“And you think that proves she was guilty?” I ask. “You think that proves she was the one who killed Jennifer?”

As much as I hated my mother, even after all she did to me, I still had a sliver of hope she wasn’t the monster I thought she was, that she didn’t kill a sixteen-year-old girl. I don’t want to know half my DNA was from a woman capable of this. I shudder to even think about it.

“Well, both your mother and the Senator had a lot to lose,” Ingrid says. “Both had families, children, and both would have been under heavy scrutiny if the affair leaked.”

I say, “And perhaps under heavy scrutiny, they would have discovered the pair’s connection to a black op.”

Ingrid says, “The Sleep Control Program.”

“Right. So when Jennifer goes to blackmail them for having an affair, she has no idea how much they stand to lose. That even if they pay her off, they can’t trust that she didn’t make copies and that the pictures won’t get out.”

Ingrid says, “And so they kidnap her and ask her where the photos are?”

“But she hid them in her brother’s room,” my dad says. “She was scared of what they would do to him if they thought he knew.”

“So Jennifer doesn’t tell them,” I say. “Then they shoot her up with Compound-23, hoping that after a twenty-three hour nightmare she will give up the location of the pictures.”

Ingrid says, “But she doesn’t. She stays strong. Then they hit her in the back of the head with something and dump her body.”

I say, “After the murder, they break off the affair and my mom leaves, goes down to Honduras for three years. When she returns, the case is long closed, a distant memory.”

“And your mother moves the Sleep Control Program somewhere else. Maybe Michigan. Maybe somewhere in the Midwest.”

I nod.

“So then where do you come in?” my dad asks. “Why kidnap you? What about the flash drive?”

It takes me thirty seconds to put it all together. “When we talked with Sidney Ewen, he said the last time he talked to my mother was right after 9/11.”

Ingrid says, “Right after the Senator died.”

“And his wife, which means everything the Senator owned was passed on to their only child.”

“Conner Sullivan,” my dad says.

“And I’m guessing somewhere in all of his valuables, maybe locked in a safety deposit box somewhere, is a—”

“Flash drive,” Ingrid says.

I smile.

My dad says, “Maybe the President has a flash drive and he doesn’t even know it.”

“But what’s on it?” Ingrid asks.

I know what’s on the flash drive.

My dad was right.

“It’s my mother’s confession,” I say. “She was the one who killed Jennifer Nubers.”

::::