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The drive home from the beach is maybe only three minutes but it feels like an eternity that I'm sitting in the passenger seat next to Tad, who won't say a word. I don't know what's going on and my throat is frozen, constricting around any words I could form. I've gone totally numb, rooted to the seat, but my mind is flying.

It's about Dad. It has to be. Unless something has happened to Kris. But Tad wouldn't have said that Mom's ok if something had happened to Kris because she would be absolutely inconsolable, and if it was something good then Tad wouldn't be so shaken. I know Kris is ok. I know Mom is ok. I know Tad looks upset.

It has to be about Dad.

I just don't know what, and Tad won't say anything. I asked when we got in the car but he just told me that it's not his place to say, and he squeezed my hand. It felt strange. Not bad. Just different. He has never done that before. He and Mom may be dating now but he and I have never spent much time together. I guess that'll change now.

I glance across at him as we get closer to home and he looks so distraught, and all of Mom's hope over the past two years hits me. Maybe Dad's alive. Maybe my life is about to be thrown upside down again. My eyes linger on Tad. His knuckles are white, fingers tight around the steering wheel, his eyes wet. Maybe he's just lost his girlfriend to her husband.

The thought makes me sick. Not the thought that Dad's alive – I'd give anything for him to be alive, to have my father and my family back – but the fact that if he is, nothing can ever be normal again. He's been gone so long. We've moved on, and it has been so painful. I can't think of much worse than Dad showing up again only to be a stranger in his own family.

I really think I'm about to throw up and I have to clamp my hand over my mouth and focus on breathing in and out when we reach out street. Tad slows. I see my house. I see an unfamiliar car parked next to mine in the driveway and I can't breathe. My lungs have turned to concrete.

When Tad comes to a stop, I can't move. He puts his hand on my knee and gives me a smile, but it's not in his eyes.

"You need to go in," he says, his voice softer than before.

My eyes are fixed on the black car that doesn't belong. Tad reaches across to unbuckle my seatbelt for me. Gray leans forward, poking his head between the two seats. His face is so close to mine that I can feel his breath on my cold shoulder. I'm still in my swimsuit, the tight straps digging into my flesh, and my skin prickles.

I can't go in like this, wet and dripping and barely dressed. My shorts are in here somewhere, but I don't know where and I can't bring myself to look, but then they're in my lap, dropped there by Gray. He can read my mind, I swear.

"Want me to come in with you?" he asks, his voice low and warm and reassuring.

"No," Tad says before I can reply. My throat is too thick to respond, my mouth too dry. It feels as though my tongue has been replaced with cotton. "Storie needs to go in and we need to go home, Gray."

He doesn't argue. He just nods and gets out and opens my door for me, and he gives me a hand when I can't get my legs to cooperate. He knows as much as I do, and I bet he knows how much of a mess my head is right now, so he just gives me a damp hug and a smile.

"I'll be right next door," he says, tipping his head at his own house. I nod and he squeezes my hand and lets go. Tad gives me a strained smile and then puts his hand on Gray's shoulder, and they go to their house. I have to go inside. Mom's in there. She probably asked Tad to get me.

I stare at the car as I pass. The wheel rims are scuffed and dirty; the windshield is splattered with a few bugs; the inside is nondescript. A coffee cup and scattered papers. Remnants of a life. I take a deep breath and let myself into the house. The front door is only ever locked at night.

My feet know where to go. I'm in the kitchen before I know it. Mom's sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in her hands, facing me. She gives me the slightest smile when she sees me, looking up from the man sitting opposite her. His back is to me, but my heart leaps to my throat when I see black hair and a brown hand wrapped around a coffee cup.

"Storie," Mom says, and she pats the seat next to her. "Come and sit down."

I can't. If I move, I'm going to collapse. My eyes are hot and my hands are shaking, and when the man in front of me turns to face me, I have to grab his chair to stop myself from falling.

It's not him. This man isn't my father. He has the same dark hair, the same weathered skin, but his face is all wrong. I don't recognize this man, but I don't need to. The badge on his chest tells me what I need to know. Officer Lopez.

Forever and a day drags itself by before I manage to sit down next to Mom and she clasps my hand in both of hers. Her grip is strong, but her voice is weak when she introduces the officer and asks him to tell me what he has already told her.

He has a kind face and his sympathetic smile is warm, but I feel as though I'm staring right through him when I try to look at him, like my eyes are refusing to focus because I don't want to see what's right in front of me. He takes a sip of his coffee and rolls his lips together before he speaks.

"This afternoon, human remains found on Tuesday evening were positively identified through dental records as Levente Sovany," he says, and as though I don't know my dad's name, he adds, "Your father."

There are a million ways my body seems to want to react but as the officer's words sink in, a sense of nothingness takes over, and my mouth clears enough for me to speak. I've been waiting for those words for two years now; I've practiced hearing them a million times, but that doesn't make it any easier to hear that my dad is dead.

"Where was he? What happened?" I ask at last. Mom squeezes my hand tighter but I can't look at her right now or I'll cry, and I need to know what happened before I can let my emotions ruin me.

