broken // branded sequel // heathers au

three

Elody's POV

Praying was no use.

My dream was of the day Giselle met our father. In it, she cried tears of joy when he revealed who he was as she was sure it couldn't be possible. She had just learned moments prior that he killed himself. But when my mother and Giselle went outside, he was there.

It wasn't ever made clear to Giselle how he found them. But I know how he managed to do that. My mother has stated, in her diary, that he was stalking her. Not just for a short while. He was following her since the day he pretended to die. After he went up in a puff of smoke, he watched her.

Why he didn't go to her sooner, I always wondered. But Giselle's life provides insight.

"I tried calling once." He told my mother after she asked why he took so long.

I saw the way he yanked my mother close, kept her pinned to his hip as he led her towards the doom of their firstborn daughter.

But Giselle was having a great time, she laughed and got to know him on a purely basic level. She thought he was funny and silly and everything a dad should be.

I feel sick writing that down. She saw him as a truly good man, one who was happy to finally meet her. She had no idea that a year and a half later that he would point a gun at her and pull the trigger.

Giselle got upset over pancakes, because she was seven and they were her favorite food, so she stormed off to the lavender room she would call her own. As she sat and stewed in her annoyance, something sinister started to whisper to her.

"Your mother does not love you, Giselle. She is going to leave you in the dust for your father." The voice told me. It was feminine, young and perhaps cold.

"Heather, mom loves me." Giselle argued. But her voice was soft, empty. She didn't believe it even then. Writing this makes me wonder what life was like before my mother brought Giselle to Sherwood, Ohio.

"If she loved you she'd have told you who your father was. She'd have made you pancakes. She doesn't love you. No one loves you." The voice, who I now knew to be Heather Chandler, repeated over and over until Giselle hurt herself in the dream.

My parents screamed, bandaged her wounds and helped her fall asleep. That's when I was being shaken awake by my father. I was in a pool of my own sweat.

"What were you screaming about?" He asked me, his voice low. I glanced at the clock, it was barely three AM.

"I don't know," I told him, despite knowing that I likely was screaming 'Let me die! Why won't you let me die!?'

"You were saying something strange, Elody." He said. "You were asking why we won't let you die." He clarified. His voice sounded strangled. I knew he remembered that phrase.

"I was having a nightmare." I explained, getting a sense of déjà vu at the frequent repeating of this phrase.

"Of what?" He asked me. I don't know why I felt so uneasy as he looked at me. It was like he already knew what my nightmare about.

"I wasn't me. I was," I faltered, unable to say my sister's name.

"Who?" He asked me. He had fear in his blue eyes, the same blue eyes he gave to all of his daughters. I never understood how the blue of his eyes dominated the brown eyes of my mother in all three children.

"Giselle." I said, looking away from him. "I wasn't me, I was her. I was reliving her life." I added quietly, keeping my eyes focused on the flower pattern that decorated my comforter.