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part. I had a million questions in my head, all demanding answers that I wasn’t able to give.
    Had my whole childhood been based on a lie? The story was that my mom had been a private detective—that’s what we were told, that’s why she was hardly ever home. Now it turned it out she was into something much more dangerous.
    And where was my dad in all this?
    That’s what I really wanted to know. Did he know about the lockup, about what my mom was into? He had to have known. And who was the stranger my mom was with at the storage facility? I hoped there’d be answers on that disc and in that journal.
    I dropped Kasey off where I first picked her up, at the building in which she slept. She tried to persuade me to stay, to share a bottle of vodka with her, but I politely declined. I had other priorities, which I think she knew anyway. Normally she would have pressed me until I gave in, but on this occasion she let me of the hook first time.
    As I wasn’t going to be drinking, on the way home I decided I would have a joint instead. So much had happened and my nerves were jangled. The weed would calm me. Josh always kept a stash under the driver’s seat. He used to keep it in the glove box until he got pulled over one day by the cops and got busted for possession. Under the drivers seat was a safer place. I spotted an empty parking lot at the back of an old abandoned grocery store of Queen Street. I pulled in and parked the car then slid my hand under the seat in search of the weed. What I found instead was Josh’s laptop. He’d obviously stuffed it under the seat in a hurry. Forgetting about the weed I opened the laptop and inserted the disc, my stomach doing somersaults at the prospect of discovering what was on it. Just a quick look and then I would get the car back to Josh.
    My pulse quickened as I put the disc in the drive and waited for something to come up on the screen. My heart skipped a beat when a video started playing and I gasped when my mom’s face appeared on the screen. My hand went to my mouth and tears welled up in my eyes. She looked just as she did the last time I saw her. Her thick dark brown hair was tied back, revealing her brown, almond shaped eyes, which seemed to fill the screen as they looked out at me. She appeared tired, slightly haggard. It was like looking in a mirror for me. “Hello, Leia,” she said on the video in her familiar dusky voice, a voice I hadn’t heard in so long. “I guess if you’re watching this that means you found the lockup and I’m not around anymore.”
    The video was dated the day before her death. Tears steamed down my face. “Mom…” I said, touching the screen. I had spent so long resenting her, being angry at her, that I forgot just how much I missed her.
    “I’m sorry, baby,” she went on. “I messed up.” Even with the weak video quality I could see her own eyes were shiny with tears, but she held them back. That’s how I remembered her—tough, able to hold back her emotions. I used to think she was cold back then, even uncaring at times. That didn’t matter in that moment as I became filled with longing, wishing she was there to explain everything in person, to help me understand what was happening to me.
    “At some point I’m not going to be around anymore,” she said, her voice strained as she held herself in check. “Something… someone’s gonna come for me and that’ll be that. Shit …” She paused while she wiped tears from her eyes. “I hope your father is still there with you. I’ll be leaving soon because I know he’ll only get himself killed trying to protect me. Despite everything, he still loves me, though I don’t know why. I’ve made things dangerous for all of us, for you and Josh. No one can be there when they come for me, especially you and Josh…my babies.” Her voice cracked and tears escaped from her eyes, which she quickly wiped away.
    I had to pause the video as I sat in the car crying. Seeing my mom again,