Officer Lopez has done this before. His face is sincere and he isn't rushing to get through this. He sits with both hands around his mug as though he is an old friend, and it's the slightest comfort that he doesn't have the imposing presence I expected from a police officer.

"Your father's remains were found during the planned demolition of an abandoned building site in Jackson Heights," he says.

As soon as the words leave his mouth, I know exactly what he's talking about. Dad used to complain about that site all the time. It was two blocks from our apartment and for over a year, the noise drove us crazy. Then it stopped a few months before Dad disappeared when the project lost funding and left a shoddy half-finished building to gather dust.

He was there. He was there? Two blocks from home. If I wasn't sitting, I'd be on the floor right now and I'm trying to focus on Officer Lopez but it's getting harder and harder when I realize that the whole time Dad was gone, he was two blocks away and we never found him.

Mom's still holding my hand. I know from the quiet sniff beside me that she's crying but I can't look, not yet. There's a painful lump in my throat but my words cut through it when I ask, "Why was he there? How long?"

The officer sighs. "While it's difficult to say for certain, we can fairly safely assume that your father was killed the night that he disappeared," he says. "As you know, there was no CCTV footage to show what happened but an empty wallet was found alongside his remains."

Dad only ever carried cash. He never had his cards on him, which he used solely for bills and anything related to the bookstore. I barely even noticed it until he went missing and we couldn't even track his cards when they were all at home.

"What happened?" I ask again. "How did he die?"

"Cause of death is most likely blunt force trauma to the skull," the officer says. "Again, I can't confirm anything with one hundred percent certainty, but it would appear that your father was the victim of a mugging gone wrong."

A mugging gone wrong. Wrong place, wrong time. An accident.

I force myself to pay attention as Officer Lopez goes through everything they know for certain and everything they can speculate about what happened to Dad and how he was found, and why he wasn't found sooner. He apologizes for the time it has taken for us to know what happened, as though it's his fault.

He even apologizes for the press leaking that a body had been found in the search for Maggie. They weren't looking for her when they found my dad: they were just knocking down an abandoned building where he was left to rot away until his bones were found. Officer Lopez had nothing to do with it, though. He's from around here, and he just happens to be the one relaying to us what the Queens precinct told him.

He sits with us for a while, answering every tiny question I have even when I know he won't know the answer. I need to know everything that he knows, or my damn mind will run around in circles creating theories that will exhaust me long after he leaves. It's only when I've run out of things to ask that he leans back in his seat and takes a card out of his pocket.

"This is me," he says, tapping the name that reads Officer Samuel Lopez above his number and the details of the local precinct. "If you have any more questions, you can call this number, or you can come down to the station, and I will do what I can to help you out."

Then he's gone, and I look at Mom for the first time since I sat down. Her eyes are wet, her cheeks streaked with silent tears that spilled as I pummeled the officer for answers and she sat silently listening to what she had already heard.

I hate myself for wanting this. For two years, I've been praying for the day we know what happened, but now I just feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest. I didn't think about how much it would hurt to learn that Dad was down the street the whole time, that he was probably bleeding out while we were wondering where he was.

I don't know what to say anymore. I've run out of words. Mom and I just stare at each other and when I start to cry, she sniffs and wraps her arms around me and her hug unleashes some kind of messy monster in me. My whole body shakes as I sob into her shoulder, my eyes streaming until my nose runs and I can hardly breathe.

We've switched roles. I've always been the level-headed one, the one who came to terms with Dad being gone; Mom's usually the mess, but she is surprisingly calm as she strokes my back and my hair and holds me when I break down. This moment has been a long time coming, finally knowing what happened, and I thought I'd be ok with it but it feels more like I'm drowning.

"It's ok, bogárkám," Mom murmurs. "Now we know."

She keeps murmuring things like that, over and over and over until I'm too drained to hold onto her anymore. When my arms go limp, she holds my face in her hands and dries my cheeks with her hands, and I feel like I'm watching from the sidelines. I don't feel present. I feel like I'm trapped in some invisible bubble, watching Mom soothe me.

"What are you always telling me?" she asks, pulling her lips into a weak smile. "We've made it this far; we can keep going." She pushes my hair off my face and I nod, and I feel so pathetic for losing it when I'm the one always preaching about moving on.

"Sorry," I mumble, and Mom draws back as though I've just punched her. Her hands are tight on my shoulders and her horror turns to despair.

"Don't you dare apologize, honey," she says, her eyes filling with tears. "This is ... I don't have the words for how awful this is. You are allowed to cry. It's good to cry. We have two years' worth of tears to cry." She strokes my cheek and hugs me again.

"I love you, Mom."

"I love you to the moon and back, a million times over," Mom says, "and now I know your dad is up there somewhere, and he loves you more than he could ever say. He didn't leave us: he would never leave us. Maybe this is fate," she says.

I have no idea how this could possibly be fate, how in any way she could believe this was supposed to happen, but she holds my gaze and she explains.

