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“Fine.” Popping the lid off my dinner, I sat back against the soft cushions of the couch and stared at the TV screen for a moment. My eyes flashed down at the English subtitles for a moment before I turned back to her.
“Uncle Tony should’ve been home weeks ago. I’m still getting the occasional text saying
that he still hasn’t been able to clear things up where he’s at. He hasn’t answered any of the questions I’ve asked, but a lot of what I want to know I’ve kept to myself. I want to talk to him in person about most of this.”
My uncle was a seasoned liar. I liked to think I knew him well enough to know when he was lying though.
“You can let the party begin, girls. I have arrived,” Milo called out as he came through the apartment door, bags hanging from his wrists. It looked as if he’d stopped and grabbed a pizza and soda before coming over.
I still thought it was funny that the boy didn’t drink. It was possible it had something to do with the way things were at home, but I didn’t press. He’d tell me when he was ready. For a few weeks when I’d first brought him into our circle, he’d been quiet, withdrawn, and skittish. Over time he slowly began to open up and step out of his shell. As that started to happen, I noticed there were less and less times when he behaved as if he was hurt and injured where I couldn’t see.
I’d asked Jasper to look into his situation just as I had done with Alicen. The same thing
happened. Jasper told me he knew what was going on, but the situation didn’t call for me to intervene. If anything changed or Milo didn’t tell me before it was too late, he’d let me know what was happening. It was the best I could hope for. Jasper wasn’t one to tell other people’s secrets. It was one of the reasons I trusted him so much with my own secrets.
“It took you forever to get here. The show is almost over,” Alicen bitched at Milo as he sat on the floor in front of the couch. Most of the time she and I were stretched out across the furniture, so there wasn’t anywhere for him to sit, and it had just become a habit for him to sit on the floor in front of us. Like now. There was plenty of room on the couch, but he still took up his chosen spot.
“Why’d you start it before we got here? Now I’ll have to listen to him complain about missing most of the show and not being able to understand what’s going on,” Jasper said
as he took up the empty space on the couch beside me.
One day he was going to be honest and admit he was as invested into the shows as me and Alicen. He laughed with us, got angry with us, and cried with us during the show. Alright, maybe not cried with us, but he still got a little emotional at the heart wrenching parts. He was really going to flip when we started the next one in the lineup. It about a medical examiner who goes back to his hometown and things get all fucked up. I’d heard great things about it, and I’m excited.
“Nothing has really happened yet. You’ll be able to keep up with what’s going on.” Alicen pushed herself further back into the corner of the couch, her knees up in front of her chest hiding her bowl of noodles from Milo’s questing fork.
Leaning into Jasper’s side, we both sat laughing at the back-and-forth fight between our two other friends over the last forkful of lo mien. A cold beer was pressed into my hand, and I took a long sip.
It had been a while since we’d all hung out and watched TV. No ulterior motives, no talk of death and killing. Nothing but just being together like normal people our age. A few beers, some good food, and laughter. It was something I needed right now. Having them sit beside me on the couch and laugh at whatever ridiculous show was playing on the TV let me forget about everything else that I’d been failing at lately.
“We need to talk,” Jasper quietly said in my ear. The feeling of contentment I’d just been
having instantly vanished.
I didn’t get a day off. Not when there was too much going on.
“What’s up?” I wanted to tell him to wait until tomorrow. Let me have today to just be a
teenage girl spending time with her friends. Nothing else mattered right now. Everything will be waiting for us when the sun comes up tomorrow. There was no reason to focus on it right now.
“We hadn’t had the time for me to show you what I found out. I don’t want to ruin your night, but I’ve been holding onto this for a while, and it can’t wait anymore. We’re heading out to Gio’s in a week. You need to know about it before we get there. It might change how you approach that situation.”
I could feel the nervousness in his body. Whatever he found out was big, and he was scared to tell me. That could only mean I wasn’t going to like it. I wasn’t sure if I had the capacity to handle any more surprises or bad news.
“Hit me with it,” I told him. There wasn’t anything else I could do other than listen to what he had to say.
Lifting me off of him, he climbed off the couch and grabbed his ratty old backpack. It was the one I’d bought for him when he’d first gotten into college. I don’t know why the man hadn’t gotten rid of it yet, but it was about to fall apart. If I remember correctly, he’d already sewed one of the straps back on.
“I created a keyword search program that would scan everything from the internet to all
databases for information that included the names of your uncle, Gio Valentino, and your parents. I hadn’t had much luck really. Just news articles about things we already knew. I wasn’t holding out much hope, but it was something I felt we still needed to investigate just on the off chance we would find anything.”
His fingers moved across his keyboard as he spoke. His eyes glued to the screen. Not once had he looked at me or the tension left his shoulders since he started talking. Whatever he found was going to change everything.
“Last week I got an alert for a new hit. I didn’t have much hope for it, but I cover all my
bases when it comes to your stuff. It was a document from a lawyer’s office. The law office is shut down now. The attorney was killed years ago under suspicious circumstances. The murder case is still open and unsolved.”
He laced his fingers together and rested his arms on his knees. A few deep breaths expanded and contracted his chest as he geared himself up to show me whatever document
