I bark a laugh, the sound tainted with icy bitterness. “She’s dead,” I remind her.
“But the evidence left behind tells a story she can’t.” Aine gazes at me, her eyes soft and understanding. “We needed to be sure, though.”
“About?”
Her gaze turns to Liam. “That everyone would go in open to the truth,” she tells us sadly. “Because if I’m right—the truth might break one of you.”
“Show us,” Liam demands.
Aine doesn’t wait for anyone to argue. She turns and leads the way out, the weight of her words following us like a shadow.
Doors shut, engines turn over, and soon we’re moving, tires humming against asphalt as the city slips past in quiet blurs of streetlights and darkened storefronts. No one speaks. Whatever truth she’s carrying feels too fragile, too volatile, to name aloud before we reach it.
The streets surrounding me are oddly familiar. Flashes of my childhood stretch out before me but there is nothing concrete. I might have played on that playground. Is that where my mother took me for dinner one time?
Gradually, the memories that have faded over time resurface the closer and more familiar the neighborhood becomes. There isn’t much that has changed. Houses have been repainted. Streets were re-paved, but it feels as if everything is the same.
Including our house.
It doesn’t pass my notice that my childhood home is in O’Malley territory. I doubt it is a coincidence, either. My mother knew where we needed to go. Not that it did much good.
“I wasn’t the leader at the time,” Sully speaks as we exit the SUVs. “My father was. When Aine mentioned your mother’s name, I immediately recognized it from a file my father had stashed away in his desk. I thought it odd when I found it a few years after I took his place. Not that there was a file, but that it had been hidden in a false bottom in a locked drawer I never found the key for.
“At the time, I paid little attention to it,” he admits. “I had a rising mutiny on my hands, and the IRS and FBI were coming down hard on my transport business. But the file gnawed at me.” He stops to fetch a key from his pocket. It is covered in worn butterflies and flowers; the coating nearly gone from the test of time. “Then I came here.” He hands me the key.
With trembling hands, I take it from him. The key that I used dozens of times after coming home from school. The porch is worn, but maintained, with no sign of rot or disrepair. It is like stepping back in time. The shadows of my past push in on me. The cage around my heart squeezes tightly, my chest heaving as the memories of that fateful day resurface. A tsunami of emotion sweeps up, bubbling to the surface, disturbing the calm waters of my soul.
“We laid out the evidence where they were found,” Aine whispers gently from beside me. “The crime scene photos weren’t tainted. Maybe something will help jog your memory.”
The muscles in my neck tighten as I grit my teeth against the painful sweep of despair flooding over me. The walls I built over time are crumbling inside of me and grief threatens to overwhelm it. I’ve thought about my mother’s death nearly every day for years, but I never expect to be back here, confronting my most painful memories in the house I was the happiest.
A warm hand on my shoulder centers me, dragging me up from the depths of despair. Tears paint my face. I turn the key, the lock disengaging easily, the door sliding open noisily.
The air is slightly musty, dust settled on every surface. Elias refused to allow me to bring any of my mother’s belongings when he took custody of me. Everything else was left behind, except the book I managed to hide beneath my faded, oversized hoodie.
I step inside, the cherry wood floor creaking slightly beneath my weight as I step inside. Everything is exactly as it was the day I was taken away. From the tipped over bookcase to the blood splattered walls. My mother put up one hell of a fight that day. Carefully, I tread through the house with ginger footsteps. Afraid to disturb the past. As if I will somehow change it.
The kitchen has always been the center of this house. My mother often spent hours in here dreaming up new recipes and teaching me to bake. It was our favorite activity on nights when we both felt restless. She dreamed of opening up her own bakery one day. Dreamed of giving us a life of freedom.
It wasn’t until I discovered her past that I truly understood what she meant.
I run my hand along the cool marble of the island, my eyes drifting closed as I let the past overtake the carefully constructed barriers of my soul.
“Do you know the most important ingredient in making cookies?” My mother asks me as I stand on my little stool at one side of the island, flour dusting my face and hands as I work the gooey dough in my palms.
“Love,” my nose scrunches as I smile at her. She smiles back softly.
“Always love.”
“Who do you love, mommy?” I ask, placing one of my misshapen balls of dough on the stone cookie sheet. “Do I have a daddy you love?” She reels back slightly as if the words I utter slap her. Sadness is etched in every line of her face and her eyes swim with a pain so deep that it makes me want to cry.
“You do have a daddy I love,” her voice is hoarse, full of regret. “Very much.”
“Can I meet him?” The thought of meeting my daddy sends a thrill of excitement through me. Timmy and Mary have a daddy and a mommy who take them camping and tuck them in to bed. They both look happy. Maybe mommy will be happy if I have a daddy here.
“Maybe one day,moy a chroí.”
I preen under the Irish nickname. My heart. I have a daddy somewhere. Someone who mommy loves. Where is he?