Chapter 2.8 - The Truth, Part I

“What… what do you mean? Is she dead?”

“Not as far as I know. Dylan, Tara Rose isn’t a real person. Whoever she is, she was using a false name.”

Dylan buried his head in his hands, shocked. “There… there are lots of reasons somebody would do that, right? Some of them aren’t necessarily… illegal.”

Ayla sighed. She hated having to do this to her brother, but… “Maybe that’s true, but what I found… it doesn’t look good. She told you that she moved in with an aunt, right? I found out that a woman named Tina Rose went missing in mysterious circumstances shortly after you graduated high school, about six months before you met Tara. She lived in the apartment that Tara lived in before she moved in with you.”

Dylan was confused and upset. If anything, he had even more questions than he had before he had asked Ayla to find Tara. “Nothing else?”

“Nothing significant. I’m not actually that great at research.”

He nodded. “I’d better head home, then.”

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After he’d paid the babysitter, Dylan stood in the nursery, thinking about what he’d learned. If Tara had never been who she said she was… what did that mean about their relationship? What did it mean about their children?

Jade toddled up to him and tugged on the leg of his pants. “Dada.”

He crouched in front of her. “Yes, little gem?”

“Up?”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Up please?”

“Okay.” He scooped her up, settling her on his side.

“Dada? When you were little, did you do this with your dada?” Jade had recently realized that her dada had once been as little as she was, and ever since, she had been fascinated with asking him what it had been like.

He chuckled a little. “Sometimes. More with my mom. Sometimes I’d play with her hair, but she didn’t like it because it showed her… tattoo. Her dragon tattoo.”

He carefully deposited Jade back on the ground. Then, as if in a trance, he walked into the living room and pulled out his phone.

Do you know anything about Mom’s tattoo?

He got a reply almost immediately.

I’ll be right over.

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“Thanks for this.”

“It's nothing. You have a right to know. All I'm curious about is why you want to know now.”

Dylan told his father the whole story, both about his work and about Tara. At the end, Lee laughed.

“Like father like son, I suppose. Your mother's legal name isn't Nyx Doe, you know.”

Dylan hadn't. But as his father told him about his mother's past, he found that was the most believable thing he learned.

“So the Dragons here probably came from Bridgeport because of Mom. But why now?”

“I can't tell you that. But I can tell you that if they're the same gang, their headquarters is probably in some nice remote mansion by the ocean.”

There was only one of those in town, and they both knew it. “Thanks, Dad.”

Lee moved towards the door, but paused on his way out. “Be careful, okay?”

Dylan nodded. “I will.”

After his dad left, he knew he had to get down to the station to report all of this. He went to call his usual babysitter, but he hesitated. He wasn’t sure why, but some instinct told him that he needed to do something else. So he dialed a different number.

“Hey. I need a favor…”

Author's Note: Lee is old now! Nyx is too, but of course we won't see her. She's actually been old for a while. Somehow she got to be almost a week older than Lee at some point. I had lots of aging bugs back in old Sunset.

Ayla had her baby between this chapter and next chapter. I got a picture because she probably won't appear until a lot later, if she appears at all.

Her name is Eve, which I think is actually something Ayla would name her daughter, so for once SP came through for me.

Next chapter will wrap up this plotline, and then I can focus more on the kids.