“I’m telling you that I wasn’t going to stand in her way of what she wanted to do.”
I reach for my phone to call the police.
“Calling the police isn’t going to help. She’s gone. She’s been gone for a while. She didn’t put up a fight. She walked out the door with bags in hand and left of her own free will.”
“Fuck!” I scream as I throw the phone across the room. “Fuck!”
Anger? Intense sadness? A suffocating fury? Devastation? Relief?
No, not relief. Ember should be here. She should fucking be here!
“Fuck!”
I have no idea what I’m feeling. A mixture of grief and rage is a potent combination, and it makes me feel as if I’m losing complete control of everything.
Why the fuck would she leave with them?
“She’s on the run with them now,” Mother adds. “Which tells me that she was part of their sick acts all along. You know the police will see it that way. She’s a criminal on the run.”
“That man has brainwashed her. Nothing more,” I defend. “You have no idea just how sick in the fucking head he is.”
I can’t allow myself to believe that Ember would ever condone or be a part of killing. She’s merely a puppet and he the master.
I glance back at the letter.
“She knew deep down that they’d find her. How they did, I don’t know. But I bet she was scared for me. For us. I bet she left as a way to sacrifice herself. That’s the only explanation,” I say, my voice coming out gruff and muffled.
My mother simply shakes her head.
I point at her. “You never liked her. You never made her feel welcomed. She sensed that. She knew!”
“You can blame me if that makes you feel better,” she says calmly, which only infuriates me more. “But the person to blame is you. You should never have brought her home. And you should never have left her to figure things out on her own. That poor girl was thrown to the wolves by you.”
“Yes!” I shout. “And you were the leader of the pack. Why couldn’t you have been nice to her? Why couldn’t you have acted like a mother figure she so desperately needed?”
“It wasn’t my job to love her. It was yours.”
Her words were like a punch to the gut. It was my job to love her, and clearly I didn’t make her feel loved enough, or she would have never left me. If she truly knew how deeply I did….
“You truly are a despicable woman,” I snap. “I’ve lived my whole life trying to be better than you. Trying not to let money change me like it clearly changed you. You have been the perfect example to me as to what not to be.”
“I know you’re angry and acting out,” she says, proceeding as if she doesn’t hear a word I say.
“No,” I reply, shaking my head in disbelief that this woman is actually my flesh and blood. “This is no act. I’ve reached my max, Mother. I can’t ignore who you are or the things you do any longer. I’ve spent my whole life making excuses for your behavior. I used to write it off as it just being part of you being a rich socialite. But I was just putting my head in the sand. You simply are a bad person. Period.”
“Listen to me,” she says, walking over and placing her freshly manicured hand on my shoulder. “You refused to see just how unhappy Amber was here. You also didn’t want to face how broken she was. She needed help, and you were too busy with your job and trying to get your life back on track to see it. But at the same time, you can’t fix her. She’s lived that life for far too many years to just step into our world and survive. I knew this the minute you brought her home. You can’t tame a feral, son. It’s against nature.”
I snapped my shoulder away from her touch, stormed over to my phone, and picked it up off the ground. “She’s not a fucking stray! She’s my goddamn wife, and you allowed her to leave with monsters!” I pointed to my door and then dialed the detective in charge of the case. “Get out while I deal with this. Get out before I say something I’ll regret.”
“Christopher—”
“Get out!” I shout. “Now.”
“You’ll see soon enough why I made the decision I did. Someday, you’ll understand.”
“Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
3
Christopher
Agent Martinez looks as annoyed as I feel. “So, let me get this straight,” he begins. “A serial killer and his possible accomplice enters your house, and you don’t call the police?”
“What do you think we’re doing right now?” My mother counters his question with the cool demeanor only she can pull off.
“And you allowed Ember to walk out the door with him?”
“She chose to go with him,” my mother says, darting her eyes at me. “I’ve always felt from the beginning that Amber wasn’t completely innocent in all this. She showed me today that she isn’t afraid of Richard one bit.”
“Because she’s brainwashed,” I cut in. “She grew up believing he was her father. She loves him, no matter what he did. She can’t help it. Just because she left with him, doesn’t mean she’s guilty of any crime.”
“I think that’s left to be decided,” Agent Martinez says as he nods to another man standing next to him, who is taking down all the notes in a black leather pad. “Christopher, did Ember have any phone calls or contact with Richard since returning?”
“Absolutely not,” I snap. “She was terrified that he was going to be able to find her. All the media and attention really scared her for that reason. She believed he was coming for her, and that is exactly what he did. He came and took her.”
Agent Martinez looks at my mother. “But your mother just said she went with him willingly.”
“She’s wrong,” I say. “It might have appeared that way on the surface. But I know Ember. She wouldn’t want to go back to a life with that man. There’s some other reason why that we don’t know.”
“Mrs. Davenport,” Agent Martinez says, acting as if my words aren’t even heard, “do you have any idea where they were headed? Did they give any clue or say anything?”
My mother shakes her head and gives a slight shrug. “No. Richard simply told Ember to hurry up and that they had to get out of here quickly. Ember rushed upstairs, packed a bag, and was out the door before I could do anything. I wasn’t exactly going to try to fight with a serial killer. Frankly”—she looks at me—“I was scared. But this wasn’t the first time I’ve been scared in my own home since that woman entered our lives.”
“Why did you wait to call us until after Christopher got home? Why didn’t you call 911 the minute they left?” Agent Martinez asks.
Yes, Mother, why?
“For Ember,” she answers with a deep sigh. “I knew how this would look for her. And regardless if she’s innocent or guilty, I wanted my son to hear it from me first. I wanted him to handle this and make the decision. She’s his… wife. And, well… maybe I should have called right away, but like I just said, I was scared.”