No amount of coffee could energize me enough to utter a coherent sentence.
It'd been close to three weeks living on about twelve hours of sleep a week. Between the nightmarish images that clouded my thoughts and stared back at me when I shut my eyes and the twins waking up every three hours on the dot, it was a lost cause.
The fact that I was about to go speak to the police about the possibility of foul play in my sister's death didn't help the anxiety gnawing me from the inside out. As I stepped out of the bathroom, rubbing my hair dry with a towel, I ran into a hard chest. I knew by the unfamiliarity of the spicy scent that it was neither Tanner or Parker. When I glanced up I was met with a stocky man only a few inches taller than myself. He was as broad as both of my sisters friends, but not nearly as toned or tall. He, unlike the other two boys in the house, had only just returned sometime last night and I had yet to see him, though Tanner had reassured me he knew we were here.
"Sorry." He muttered quietly, running a hand through his tousled dark bed hair. "Not used to having another morning person here."
I brought the sea green towel in my hand down and nodded. "It's fine. I'll just. . . get going."
I curved around his arm and darted for the sparsely furnished bedroom a few doors down. I had to blink a few times to make sure I was seeing the image before me correctly and it wasn't just a figment of my imagination. Parker sat in one of the few pieces of furniture in the room-an old leather computer chair with a few tears through it. He was as shirtless as the nameless roommate I'd run into out in the hall, but had Michaela cradled against his bare chest with the smallest hint of a smile on his lips as he caressed her cheek with the knuckle of his index finger. I had no doubt he hadn't heard me come in, and I almost felt as if I were intruding on a personal moment. Tanner had gotten up twice last night and come into the room, seeing I was still awake, he didn't bother to go back to sleep himself, but took the twin that I wasn't holding and did his best to try and break through to me with his crappy jokes and pick up lines. But Parker? He had seemed as though he wanted nothing to do with the kids, so seeing him like this, especially with the one that was extremely colicky, was shocking.
"Hey." Parker said in a hushed whisper, eyes still glued to the baby. She must have fallen asleep. "She was crying and Tan was up with you all night, I figured I could help."
I didn't know how to respond, so I crossed the room to my duffel bag, not thrilled to be in the same room as my childhood crush in nothing but a pair of shorts and a sheer pajama top. "She must like you. Tanner and I couldn't get her to stay quiet for longer than a couple minutes last night. She kept waking Max."
Parker's eyes finally left the baby and fell on me, eyebrows raising in curiosity. "If you plan on staying here, you might want to alter your wardrobe. You are living with three extraordinarily disgusting manwhores."
I was glad he couldn't see the small smile that touched at my lips. "I don't plan on staying here, Park. You guys have done enough already."
"Where are you going to go?" I thought for a moment he'd raised his voice and was about to warn him to quiet down, but turned to find he had set Mickey in her crib and was only a few feet away. "I. . . your Maya's sister. I can't just let you throw yourself out on the streets, Mia. Especially with them."
We looked toward the white bassinets before us, side by side, both infants swaddled in them.
"I have to go, Park." I whispered, having no desire to try and rack my sleep deprived brain of an answer. "Tanner said he'd watch them for a couple hours."
"How are you getting there?" He asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "Is Darren picking you up?"
That thought was more comical than thinking it was safe for me and the twins to live in this house. Darren wouldn't come within a hundred feet of a place that housed not just Parker, but Tanner too. He'd walk on hot coal before he'd do that.
"There is something called public transportation, Park." I said flatly.
"Let me drop you off." He offered, reaching up with his right had to run it through his mess of a blonde hair. "I don't want you on those public buses, Mia."
I almost snapped that I didn't give a rats ass what he wanted but decided not to test my waters. He was kind enough to let us stay here, after all.
"Okay." I responded instead. "Sure, you can drop me off."
**
Darren was slumped in a black booth with little padding when I stepped into the police station. A short red headed woman, a receptionist of a sort I'd assume by her blouse and slacks, nodded in greeting. My brother lifted his head and for a second, I saw the devastation he'd so desperately been trying to keep concealed in my presence lingering in his dark eyes. He rose and crossed the room to me in seconds, crushing me against his chest It'd only been three days since I'd last seen him, but it had felt like an eternity, a different life even.
"How are you holding up?" he asked, brushing a strand of my dark hair off my forehead. "You look like you haven't slept a wink."
"That's kind of what happens when you find out your twin sister is dead and are left to care for her newborn children. You don't sleep."
His lips drew into a thin, tight line at the comment. But he didn't get the opportunity to say a word. An officer called his name and Darren hugged me against his side as we headed down a dimly lit hallway until we were sitting in what appeared to be an interrogation room.
Why the hell were we in an interrogation room? They couldn't possibly think one of us did this, could they?
"Mr. and Ms. Foster. It's a pleasure to see you again." Pfft, okay. "I'm Detective Thatcher and I'm part of the team leading the investigation on your sisters death."
Shockingly, the Detective, despite his cold, passive, almost robotic tone, looked no older than my brother. Though his face, twisted into a grimace, still showed hints of boyish features.
"You said you guys found new evidence?" my brother straightened himself in the cold, metal chair. "That foul play may have been involved?"
Detective Thatcher nodded, his icy blue eyes shooting a sharp look at my brother as he pulled a manila folder from the far corner of the table and set it in front of him. "That's correct. We received the autopsy report yesterday morning and in it were a lot of troubling things, thus having us switch the investigation from that of a suicide to a homicide."
