Chapter 2 - The Sins of the Past
The police yellow tape stretched across the front porch of 412 Oakwood Lane like an insurmountable barrier.
By midnight, the forensics team had cleared the scene, taking evidence bags filled with duct tape, zip ties, and the bloody blanket from my closet. The lead detective, a stern woman named Detective Vance, had interviewed me for three hours at the station before allowing me to return to the house to gather my things.
"Your parents aren't talking, Leo," Detective Vance had told me in the interrogation room, handing me a cup of lukewarm black coffee. "The victim’s name is Julian Vance—no relation to me. He’s a former contractor from Cleveland. He’s currently in ICU with internal bleeding and three broken ribs. But here's the strange part: Julian Vance went missing six months ago, and he has an active warrant for arson and vehicular manslaughter."
Her words echoed in my mind as I walked through the dark, quiet house. The silence was suffocating. Every ticking clock sounded like a countdown.
I remembered what my dad had whispered to me before the police pushed him into the car: Look under the loose floorboard in the garage... under the workbench.
My hands trembled as I grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen counter and walked into the dark, cold garage. The air smelled of gasoline, motor oil, and old pine sawdust.
I dragged a heavy wooden tool chest away from the workbench at the back wall. Prying my fingernails under the seam of a dark plywood board, I lifted it up.
Beneath the floorboard was a metal fireproof box.
It wasn't locked. I pulled open the heavy lid and shone my flashlight inside.
There were three things inside the box:
A faded photograph from twelve years ago showing a younger version of my dad, another man, and a little girl around nine years old sitting on a tire swing.
A yellowed newspaper clipping from the Columbus Dispatch dated August 14, 2014, with the headline: "TRAGIC HIT-AND-RUN CLAIMS LIFE OF 9-YEAR-OLD MAYA MILLER; SUSPECT FLEES SCENE."
A bound leather journal written in my dad's tight, precise handwriting.
My breath hitched in my throat. Maya Miller.
I had an older sister.
A sister I had completely forgotten about—or rather, a sister my young mind had blocked out after a childhood trauma. I remembered vague flashes of a girl with dark braids who used to read me bedtime stories, but whenever I asked my parents about my childhood before age nine, they always brushed it off, saying I had suffered a concussion in a playground fall that made my early memories hazy.
They hadn't lied about the concussion. They had lied about everything else.
I opened my dad’s journal to the first page. The date was six months ago.
September 12th. I found him. After twelve years of police dead-ends and closed cases, I found the man who hit Maya on her bike and left her to die in the ditch on Elm Street. His name is Julian Vance. He's been living under an alias in Cleveland, working construction jobs. The police won't help us. The statute of limitations on the hit-and-run expired, and the evidence was lost in the precinct fire back in 2018. The legal system let my daughter's killer walk free. Linda and I made a decision today. If justice won't come from the courts, it will come from this house.
May you like
My tears dripped onto the dry paper, blurring my dad's handwriting.
My parents hadn't kept a random victim in my closet. They had tracked down, abducted, and imprisoned the man who had murdered my sister twelve years ago.
