DIESEL TORE THROUGH his mother’s bedroom, rifling through the drawers he hadn’t been able to face after she’d died. The hell with sadness. He needed answers. He emptied boxes from her closet, finding crayon drawings he’d made as a child, school pictures, his tiny clay handprint, Mother’s Day and birthday cards he’d made and the ones he’d bought as he’d gotten older. There were report cards and school awards and notes he’d written to her as a kid. She’d saved all of them, but there was nothing about Axel, or any other man.

Anger pounded inside him as he stormed into the hall and stood in front of the closed door to the hobbit room. The room where his mother had taken her last breath. He reached for the doorknob, memories slamming into him of his mother’s jerking body, the sounds of desperation she’d made in her last moments.

His hands curled into fists, grief stacked up inside him, filling every crack and crevice until he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t go in there and face it all again. He stalked into the living room, throwing open the cabinets by the television where his mother had kept what she’d called her most precious memories, and yanked photo albums from the shelf, shaking them out and flipping through the pages, looking for what? Another picture of Axel that wouldn’t tell him shit? Rage and despair warred with all-consuming guilt inside him as he threw the albums to the ground, then did the same with her guitar notebooks, where she wrote songs and lyrics.

Coming up empty, he stood amid the mess, knowing damn well where he’d find the answers, but couldn’t bear the thought of tearing apart the room that had meant so much to her. To them. A roar of frustration ripped from his lungs, and he went a little crazy, tearing out drawers, looking under cushions, storming into the kitchen, emptying more cabinets and drawers in search of the ghosts of his past.

Breathing heavy, barbed wire twisting in his chest, he forced himself to return to the closed door. He swallowed hard, telling himself to let it go, that it didn’t matter who his father was. The answer wouldn’t bring his mother back. He could never hear her side of the story.

Fuck.

Driven by a bone-deep need to know if the woman he’d trusted most in this world had kept something so important from him, he threw the door open, adrenaline pumping through his veins. He stood stock-still at the sight of the hospital bed and the walls they’d painted with forests and creatures year after year, until every inch was covered. Eyes peered out from behind leaves and vines, like he was a villain there to desecrate the sacred space he’d helped bring to life.