I studied my reflection in the mirror, a strange feeling of self-consciousness attached to the happiness I’d been feeling ever since we’d arrived back in Fort Collins, Colorado. It wasn’t really about my appearance. I was used to being self-conscious about that, wondering if my scar was showing, if the shirt I was wearing was long enough to cover everything when I moved, if the neck was high enough. Now, when I looked in the mirror and saw the familiar ash blonde hair and china blue eyes, I wondered if people saw beyond that, if they could see the way I felt. Even though I knew it was silly, I felt like I should be glowing or something.

I’d had moments of happiness with Clay as a friend and as a lover. Moments with Uncle Anton where I’d forgotten that I should have had a different path. My life since my mother’s death hadn’t been all doom and gloom, but it hadn’t been like this either. It wasn’t about perfect circumstances or not being sad over Adare’s death. It was about letting myself see a positive future, and with Jalen, with this life I had begun to build here, I could see it.

I turned away from the mirror and headed back into the office. I’d spent the last couple hours organizing and sorting through things. It had been less than two weeks since Adare’s death and I hadn’t exactly taken the time to go through Adare’s things. Even when she’d been dying, she’d kept up with the bills, with the clients, and when I found the envelope with my name on it, I knew why.

I walked back over to the desk and sat in the chair. The envelope sat on the top of the desk and I stared at it, trying to work up the courage to open it.

This was how I knew I was really happy. Even the grief at losing Adare wasn’t the sharp, debilitating agony that I’d known in the past. I missed her, and that wasn’t going to go away anytime soon, but I’d known her well enough to know that she wanted me to be happy.

I let out a slow breath, picked up the envelope and opened it.

Rona,

I’m guessing, right now, you’re pretty pissed at me for not telling you I was sick. I’m sorry about that. I’m sure we had this discussion at some point, and this letter isn’t to go over it all again. It’s to reassure you that you can do this. I wouldn’t have left Burkart Investigations to you if I didn’t have faith that you could make it into everything I always wanted it to be. Don’t doubt yourself.

I’m getting close to the end now, and now I’ll ask you forgive me for taking liberties that I might not have yet earned.

I know there are things in your past that you don’t want to share, and I respect your privacy. I haven’t gone snooping. I like to think that if we had more time together, you would have eventually trusted me with some of those secrets, and maybe you would have taken some advice. Since we didn’t have that time, I’ll ask for some leeway when it comes to telling you something that I wish I would have figured out when I was your age.

Don’t be afraid to live the life you’ve always wanted.

It doesn’t matter if that life is being single and running a private investigation firm, or getting married and being a stay-at-home mom. Go back to college or become an apprentice. Make friends or be a loner. Find a man, a woman, or both. The opportunities are endless.

Don’t allow fear of your past, or of your future, keep you from reaching that potential.

I swallowed hard, a painful lump in my throat.

Now, for a few final things.

Don’t let Wendy Mikelson weasel her way out of payments. She knows that she doesn’t get a frequent customer discount. If she has a problem paying the bill, remind her that she can always ask her son to tell her where he’s going at all times rather than having us follow him.

Don’t take any cases from Hiram Whitehouse. He believes that aliens impregnate his chickens every few months. He’s harmless and I don’t like taking money from him for his flights of fancy so I just suggest he take any suspicious eggs to his vet. Orville knows all about the alien chickens and doesn’t mind turning them into omelets.

When the bathroom sink gets plugged up, before you call a plumber, use the wrench in the tool box to take off the bottom pipe. It’ll save you sixty bucks even if it makes you curse.

Go to at least one Rams game and mingle with the locals. Become a part of the community, even if you’re an introverted one.

And, finally, I believe in you, kid. I’m just sorry I won’t be around to see everything you’re going to accomplish.

Love, Adare

I set the letter back on the desk and rubbed the backs of my hands across my cheeks. I’d always known that life wasn’t fair – when your father murdered your mother and two other people, and left you literally scarred for life, the world being unfair was sort of a given – but thinking about how my father was still alive while Adare was dead really drove the point home.

I’d wanted to become an FBI agent to make a difference, to protect people the way I hadn’t been able to protect my mother. When I’d gotten kicked out of the academy for lying about changing my name and about my father’s murder conviction, I’d felt like I’d failed my mother. Becoming a PI hadn’t been part of the plan at all. Then the case Jalen had brought me ended up leading to the arrests of several human traffickers and the rescue of several teenage girls. That had made a difference.

Maybe I could make my mother proud and do what Adare had asked of me and run Burkart Investigations. I’d probably still have to take cases like lost pets or following possibly cheating spouses, but I could find other cases too.

In fact, I realized suddenly, I already knew someone who worked important cases with the FBI even though she wasn’t an agent. Jenna Archer. The victim of a childhood horrific enough to make my family look like the Bradys, Jenna was a computer genius and she’d helped FBI agent Raymond Matthews take down several human trafficking and child pornography rings. Oddly enough, Agent Matthews was Clay’s partner, both of them working out of the Denver office.

All these pieces of my life had come together in a way that I’d never expected, never could have predicted. If I was someone who believed in destiny or fate, I might’ve thought that was what was happening here, but I’d seen too much shit to want to believe that there was some higher power or higher reason making things happen.

I preferred to think that the accident that had turned my loving father into a murderous monster had been just that. A serious of circumstances and events, results of choices or of completely happenstance. Why would I want to believe that there had been a reason for my mother being brutally murdered? For Jenna being pimped out by her own mother? For my uncle being shot to death?

I shook my head. Too many maudlin thoughts. I’d come here happier than I’d been since I was a kid, and I wanted that back.

Work. That’s what I needed to focus on. Get back to the entire reason I’d come here to begin with. Keeping my promise to Adare.

Even though we’d – I’d – been closed for two weeks, I did have a case to work on while I waited for others to come in.

I’d met Jenna on a case. She’d hired me to find the half-brothers and sisters that her mother had given up or had taken from her. I’d gathered some information about them already, but between Adare’s hospitalization and death, and then my needing to go back to Indiana for my father’s new trial, things had been on hold. Now, it was time to pick them back up again.

Fortunately, my white board was still against the far wall, turned around to prevent clients from seeing personal information, and everything I’d put on it before was still there.

I walked across the office and turned the board so I could refresh my memory. At the top was Jenna’s mother. I’d listed all of the aliases I’d been able to find, including what I knew of which name Jenna’s mother used for the different births, and the approximate years each child was born. I still had a lot of blanks to fill, and I intended to work my ass off to give Jenna a chance to know siblings who might end up being a part of her life.

I’d focus on the kids who were born after Helen Kingston’s arrest and induction into Witness Protection, mostly because that was the research I could do around here. In another one of those strange twists that I kept seeing, Helen had been sent from Florida to Cheyenne, Wyoming…where she ended up being far too close to Jenna. It was a fuck up of epic proportions on the part of the US Marshals; one that had almost gotten Jenna killed a few years ago.

But, there was one positive to her having been that close. If – no, when – I found her siblings, they’d be close enough for them to have a relationship if they wanted it. The older ones would be more difficult to locate, but if there was a way to find them, I’d do it.

I couldn’t change what Jenna had been through, but I could do this for her.