She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [183]
“But then she’ll say something to someone and it will get back to us. Something hateful,” said Kristina. “And we remember that she never loved us or Steve. We’re forced to think about how wicked she really is.”
“I wish our mom was different, but she isn’t,” said Jen. “We were never really people to her. She was never really our mother, because she didn’t love us the way a mother loves her children. She’s incapable of loving anyone.”
Still, they struggled with all that happened. Although they both understood their mother was behind bars, for them, Celeste was all-powerful, and they continued to fear her. Kristina was afraid to venture out alone at night, afraid Celeste lurked in the shadows. “I check my rearview mirror,” she says. “I’m afraid I’m being followed.”
Jennifer still grieved over losing two fathers, one to suicide, the other to murder. Their mother continued to stalk her in nightmares where Celeste waited unseen for an opportunity to take vengeance. “I’d like to go on with my life,” she says. “But so far, I just can’t.”
Neither planned to ever see or speak to their mother again. “She doesn’t deserve us,” says Kristina.
In yet another twist, in the fall of 2004 Kristina and Jennifer were reunited with their long-lost sister, the baby girl Celeste had put up for adoption. A college freshman, she’d looked for her biological family and found her father dead and her mother in prison. Only Kristina and Jennifer were there to tell her all that had happened. “She looks just like us,” says Kristina. “We recognized her the moment we saw her.”
At Christmas, the twins have a ritual. In Austin, Jennifer and Kristina gather at a church with other victims of violent crimes and their families to decorate a tree of remembrance. In honor of Steve, they hang an ornament, an ethereal gold angel. The ceremony, surrounded by so many others who have lost loved ones, gives them a sense of community and a moment of peace.
“We don’t have much family left,” says Jennifer sadly. “And we want to make sure Steve’s not forgotten.”
October 2, 1999
Sometime after two, Tracey was ready. She’d loaded her shotgun and dressed in black. In her year-old maroon Pathfinder, she drove to the Toro Canyon house. When she reached the back entrance, the gate was open. She turned off the headlights and pulled forward.
Picking her way through the trees in the darkness, she walked along the back of the house to the patio. The house was dark, and the windows looked like blank eyes staring back at her in the night. She paused, thinking about what she was there to do, and felt ill again. I can’t do this, she thought. For minutes she stood statue-still, thinking of some other way to save Celeste.
No, she thought. This is the only answer. He’ll never let her go. I have to do it. I promised. Just do it.
Holding the shotgun in shaking hands, she felt her way around the house, saw the pool glistening in the moonlight, then the door. She opened it and, as Celeste had promised, it was unlocked. No alarm sounded.
To save Celeste’s life, she thought, and walked through the door…
Books by Kathryn Casey
SHE WANTED IT ALL
A WARRANT TO KILL
THE RAPIST’S WIFE
Copyright
She Wanted It All is a journalistic account of the actual murder investigation of Celeste Beard and Tracey Tarlton for the 2000 killing of Steven Beard in Austin, Texas. The events recounted in this book are true; however, the following names are pseudonyms for people involved in