Page 45 of Forever is Now

Summer Taylor-Braddon: Yes. I don’t remember doing that, but I guess I did. I told the ambulance person on the phone that we were inside.

Ashley Kincade: When I arrived, you were scared to let me in at first—you thought it was someone else, didn’t you?

Summer Taylor-Braddon: I was so scared.

Ashley Kincade: But you let me in. Mia was still breathing, but it was erratic. And she was unconscious. I took over. On the phone to the emergency services, but also doing CPR. You’d started it by then, hadn’t you?

Summer Taylor-Braddon: I... I was so scared.

Dante Fiore: Are you okay, Summer?

Summer Taylor-Braddon: Yes. Sorry. Thank you.

Ashley Kincade: People were congregating outside, before the ambulance arrived. Neighbors, mainly. I think, anyway. But we didn’t open the door until it was the paramedics shouting.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: I... I think I knew then, that Mia was going to die. I... I felt so helpless.

Dante Fiore: I can’t imagine how traumatic it must have been for you.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: I’m glad Ruari wasn’t there. That he didn’t see.

But she wasn’t alone. When she...

Her breaths got all raspy. Right before the paramedics did arrive.

I held her hand.

She whispered my name, and she pointed up. At the ceiling.

Ashley Kincade: The paramedics arrived then. I let them in. They needed space, to work on Mia. They asked though if anyone else was in the house.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: That’s when I realized. Their daughter. She was upstairs.

I went upstairs. Sat with her. Made sure she didn’t come down.

Summer must’ve been two or three. I... She kept speaking, asking me where her mama was.

I’d thought the first time I met Ruari’s kids would be magical.

Instead it was... It was that. Then.

It was... [She clears her throat] There are no words for it, you know?

Ashley Kincade: Mia was pronounced dead at the scene. We didn’t know where Ruari was then, but there was concern. The police arrived. They were trying to locate him.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: Of course, people thought I’d done it. It didn’t matter that the Ring doorbell footage proved otherwise. People thought it was me—like, even weeks after the police had cleared me, there were so many people online who said it was me. Yet another trial by media.

That one was bad, too.

Really bad.

And they... they found out about my nightmares. About how I’d had these thoughts of taking back ‘my’ baby—those thoughts that I only had for a brief time. It was shortly after this all happened, that I just mentioned to a few people about them.

Ashely Kincade: We were at your house. Me and Dante, Hana and Julia. You.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: I just mentioned it in an offhand way.

Ashley Kincade: We’d opened a couple bottles of wine. We were... We were trying to decompress, I guess. And I was talking about the nightmares I’d had since. And you started talking about all the nightmares you’d had, since this whole thing started.

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