Blood On Her Hands

Chapter 33

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.