The driver who killed Ross Centino was described by an eyewitness as a caucasian man in his mid to late twenties with medium blonde hair. He drove a black sedan with a California bumper sticker on the back. The driver who killed Diana Miller, Darren's mother, was caught on a blurry gas station camera. The car was a red Honda and the driver appeared to be a Caucasian man.

Neither car descriptions matched Darren's but the descriptions of the man were vague enough to fit him. I hadn't expected this query into Darren to lead anywhere. I was stunned to read the file and see that the Darren theory wasn't going to be shut down immediately. When Vincent came up beside me, peering over my shoulder at the file, part of me wanted to snap it shut.

"That'll help with getting a warrant to check out Darren's business," he had said. He almost grabbed my shoulder in a congratulatory sort of manner but then paused, catching himself. His features softened. "The warrant will clear him if he's innocent. You're doing the right thing." 

Right. 

I was quiet when I got back home. I opened the door slowly, making sure the keys didn't jingle in the lock. When I entered, I shut the door softly behind me. My footsteps were nothing more than a pitter patter along the wooden panels and I didn't enter the living room or kitchen just in case someone was inside. 

Nancy was the only person I was talking to again. Her being there for me after my fight with Darren, without her knowing that was why she was comforting me, I had eliminated the tension between us. It made me remember how she took care of me when I was sick. Nancy wasn't all bad. She was trying and she hadn't been actively deceiving me like Tìo and Tìa had. She was looped into some of their lies by proximity. 

With Julio, it was complicated. I wasn't mad at him but up until the confrontation with the family, I felt like he was on my side. He told me about the gun hidden in his parent's room. He kept it a secret that I was snooping in their closet. When he lashed out at me, it was because he was frustrated I let everyone walk all over me. I had begun to believe Julio was rooting for me and maybe he was. Maybe he was genuinely concerned that I had a drug addiction. But while he was under his parent's thumb, it felt like he was unreachable. He'd believe them over me. 

My boot was on the first step of the staircase when I caught the faint whispers of my Tìo and Tìa's words. Their bedroom door was slightly ajar. There was a second of hesitation where I hovered between both options: going upstairs and eavesdropping. 

Then I was tiptoeing closer, straining to catch their hushed conversation. 

"Sometimes I wonder if we did right by the kids," Tìo said. "I know we've always had the best intentions but . . . I don't know." 

I heard Tìa sigh. 

"We've done what we thought best. A lot of the time, parenting is making it up as you go." 

"But Mickey, if she found out about her father . . . What we've kept from her . . . She would be even more resentful towards us than she currently is." Tìo sounded worried, maybe even scared.

My father? What hadn't they told me about my father? 

The floor creaked beneath me. Spooked, I hurried away, not stopping until I had cleared the steps and made it to my room. 

Once I was inside, I began to pace. 

My father. 

He was the last person I wanted to worry about. Immediately, I began to fret about what I didn't know. What if he was being released early? What if he died in prison? What if something had been updated in the case after years of it being closed? Maybe there was a secret motive for him having killed my mother, not plain jealousy but something more twisted and darker.

I could have worn the floor thin with my pacing. I continued to think, spiraling and spiraling, urging myself to stop feeding into the anxiety but unable to tear myself from its velcro like hold.  

What if they knew about me? What if they found out what I did? 

I rushed to the bathroom, locking the door shut behind me and resting my back against it for the briefest of moments. Then, caught in a trance, I twisted the faucet knobs and stuck my hands under the scalding hot water. I pumped several drops of soap into my palm and scrubbed. I scrubbed and scrubbed, getting lost in the task. 

I could have sworn the water was tinted pink.

 My hands were pink. They were blistering from the heat. All at once, I knew the water was hot, not from the sight of the steam in the air but from how hot it felt on my skin. I could feel the temperature again. I flinched my hands away, holding them to my chest in horror. I grabbed a towel, wrapping them in it and then running cool water on them after a minute. 