Homicide. My sister was murdered.
"Troubling things? Like what?" Darren, ever the persistent idiot he was, asked what the Detective was likely to have explained regardless.
"These photos, there's indication of blunt force trauma to the head." Thatcher spread out three 8x10 photographs in front of my brother and me. Suddenly the nightmares, the thoughts, the flickers of questions, of what my dead sister looked like were real and I wanted to run out the door and throw up.
She laid like a broken rag doll on the bedroom floor of her room, not even a few inches from the foot of the bed. Her eyes were wide open, pupils large and eyes full of blood. Her face was entirely ashen, lacking the rosy cheeks and blush that had just about always lit them. Lips, always parted a fraction in surprise, hung open, chapped and as colorless as her face. A hand shot into my line of sight, long, slender fingers pressing into my sisters neck. "There were also strangulation marks on her neck and bruises up and down her thighs. Our forensics team had no doubt this was a murder upon arriving, but we had to wait for the autopsy to pursue it further."
I pushed the pictures back toward the man in front of me, the knot in my stomach as cold as the chair beneath me. "So your saying someone. . . someone murdered my sister? How. . . how long before we found her like—"
"According to the report, three days."
Three days. Maya had been dead for three days. The babies had been starving and sitting in a bed of their own poop and formula for three days before we forced our way into the place.
"If it's alright with you, I would like to speak with both of you alone."
So they did think that we could of possibly killed her.
My brother rose shakily to his feet and squeezed my shoulder comfortingly before exiting the room. Thatcher waited a good few minutes before he leaned back in his chair and directed that cold glare on me.
"Where were you the night of August first?" he questioned.
I tilted my head to the side. "You think I killed my sister? That. . . does it look like me, a five foot nothing, hundred- and fifteen-pound girl could do that?"
He was a little taken back by my words, his eyes widening a fraction, before he leaned across the table and repeated himself. "Where were you the night of August first?"
"I had a job over the summer to help Maya with the twins and the Weekly she was staying in since she'd only be a few weeks post partum when school started. I was at work."
"Where do you work, Ms. Foster?"
I curled my fingers into a fist on top of the table. "Moonlight Bar and Grill. I'm a waitress."
Detective Thatcher pulled a small notepad and pin from thin air, scribbling information down at lightning speed.
"How was your relationship with Maya?"
I averted my eyes to my clenched fists. "She was my best friend, my everything. We did everything together from the second we were born. When she told me she was pregnant the middle of Senior year of high school, I promised to keep it secret. And when she needed me after graduation, I put my own summer plans aside and did everything for her. I don't know what your trying to get at doing this shit, but I didn't kill my sister, and I think you know that. So how about you get off your ass and go find out who did."
My father would have beat me into tomorrow if he'd heard me speak to an adult in such a way, let alone law enforcement. But Detective Thatcher, he found it amusing. A smirk actually broke through his emotionless mask.
"You're right, Ms. Foster. I don't think you killed her, but this is all protocol we have to follow to ensure it." He nodded toward the glass behind me, then his eyes were on me again. "We found a box of items with your name on them. We have checked through them to be sure they wouldn't be of any use as evidence. You can pick it up on your way out."
I stood, having to grasp the corner of the table to keep my legs from giving out beneath me. He rose, pulling a card from his pocket and handing it to me. "If you have any leads, any information, please do not hesitate to contact me. I do feel as though you want to find the suspect as much as we do. Have a good day, Ms. Foster."
*
Most of the items in the box were actually things of mine I'd left at the Weekly. Shoes, a couple paperback books, a necklace, a photo album. But some of the stuff in it was Maya's. There were a few of her own pictures of us, of the twins, but what caught my eye was a leather bounded diary that looked as if it'd been pulled right out of the nineteenth century. Darren, who'd been so eerie silent since we'd left the station that I'd forgotten he was driving the car, raised an eyebrow when he saw the book in my hands.
"What the hell is that?"
Skimming through the pages, I frowned. "A diary. Maya's diary."
"Seriously?" he almost smiled. "She was nearly nineteen and still had a diary?"
"Yeah? Well you're twenty five and still watch cartoons." I defended her. "How about you not judge our dead sister, Darren."
His top lip pulled back in disgust at the comment. "How can you talk like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like her being dead doesn't affect you?"
I turned away from his curious gaze and stared at the apartment building coming into focus. "I learned a long time ago that showcasing emotions only hurt you more in the long run."
"Because of Dad." It wasn't a question, but a statement.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. "It hurts, Dare, okay? I feel like I'm fucking drowning and no matter how hard I try to come back up for air I can't. I can't close my eyes without seeing her dead, and when I do doze off, I dream of her in a pool of blood begging me for help. Is that what you want to hear?"
"Mia?"
"If she was murdered, who's to say that the murder won't try to come after the kids next? After me?"
My brother opened his mouth, then slammed it shut so hard I heard his teeth grind against each other. Luckily, he'd already slowed the car to a stop along the curb outside the apartment building. Grabbing my purse I slung it over my shoulder then grabbed the box, peeking over it at my older brother. He was staring right back, so helpless and hopeless, that I almost apologized for my outburst. Nodding curtly, I nudged the door shut with my butt.
"Get back to campus safe, Dare. Love you."
Before he could respond, I walked around the front of his Volvo and stepped on to the sidewalk, feeling a stray tear escape my eye as I headed for the front door.