Kiss of the She-Devil Read Online Free PDF Page A

on her mind.
    “I didn’t feel right. I had a headache. I kept getting that feeling that I needed to go see my mom and be with her, but that I wasn’t supposed to, at the same time.”
    Emily had been to several of these sales parties—be it jewelry, food, cooking supplies, Amway, whatever. She always had made purchases, both to support her friend and to get something for her mother.
    “But on that day, I knew,” Emily recalled. “I was going to buy something for my mom, but I knew. I needed to wait. I wasn’t going to buy anything for her.”
    Why the hesitation?
    Because she felt that her mother wasn’t going to need it, she added.
    “When she died, the moment she died,” Emily said, “I must have felt it.”
    After the Pampered Chef party, Emily should have gone home. It was the thing to do. She’d have to get some sleep so she could get up and go to class in the morning.
    “But something told me not to. I didn’t want to face what was there.”
    Inside that house, Emily sensed, was bad news. She knew it. She understood that what was waiting for her might change her life in some way. She just didn’t know how.
    “I was avoiding going home, at all costs.”
    So Emily went over to her boyfriend’s house.
    It was near eleven at night when she dredged up the nerve to drive home.
    “I put it off as long as I could. Then I showed up and the police are there.”
    All those feelings throughout the night—the connection with her mother, the aura of something dark that was hovering around like a ghost following her—were now in her face. She had been right, after all.
    “There’s been an accident,” one of the cops at the house told Emily after she walked in. It was late now, well after midnight. “Could you come down to the substation with us?”
    Emily had just started her sophomore year of college. Same as her brother, Emily lived at home. (Their older sister had stayed in Texas and lived with Gail’s mother, Dora Garza, and finished up college before marrying and moving to Virginia.) Emily was the outspoken one of the bunch. She had graduated high school in Michigan in 1998. This was after changing schools two years before, in 1996, when George Fulton had decided—against Gail and all the kids’ wishes—that the family was moving north to Michigan from Texas.
    “Sure,” Emily said, responding to the OCSD’s request to go down to the substation.
    Emily stepped into the police cruiser. They took off.
    “What happened?” Emily asked as the cop drove.
    “Well, we’ll explain it all when you get to the substation.”
    Emily thought about it. “What’s wrong with my mom?” she pressed. “I can’t feel her. Something’s happened to my mom. . . . I cannot feel her with me.”
    This statement shocked the police officer. “Why do you think that?”
    “Because I have not felt right all day about my mom, so it must be about her.”
    “Don’t worry,” the police officer said, “your family is there [at the substation]. We’ll explain when you get there.” Then the cop broke into what Emily described as “small talk,” and the officer started to ask her all sorts of questions.
    “What’s wrong?” Emily asked again. “You’re nervous. You’re repeating the same questions over and over. You’re also just saying ‘family.’ You’re not mentioning who’s there at the substation. What’s going on? What happened to my mom?”
    Some time passed. “Let’s just not talk,” the cop suggested.
    When Emily arrived at the substation, the first family member she spied upon entering the building was Andrew.
    “Where’s Dad?” Emily asked. “What happened?”
    Cops were standing around everywhere.
    “I got into trouble for stealing something,” Andrew said with a troubled, mocking smirk, likely more out of nervousness than trying to be funny. (“Although I do believe that the police told him to say this,” Emily recalled.)
    “You didn’t steal anything,” Emily said. She was the