Little White Lies

    It had been 6 years since my husband, Josh and I had heard from our daughter's biological mother. Jenn and her pedophile of a husband had Heather and Tristan taken away from them for the unthinkable. Severe child abuse, the kind of stuff you hear about and it just turns your stomach. Then say,"Nothing like that will ever happen to me or my kids." So Josh and I got custody and I adopted both of them so that it would never happen again and moved them to Maine.
    Things were very hard at first, but we got through the horror of it all and I would say that both of the kids are doing great now. Until the phone rang on Heather's 18th birthday of all days and it was Jenn. I just couldn't believe that she was even calling. Her husband was due to get out of prison the following month and this was not rubbing me the right way at all. After Heather got off of the phone she told me that Jenn was in town and she wanted to go and meet her. As for the town we live in, it's so small that it must have took a large amount of effort to find us. I hated the idea of Jenn being here and Heather wanting to see her, but I couldn't say no. It wasn't my choice anymore, but yes I was scared of what could happen. Who knew maybe Jenn did finally change and it was soon to be found out.
    We had company visiting, my best friend Macy, and she had a bad feeling and didn't think that Heather should go either, but Heather promised she would keep it in public. I felt like I was stuck between those walls that just keep moving closer and your trying to get out, but you can't and the walls never stop moving, like the life was about to be sucked out of me, but we let her go and just held our breath. Josh was not taking this well and so Macy and I opted to stay up until Heather came home and I told Josh maybe he should try and get some sleep.
    It was midnight when we heard Heather's car pull up. She had been gone for over 7 hours! She finally came into the house and was so out of breath from crying that she was having a hard time talking. She collapsed on the floor and that was when I noticed all the blood on her clothes. I felt like I had just leaped over onto the set of the friggen "Twilight Zone"! I knew this was going to be bad and the feeling of fear came over me like the darkness of the night sky. I grabbed ahold of Heather and sat her up and asked her what the hell happened?! She got up and was all of a sudden so calm, a calm in her that I never had seen before. It was so creepy that it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. She grabbed my hand and Macy followed as we went out to the car. Heather opened up the trunk and it was like I was just sent to hell. There was Jenn, in the trunk of the car, stabbed to death. I shut the trunk in a hurry and ushered us all back into the house.
    I still didn't know the circumstances, but I just had to think and think hard. I asked Macy to get Heather out of those clothes and in the shower. I took the clothes and wrapped them in a plastic bag. I had to go and wake up Josh and tell him. At the same time I was thinking,"Oh my God, what has Heather done?!" There was a loud ringing in my ears as I went to my room and woke up Josh. I said as firmly as possible,"Josh, you need to get up and come down to the living room NOW!"
    When Josh finally came down I proceeded to tell him what was in the trunk of the car and how Heather came home. He went outside and looked for himself and when he came back in I don't think I have ever seen this look before in the 13 years we had been married. It was almost like this overwhelming look of fear and what the hell am I going to do. Heather was finally done in the shower and came down in the living room with Macy. I finally asked,"Heather, you have to tell us what happened. What the hell happened while you were gone with Jenn?" I told her that we couldn't help her unless we knew what went on. She took a deep breath, one that was for when there was a long story to tell. So all of us sat quietly for a moment waiting for the explanation of how Jenn ended up in the trunk of the car stabbed to death.
Just when frustration set in, Heather finally started to talk and tell us from the beginning what happened.
    Heather began and said,"I went to meet her at about 3 o'clock pm at Governor's Restaurant. We sat and ate and had a really good time catching up. She didn't seem high or drunk and it was a nice conversation. I lost track of time and before I knew it it was already 8 o'clock pm and Governor's was closing." Heather sighed and started crying and said,"Jenn convinced me to take a ride with her because she said that she was leaving tomorrow to go back home. She was just passing through and had to see me. Things were so different this time and I kind of trusted her at that moment." Crying hard now Heather said,"I didn't mean to do it, I swear! We went and parked at this place that was off of a dirt road. It was hard to recognize in the dark and I don't remember being on it before. When we got out of the car she changed and things got scary. I was so scared." Heather began to sob almost into hysterics for the next ten minutes.
