I read the text while I walked down the dim hallway to our apartment. After opening the door and dropping my keys in the bowl and my bag by the entrance, I paced the space between the living room and dining room. I’d been so happy to have this connection to my biological family that I’d been dismissing all the clues. But are they clues? Or am I just reading into everything because the FBI agents, Beccah, and all the news articles have gotten into my head? I grabbed my phone and dialed Beccah’s number but it went straight to voicemail. I needed to talk this through with someone. I had a few friends in the city besides Andie that knew the broad strokes of what was going on but I wasn’t ready to have this conversation with any of them. Then I thought about my mom who, before this, would have been the obvious choice if I needed a sounding board. As much as I didn’t want to worry her, the guilt that was building at keeping this massive secret from her was chipping away at my resolve to keep her and my dad in the dark. She was my best option and now that things had escalated, she needed to know. It was time I told my parents what was going on. I picked up my phone and after a few rings my mom’s smiling face appeared on the screen.

‘Hi, sweetie. I’m so glad you called. Your Uncle Vinnie is planning a family trip to … Lizzie, what’s wrong?’

My mom could always tell when something was troubling me even when I tried to hide it, which I wasn’t even bothering to attempt right now. ‘Mom, I have something I have to tell you.’

My mom’s smile dropped. ‘What is it?’

‘Remember I told you about meeting up with my grand uncle?’ My mom nodded. ‘Well, there’s something I didn’t tell you. I uploaded my DNA from the genealogy kit into this database called GEDMatch in the hopes of finding more family members. There’s an option to make your DNA available to law enforcement and I decided to opt into that since you said my mom had spent time in jail. I just wanted to cover my bases.’ I bit my lip, nervous about how my mom would react.

‘Liz, just tell me.’

‘About two weeks after I uploaded to GEDMatch, I was contacted by the FBI. They came to our apartment.’

‘The FBI? Oh Liz, what have you gotten yourself mixed up in?’

I rushed past the concern on my mom’s face, trying not to lose my resolve to fill her in. ‘They told me that my DNA profile got a familial hit to a DNA sample they have from The Tri-State Killer case.’