occupation: police officer
neighborhood: virginia highlands
length of time in atlanta: fifteen years
faceclaim: gina rodriguez
trigger warnings: â death, mentions of murder
Growing up, Vanessa lived the very clichĂŠ of the picture perfect life: mother, father, obnoxious younger brother, a house in the shadows of Chicago, even the literal white picket fence. Born Caitlin Healy to two white collar workers who seemed to have a moment to spare for their children no matter how busy they were, there was hardly a single thing she wanted for as a child. Her mother worked as a defense attorney, a woman known for being as clever as she was dedicated, a woman who fought hard to be accepted as a Latina in a demanding work force; her father was a financial advisor for some big tech company, the kind of person who knew just how to handle money. Her little brother came two years after she did and as the young children of two rather well off people, all their occasional whims were indulged â various dance classes, music lessons, any and everything. They were the perfect loving family.
But as the clichĂŠ often goes, the perfect family is hardly ever just that. But who was Vanessa to suspect otherwise? All her life sheâd known a stable, caring home environment â in fact, sheâd never so much as suspected any differently until she was seventeen. There is always one day that would stand out very vividly in her memory: the hot night, in the dead of summer, when the FBI broke through their front door and arrested her father without so much as a momentâs hesitation. What started out as an idyllic, fairytale life turned into a horror story all within the course of a couple of hours.
How could they never suspect? How could they never find out? That was a question leveled at the Healy family in the ensuing months after James Healy was arrested, arraigned and remanded to prison. Of course, the question never asked was how could they suspect? How was Vanessa, young and naĂŻve, with stars in her eyes, supposed to suspect that the same father who would sing bad karaoke with her was capable of ending the lives of eight people? Maybe she never wanted to suspect: her father was her hero, the man who protected her from nightmares and monsters in her closet when she was a child. Maybe the signs were always there: the stray dog that mysteriously went missing the day after Vanessa brought it home; the sudden, harsh shift in personality that seemed to hit out of nowhere on certain days, when her mother asked how his day had been; that box of jewelry that sheâd been grounded for going into when she was a preteen, after simply wanting to borrow a pair of her motherâs earrings. Maybe she just didnât want to see.
Life hit a drastic turn once the skeletons had come out from that apparently very large closet. Once a girl who wasnât noteworthy to the population of her high school, she quickly became the subject of the kind of gossip that was whispered behind hands, the subject of either looks of pity or disgust, the subject of forced sessions with the school guidance counselor. The close friend that Vanessa had comforted through the loss of her mother very quickly became an enemy â it didnât take Vanessa long to realize how and why that friendâs mother had died.
Once a fairly outgoing, friendly person, the last few months of her high school life, she kept her head down in a very literal sense. Stayed quiet, sat in the back of the room, refused to raise her hand to answer questions or partake in group discussions, no matter how well she knew the material. She even skipped out on her own graduation, dreading how the room would go deathly silent once her name was announced, as it inevitably always did. Living as a Healy, in a small town such as Kohler, Wisconsin, was the equivalent of being a Manson or a Dahmer everywhere else. It was an albatross, a mark of shame that always hung around her neck.
And that was how Caitlin Healy became Vanessa Alvarez, pulling her middle name and her motherâs maiden to create a whole new identity for herself. A new name, a new city, a new life. Now she wasnât Caitlin, the daughter of a serial murderer â she was Vanessa, an entirely unremarkable twenty-something who never knew who her father was, thank you very much. She visited the man she used to call dad all of once before packing up and moving to Atlanta. All it took was one visit, ten minutes of sitting behind three inches of glass, inside the cold and unwelcoming walls of Menard Correctional Center for her to never want to set foot in there again. She didnât speak, or at least she doesnât remember saying anything, all she did was sit and stare and, for the first time in her life, she hated her father.
No, she didnât hate him. Hate was fear and she wasnât afraid. Disgusted and horrified, yes, but never afraid.
