Jezebelle: No. I was snooping. I have a flag on her account so I can see any activity that might match our DNA. Wrote the code myself. She has no idea. Though now…
Before J can answer, a message pops up from a strange account, one she doesn’t recognize.
Hello Scarfly414. This is your mother. We’ll discuss this when you get home. Straight home from school, do you hear me?
“Oh, shit!”
Not only has her mom found her private account, she’s read every message that’s come through. She knows everything that’s being said.
She knows that one of the siblings is a killer.
It’s not like Scarlett was going to be able to hide this anyway, not with that kind of news. But damn, her mom will go ballistic.
The bell rings. She needs to get to chemistry.
Scarfly414: JZ, I think I’m busted. Talk later?
Jezebelle: Yeah.
Scarlett scrolls quickly through the rest of her messages, tendrils of panic coursing through her. Everyone is concerned about the same thing. Speculation, fear, are we in danger?
Do you know who it is?
We should shut this down. I don’t want to be a part of this.
Do we know it’s not one of us on this group?
Could the person responsible for this woman’s murder be on their server already? Watching them? That’s like her worst fear ever.
You have only one chance to do the right thing in this world, baby girl.
Scarlett knows what the right thing is. She should call the police. She should tell them everything she knows. Everything she’s learned. She’s done nothing wrong. There’s nothing to be afraid of. She should get Jezebelle, whatever her real name is, to act as well.
Unless someone on the group is the killer, and they know she ratted them out.
Scarlett needs her mother.
A bit of peace settles upon her. Even if she’s furious, her mom will know what to do. This is too big a decision to make without her. It was one thing finding out who Scarlett is, genetically speaking. Something else entirely to know she may be related to a killer.
Screw chemistry. She’ll make up the quiz later. Scarlett goes to the office, tells the nurse she’s not feeling well, and checks herself out of school for the rest of the day.
The drive home doesn’t take long enough. Her mother is in the kitchen, on her computer. Great.
“What are you doing home?”
Scarlett opens the fridge, gets out a bottle of lemonade and a piece of string cheese.
“I feel sick.”
Darby stands with a sigh. “Let me get the thermometer.”
“Not sick like that.” She sits down at the table, gestures for Darby to do the same. An eyebrow raised, her mother sits.
“You’re missing a quiz in chemistry, you know. They might not let you make it up.”
“This is too important. We need to talk. I need your advice.”
Darby is clearly trying not to detonate. “On your little Discord group? My God, Scarlett. How dare you go behind my back like this?”
“How dare you snoop in my room?” Scarlett shoots back. “I thought we were past that.”
“I wasn’t snooping, I was getting your laundry. I was doing you a favor, and what do I see? You’ve been hiding the truth from me, living a secret life, and God knows what else—”
“Don’t you dare, Mom. I haven’t done anything wrong. I wanted to know who he was, that’s all.”
“And you couldn’t have come to me, made a plan with me? You went online and confided in a bunch of strangers? This could all be some sort of huge lie, some sort of scam, you realize that. To prey on donor kids.”
“It’s not. I’m not an idiot. And see, that’s the problem right there. You won’t ever say anything about him other than calling him your donor. Your donor, your donor, your donor. He’s my father. I’ve always wanted a father, and you tore that dream away from me, and now I have a chance to meet him, and I bet he loves me more than you do.”
They are both shocked by that outburst.
“Want to take that back?” Darby asks.
“No,” she cries, lower lip stuck out like a petulant five-year-old, though the tears are coming, her lip wobbling, and Darby sighs and pours herself a glass of water while Scarlett erupts into a shower of tears.
“Why couldn’t I have a father? Why did you have to do this alone? All I ever wanted was to be a proper family, and instead it was the three of us and people laughed and said nasty things and—”
“They did?” Darby puts the water pitcher back into the fridge.
“Yes.”
Darby hands Scarlett a tissue. “What did they say?”
A shuddery sigh. The fight has gone out of her as quickly as it arose. Her mother is so calm, so logical, so unruffled all the time. She doesn’t fight with passion like Scarlett. She’s almost robotic. It’s infuriating. Sometimes Scarlett wants to scream and smash things. The pressure builds inside until she needs to explode. When she was little, she’d punch or bite the kids around her, completely out of control, but as she’s grown older, she’s learned to master her feelings. She usually takes it out on her pillow, or on the pitch, against the soccer ball. Right now, though, it’s come to a head, and she’s forcing it away. They have bigger problems than her own emotions.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“If it hurt you, honey, it matters. People talk, people say things, because they don’t understand other people’s choices, especially on something as personal as building a family.”
“Didn’t you want a husband? Or a wife? I mean, a partner of some kind?”
Scarlett claps a hand over her mouth. This is as close as she has ever come to inquiring about her mother’s sexuality.
“I assume there’s been talk?” Darby asks evenly.
“Speculation is more like it. Because people are cruel and can’t mind their own damn business. But I never knew what to say. Not that it matters, Mom. People were just curious.”
Darby runs a long finger across the top of her water glass. It sings a tiny note of squeaky joy. “I wanted kids. I wanted you. You know my dad wasn’t the greatest, right? I’ve told you I had a rough upbringing. He drank, and he hit, and he threatened, and my mom wouldn’t walk away, and she was always so miserable. I couldn’t do that to myself. I never wanted to be beholden to someone else for my happiness. I decided early on that I was going to be a single mother, and I never strayed from that.”
“But aren’t you lonely? I mean, it would be so hard to be alone all these years.”
“How could I be lonely when I have you and your brother? You’re my world, and always have been.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I have a bigger problem.”
“All right,” Darby says, leaning back in the chair. “Shoot.”
“It’s about the group. The match to the murder. I think we need to go to the police. Normally I would have said it on the page because the Halves—that’s what we call ourselves—we’ve been making most of the decisions together. But if the killer is a part of the group—”
“Slow down. Back up for me a moment, all right? You want to run me through how in the world you got hooked up with them—the Halves—in the first place?”