Page 19 of Begin Again

I blink hard, trying to ground myself. When my senses return, Mo is watching me carefully. Her hands are wrapped around her mug, but I can see the tension in her shoulders. She’s speaking, but her voice comes through in fragments, muffled by the roaring in my head.

Bennett doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. His intense gaze pinning me in place. “Theo,” he says, his voice steady and deliberate. “I know this is a lot, but you need to hear it.”

I inhale sharply, trying to steady myself. My voice comes out hoarse as I manage a joke, “If that’s the bad news, then what’s the good news?”

He hesitates for a moment. For the first time, his expression shifts—like he’s searching for the right way to say it. Then, finally, he sighs. “The good news is… we’re first cousins.”

I blink at him, certain I didn’t hear him correctly. “Cousins,” I repeat, the word sounding foreign on my tongue.

Mo, who has been uncharacteristically silent, mutters, “Told you this was going to be a lot.”

I let out a breath, trying to piece this together. My parents were murdered. Bennett—this guy I just met—is family. How though? My dad’s only sibling was his twin, and he died before we were born.

I stare between the two of them, my thoughts racing. Murdered parents. A long-lost cousin. “You’re joking,” I say weakly, though I know from the weight of Bennett’s gaze that he isn’t.

The silence stretches between us, heavy, suffocating.

Finally, I exhale sharply, dragging a hand through my hair. “Maybe we should start from the beginning?”

Mo doesn’t answer right away. Then, with a sigh, she abandons her coffee and makes a beeline over to my liquor cabinet. Without a word, she pulls out a bottle of whiskey and three glasses.

I let out a weak laugh. “Mo, why didn’t we start with this? I feel like ‘your parents were murdered’ should have been the cue to break out the alcohol.”

Mo just gives me a look of equal parts pity and exasperation, “Trust me,” she says as she pours us all drinks, “You’re going to need it.”

She passes one to me and the other to Bennett before she sits on the stool beside him. The three of us sit in a tense, fragile silence for a moment, the air heavy with unsaid things.

Finally, Bennett clears his throat and leans forward, “I’ll try to make this as clear as I can,” he pauses. “But there is a lot to unpack so bear with me.”

Bennett launches into everything that leads us up to this point and it’s as though I’ve stepped into someone else’s life, a life I can’t quite recognize as my own.

“I’d always believed my adoptive mother was my biological one—until earlier this year. While cleaning out her things after she passed, I found a folder with my name on it, tucked away in a locked drawer.”

I lean forward, gripping my glass like it’s a lifeline, even though the tremor in my hand betrays me. It’s the only thing keeping me tethered to the present, stopping me from losing myself in the past, in the memories of my parents, of everything I’ve lost.

“Inside was everything,” Bennett said, swirling the whiskey in his glass. “Adoption papers, old photos, even a DNA kit she must’ve ordered without telling me. I guess she did it at some point without me knowing.”

“So, she did the DNA thing? What did it say?” I asked my voice hoarse, still gripping my glass like a lifeline. My heart is pounding too fast. Too loud.

Bennett nodded. “She did the DNA thing and even got a message back from someone. My uncle, your dad, Theo.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

“I emailed the account linked to his results,” Bennett continued. “I didn’t hear back. After a week of waiting, I did some digging and found his obituary.”

A rush of coldness spreads through me. That’s when I first felt it—the pull of a darker force, a presence that didn’t make sense. My chest tightens, a mix of old grief and confusion surging through me.

“I thought it was a strange coincidence,” Bennett said, his voice steady but edged with a sharp undertone. “An email sent, then a death days later? It didn’t sit right.”

“What did you do about it?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. My head’s spinning, trying to keep up with what Bennett is telling me, but the pieces just aren’t fitting together. What am I missing?

“What I do best,” Bennett said, his lips curling into a grim smile. “I investigated.”

He explains how he dug into the police reports surrounding my parents’ deaths. On the surface, it seemed straightforward—bad weather, black ice, a tragic accident. But Bennett wasn’t satisfied.

“If anyone had read the autopsy report carefully, they would’ve seen something odd,” he said. “Your father had traces of cyanide in his system. It’s not uncommon, but not untraceable. I’m still working to identify where it came from.”

The room suddenly feels colder, like a draft slipped in through the cracks in the walls.

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