Ella's parents arrive home on Monday morning. Ella's father is confused to see that his car is not in the driveway. They enter their house and set their bags down in the kitchen.
Ella's Mom immediate sees her daughter's anxiety medication scattered all over the floor. She sighs and bends down to clean them up. "Looks like she had another episode, Bill."
"I'll call her, see where she's at." He nods as he sees the pills all over the floor. "Maybe she's just on a drive to clear her head."
Both of them lift their heads when they hear the subtle ringing of a phone upstairs. "She left her phone here?" Her mom asks as if her husband would know the answer.
"She must still be here then. Maybe she lent the car to Aubrey or someone." Her dad shrugs, thinking of possible scenarios that could have occurred.
Her mom ventures up the stairs to see what her daughter is up to. "Isabella?" She knocks on the door and pushes it open. She screams once she has a clear visual into her daughter's room.
Her husband runs upstairs to see what his wife is yelling about. "What is it?" He asks her before he is able to see the gruesome scene before his wife. He inches forward, wishing he did not ask. "Is that, is-" He tries to say his daughter's name, fearing the worst.
He pushes past his wife to get a closer look at the victim. He sees Aubrey's body laying in the middle of his daughter's bedroom floor with a bullet wound leaving a gaping hole in the middle of her forehead.
"Ca-call the police, Mary. It's Aubrey. I think she's dead." He kneels down beside his daughter's girlfriend of four years as his wife runs to grab a phone. He hesitantly sticks two of his fingers into her cold neck, searching for a pulse. When he can not find one, he stands and exits the room. The smell of her rotting flesh is too much for him to handle right now.
He is thankful that is it not his daughter with the bullet in her head but it does not mean this situation is any easier for him or his wife.
Aubrey is dead. This family loved Aubrey and treated her like one of their own. Ella loved her too. Her death is something they will all be grieving for a long time to come.
But the fact that Ella's body is not here also makes this a very difficult situation to digest. Their daughter is missing. And to make matters worse, they don't know if they need to search for their daughter or her body. They have no idea if she is dead or if she is still alive.
Police arrive on the scene of a murder at a local home. After some careful investigations of the crime scene, the police have formed a tentative theory as to what may have happened here two nights ago.
They suggest to Ella's parents that she may have killed her girlfriend in a fight that escalated quickly and after she was sure Aubrey was dead, Ella took her father's car to escape in the hopes of getting away with her murder. That is what the current evidence would suggest.
Both of Ella's parents think this theory of theirs is absolutely absurd. Ella loves Aubrey. She would never do anything to hurt her. They would never believe their daughter could be capable of such a thing. And definitely not when it has to do with hurting her beloved Aubrey. Besides, neither of Ella's parents owned or kept a gun in the house they don't know where Ella would have gotten one.
Aubrey's body is removed from the house in a body bag and she is taken to the morgue. An officer is on his way to Aubrey's house to tell her mother her daughter's fate.
Ella's mother grasps at her chest as she sees her daughter's pill bottle on the counter where she left it after cleaning up her mess all over the floor.
"Bill," she grabs her husband. "Bill!"
"What Mary what?" He asks as she shakes him.
"It's her. She took our daughter. She's back." She replies ominously.
"I'm sorry to intrude. You said she's back? Someone took your daughter?" The detective asks, intruding on their conversation.
"She-she-she" Mary tries to collect her thoughts as she processes everything. "I came home and had to clean up her pills because they were all over the floor. Recently she's been fine but she used to take them almost every day because she felt like she was still being followed by her." Chills run up her spine. "She stalked her for years and broke into our house."
"Do you know her name?" The detective asks, dialing the station so he can have someone look into the case.
"Shawna Jones." She replies in a whisper.