"We're moving on, honey," she says. "You seem happier now than I've seen you in a long time. I used to worry so much but now you have Gray and I'm so proud of you, Storie. You're a whole new book."

I manage a smile. She beams back at me, and it's comforting despite the quiet tears rolling down her cheeks. Mom's a pretty crier. I'm a crumpled-face loud-sob crier.

"I know you've been there for a while. You figured out moving on before I ever did," she says, her hands dropping to mine, "but now I've figured it out too, and I'm happy with Tad. I think maybe, somehow, your dad saw that we have finally got a handle on life without him, and he is ok with that. Maybe he needed to make sure we were ok before he was found."

Even now, in the aftermath of news that could have set her back months or more, there is so much hope in her voice and her eyes that I feel ok for a moment. If Mom's ok, I can be ok. She's right. I was happy earlier today. The only thing that has changed since then is that the question plaguing me for two years has finally been answered.

And that's a good thing. I don't like the answer, but there's no answer I would have liked.

"Now we can have a funeral," Mom says. She squeezes my hands and her words hitch on her tears, and she takes a few deep breaths to take back control. "We can say goodbye."

Nodding, I dry my eyes and try to swallow the giant lump in my throat. Mom stands and kisses my head before she fills a glass of water and puts it in my hand. I finish it in a few huge gulps and take a deep breath. This is going to take more than a couple of hours to get over, but her words are a comfort and I'm overwhelmed with love for her, and all the love I never got to express to Dad.

There's the crunch of gravel outside and footsteps, then the front door opens and Kris rushes in. His eyes are red and a little wild, and he throws his arms around Mom. He almost knocks her over with the force of his hug and when he lets go, he sinks onto the seat next to me and pulls me close.

"I set off the second you called," he says to Mom, and his face crumples when he asks, "What happened?"

Mom's the calmest of us all. She tells Kris what Officer Lopez has told her twice already; she tells him what she told me. She wears a smile and comforts him as though he's her child too. I'm only half there as Mom talks, my mind wandering off down a thousand forking paths, but I snap back to the present when Kris links his fingers with mine and pulls me close as though he needs something to hold onto.

I hate seeing him like this. I'm used to Mom's emotions but Kris is usually so put together that it hurts to see him looking as broken as I feel. We're supposed to be the rational ones, piecing Mom back together when she falls apart, but now she's the one standing in front of us with the glue.

It's only when they start talking about the next steps that I reach my limit. I can't sit there and listen as Mom and Kris decide what to do with Dad's remains, when business takes over. We've had so long to think about this but we never did, and it kills me when Kris talks about flying back alone to cremate Dad and bring his ashes here.

"I need to go," I say, almost tripping over my chair when I push it back. Mom nods and squeezes my arm and pulls me into another hug, and I manage to hold myself together this time.

"Are you going next door?"

I am. I need to see Gray. There's nothing he can say, really, but I think I need to be distracted right now, even if I just sit there and listen to him rant about the essay that I'm pretty sure I'll never finish now.

"If Tad's around..." She trails off but I know what she wants.

"I'll send him over," I say, and she gives me a warm smile, her gratitude evident in her pink cheeks and the brightness behind her tearful eyes.

I let myself into the house next door. We're always in and out of each other's houses so much that I don't think to knock, and both Tad and Gray jump when I walk into the living room while they're watching a film together. Gray shoots to his feet to hug me. Tad stands a little slower.

"How're you holding up?" he asks, his voice low.

"Holding up," I say, because I can't say that I'm ok or that it's ok, and I don't want to say that I'm not ok. I am holding up, after all. "Kris is here now. And Mom wants to see you."

Once he's gone and Gray and I are alone, I drop onto the sofa with a heavy sigh and flop onto my back. I feel as though I need to sleep for a week, and drink a couple gallons of water to rehydrate myself.

"Dad told me what happened," Gray says. He perches on the edge of the sofa. "I'm so sorry, Storie. I ... I wish I knew what to say."

"Me too," I say. "You don't need to say anything." I struggle to sit up and I sink against Gray, our shoulders pressed together. "It's over now, at least. No more wondering."

"Closure," he says. "Right?"

"Exactly." I turn to him, his face so close that it makes me go a bit cross-eyed. "For a second, I thought Dad was alive," I say. "The police officer looked like him from the back, and Mom looked so calm. I thought it was him."

"Oh, God. That's awful."

"Mmm."

I can't explain that feeling, the whiplash of going from one extreme to the other so fast that I'm sure my body went into overdrive and stopped functioning for a few seconds.

"I'm so sorry, Storie," Gray says. He puts his arm around my shoulders. "I'm glad you know now, though."

"Me too."

"D'you want to talk about it?"

"Not yet."

"Wanna stay here for a bit?"

I nod.

"There's ice cream in the freezer and chips in the cupboard and Netflix on the TV," he says. He always knows exactly what to say. "Chickflick, comedy, or trashy horror?"

"Something feelgood," I say, and he navigates to an old favorite of mine without having to ask. There are some films I can watch over and over and never get sick of them, and Matilda is one of them.

I think Gray knows me better than I do. God knows what I'd do without him.

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