prison don't take too kindly to those who hurt children. Or those who killed a child.
"So," He began to say as he sat down beside my mother. "How's school going?" He asked.
"Fine." Auden and I said at the same time, without meaning to. This was the answer we always gave him.
"You two are juniors now, bigger fish in the polluted pond." He said. This caused Auden to roll her eyes. "How's Cheer, Auden?" He asked her.
"It's awesome." She told him, smiling brightly because she knows that it annoys him. "I have a game tonight."
"Homecoming?" He asked her.
"That's next week." She replied.
"They picked out really nice dresses." Mom added. "Auden is doing red and Elody is doing blue."
"Elody also insists on wearing a black jacket and converse with it." Auden reminded mom.
"Let her wear what she wants." Dad said, defending me only because he doesn't like who Auden is. Mom told me once, in confidence, that Auden reminds him of Heather Chandler.
"Whatever." Auden rolled her eyes again. She must be going for a world record of how many times she can roll her eyes at him before he gets annoyed. She pulled out her phone and deliberately made it seem like she was doing something. I checked, she wasn't.
"How's the writing coming along, El?" He asked me.
"It's swell." I said sarcastically. I've always been a writer, which dad said I inherited from mom. She bleeds blue ink, he said once.
"Veronica, how's work?" He asked, quickly moving on from me to my mother. She was who he really wanted to talk to anyways.
"It's alright." She replied, this was a lie. Work sucked and my mother hated her job. She wrote articles for the newspaper. News flash, no one wants to buy papers.
"You know it's not going to be much longer until I'm out right, girls?" He asked Auden and I. We nodded because we did know this. "In fact, this is the last visit we'll have here." He added.
"We have a surprise." Mom told us, her voice containing excitement. We both looked up annoyedly. "Your father's paperwork is being processed right now. He's coming home tonight." She said, her voice feigning excitement. I could hear anxiety in there as well. She was scared that once he came home, he'd hit her because he'd spent fifteen years not doing it. Making up for lost time goes for bad things too.
"Are you serious?" Auden asked. I started to chew my lip, knowing this was about to go south. "He can't come to the game tonight."
"I've never gotten to see you cheer. I'll be right by your mom and sister. You won't even notice me." He told her, making it clear that it wasn't for debate. But that doesn't exactly stop Auden's tirade. Nothing that simple ever stops Auden.
"I don't want you there." She said.
"It's either I go, or you don't." He said, shrugging because he knew he won.
"Mom!" Auden whined, slamming her hand on the table.
"He really wants to see you cheer. Trust me, he hates football. He won't want to go too often." Mom reasoned with Auden, who gave another whatever in reply.
We sat there in pretty much dead silence as everyone but my father was anxious about his homecoming. Instead of anxiety, he was excited.
Some of you may ask, why weren't you excited? It's a simple answer. A man who abused his wife, eight year old and twin babies shouldn't be coming home. He'll just do it again. No one in this family bought that he'd changed.
It's why my grandparents don't talk to Auden or I. They wanted my mother to divorce my father when he was arrested for killing Giselle. She refused because she loved him. But I really think that she was just scared he'd kill her when he got out. As such, her parents disowned her. Her friends stopped being her friends when they learned she knew that Heather Chandler's death wasn't a suicide.
What I'm trying to say is that all she had in this world was him. No one else in her life had any desire to know her after the trial. It's sad, honestly. Everyone wanted her to leave him. But because it was an ultimatum, they turned their backs instead. This just caused her to lean on my father more.
Dependency goes hand in hand with abuse. If you're dependent on a bad person, it gives them easy access to hurt you. Truly, my mother's life is a sad one.
On the car ride to Auden's football game, I thought of this more.
My grandparents were wealthy. But they were generally unhappy with my mother her whole life. They wanted her to be someone she's not. They wanted an Auden, not an Elody, she explained to me once. I asked if that meant she didn't want me. She told me that she loves what makes Auden and I different.
I started to feel as though she wasn't too thrilled my father was coming home. She loved him, so she probably was tentatively happy but not ecstatic. She can never get back what he took from her. Aside from Giselle, her unwillingness to break away from his abuse made her whole family turn on her. And his killing of Heather Chandler made her friends desert her. But truly, the important thing she lost was Giselle.
I sometimes feel like my mother loves Giselle more than Auden and I. Maybe it's because she was killed or the gruesome way that happened, but it's strange. I already have a twin sister to compete with for our mother's love. I never realized that my dead sister would be the winner. It's weird to really think about her. Her whole life ended so young. She'd be twenty four this November. My mom said she likes to picture her this way, working somewhere amazing and fantastical. It's what Giselle would have done. She was always described as a bit eccentric.
P.S. - That's a nice way of saying she was crazy.
I've read Giselle's diary during the dark times, as my mother calls them. The months after my father returned, the months where he became truly cruel. She saw things. Let's not mess around here, she had hallucinations. Specifically, she saw Heather Chandler. According to the diary, so did my parents.
But Giselle wasn't even alive when she was killed. She made up who Heather was for her. She was a friendly big sister, mom said it was the type of sister Giselle would have been. It was a coping mechanism, she added. Apparently, little Ellie Dean was quite lonesome. She made herself a friend in her loneliness.
My mother doesn't talk about her hallucinations often. From what I've gathered, it started the moment she helped kill Heather Chandler. It was the onset of guilt she's never really been able to move past.
My father, on the other hand, I'm only going off what my mother recalls from private conversations in their bedroom. All those years ago, he said he saw Heather Chandler inspiring him to hurt more and kill more. He had referenced that when someone makes him angry, or even for no reason at all, she appears and eggs on the rage. He doesn't feel guilty, he never did. It's bottled up anger. And all this tells me is that maybe there was truly no reason that he killed Giselle.