WHO: Xo WHEN: 9/12/18, evening WHERE: The Valdez Munroe home SUMMARY: Xo got the results. Now what does she do. WARNINGS: Paternity results, drinking, observations on the killer and rumination on the March fire.
She had picked up the results from the doctor. There had been no making an appointment to go over the results. It’d be either a yes or a no. Or possibly a partial no, enough to be related but not paternity. Which would be another answer in itself. Father in jail for murder, father disappeared with some girl, or unknown. They were the options left in front of Xo.
Work had already been gone through. The evening news was completed, updates given on the state of the investigation, plus some local pieces that likely no one paid attention too outside of the news of Rhett Wyatt of all people being the one arrested.
Olly was put to bed, though he had been dozing when she picked him up from her mother’s. Now she was staring down the envelope as she swirled a glass of wine. There was the gripping instinct that she could just tear it apart. Or burn it. Consign it to the den of the unknown and unknowable. Lying was an option. It's entirely possible he wouldn't even give it a second thought or follow up. It hadn't even occurred to him to ask until months after the fact.
But Xo had never been a liar. She had kept secrets, but she had kept them for reasons. To try and drive out a killer that could still be in their midsts. To give a stability to Oliver when the truth was more mishap and mistakes on her part, the same boundless impetuousness that she had never full grown out of. That impulse amd disregard of consequences that left her with an envelope with the blood results of an accused murdered.
And Oliver lying so sweet and innocent, oblivious to it all as he curled up with his sentry stuffed animals, all placed around him in a specific order. He looked so much like her. So much like her father. And sometimes he looked like a complete stranger, little hints of features she didn't know where from. And that same boundless energy she always had and never quite seemed able to hold back.
“I hate you.” Xo scowled at the envelope, sitting there looking so innocent when it could tie her forever to someone that had gotten past all her senses. Someone who had the ability to kill someone else. And if someone could kill, what else were they capable of?
A killer who organized search parties, possibly knowing exactly where not to look. Her sources at the DSD weren't the same as before. She didn’t have enough information, the trial would be forever away and even then would the truth even come out.
The March Fire hadn't yet. Not after a lifetime of trying to dig into people's stories who weren't suspecting it. But then Xo always asked too many questions. So many questions. And where had it gotten her? Any closer to any of the truths that mattered?
The truth always mattered. Even with her secrets, she did believe that. Even if only one person knew, that one person held a crystal in their mind that couldn't be shattered. No matter how people hide, how they liked and obfuscated, how they might do everything in their power to destroy it, the truth would exist.
She'd have to pass the investigation to Levi. All that work. A second big break to move to the nationals. She was still young enough. But the integrity wouldn't be there, all depending on that piece of paper.
Her body sank to the floor, wine tipped back down her throat. Back to the cabinets, she looked over the envelope. The sound of ripping paper cracked through the air, something brittle breaking down forever.