But my finger hovered over the trackpad—something about the date nagging at me.
The article said Wednesday, May 15th.
May 15th.
My father died on May 15th.
I’d been working a shift at the diner when the hospital called—they’d said there’d been an accident, that he’d been drinking, that he’d died instantly.
The dates were the same.
Coincidence. It had to be. Drunk drivers crashed every day, multiple accidents happened in the same city on the same day all the time.
But my hands were already typing before my brain caught up.
Then I saw it.
A local news site with less polish than the major outlets but more detail.
Fatal Two-Car Collision on Amsterdam Avenue Claims Two Lives
I clicked.
The article listed the location and at the bottom, in a section labeled “Fatalities”:
Joana Marie Valdez, 34.
Thomas Michael Tinsley, 52.
I stared at my father’s name on the screen, the letters suddenly unfamiliar.
Read it again, slower this time, like maybe I’d misread the letters somehow.
Thomas Michael Tinsley.
The same name I’d seen on his death certificate, the same name that had made my stomach turn every time I’d heard it growing up.
My father’s name.
Right there under Joana Valdez’s name, like they were connected.
They were connected. In the worst possible way.
My hands shook so violently I had to set the laptop aside before I dropped it—the screen still glowing with those two names, those two deaths, linked together in black and white text that wouldn’t change no matter how many times I blinked.
My father had killed Joana Valdez.
The thought came clear and terrible, cutting through the fog in my brain like a knife.
My father had killed Hector’s wife.
The sentence repeated in my head, refusing to become real, couldn’t become real because if it was real then everything else was real too: six months of working with Lily, of living in their home, of growing close to Hector while carrying the blood of their destroyer in my veins.
My stomach lurched hard and fast. I barely made it to the bathroom before I threw up—violently, helplessly—my wholebody shaking with it. When there was nothing left I just stayed there on the floor with my cheek pressed against the cool tile, tasting bile and breathing too fast, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
All this time.
And I was the daughter of the man who’d destroyed everything Hector loved.
