Four years later, Vicky married my dad. For a moment, I'd thought I might have a family again. But within six months, Vicky had talked my father into sending us to boarding school.

Neither of us wanted to go, but in some ways being away at school had been a relief. We didn't have to tiptoe around my dad or be super nice to Vicky. We could just be ourselves.

It was at boarding school where I'd really honed my musical skills. My mother had been a violinist, and I'd learned the basics from her before she'd died. But at boarding school, playing the violin had become my escape from reality, and I became very, very good at it.

After graduating from high school, Dani and I moved on to UCLA, where I started out in the music program but eventually changed my major to business, because Dani convinced me we needed to be practical and to be able to make our own way in the world. Dani and I were different in a lot of ways, but one thing we both hated was unpredictability, probably because of how drastically our life had changed in one night. We never wanted to feel out of control again.

But I felt that way now, and it was terrifying.

I would love for my mother to be alive.

On the other hand, if she wasn't dead, where the hell had she been all these years?

Did my dad know she was alive? Did Vicky?

The questions ran around in my head, the anxiety making me press down harder on the gas. Maybe when I got to the hospital, the answers would be right in front of me. I would see that the woman who had been shot was not my mother, that it was all a bizarre mistake, and my life could return to normal.

* * *

When I finally drove into the hospital parking lot, it was eight thirty at night. The rain had stopped, but it was cold and foggy, adding an eerie atmosphere to an already scary destination. Before getting out of the car, I checked my phone, seeing a stream of messages from Jeff, Ray, and my sister. There was also a voicemail from an Inspector Alan Greenman with the San Francisco Police Department asking me to call him back as soon as possible. That had to be about my mother, or the woman who people thought was my mother.

I left all the messages for later. I got out of the car and walked toward the lobby doors. Once inside, I was directed to the Intensive Care Unit on the fourth floor. The smell of medicine and bleach made my already queasy stomach turn over, but I pressed on.