……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
“Did you have fun tonight?” Rose asked as Ella collapsed on the couch.
“Yeah, thanks for dinner, mom. It was nice to get to see everyone again. It’s been awhile since everyone’s been in town.” She gave her a hug before getting up. “I think i’m going to go to bed early tonight. I’m tired.”
“Okay, goodnight sweetie. I love you.”
“I love you too, mom.”
Ella kicked her shoes off, shimmied out of her jeans, and stretched out on her bed. She scrolled through facebook for a few minutes, before clicking on the new podcast episode and hit play. She set her phone down on the nightstand, closed her eyes and listened.
“Now this week’s episode is a little controversial. It contains crimes against children, so if that makes you uncomfortable you might want to skip it.” The female host warned. “Now if you’re still tuned in, do I have a story for you.’
“Thirteen years ago, police were called to an apartment building by a man claiming to be a concerned neighbor. He said he heard, what to him, sounded like a gunshot and would they please come and do a welfare check.
When Police get there, they are shocked at what they find. A woman is lying dead in the master bedroom from what appears to be a self inflicted gunshot wound. So they continue their search of the house, when suddenly one of the cops yells from the bathroom. There on the floor is what appears to be the body of a small child, but after a quick check they discover to their amazement, she has a pulse. They quickly call in an ambulance and rush her to the hospital, only for doctors and hospital staff to know exactly who she is.”
“So her name was never released to the public, so for the sake of the story, let’s just call her Kelly. Now Kelly was a very sick little girl. She was constantly in and out of the hospital, was severely underweight, and to top off everything, had terminal cancer. That’s why police were so shocked when they found a pulse. By all accounts she looked dead.
When Kelly finally wakes up, doctors are stumped. She can’t remember a thing, and more bizarrely, she can’t talk. From what I’ve gathered this was a really friendly, talkative little girl even despite her circumstances. So after discussing how she was found with police, doctors thought given her severely weakened state, it was perfectly plausible she had accidentally fallen and hit her head.
Police quickly shut the case and rule her mothers death a suicide. Police figure she had walked in the bathroom, found her daughter unconscious in the bathroom and thought her dead, just as police had. In her grief, she had taken her own life. The gun had been found lying next to her after all. Pretty open and shut case, right? Well that’s where you’d be wrong.
Now this is where this case takes a sudden twist. It’s not until two years later that police get a phone call from a school for kids with special needs. It’s a school a six hour drive away, and one of the teachers begins to talk about one of her students. The student in question is Kelly and she’s starting to remember bits and pieces of that night, and what she has to tell police will throw everything they thought they knew about her mother’s death right out the window.
So Kelly tells them she remembers a man being there that night, and even stranger, that it was the same man the school caught on surveillance that very morning leaving a very expensive gift, for none other than Kelly.
Kelly identifies the man as Stanley Vertamin, a previous sports coach she had before she had gotten ill. Police quickly track down Stanley in town and bring him in for questioning, and there he admits everything.
According to Stanley, he first met Diane Marsh nearly 12 years previously in Las Vegas. They get to talking, and he invites her up to his room, and she agrees. He says they have consensual sex and she leaves. They have a one night stand and neither of them ever expects to run into each other again, but little did they know they would cross paths nine years later in a completely different state.
Stanley Vertamin is now working as a kids soccer coach and he notices one girl in particular looks stunningly like his daughter. They have the same build, the same eyes, the same black hair. When he sees who comes and picks her up the truth hits him like a ton of bricks. He recognizes her immediately as the woman he had had an affair with all those years ago and quickly does the math. The girl looks like his daughter, because she was his daughter as well.
Stanley approaches Diane and she admits that yes, she had gotten pregnant after their affair. She tells him though not to worry, she wasn’t coming after him for child support, and meeting him here had only been a fluke. She tells him basically just go on with your life, pretend this didn’t happen, and just treat her like any other kids on the team. Stanley quickly realizes he can’t do that. He finds himself giving Kelly extra pointers and keeping more of an eye on her than anyone else on the team.
