The days blurred together after her conversation with Darren. Roselle spent every free moment combing through reports, reading and rereading the details, hoping for something. Anything that would make sense of it all.
She wanted to believe in her father’s innocence. But doubt gnawed at her.
If he had never touched alcohol, how did it end up in his system that night? If he was drugged, then who did it? Why?
Weeks after weeks passes by. Then,on a late one evening, Darren finally called back.
“I have the toxicology report,” he said.
Roselle felt her pulse quicken. “And?”
There was a pause. Too long.
“The test confirmed high levels of alcohol in his system. No signs of any other substances. No sedatives, no drugs that could have impaired him beyond the alcohol.”
Roselle’s stomach twisted. “That’s impossible.”
“Not impossible,” Darren said carefully. “It means no one drugged him, Roselle. He drank willingly.”
She stood frozen in her bedroom, the words crashing over her.
He drank..?
Her fingers clenched the phone. “No. There has to be a mistake.”
“The report is clear.”
Roselle’s breathing was uneven, her vision blurring. “But why? Why would he do that?”
Darren sighed. “That’s what we have to figure out. I managed to get access to the original police transcripts. I’ll send them over. There’s a recorded statement from your father the night of the murder.”
Roselle swallowed, her throat dry.
“Did he say anything?”
“Yes,” Darren said. “But you need to hear it for yourself.”
The audio file sat in her inbox, an unopened weight waiting to unravel everything. Roselle stared at it for hours before she found the courage to press play. Static crackled. Then, a weary male voice emerged.
"I don’t… I don’t know what happened."
It was him. Her father.
"I—There was an argument. She was yelling. I was yelling. I don’t remember why."
Roselle’s breath hitched.
"And then… I don’t know. I drank. I remember drinking. I shouldn’t have. But I did."
Her fingers curled into her sleeves.
"I—I lost control. Everything after that is… blurred. But when I came to, she was on the floor. And there was blood. So much blood."
Silence.
Then, a broken whisper.
"I killed her."
Roselle slammed the laptop shut. The room felt too small, the air too heavy. She pressed her hands against her mouth, trying to hold back the sob that tore its way up her throat.
He did it.. He actually did.
He wasn’t framed. He wasn’t set up.
He drank. He fought. And in his rage, he took her mother’s life. A part of her had clung to the hope that the truth would set him free. But the truth had only shackled her with a reality she wasn’t ready to face.
The man I wanted to defend, the man I acknowledged as my father. He.. is the killer of my mother. 
Roselle laid down on her bed long after those words had left her lips, the weight of them settling into her chest like stones.
I want to take him to court. I want to hear him admit it in my own face.
It had felt like the right thing to say at the time. The logical thing. But now, sitting there in the dimly lit room, the reality of it all crashed over her like a wave, drowning her in emotions she wasn’t ready to face.
Her father had killed her mother. Her father.
Not a stranger. Not a faceless monster.
The man who had carried her on his shoulders when she was little. Who had held her hand when she was scared of the dark. Who had sat beside her when she cried over scraped knees, telling her she was strong enough to stand back up.
How could the same hands that once held her so gently have taken a life so violently?
She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her knuckles against her lips to stop the sob threatening to escape. It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense.
She had spent years weaving together a version of him that she could love. A man who had been wronged. A man who had suffered an injustice. A man worthy of forgiveness.
But that version had never existed, had it?
Her mind screamed at her to reject it, to fight against the truth, to reach for any explanation that could undo what she had just heard.
Maybe he was coerced into confessing.
Maybe his memory was unreliable.
Maybe…
But there were no maybes. No loopholes.
Just his voice, haunted, breaking, defeated, admitting what she had spent years denying.
Roselle pulled her knees to her chest, her nails digging into her arms as she tried to steady herself.
If she acknowledged this truth, truly accepted it, what did that mean for her?
What did it mean for the love she had stubbornly clung to?
Had she been mourning the wrong thing all these years? Had she been mourning the loss of a father who had never really existed?
Tears slid down her cheeks, hot and relentless.
She wanted to hate him.
But all she could feel was this unbearable, aching grief.
For her mother.
For herself.
For the little girl who had believed in fairy tales, who had believed that love, no matter how broken, could fix anything.