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“It’s registered,” I assure him.

“You always keep it on the kitchen table?”

I shake my head. “No, but I’m a single woman living in one of the worst areas of town. It’s never far from me. Besides, you’re the one pounding on my door at two in the morning.”

“I do apologize for that. The subject is… sensitive and I needed to speak to you before anyone else did.”

I wrap my arms around myself. “Well, now you’re worrying me. What’s going on?”

“Please,” he says, gesturing to the table. “Have a seat.”

He sits at the head of the rectangular table and I choose the chair adjacent to him as he sets a folder down on the table. Sighing, he pulls a photo out of the folder and sets it down in front of me.

“Do you recognize this car?”

I nod, staring down at the dependable little Nissan she loves – now a mangled mess. “Yes, it’s my mother’s. What happened?”

Worry twists in my gut and it only gets worse when Detective Rodriguez looks uneasy. “At eleven fifty-three this evening, I was called to the scene of a hit and run accident involving this vehicle. When I arrived, they were loading a woman into the ambulance. They rushed her to the hospital and after all attempts to revive her, she was pronounced dead at twelve thirty-six a.m.”

“Are-are you telling me my mother is dead?” I stutter, pressing a hand against my chest in an attempt to restart my stalled heart. A roaring sound fills my ears and my mind blanks as I wait for his answer. An answer that I somehow already know – like I can feel it deep down in my gut – but I can’t believe it. Not until he says the words.

“That’s the reason I’m here, ma’am. We need you to identify the body.”

All the air rushes out of me and I nod. “Oh.”

Detective Rodriguez pulls another photo out and places it face down on the table in front of me. “I know this is a difficult time for you, Miss Carter, but the sooner we confirm that it is your mother, the sooner we can shift our focus to figuring out what really happened.”

The room spins as I stare at him, trying to process what he just said. How the hell am I supposed to do this? It can’t be true. Not my mother. She’s the strongest, bravest person I’ve ever met so there’s no way she was taken out by a simple car accident. It’s not possible. This doesn’t feel real. Like any moment, I’ll wake up and be back in my bed, under the covers. I set my shaking hand down on the table, my heart jumping into my throat as I try to convince myself to flip the photo over. My mind is screaming to do it but my hand won’t move as it desperately tries to save me from discovering the truth.

Lightning streaks across the sky as I reach forward and gently turn the photo over as the world around me fades out of focus. A sob lodges in my throat and I stare down at the photo of my beautiful mother, laid out on a metal autopsy table with a pale blue sheet pulled up over her chest. Tears spill down my cheeks and the sob that I was barely holding back tears through my lips. Detective Rodriguez lays his hand on top of mine and another sob rips through me. He doesn’t need me to say anything because the sound of my cries is all the evidence we both need. It’s my mother lying on that cold metal table in a morgue somewhere across town and in her death, she’s taking a chunk of my soul with her.

* * * *

My stomach sinks like a stone and my feet are rooted to the concrete as I sit on a park bench across from the Baton Rouge Police Department, staring up at the formidable building that holds answers. Answers that I’m not even sure I want.

“Ready to go?” Theo asks, sitting down next to me on the bench and I shrug my shoulders.

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“We’ll go in whenever you’re ready, T,” he assures me and I turn to him with a raised brow.

“How the hell are you being so damn strong right now?”

He shakes his head. “I think I’m just in shock.”

Turning back to the building, I nod. Shock is a good word for how this feels. Theo is stationed in Charleston with the Navy and after Detective Rodriguez left my apartment two days ago, I called him in tears. After five hours and several calls to his chief, he was on the road to help me process all of this and bury our mother. But none of it feels real.

“It doesn’t seem possible…” I muse and Theo turns to me.

“What doesn’t?”

“The car accident. I mean, this is the same woman who has a gun conveniently hidden in every room of her house, the one who built a panic room out of her bedroom closet, she made us train in at least three different martial arts, made us run drills for every disaster scenario and a car accident is what kills her? It doesn’t fit.”

“I know,” he whispers. “I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it.”

Shaking my head, I sigh. “I guess we won’t get any answers out here.”

“Ready to do this, then?” He holds his hand out to me and I grab it as I push to my feet.