Her mother supported her decision to move down south, lending her a sizable amount of money to get herself situated. For the first time since her fatherâs arrest, Vanessa was able to breathe. She was in a town where nobody knew her history, where nobody knew her face and she never put too much stock into that whole âstarting freshâ thing until she had actually done it. It took her a year or so to settle in, but once she had a permanent residence â and a dog, which she very much made a point of getting â she threw herself into Atlantaâs police academy at twenty years old. It was slightly perverse, to say that her family situation inspired her to pick up a career in law enforcement, but no matter the wording, that was exactly what had happened. She wanted to serve and protect and if she could prevent anyone from going through the kind of thing she went through, sheâd consider it a job done well.
It didnât take too long for Vanessa to settle into a routine that worked well for her â wake up, take the dog out for a walk, go to work, catch some bad guys, hopefully come home in time to catch an episode of Breaking Bad, repeat the whole thing again the next day. It wasnât a particularly exciting way of life most days, at least not once she took off her uniform, but it was one that worked for her. What didnât work, however, was suddenly having a wrench thrown into that routine. On a very rare day off, finding that her habit of patrolling the streets didnât go away once she was a civilian, she had spent the day simply wandering around the town â and had ended up crashing into and spilling a rather hot cup of coffee directly onto another police officer. A lot of napkins and some very hurried apologies later, the two sat down for a drink â one that wasnât spilled all over the other â and they found that they had a rather lot in common. Aside from just being officers, Vanessa learned that Joey Benson also had an incarcerated, criminal father and though she didnât disclose her history right away, the two hit it off. Though they worked in separate precincts, and their schedules were always hectic and conflicting, they always found the time to meet, even if it was just for a quick lunch between shifts.
Somewhere, in between all the crime fighting and the quick, hastily put together meetings, Vanessa found herself falling pregnant at 26. A less than stellar position to find herself in, as an officer, she seriously considered ending her pregnancy â when Joey retired, without question and found a desk job, vowing to be as much support as he could be so she could keep her career to the best of her ability, it put all thoughts of not carrying the baby out of her mind. A short â or incredibly long â nine months later, they welcomed a screaming, crying bundle of blue that they named Samuel. The story of two barely prepared new parents is a boring one, but they traveled the road of parenthood with relative ease, through all the sleepless nights and outgrown baby clothes.
Of course, Vanessa shouldâve known better. She shouldâve known that the seemingly perfect life could never last. And while she was at least grateful that Joey hadnât turned out to also be some kind of serial killer, she doesnât imagine the reality is any better. Her boyfriend, ever the hero, had attempted to break up a casual robbery at the little convenience store he had gone to so he could pick up some extra diapers. This time, when the police came to her door, it wasnât with guns drawn and anger in their eyes, it was to deliver maybe the second worst set of news she couldâve possibly received.
The ensuing years after Joeyâs death became a blur of navigating single-motherhood and throwing herself as much into her work as she could safely manage. And suddenly, she woke up one morning to realize that eight years had gone by, that her son was his own, small little person and that she had been living her life at the bare minimum possible. It took a while, but eventually she learned to come out of her shell a little more, open more to trying to have new experiences and attempting to enjoy her life â all while firmly wearing her bulletproof vest.
optimistic, maternal, reliable
secretive, distrustful, overly-careful
While Vanessa loves being a mother, and wouldnât trade that experience for anything in the world, sheâs consistently terrified that her fatherâs bad genes are somehow going to pass down to her son. Itâs a ridiculous notion, probably, but genetics did play a big part in how a person acted. Sheâs doing her best to be loving, caring, anything she could possibly do to prevent her son from turning into a monster.
Although theyâve pretty much gone their separate ways, Vanessa still tries to keep in contact with her brother. However, since her brother maintains rather steady contact with their father, she finds that, more often than not, she tends to ignore his letters / emails / texts. Sheâs growing to resent him and even though she knows itâs his choice, she canât help but feel heâs making the wrong one every time he goes to visit that man.