It’s while he’s been watching her that he begins to notice a drastic change come over her. Instead of her usual energetic and bubbly personality, she seems to always be tired. She has this overall unhealthy look about her and she always seems to be covered in these big nasty bruises. In Stanley’s mind, he immediately thinks the worst. He suspects Diane has been abusing Kelly, and he needs to step in and stop it. He confronts Diane after practice one day and Diane is pissed. She immediately pulls Kelly off the team and tells her she has to stay away from him.
Things begin to take a turn for the worst and she begins to notice a change in Kelly too. At first she thought the bruises were from playing sports. You know, she’s a kid and kids fall and get hurt all the time, but even after Kelly stops playing soccer, all she wants to do is sleep. Diane knows something is up now and takes Kelly to the doctor. She starts to think Kelly has mono, or she’s anemic, or something minor along those lines. What she was not expecting was to be told Kelly has leukemia.
When rumors of Kelly’s condition reaches Stanley, he immediately gets in touch with Diane to apologize and he rounds up the whole team to come visit Kelly in the hospital. They all sign a big, giant get well card and bring her flowers and such. It’s then that Stanley notices Diane looks awful. She’s clearly stressed, she’s lost weight, she looks exhausted. He keeps asking her how she’s doing, but Diane just puts on a brave face and says they’re managing.
It didn’t take long at all before Diane had completely gone through her savings to pay for Kelly’s treatments, and the bills just kept piling up. She had had to quit her job in order to take care of Kelly, and It had gotten to the point where Diane was having to make choices about what bills she paid. Did she make the car payment or did she pay rent?
Then came the worst news imaginable that no parent wants to hear. Kelly’s treatments were not working. It was starting to look like there was nothing more they could do. This round of chemo was about to finish up in a couple weeks, and doctors were telling her that once it finished, she should probably just keep Kelly home and try to make her as comfortable as possible. At the rate her cancer is spreading, doctors give her an estimated six months left to live. Diane is understandably crushed. She’s a single mom desperately trying to hold it all together for her daughter.
A few more weeks go by and Stanley says this is where she runs into Diane and Kelly again. He notices their car run right through a red light and he follows them home to make sure everything’s okay. He gets out of the car and knocks on the drivers side window. That’s when he notices Diane is just sitting there spacing out of the window. She’s not responding to him at all, so he opens the door and is startled to find Diane just sitting in a pool of urine just staring at nothing. He debates calling 9-1-1 but Diane kind of snaps out of it a little. She’s still clearly not ok according to Stanley, but she is making eye contact and talking.
Relieved, he helps her inside only to find their apartment is an absolute disaster. It looks like no one’s cleaned in months. He puts both Diane and Kelly to bed, and does what he can to try and tidy up a bit. He picks up all the trash, does the dishes, vacuums. It’s not great, but it was certainly better than how he found it. While he was picking up, that’s when he noticed all the past due notices for just about everything, and worse an eviction notice for two weeks from then.
That’s when Diane comes back out. She looks a lot better than before and whatever had happened, she seems to have snapped out of it. She is surprised to find him in her living room. So he tells her what happened and how she was acting strange. She’s shocked. She didn’t remember any of that. Stanley insists Diane go to the hospital and get checked out, but she refuses. She keeps insisting she’s fine and admits she’s been under a ton of stress. She hasn’t been sleeping because she’s been up most nights with Kelly when she gets sick.
He makes a deal with her. He promises to spend the night on the couch and look after Kelly so Diane can get some sleep. In return if he doesn’t feel she’s at tip top shape she has to go to the doctor. Diane agrees and thinks maybe she just needs a good night sleep after all. She feels totally fine. He orders them all dinner, and by 7pm Kelly says she’s going to bed. By 9 p.m. Diane says she’s going to. She brings Stanley a blanket and pillow and thanks him for all the help. He lays down on the couch and falls asleep.
When he awakens around 11pm, he hears strange noises coming from the bathroom. He figures that must be Kelly getting sick and rushes over to help. Instead, what he finds makes him absolutely freeze in his tracks.
The weird sound wasn’t Kelly getting sick. The sound was Diane holding Kelly underneath the water while she repeated over and over “Let mommy make it all better.”
Kelly is fighting and thrashing in the bath and the sound of splashing water seems to snap Stanley out of his shock. He rushes to Diane and tries to pull her away from Kelly, but she is completely fixated on drowning her daughter. It takes all his strength but he finally wrestles Diane away, only to find Diane once again in a complete trance like before. That’s when he notices what’s in Diane’s hand. A gun.