    When she composed herself, she said,"She started saying all of these things to me and blamed me for everything, all the abuse,putting her husband away for what he did to me. She started screaming at me that I ruined her life and her marriage and getting all crazy on me! Jenn told me that she came here for payback. I didn't know what that meant at first and I was so confused by the whole night. She came at me and started to beat on me and punched me where ever she could. I was trying to get away and I tried to fight back, but she was too strong!" As Heather sat on the floor and rocked back and forth she continued her story. "I was on the ground getting beat up and I remembered the knife we kept in the car for protection. All I could think is if I didn't get that knife I was going to be the one dead! I don't remember how I got out from under her, but when I did I ran to the car and half of my body was inside trying to look for the knife and she was pulling on my legs as I was struggling to get it. I found it under the seat and when I turned around I ended up stabbing her once to get her off of me! What was I supposed to do?!"
As Heather went on crying and talking I just couldn't figure out what to do yet. My head was spinning. Everyone's head was spinning. Heather went on to say,"Jenn said that she came here to kill me and that I had better hope she didn't get that knife away from me. I totally freaked out and thought she was going to kill me and I went for her and I knocked her to the ground. I just started stabbing and stabbing and stabbing. I just couldn't stop! It was all the rage I ever had going into Jenn's body with that knife. Everything she ever did to us and let happened to us came out and I thought for sure she would get that knife from me and I couldn't let her do that. She would have killed me first. Heather took a big breath and spaced out for a minute and I asked, "Honey, why didn't you call the cops? Why didn't you call me!" She said softly,"Mom, my battery died on my phone. I panicked. It felt like afterwords time just stopped and there was nothing I could do. It's just like in the movies when you just freak out and don't know what to do and I got so paranoid and scared to go to jail. So I made sure that I was still alone, that there wasn't any houses or anyone around. I dragged her to the back of the car and tried to get her in the trunk and slammed the door. I just had to get home, but then realized I had the knife in my pocket. I drove around and went to the lake. It was late and nobody was there and so I threw it as hard as I could into the lake."
    I knew that if we called the cops that they would not take it lightly and I knew Heather would go to prison and ruin everything she worked for. I knew why she did it and understood, it was self-defense. I needed a plan and the weapon was already gone, but there was a huge amount of evidence sitting right outside. Then it hit me about what I was going to do. I couldn't let this woman that ruined my daughter's childhood ruin her adult life too. My friend lived about fifteen minutes away and she had about 20 acres. My first thing was to get rid of the body. So while Josh stayed with Heather, he called his best friend, Kelly. Kelly owned a junkyard and a scrap metal yard and that was where the car was going to go. Kelly was aware of how Jenn was and what happened to our kids, so he wasn't hesitant about helping us.
When we got to Macy's we went way out into the back of the woods and dug a hole deeper then 6 feet would have been and took Jenn out of the car and dragged her to the hole and buried her there. We then took the car to the car wash and sprayed it all down top to bottom and especially in the trunk. When we got back to my house, Josh then took the car to Kelly's and first thing in the morning our car was getting demolished. In the meantime, I took Heather's clothes downstairs in the basement and burned them in a barrel we had down there. I let it burn as if the 4th of July was going off. Then I just wanted to forget this horrible night. Macy and I took our turn taking a shower to take the stench of death off of us. I went back downstairs and did the same thing with our clothes and just let it all burn until there was barely any ashes left.
    We were four people trying to take care of a kid that some may think should have been in prison, but until you have been in that place of abuse and being attacked and blamed for what was done you don't know what you may do. Especially if you think you are going to die. We all moved on and never really talked about it again. We gave each other looks for a long time and you just knew what the other was thinking about. Months went by and not a word of Jenn's disappearance. All the town folk either knew or overheard in the restaurant that Jenn was leaving the next day.
    Heather moved on and went to college in Denver. Josh and I moved to Colorado to be closer to Heather. As for Macy, she still lives in Maine and she eventually sold her house and her land about five years later. She just couldn't take living there anymore knowing she had a body buried in the woods out back of her house. She went as far from that little town as she could, who knows maybe she'll leave there too. As for Kelly, he sold his business around the same time as Macy sold her house and he moved to Arizona and started over. We vowed never to go back to Maine again. What is done is done and no one can change that, but what would you have done if this was your child?