"No detail is too small to be ignored," special agent Marks says.

Every trainee in the room is tense, but none so tense as me. I finger the note in my pocket, written on crisp paper, in Sebastian Cavalli's handwriting. Sebastian. I frown. How many Cavalli's are there? Antonio. Roberto. Now, Sebastian?

"Very often, if you aren't paying attention, you'll overlook something that could be crucial to your case," Marks continues, his tone letting me know that he's noticed my flicker of distraction. I school my expression into a more focused one, looking at the evidence in front of me. Trying to ignore the piece of it burning a hole in my pocket. What should I do?

Every instinct I have, for some reason, is telling me not to tell my superiors about this. Not because it's a sketchy source, but because they won't listen. I'll have to build an entire case before they'll trust me with anything.

Rafael Santos, a fellow agent trainee, turns to me with a scowl. "You realize that we actually have to find out what evidence there is for proof of this attack, right?"

Brunette, lean, and six-feet tall, my erstwhile best friend with a perpetual grimace on his face applied for this job because he has a heart of gold. It's just buried somewhere beneath his gloomy demeanour and serious expressions. He's almost always concentrating on his work about ninety-nine percent of the time, and the other one percent is just when he's at church or with his family. He takes his duties solemnly and generally makes me feel bad for not doing the same. I didn't sign up for the FBI with the same reasons that he did. I wonder if I'll ever have the same motivation that he does.

"Evidence is all around us, actually," I respond. "It's only that we have to find the right pieces."

Lover of snark and sarcasm that he is not, he remains silent before rooting through the apartment set-up once more. After a beat, he pauses and says to me, "Lucas, what's on your mind?"

I roll my eyes, not wanting to talk about it. We're buddies, yeah, but there are lines of conversation we haven't crossed and probably never will. "Aren't you the one always telling me to focus on work?"

Knives clatter as he stops rummaging through a kitchen drawer and turns to face me. "Yes, and you obviously cannot focus until you tell me what is going on."

Every principle that I was brought up with tells me to resist. Tells me that I can't trust him, or anyone, really. It's my father's voice, ringing in my ears, a remnant of the few times that he was home long enough from the bar or the couch of one of his various girlfriends. Don't ever tell anybody your secrets. They are bullets that you are loading into the chamber of every person you spill them to. And if you're not careful, one day you'll be shot. I never knew how true that was until I took this job... and yet I know that it's also part of why my relationship with Christina fell apart. I couldn't trust her with anything. I nitpicked her to distract from my own feelings of inadequacy. I wanted to let loose and go drinking and pretend that those were the ideal things in life, that there was no real higher purpose than fulfilling whatever base desires pressed on me at the time.

"You don't look like you're concentrating on the task," O'Connor says, making both of us jump. His hand is on his gun. "This isn't kindergarten. I shouldn't have to tell you to focus."

On edge, both of us mumble a yes, sir and go back to looking for the truth, mine buried deep in my chest somewhere, never to be revealed.

Understanding my reticence, Rafael nods. He knows me. Just not well enough. And I wonder if he ever will—if anyone can.

"Who is my father?" I ask my mother over dinner.

Laden with shopping bags, I came home earlier today from the mall, having spent a boring day doing nothing but wonder exactly what Antonio Cavalli meant by our conversation this morning. I hadn't wanted to heed his advice immediately--hadn't wanted to listen to him at all--but my curiosity had won out. All the while I had been shopping, adding to my beauty regimen in the way that I always did (with my mentality of it's Korean skincare so I must buy it that always leads to my acquisition of far too many face masks). Considering the amount of stress I've been under lately and the amount of stress I'm about to put myself under by asking my mother this question... I might actually need some of them.

"Hmm?" She looks up from her bowl of rice as she picks up a strand of lo mein with her chopsticks. "What did you say, Christina?"

I pause, about to chicken out. "I said... who is my father?"

She is silent, and for one moment I think she's misheard me again. Then she takes a sip of water and sighs. "Christina, I'll tell you when you're older."

I put down my chopsticks. "Mama, you've been saying that since I was five and the kindergarten teacher asked me why I didn't celebrate Father's Day."

She doesn't say a thing but simply keeps eating as though I haven't spoken.

"I'm twenty-one! I can legally drink, smoke, vote, and be considered an adult. When am I going to be old enough for you to tell me about him?" I spear a piece of beef angrily, staring at the red-tinged fluid that seeps from it onto the porcelain plate. When I get mad, I also have the lovely addition of tears. So I'm about two seconds from crying. My next word is a hoarse whisper. "When, mama?"

She drops her food and rubs her temples with both hands, drawing attention to the greying hair there. She had me young, yet the stress of the years has given her grey hair before her time, though not wrinkles. But the cheap box dye emblazoned with Biden Speedy that she gets from the Asian supermarket doesn't help her cause. I always tell her to get it professionally coloured, but she insists it's a waste of money. We tell each other a lot of things, always, to cover the gaps that neither of us are willing to fill.

"Christina, I don't want to talk about this right now." Her tone is steel, adamantine. This conversation is over, whether I like it or not. I clear my plate from the table and begin doing the dishes in silence.

As I wash and rinse the pots, pans, and bowls before neatly stacking them to dry in the dishwasher, I wonder what my life would be like with a father. It's a fantasy I've entertained many times since I was a child. Picturing the shape of his eyes or the colour of his hair, wondering which of his physical traits he might have passed on to me. Imagining if my mother would laugh more, be more relaxed, if they would show affection to each other. Drawing images of him teaching me to play sports or drive or whatever it was that fathers did. Pretending he was somewhere in the crowd of proud parents, clapping at my ballet recitals.

But they always ended. Like all fantasies, they weren't real. And so I put them away, tucked away the broken toys of childhood, locked them in the attic of my mind to collect dust. Yet now, with a few sentences, Antonio Cavalli has dredged those memories and questions up again, thrown light all over them and tugged my heart out of my chest just a bit, just enough to leave it vulnerable and raw and smarting.

"Your father is a dangerous man, Christina." My mother enters the kitchen, setting down her plate on the granite countertop. "That's why I have never wanted you to have any contact with him. He has many enemies, and if they knew he had a daughter... you could get hurt."

I speculate as to the meaning of her words before repeating my query. "Mama, who was he?"