Brother, This April Fools’ Day Is the Last One Chapter 10

Brother, This April Fools’ Day Is the Last One Chapter 10

The second they reached the station, Lily started crying. She claimed she was having a panic attack,

that finding out what happened to me had been too much for her to handle. She begged to be taken

to the hospital.

The police didn’t buy it. While Lily sat in a holding cell, the medical examiner finished the autopsy.

The report said I’d tried to claw my way out. Multiple times. Several of my fingers had been

shattered from the effort.

Oliver couldn’t even sit through the officer reading it back to him. He broke down before she even

reached the end.

“I was wrong. I know that. I just, I couldn’t stand her. She was always such a freak, but I never

meant to kill her.”

“I thought the oven was broken. I just wanted to scare her.”

“It was April Fool’s Day. I just wanted to pull a stupid prank…”

The officer across from him shook her head.

“How would you like it if someone pulled a stunt like that on you for April Fool’s Day?”

Oliver said nothing.

Lily blamed everything on Oliver.

But Lily’s fingerprints were all over the child lock, more than anyone else’s. The police had also

found a layer of superglue sealing the oven door shut.

Her prints were on the glue, too. The maids said the appliances were always kept unplugged, but

the day I died, Lily’s fingerprints were on the plug.

“It’s all a misunderstanding. Oliver made me do it,” Lily said.

The police ignored her entirely. They held both of them overnight.

When it was my parents’ turn, they claimed total ignorance.

The officers asked if they knew their business partner had been threatening their daughter for

years.

Mom shook her head. “Mr. Miller was always a perfect gentleman with us. We had no idea.”

The officer stared at her. “Your daughter came to you for help, and you didn’t listen, did you?”

My dad looked at the floor. “I thought she was lying. Arthur’s been our friend for twenty years.”

“She’s your daughter. It took everything she had to tell you what happened to her. You were the only people she had, and you threw her to the wolves.”

The interrogation went late into the night.

By the next morning, my story was all over the news. Strangers left flowers. People I’d never met

came to the funeral home to pay their respects.

Emma cried until she was completely hollow. Watching her was the closest thing to pain I could still

feel.

She swallowed her grief and handled everything, my funeral, my burial. She was the only one who

could.

Every member of my family was behind bars.

The investigation uncovered the truth about my parents. They had come home that day, the day

Arthur assaulted me.

They heard what was happening behind that door. And they walked away.

They’d also turned a blind eye to everything Oliver and Lily had done to me. They were charged with

criminal negligence and child endangerment.

As for Arthur, the other girls he’d hurt found each other because of my show. They saw their own

stories reflected in my paintings.

Maybe seeing that I’d never stopped fighting gave them the courage to speak up.

Together, they gathered evidence. Together, they put him away.

They came to visit my grave too, every one of them.

That day, for the first time in a long time, a profound sense of peace washed over me. Emma felt it

too.

Years passed.

One day, Emma came back with a little girl.

“Say hi to your godmother,” Emma told her.

The little girl looked just like her, the same eyes, the same stubborn chin.

Emma caught me up on everything. My parents couldn’t find work after prison, no one in their

industry would touch them. Dad had a stroke and lost the use of his legs.

Mom worked dead-end jobs to cover his medical bills.

Oliver and Lily both got life sentences.

Oliver killed himself in prison.

Lily had a complete psychological breakdown.

Emma ran her fingers over the photo on my headstone, the one where I was smiling. “If there’s something after this, Chloe, I hope it’s everything you deserved.”

It would be. I smiled, nodded, and let go.