Fighting My Demons

Who are my parents?

Chapter 3

Who Are My Parents?

One week after the incident, everything shifted.

We nearly lost the house. I was almost driven out of school over unpaid fees. But somehow, against all odds, we were still standing. We were still in our home. My school fees had been paid. Life had not completely collapsed, even though it felt like it was leaning dangerously in that direction.

The only thing getting worse was my mother.

She was still carrying the trauma my father had put her through, and every day I watched her sink a little deeper into it. She smiled less. She spoke less. She moved through the house like a woman carrying something invisible and very heavy.

I was in my room when I thought about how she had managed to pull things together financially.

"Mum, where did you get close to a million and fifty thousand from?"

"From my resource persons, Boma."

"Which resource persons?"

She gave me the look that meant the conversation was over before it had properly begun. I swallowed my next question and replaced it with the only one that mattered in that moment.

"Thank you, Mum. I love you so much."

She nodded and said nothing else.

I sat back on my bed and looked around my room. Same walls, same colour, same posters of Dilraba, the Chinese actress and model I had been obsessed with for years. Cardi B and Nicki Minaj albums stacked on the shelf. My wall of detective cases pinned and mapped out with string and sticky notes, a project I had been building since I was twelve.

I thought about everything I did not know.

My father was a gambler. That much I now knew for certain. But why did both my parents own guns? Not just any guns either, automatic weapons with what appeared to be legitimate licences. What was locked in the safe in my mother's room, the one with the combination neither of them had ever shared with me? Why had my mother paid my school fees with money from unnamed, unexplained resource persons?

I have a hunch that this is only the beginning.

There were secrets buried in this family, deep ones, and I was going to find them. Not because I was being reckless. Because I loved my parents and I was not willing to let my family fall apart over things nobody would explain to me.

I was still turning all of it over in my mind when my mother's voice cut through my thoughts from downstairs.

"I want that divorce as soon as possible."

I crept to the top of the stairs and looked down. A man I did not recognise was seated across from her in the living room, a tall, broad-shouldered man, brown-skinned, with the kind of composed professional energy that reminded me of the "Brown Skin Girl" music video. Canadian American accent. Six feet easily.

"Calm down, Madam. The process will take three months."

"Three months?" My mother's voice went dangerously quiet before rising sharply. "What exactly do I pay you for? You have one month. One."

"Madam—"

"That will be all, Mr. Williams."

"But Madam—"

"You may leave. And I expect results in one month."

Mr. Williams rose slowly, straightening his jacket with the dignity of a man who had been spoken to like that before and had learned not to take it personally.

"I cannot make any promises, Madam, but I will do my best. Good day."

He let himself out.

My mother sank back onto the sofa, and for just a moment her composure cracked. She looked lost and very tired. I came down the stairs quietly and sat beside her.

"Mum, please. Take a breath. Everything is going to be alright."

She looked at me the way she always did when she was trying to believe something she was not sure of yet. I got her a glass of water, squeezed her hand and went back to my room.

One month.

I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling.

I was not going to let this happen. I refused to accept that my parents' marriage was simply going to be dissolved by a man in a suit and a court document. There was more to this story. I could feel it. And I was going to find it, with or without anyone's help.

I spent the rest of the evening on my laptop, searching and reading and thinking, until I eventually fell asleep on the sofa in the corner of my room.

My alarm woke me the next morning. Friday. Thank God.

I tidied my room quickly, splashed water on my face and ran downstairs.

"Good morning, Mum!" I gave her my best smile.

"Morning, dear. Are you ready?"

"More than ready."

She dropped me off at school, and though she still had that distant look in her eyes, she seemed a fraction lighter than the day before. I was grateful for even that small thing.

"Bye, Mum. I love you, okay? Take care of yourself today."

She parked in front of the school gate and looked at me.

"Follow the school bus home, Boma. And please, stay out of trouble."

Her voice was cool but it was hers, and that was enough. I did not wait for her to make the first move. I leaned across and kissed her cheek, hugged her quickly and jumped out of the car before she could say anything about it.

"Follow the school bus!" she called after me.

I turned and waved.

Then I turned back around and walked straight into someone.

We collided with enough force to send my books scattering across the pavement. I stumbled backward and looked up.

I have never seen him before. Is he new?

