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Authors: Daniel Palmer

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BOOK: Forgive Me
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I don’t know if we’re doing the photo shoot or not anymore. I’m not sure I even care. I’ve spent the whole day talking to Ricardo. He’s AMAZING! Really amazing. He’s older. Twenty-three I think, but he thinks I’m almost nineteen and that’s not too big a difference. That’s totally normal. We could go out together and nobody would think anything of it. Not like he’s sixty and I’m twenty-five or something. To prove my point we did go out. Ricardo took me to this restaurant that serves Mexican food, but it wasn’t like the Mexican restaurants near my house. This was a lot, I dunno—more authentic, I guess. Everyone spoke Spanish and they talked really fast. Ricardo did, too, but it was really hot to hear him talking Spanish. Anyway, he ordered me this burrito thing and it was great, but I was soooooo hungry I would have eaten the aluminum it was wrapped in. I drank a big glass of water and I was starting to feel a whole lot better, a lot more like myself. But I still didn’t have my cell phone or wallet. I had no money and maybe that’s why my stomach was in knots. Or maybe it was Ricardo who kept looking at me and smiling at me but in the sweetest way imaginable.
He asked me about my mom and dad. I’m thinking “you don’t want to hear about them,” but really I was worried if I talked about home I might cry. Guess what? I talked about home and I cried. Not the ugly cry, but I definitely needed some napkins and people looked at me and I got really embarrassed. And all I could think is “oh my God, I’m such a loser.” But you know who didn’t care? Ricardo, that’s who. He moved his chair closer to mine and brushed a strand of hair off my face. Then he wiped away one of my tears with his finger and told me it was ok to cry. He didn’t have a good relationship with his parents either, he said, and it made him really sad. He understood.
I asked him if he thought I was stupid to run away from home. He said no, they didn’t understand me or appreciate me and you know, he’s right. They didn’t. I feel badly leaving my friends, but they’ll get over it or maybe they’ll see me in the movies! Ha! That’ll be so awesome.
It still can happen, too. Ricardo told me that I’m really special. There have been a lot of girls who have had photo shoots at the studio and there’s something unique about me. Me! Ricardo told me that’s what Stephen Macan said after I fell asleep (Ha, fell asleep, lol. Passed out is more like it). Anyway, Ricardo said he’s been instructed to look after me because I guess I’m really important to their business. I’m going to make them all a lot of money! Can you believe that? The most I ever made was a few hundred dollars working as a babysitter.
Ricardo touched my hair again and he didn’t have to because I wasn’t crying and it wasn’t in my face. But I liked it. And I wanted him to do it again, but he didn’t. He did say I should get used to the idea of being famous and that I shouldn’t be Nadine anymore. It’s not a famous name. Can you think of one really famous Nadine? I can’t. He called me Jessica. I liked it. There are a lot of famous Jessicas out there.

 

CHAPTER 8

T
he home of Angie’s parents (now just her dad) in Arlington was crammed wall-to-wall with mourners who represented the varied interests and activities of Kathleen DeRose. It was difficult to move around among so many bodies, so Angie stayed rooted in one spot. People found her, one after the other, each offering their sincere condolences. There were people from the Lupus Foundation, of course, and the Arlington County Fair, as well as kids Angie’s mom had taught to swim, and the parents who had driven them to the service and the reception.

Angie wore a loose-fitting black dress, accented by an understated strand of pearls. She’d tried to cover her pale and waxy complexion with a generous application of makeup. She had washed her hair, but didn’t give it the treatment to make it look pretty. It didn’t feel appropriate.

She felt strangely detached from the moment, an observer more than a participant in both her mother’s memorial service and this reception. She would hug whomever approached her, thank them for their support and condolences, and assure them she was doing all right, hanging in there best she could, but she was numb, and had been since the hospital.

The reception, especially, was too much for her to process. Too many bodies, too much noise. She wanted to be alone with her father, to grieve privately—but right now, it was about her mother, not Angie. Kathleen needed to be celebrated, appreciated, and memorialized.

The service was lovely, or so people said. Angie had delivered a eulogy, one of three presented to a room of more than five hundred mourners who filled the church and spilled out into the hall. She’d talked about her mother’s unconditional love and support, her passion for helping others, her loyalty to causes she championed. Kathleen DeRose was, in Angie’s words, a roadmap to a life well lived. “Be kind, love fully, and embrace the moments as they come.”

Angie felt a hand on her shoulder and turned. Walter Odette was standing behind her, smiling at her. He had broad shoulders and a square-shaped head topped by a thin covering of hair that still had plenty of brown. At five-foot-nine, Walter was taller than Angie by only a few inches, but his barrel chest made him an imposing figure at any height. He had the kind of eyes that sparkled and laughed even when he wasn’t telling jokes as old he was.

Today the glimmer was gone. He smiled, but his teeth were yellowing, and Angie took note of how much older he looked. He had more creases on his face than she remembered. Everyone looked older to her, including her father and her mother’s friends. Even her own friends looked older. In this regard, Kathleen’s funeral was a celebration of her life and a wake-up call to the living that death was coming for them all.

“How you holding up, kiddo?” Walter asked.

Kiddo
. Angie liked that he still saw her as the little girl who grew up calling him Uncle Walt. She returned a wan smile and gave his hand a squeeze.

“Hanging in,” she said. “You?”

