Emily was too absorbed in her contemplation on how to use the camera, and on who, she didn't notice her mother entering or her sisters cowering behind her before Rita swiped the magical Polaroïd-maker.
Her mother might look more pissed than ever, but Emily stayed defiant. She needed to make thing right!
"You are the instigator! Aren't you, Emi?" While said daughter didn't answer, her sisters frantically nodded. "Jacqueline, Alice, go see your aunt downstairs. I need to have a serious chat with your sister…" Rita's tone brooked no arguments, so the two girls did just that.
The angry mother then slowly closed the door of her office, before ordering Emily to sit down. "I'm really disappointed Emily. In you, but, I must admit, in me too." Her tone had lost in severity, sounding more sad than angry at the end. "I thought… T-thought that, if I claimed to be forgetting my old life you would let go of yours, that you would renounce taking my happiness away…
… Not like it's really possible to go back to our old lives, anyway. Not only did 5 years pass by since you last used the camera, which is enough to make it impossible, but cumulated with all the changes I caused so I wouldn't loose your sisters and you…"
"Because when I accidentally turned myself into Rita Carter, future mother of identical triplets, I reached a level of happiness I didn't even knew could exist. Not that I wasn't happy when I was a teenage boy named Rick and you were my girlfriend, but… I don't know if it was the hormones affecting me, the camera's magic making sure it would be used, or a combination of the two, but I swore I wouldn't let anyone take away my newfound motherhood from me. And if for this I have to use it on one of my kids…" Rita was openly crying now, but it didn't stop her from fiddling with the camera's parameters. "… Then so be it."
Emily was too dumbstruck by what she heard. Not only did her mother used to be her friend, (she didn't understand the difference between a boyfriend and a friend who just happen to be a boy yet) but said friend-turned-mother wouldn't let her put things back together, and not only because she thought it was impossible.
Her mouth was still a gaping hole when Rita took a shot. Emily vanished as the old Polaroïd camera threw-up a new picture. But it didn't look like it was taken in the house. It was clearly taken outside, with a tombstone in the foreground on which can be read "Emily Cooper. Died before she could even take her first breath."
Rita hugged the shot against her chest like her life depended on it, crying even more than before. "Mommy is so sorry Emi. So, so sorry. But you left me no choice, my little angel…"