Falice 2

En Route

Charles had been obsessed with finding his family, especially after his first attempt. The curiosity had always dawned on him. He was willing to try again if there was a chance for a better outcome. The only way he knew how to start this journey was by searching for his mother, again.

All he had to work with before was her name. He was fortunate enough to have FBI resources at work to speed the process up, but it was all going to be excruciating one way or another.

He stared blankly at the web of information he set up on his wall. He scraped up every little detail that felt relevant to his mother.

He started with her stay at the group home he grew up in. She had checked herself in at seventeen. Her teenage years were quite the story. He dove into her records. He had gotten his hands on hidden archives and found her mugshot. He came to learn that during this period of time she was affiliated with the Southside Serpents.

Charles was invested in this gang life part of her mother. Had this been why she had given him away? Would his life had turned out different if she weren't a Serpent? What could have been?

He looked deeper into the Southside Serpents. They were led by an FP Jones nowadays. This man had lived a very close life to his mother's. They had crossed paths multiple times according to public records. They were a part of the same graduating class. They had been brought up from the southside of town. They had absent fathers and mothers who tried to do what they could to keep them afloat at some point. This man was on the same football team Hal Cooper was on. Hal was the man her mother was married to the past two decades. He never got to meet him when he went to the Cooper residence.

According to FP's high school records, he missed out on his junior year's football season, but carried the team to victory his senior year. It was an arm injury that prevented him from playing. His medical records note that he made a couple of visits to the emergency room in his adolescence. He couldn't help but wonder why. Was this related to the gang he and his mother were in? Was his mother giving him up keeping him away from that life?

FP had more medical records to offer in his adult life. Based on the debt in his file, it involved the family he had created with a woman from the southside. Both sharing a son and a daughter. Army records were out in the open, too, after investigating even further into this man.

Aside from the high school days, in more recent times, this man was involved in a crime that involved his mother's daughter. His sister, Polly. He had news articles and footage of what had happened to his sister's boyfriend. This man took a giant fall. Although he had a part in the death of the red headed rich boy, he wasn't the murderer.

On the topic of murder, her mother's husband was the town's serial killer? The man she shared a majority of her life with was a murderer? They had two daughters years after he was born. He could only assume so much with that knowledge. Was this why his mother gave him away?

Hal was now behind prison bars, leaving his mother home with only one daughter, Elizabeth, as he would learn. Polly was still yet to come home. Polly was involved in the case he was currently working on with his team, so seeing her name pop up in his investigation was personal. It made him want to find his place in the family. The Cooper family he had imagined being a part of. He had two sisters that got to stay. He had a mother who gave him up as a baby and closed the door on him at seventeen. He had a father who turned out to be a cynical serial killer. Was this supposed to be the family he would have had from the start? Was his mother protecting him from the start? Was leaving him behind the right thing to do?

What intrigued him was how one of his sisters was dating FP Jones's son. Why was this man still coming to be a part of his mother's life? Was it a mere coincidence?