My phone dinged in my pocket and I raced at the chance for a distraction. I dried my hands and held the phone.

It was an email notification. 

Reminder: Nancy Morales's Baby Shower Registry! Start Shopping Now. 

I hadn't realized she put it up already. Had she even decided on a date for the event? 

I clicked on the link and was taken to a website dedicated to organizing registries. Each item was displayed in a neat square box along with the price and store it was available at. I scrolled past the expected items like diapers, a carseat, pacifiers, and bottles. None of the items had been purchased by anyone yet. 

I was sitting on the rim of the bathtub, trying to decide what I may like to get her, when I was drawn to an item that's price was several digits longer than all the other items. It was a stroller that could transform into a car seat and a carrier. When I tried to click on the link, a pop up came up. 

Purchased by Stephanie Lopez. 

The last name was what stuck out to me first. Lopez was my father's last name. It would have been mine and Nancy's too had Tìo not legally changed ours to match our mother's maiden name. It was a common enough last name but since they were buying something for Nancy, I assumed they had to have been family. 

Then, I remembered a conversation I had with Nancy about the registry. She mentioned the name Stephanie while commenting on how she wanted to milk as much as she could out of our father's guilt stricken relatives. She was his sister, our aunt who I had never heard of until that conversation. Nancy had said she was rich. 

I clicked onto her name, attempting to copy it so I could paste it into google. The site, however, responded by offering to send me to her FaceBook page. I allowed it to take me there and found my father's face plastered onto the body of a middle aged woman. 

She was very petite, the shoulder pads of her blazer eating her tiny frame up. She had the thickest, blackest hair I had ever seen. It went down to her waist in an intricate braid, topped with a sparkly pin just above her ear. She had the same harsh expression my father did in the pictures I saw of him. It was the kind of expression that intimidated people and made them distrustful. She was younger than my father. I guessed maybe in her late forties or early fifties. I supposed that was why I hadn't known her. She was probably still living with my grandparents, watching cartoons, while my father started his own family. 

Her page was very different from all the other middle aged Facebook users' pages. Rather than housing a bunch of car selfies and decade old, block text memes, her page was filled with what looked like professionally shot photos. It was her sitting at a white clothed table, legs folded and hands resting atop them. The caption was written in third person, explaining she had attended a charity banquet for underprivileged youth. There was a candid photo of her standing at a podium. The caption explained that she had delivered a speech to convince state legislators to invest in making sure all schools were accessible to students with disabilities. 

I couldn't help but feel like I was completely wasting my life as I scrolled through all her efforts to aid children with the money her deceased spouse left behind. 

I wondered how much Stephanie knew about my father. Did she know things about him that my aunt and uncle refused to tell me? Did she know exactly what they had been worried about me finding out just a few minutes ago? 

The twenty thousand dollars 'donated' to my aunt and uncle might have had a reasonable explanation if Stephanie truly was as charitable as she seemed. Maybe my aunt and uncle had told her about their predicament. It was certain she had the money to help. 

It didn't seem as if she lived too far away. Maybe three or four hours by the location set on all her photos. 

If people were stalking me to try and find an opportunity to attack me, maybe a change of location would throw them off for a while. Maybe something like a road trip would buy me sometime before they struck again. 

I texted Vincent the idea, hoping he would peg this as another one of my brilliant contributions to the case. 

In the middle of forwarding Vincent Stephanie's Facebook page, Darren's contact photo invaded my screen. 

I put my phone on silent and finished sending Vincent the message. 

A part of me had been waiting for this moment, for when he finally reached out. I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to hear one of his jokes. I wanted to hear the apology and for everything to be right with us again but I had grown used to running to Darren for comfort and reassurance. I had let him be a safe place for me to run to because I thought he would always be dependable. Our fight had shown me that his presence in my life, as much as it hurt to say, wasn't certain. 

I needed to learn to be okay without him. 

I had to prove to myself that I could be.

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