“Because the man was killed three days after he was incarcerated. It was a setup. Somebody tampered with my lab in order to make sure he went to jail, where they could get to him. I can’t prove it, not yet, and since he’s dead, I can’t fix it, either.”
“But if it wasn’t your fault…”
“That’s the whole point of what I do. It’s all about what you can prove. And everything that happens in my lab is my responsibility.”
I sit back. I don’t know if Victor’s overshare makes me trust him more. But I do feel for him. “So, what are you going to do?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” His phone vibrates and he ignores it.
“Is this why you came home?”
Victor shrugs. “I came because Rachel asked me to come. Something she’s never done before. She’s worried about you. But, now that I’m here, I can see that it’s not a bad thing to know you have some family who’s got your back.”
He presses the fingers of both hands together as if trying to squeeze out the words. “I’ll admit, I don’t quite know how to address the way my sister handles your situation. I’m not a therapist … or a parent.”
I gnaw on the corner of my lip.
“But I do believe that a lifetime spent blocking feelings can lead to sociopathic behavior.” He stops and looks at me. His expression is not the normal angry adult look, but more like he thinks I’m an interesting puzzle. “You don’t strike me as the serial-killer type.”
I didn’t expect that, so of course I laugh. “Whew. That’s a relief.”
“If what you need is the free space to talk about your mother, I’m here. I can be your uncle and your friend. I can also just sit and listen. Or, you can tell me to go to hell.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“But if the unsavory things that have been going on lately have anything to do with what’s in this box, well, then you really do need me.” He smiles, and it’s not a creepy I’m-trying-to-be-your-friend smile, but a real I’m-here-for-you smile. “I’m thinking that first you’d like to know more about your mother, right?”
“Well, there’s almost no way I could know less.” The snort that follows is automatic. I can’t help it. “Sometimes at night I play this game where I lie in bed and try to think of everything I can remember in my whole life. I work my way back year by year. I start by trying to remember all the things that happened when I was twelve … then nine … then six. I keep working back to the very earliest thing I can remember. Then I lie quietly, eyes closed, and I let my mind float, like a feather in a breeze, hoping to latch on to something. Maybe I’ll remember how she smelled, or the tone of her voice.… I go back really far in the remembering game. I can remember a lot of things: a special dress, a favorite bunny toy. But she’s like an itch I can’t scratch—a memory of her is there, but I can never quite latch on to it.”
Victor pinches his lips together. The skin at the corners of his eyes folds up. “That’s sad, because she was such a beautiful person.”
“When I saw the box, I had to take it. Just so I’d have something that was close to her.” I lean forward. “Rachel never even showed me that all my mother’s things were in the attic. I found them by accident.”
“And you don’t remember anything about the murder?”
I give him a grim smile. “Only the smell of blood.”
He nods. “No one forgets that.”
I pose my index fingers in the shape of an X. “And there’s something about seeing the shadow of a cross on the floor, like when the sun shines through a French door at an angle.”
“That’s all?”
I nod.
I lay my hands flat on the table and press down. My knuckles are white as bleached bone. “So, yeah, you could say I have some questions.”
Victor shifts positions in his chair. “Then let’s start at the beginning.”
“Well, I didn’t just lose my mother, I lost the identity of my father, too.”
“It was my understanding she was planning to raise you alone,” Victor says.
“Maybe. But if she were here I could at least ask her questions. Think about it. I share DNA with a stranger. She might have loved him, or maybe he was just some random dude, but I came out of that and I have no idea who he is. Sometimes I walk down the street and just look at face after face after face and wonder, Am I related to you … or you?”
Victor smiles at the way I wave my hands around.
“I believe I have a right to know who my father is. I also think I have a right to know who killed my mother and why.”
“I agree on both counts,” he says.
“There’s one more thing I want to know … well, it’s more than a want, it’s a need. I need to know my father isn’t the one who killed her. That he wasn’t the one who took away our dream of being a family.”
Victor stays silent for a long minute. Then he ticks each item off on his fingers. “So, if I heard you correctly, you want to solve a murder, establish paternity, and rule out a suspect?”
I nod. “That pretty much covers it.”
“That’s what we call the DNA trifecta.” He nods at my mother’s box, still sitting in the middle of the table. “And, while it’s all doable, it’s going to take more juice than you’ve got up in your attic playroom.”