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6. Birthday Blues

Alyanna

Mikhail sat on the couch in front of me, looking more serious than I had ever seen him. He set a recorder on the coffee table in front of us and picked up a notepad and a pen. He seemed calm and collected while I felt out of place. I had never seen him in work mode. It was weird.

"You seem nervous," he stated.

"No, I'm fine," I replied. I was nervous. I didn't particularly enjoy talking about the life that I had lived and was forced to leave. The life that I was desperate to get back to. It had been so long now. Too long. Too many things had happened. Changed. I wasn't a fool. I didn't think that going back would magically make everything okay. But it would be a start. Even that seemed like an unattainable dream right now.

That didn't mean that I would give up. "Let's just start."

"Okay." He nodded. "I've gone through Remi's notes. He has covered all angles. There's nothing more to explore. I think our next best option is to go through your history and figure out who attempted to murder you."

"I've told this to Remi. No one I know could have done this. I didn't have any enemies."

"You are here and not in America. So that is obviously not true. Someone attempted to kill you when you were just twenty-one. It was obviously personal. It has to be someone around you, someone you know."

I found that hard to believe.

"Can you think of anyone with motive?"

"Nope."

He sighed. "I need you to try, Alyanna."

"I've gone over this with Remi, Mikhail. I had a close-knit group of friends whom I spent most of my time with. My other friends weren't too bad either. I don't have a lot of family. Never knew dad's family. Grandparents from both sides were dead. I had an aunt who was a single mother. I didn't talk to her or my cousin a lot. They weren't bad; I just had nothing in common with them. I saw them twice a year- thanksgiving and Christmas. We weren't close."

"Would you consider yourself to be popular in school?"

"I suppose. But I went to a private school that did extensive background checks. Everyone came from a good family."

"The accident took place in New York. What were you doing there?

"Looking for my father." He knew this. "You're asking questions to the answers you already know."

"New York seems like a place of importance. You didn't go there often enough for anyone to guess that you'd be there that day. Whoever the killer was knew that you would go to New York. According to Remi's notes, you didn't tell anyone when you left."

Now that he put it like that...it made sense.

"If they wanted to kill you, they could have done that in Scars Bay or Los Angeles. Why New York?"

I hadn't thought of it this way. How could have anyone known that I'd go to New York that day?

"I need you to tell me everything about how you ended up in New York. From the day you decided to look for Alaric to the day you ended up in the hospital. Spare no details."

For the first time in a long time, I felt like this investigation would lead to something.

"It was 20th July 2017," I started. "My seventeenth birthday."

It was the day that changed the course of my life. Had that day not happened, I might have never decided to look for dad; I never would have known the truth and I never would have ended up here.