“Spencer?! Spencer?!” The blonde pulled away from Ashley’s lips momentarily to look for her brother.

“Glen?!”

“Spencer! Mom’s downstairs! Mom’s downstairs!” Spencer’s sobs increased at Glen’s frantic calls from somewhere out in the hallway. “She’s alive, Spencer!” She couldn’t see Glen, but the boy was crying just as hard as Spencer was.

Ashley’s cries were just as intense; knowing that if Paula must really be alive, so would her father. Again, Ashley and Spencer fought off the agents as they helped each other stumble to their feet, their only goal now was finding their parents—the ones they thought were long-since dead.

“Get the fuck off of her!” Ashley screamed out at an agent as she pulled Spencer closer to her body and pushed the man out of their way. It was hectic and crowded and neither girl truly understood what was happening, but as they passed the one bedroom on the left, they saw a few different’ medical personnel tending to Carmen and Lily—both alive but clearly distraught. At the bedroom furt
her down the hall, both Arthur and Christine were on stretchers.

“Are they okay, what’s happening, will they be okay?!” Both Ashley and Spencer sobbed as they ran towards their parents. They were quickly told they would as more agents flocked them. But the two girls didn’t listen to directions that were being shouted out. Instead, they continued pushing down the hallway, through the different agents and deputies, racing down the steps as fast as they could while clinging to each other.

The first floor was just as packed with agents as the top, but the girls were calling out to Paula and Raife frantically through their tears, unable to be deterred. “ASHLEY!” The brunette collapsed onto the floor at the sound of her father screaming her name. A sound she hadn’t heard in four years to the day.

“DAD!” Ashley sobbed out, trying and failing to get to her feet but instead stumbling and crawling her way into the kitchen where his voice had come from.

Spencer grabbed the crook of Ashley’s arm to stabilize her and practically dragged the brunette through the heard of people and into the kitchen. “MOM!” Spencer voice felt raw as the word erupted from her already sore throat. But she didn’t care.
There, lying on a stretcher in the kitchen, was her mother. Alive. Both she and Ashley made the final push through the agents that stood in the doorway until they were both flinging themselves onto their parents.

Paula could barely croak out Spencer’s name but the younger blonde thought it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. She lay on top of her mother, clutching tightly, heaving tremendous sobs as she buried her face in her mother’s hair, only crying harder from the familiar smell. “PAULA!” Arthur’s faraway voice shouted and Spencer felt her mother’s body trembling at the sound as she wrapped her arms around her daughter’s body.

Only when Spencer felt the tears falling on her did she realize that Glen was standing next to the stretcher, his arms incasing both his mother and sister. And soon—despite trying to be strapped down to his stretcher by the EMTs—Arthur joined them. The four were holding each other so closely it was impossible to tell whose arms were whose.

On the stretcher over, Raife was sobbing just as loudly as his daughter as he ran his dirty hands through her hair and held her closely.

They all stayed like that for what felt like hours until the agents, deputies, and EMTs forced them to separate.

Christine, Raife, and Ashley all went to the hospital in one ambulance, refusing to be apart. And Paula, Arthur, Spencer, and Glen went in another—Arthur actually punching an EMT driver when he tried to make the family go in two separate ones.

No one mentioned that perhaps Glen and Kyla—who was still unconscious and headed to the hospital in her own ambulance—should be escorted by agents. Neither Carmen nor Lily spoke up as they were carted away in route to the hospital as well. No one mentioned that Marie was bleeding out in her ambulance and wouldn’t make it another hour. No one thought to.

The overwhelming family reunion taking place trumped all of that. Words wouldn’t come and only tears expressed the profound miracle.

Two separate families. Four best friends. Two married couples reunited. Two girls whose love for each other outweighed their love of self.

In the morning the front page would read: Ding Dong, the King High Killer is Dead. But the most important story, the one that truly mattered, would be that love was found again.