Page 2 of Tangled Fates

“I swear, Colin, you’re so picky about everything. Can’t you see the brightness it brings to the room? It goes with the curtains, too!”

Dad grumbled. “Don’t know why we need curtains, either.”

I walked over and fingered the pristine fabric as it wafted around in the air conditioning. Mom had been right, these things had brought a sort of ethereal feel to the entire room, especially given how dark the walls were. They were this weird dark green, with rich brown wooden doorway frames and carpet that could practically be black in the right setting.

The curtains were the only light-colored feature of the bedroom, honestly.

And it only reminded me of just how starkly opposite my parents had been.

“All right,” I said with a heavy sigh, “we might as well start in the closet.”

I had no more answers outside of what Elias had told me only moments ago. I had no leads on which to stalk out my father’s killer, or where to begin trying to figure out why in the hell my father would have put the entire pack at risk just to come find me. Was the threat that nasty? Or did he simply feel that guilty for abandoning me? I had nothing but meaningless, baseless factoids from blood-stained paperwork that didn’t make a lick of fucking sense.

I needed a lead, and I hoped that I could find it while rifling through my father’s things.

I mean, that was what kids did when their parents died, right? They went home, stayed for a bit, sorted through their things. You know, took care of the estate. As far as I was concerned, I was there long enough to deal with my father’s estate.

Then, I’d go back home to my entertainment reporter job and get back to my life.

I grabbed the closet door and threw it open before the familiar smell of grass and flowers wafted up my nose. Dad had always smelled like a fresh wildflower field, and the scent transported me to an easier time in my life. I fought off the memories, batting them away with a baseball bat as I fingered my father’s clothing.

I wanted to wrap myself up in them and pretend that he was still alive.

“Daddy,” I said as my eyes watered over again.

I slid the clothes around, one by one, trying to figure out what in the hell I was looking for. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew my gut would tell me when I found it. I took some of his pants off the racks and shook them out, wondering if anything may tumble out of his pockets. And when I had exhausted searching his clothes, I dragged a chair over to the closet and searched the top shelf.

Bingo.

That place was a treasure trove of shoe boxes and lock boxes with codes. By the time I’d hauled everything down, I had at least nine boxes to dig through sitting on Mom and Dad’s bed. I tore his closet apart, digging into the back just to make sure I had pulled everything out. And after finding two more boxes stuffed behind a bunch of shoes I’d never once seen my father wear; I drew in a deep breath.

“Here goes nothing,” I murmured to myself.

With eleven boxes of all shapes and sizes staring back at me, I settled in for a long evening. I tucked my leg beneath me as I eased myself down onto the black-and-hunter-green comforter my father insisted on having instead of the cream-colored one Mom enjoyed, and I reached for the largest box.

Start big and work to small. It always helps when you’re overwhelmed.

My father’s voice was so crisp in my head that I had to resist the urge to look around for him.

“What do we have here?” I asked softly.

I removed the lid from the black-and-red shoebox only to find all sorts of newspaper clippings. Some of them were faded at the edges with that nasty yellow color. And some of them weren’t newspaper clippings at all. There were a couple of flash drives alongside what looked like a miniature television screen, and as I picked it up and turned it around, I found a USB port on the side.

“What are you hiding, Daddy dearest?”

I didn’t bother reading the newspaper clippings. I was more curious as to what he was hiding on those flash drives. I jammed one into the port and pressed the red button on top of the small screen, and watching it come to life made me squint my eyes.

Then, a familiar voice surrounded me.

“Breaking News, coming to you out of Los Angeles, the infamous Perry Richard has been arrested for public intoxication and indecent exposure. The fifty-four-year-old rock start turned Grammy-nominated actor?—”

My jaw hit the floor as I watched one of my news broadcasts from at least four years ago. I watched it play through before it snapped to yet another clip of me, and the longer I sat there, the more I watched myself inform the general public about shit they probably didn’t care about. I yanked the USB drive out of the miniature screen and plugged in the other one, wondering if the contents were the same.

And sure enough, those flash drives were full of nothing but my broadcasts.

“Oh, Dad,” I said with a heavy sigh.

I picked up the newspaper clippings as one of my broadcasts played mindlessly in the background and found that they were mine. Before I had become a headlining reporter for entertainment news, I had been taking other people’s broadcasts and formatting them into online and paper-based news columns. I had completely forgotten about that part in my career, right at the very beginning when I was trying to make a name for myself. To break out and really find my footing in front of a camera doing what I loved to do the most. And there I sat, with every single newspaper clipping and blog print-out and television broadcast in front of me.

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