"I am so sorry! That was completely my fault." He bent down to help me gather my books before I had even thought to move. "I am Felix. Are you alright?"

"I am fine." I took the books from him and managed a small smile. "I am Boma. Thank you."

"Ahem."

I looked up. David was standing a few feet away, arms folded, watching the exchange with an expression I could not quite name. Something in his eyes made me uneasy, a flicker of something sharp and cold that I filed away in the back of my mind without examining it too closely.

"Good morning, David."

"Who is this?" He said it pleasantly enough but his eyes were fixed on Felix in a way that was anything but pleasant.

"I am Felix." Felix extended his hand with an easy smile. "New student. And I apologise again for bumping into your friend."

David shook his hand without much warmth. "What class?"

"SS3."

"Right." David nodded once. "Nice to meet you."

The air between them had the particular tension of two people who have already, without a single word of conflict, decided they do not like each other.

"Felix, David, I will see you both in class. I am already late." I slipped between them before anything else could develop and headed for the building.

The school day passed in a blur. I spent my break and the last two free periods in the library, buried in research, so absorbed that I did not realise how much time had gone by until the dismissal bell rang. I packed up my things and slung my bag over my shoulder.

A chill ran up the back of my neck.

I turned slowly.

David was standing in the library doorway, leaning against the frame, watching me. That look again. Unreadable. Steady. Like he was waiting for something.

I waved at him, kept my expression light and walked out.

I caught up with Felix briefly near the exit and waved goodbye, then made straight for the first school bus.

The bus dropped me in front of our house just after three o'clock. A little duplex with rosebushes along the front fence and a wide, quiet yard. I had always loved coming home to it. Today, I loved it even more, because it was still ours.

I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, glancing at the clock immediately.

3:10 PM. My mother would be back by 4:30. That gave me just over an hour.

I had been planning this since the night before.

I went upstairs, retrieved my mother's spare key from where she kept it, and let myself into her room. I worked methodically, the way I had read about in every detective book I owned. Wardrobe first. Dressing table. Every drawer opened and closed with care, every item returned to its exact position. My mother would notice if even a bottle of perfume was a centimetre off and I knew it.

I found nothing except a large family photo album, which I set aside.

That left only one thing.

The safe.

It was a compact steel box fitted into the wall behind my mother's wardrobe, with a ten-letter combination pad. I tried my own name. Nothing. I tried my father's name. Nothing. My mother's name. Nothing.

I sat back on my heels and looked at the photo album.

Leave nothing unturned. Everyone is a suspect.

I opened it slowly, turning the pages. Old photographs, family portraits, holidays I half-remembered. And then something caught my eye. A name written carefully in the margin beneath one of the older photos, in my mother's handwriting.

Darlington.

I counted the letters.

Ten.

I stood up, walked back to the safe, made the sign of the cross and typed it in.

The lock clicked open.

I stared at it for a moment, then reached inside.

What I found made the room tilt beneath my feet.

Documents. Medals. And FBI badges, two of them, both with photographs, both with names I recognised immediately.

My parents' names.

The photos were old, nearly eighteen years ago by the look of them. My mother and father in full FBI uniform, standing straight and serious, and between them a small boy who could not have been more than three years old.

I sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to make sense of what I was holding.

My parents are FBI agents. Or they were. What does that mean? What happened?

I kept going through the contents, hands trembling slightly now, and then a folded document slipped from between two others and photographs scattered across the floor.

I looked down.

I nearly screamed.

The first image showed my father, shot in the leg, bleeding on the ground outside what looked like a federal building. The second showed a man I now recognised as Darlington, being dragged away, right in front of the FBI bureau entrance, in broad daylight.

And the third.

I picked it up slowly.

A little boy, no older than two. Dismembered. Blood on the floor around him.

I could not breathe.

I leaned closer, forcing myself to look, and then I saw it. Written in small, precise letters on the back of the photograph.

Darlington Michael Adios.

The photograph slipped from my fingers.

"My brother," I whispered.

The tears came before I could stop them, hot and sudden, burning the corners of my eyes and running down my face before I had even fully understood what I was feeling.

I had a brother.

I had a brother, and no one had ever told me.

And from the look of what I was holding in my hands, someone had taken him from us a very long time ago.