At this point Stanley realizes Diane has completely snapped. There is no waking her up from this. She just keeps repeating, “Let mommy make it all better.” She has gone into a completely dissociative state and Stanley realizes it’s her or them. He charges Diane and manages to push her back into the bedroom where she drops the gun. He picks it up and sure enough Diane keeps ignoring him and going after Kelly. If he wants to save Kelly he has to act now, and that’s when he pulls the trigger.
He drops the gun and runs to Kelly. He finds her floating facedown in the water motionless and he’s terrified he’s too late. He pulls her out of the bathtub and onto the floor where he begins chest compressions. Just when he’s about to give up hope, she begins coughing up water. He does his best to reassure her, but she goes unconscious. Satisfied she’s breathing at least, he goes to check on Diane and that’s when he realizes what he did. He finds her bleeding from a shot to the side of the head and begins to panic. She’s clearly dead and he knows it doesn’t look good for him. So he wipes the prints off the gun and sticks it by Diane. He checks on Kelly one more time before calling 9-1-1 pretending to be a concerned neighbor and takes off.
Stanley is at first charged with one count of first degree homicide, one count of felony tampering with a crime scene and one count of felony child endangerment. Later the charges of first degree homicide are reduced to manslaughter and Stanley pleads guilty in order to avoid dragging Kelly through the stress of testifying at trial. He was sentenced to 15-25 years in prison, but three years into his sentence he was killed by a fellow inmate during a fight.
Some people see Stanley as a father who did what needed to be done in order to save his daughter’s life. Others see Stanley as full of shit. Some people theorize that when Diane was desperate for money, she threatened to tell his wife about Kelly, and he snapped.
Unfortunately, we only have Stanley’s version of events and whether true or not, he is facing his just rewards in the afterlife.
So what do you think happened?”
Ella turned off her phone and sat there motionless for quite some time.
Let mommy make it all better.
“No! That couldn’t be what happened!” but she knew it was true. She had never told anyone those words before. She numbly stood up and went out to the living room.
Why?
“Hey, I thought you said you were going to bed.” Rose said. One look at Ella’s face and she knew something was very wrong. She stood up and went to her side. “Ella, what’s the matter? Talk to me.”
“You lied to me.” Ella said.
Rose sighed and led Ella to the couch. There was no point in playing dumb. Rose knew she’d learn the truth eventually.
“Yes, we lied.” Rose said as she held Ella’s hand in hers.
“Why?” the numbness and shock were beginning to wear off and the truth was starting to set in.
“Ella, you were ten years old. You were traumatized! You didn’t need to know! You couldn’t handle knowing the truth. You couldn’t set foot near a bathroom without having a panic attack until you were nearly 13!”
“Have you known this whole time?”
“We first heard his story the night before your eleventh birthday. Do you remember?”
Ella did. It was her favorite memory. She had felt wanted for the first time.
“Is it true?”
“Only you can tell us that.”
Let mommy make it all better.
“It’s true.”
Ella fell to the floor and began to sob harder than she had in years. She was vaguely aware of Rose kneeling down next to her and rocking her in her arms.
“Why did she?”
“Your mother loved you, Ella. I don’t know what happened towards the end, maybe watching you suffer was just too much. Maybe she thought ending your pain was a kinder fate.”
Let mommy make it all better.
“But the cancer didn’t kill me, she would have ended my life for nothing.”
“But she didn’t, because you are the strongest and bravest person I have ever known, and I have a wonderful daughter now as a result. Pedro would be so proud to see the woman you’ve grown up to be.” She looked longingly at the ceramic urn on the mantle.
Ella wiped her face on her arms. They were right. Knowing would have killed her then.
“How about you come sleep with me tonight? I’ll keep the nightmares away while you sleep.”
“I’m too old to sleep with you now.” Ella chuckled. “Wouldn’t that be weird?”
“You are never too old to need a mother’s love. Remember what I told you when you were younger? You don’t have to be in such a hurry to grow up. It’s okay to take a step back when you need to. The world will still be there when you’re ready to face it.”