“Numb,” Walter said, his voice warm but a bit more gravelly, a bit tired.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Louise has been crying her eyes out for days. She can’t believe your mom is gone.”

Angie looked across the room and saw Walter’s wife of forty years at the buffet table talking with a group of Kathleen’s friends. Over the years, they had become Louise’s friends as well. They all sort of looked alike—women in their sixties, early seventies, put together, hair kept short but styled, bodies kept in decent shape by frequent visits to the health club, friendships maintained through book, movie, and bridge clubs, as well as various charitable endeavors.

“I haven’t been able to get over to her,” Angie said. “I actually haven’t left this spot.”

“I know you’ve heard it a million times,” Walter said, looking Angie in the eyes. “But if there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m here for you.”

“You always have been, Uncle Walt.”

They hugged as a familiar voice spoke. “Any room for me in there?”

Angie’s face lit up. She broke from Walter’s warm embrace to give her good friend Madeline a hug.

“Hey! I’ve been looking for you,” Angie said, her smile genuine and bigger than any she had made all day. Tears stung her eyes. She hadn’t realized the importance of having her friends there until they began to arrive. Paying their respects were a dozen or so people from various facets of her life—some she knew from high school, others from college, a few from the PI biz.

Of all who had come, none was more important to Angie than her dear college friend, Madeline Hartsock.

Back in college, Sarah, Madeline, and Angie had been an inseparable trio—the Three Musketeers some had called them. When Sarah vanished, the tandem of Angie and Madeline led the search for their missing friend. They’d seemed to merge into one over the many months they hung posters, managed the website, fielded leads, and worked with law enforcement, all to no avail.

The experience altered the trajectory of their lives. Angie became friendly with a private investigator hired by Sarah’s mother. Angie searched relentlessly for Sarah. Her alertness and situational awareness impressed the investigator so much he offered her a job with his well-established firm, The Kessler Group, right out of college. “You have a mind for this work,” he’d told her, “and you don’t slack off. Stamina and a sharp eye, that’s what you need to be a PI.”

She worked five years for the firm, earning her masters degree in criminal justice at night. Her time with The Kessler Group gave her the confidence she could run an agency of her own. Her mentor not only agreed and supported her transition, but had made his own firm part of Angie’s
& Associates
network.

Madeline, who was pre-med at the time of Sarah’s disappearance, gave up medicine to become a sex crimes prosecutor in Washington, DC. She always believed Sarah had fallen into drugs and somehow got swept up in the sex trade, a theory that was never proven. Her research into human trafficking, however, opened her eyes to the prevalence of predators and she’d found her calling putting the bad guys behind bars.

“One of these days, I’m going to get the guy who took Sarah from us,” Madeline had said. Angie had vowed to be the one to bring her that prize.

“Madeline, you remember my Uncle Walt.”

“Of course.” Madeline hugged the man she didn’t really know. Funerals made for fast friends. “I’m sorry about your loss. I know you thought of Kathleen as a sister.”

“I did,” Walter said, his eyes misting. “The DeRoses are like family to me.”

Madeline, who was tall, thin, and naturally blond, looked nothing like Angie, but called her friend a sister from another mister. She understood Walter’s point completely.

“I was wondering if any of your mom’s family might have come to pay their respects,” Madeline said. “Now seems like a good time to put that feud to rest.”

Angie had been thinking the same, but she recognized everyone who was there by face if not name. She had asked her father if he planned to include her mother’s family in the services, and the answer had been a definite no. Despite that, she held out hope some of her mother’s relatives whom she did not know, whom she had never met, might come across the obituary and show up unannounced.

Her father was never going to have any of his family there. He’d spent his childhood in an orphanage and when that closed, moved to a series of foster care homes. Like a lot of kids who entered the system at a more advanced age, Angie’s dad did not get adopted. All she knew of her father’s mother, her paternal grandmother, was that she was a drug addict who didn’t know who’d gotten her pregnant. Despite the extraordinary obstacles presented to him, Gabriel persevered, avoided the temptations of the streets, and made something of his life.

While attending University of California, Berkley on a full academic scholarship, Gabriel met and fell in love with Angie’s mother. She was Kathleen Tyler back then, young, pretty, and fiercely intelligent. Gabriel and Kathleen had an instant and undeniable chemistry. They knew after two dates they wanted to get married and announced their plans the day after graduation. Not everyone was thrilled by the news. The way Angie had heard it, her mother’s family had serious reservations about her father. They didn’t want the couple marrying so young, nor did they approve of Gabriel’s sketchy background.

Harsh words were spoken, words that escalated and sowed the seeds of acrimony. When Kathleen, unmarried, discovered that she was pregnant with Angie, the anger came to a boiling point. Kathleen and Gabriel decided to cut off all communication with her family and go at it on their own. At some point, Angie’s grandparents had died. She had never once met them.

The reception continued, the hours passing, brief conversations expressing the same sentiments.
We’re so sorry for your loss. Such a tragedy. So young. Too soon. Your mother loved you very much. She was so proud of you
.

Every one of them rang true to Angie, and the words of sympathy provided a degree of comfort. The hard part, she suspected, would come later, after everyone went home, after the sympathy cards and Facebook posts stopped coming, when she and her dad had quiet time to contemplate the enormity of their loss.

Madeline stayed to the end. Along with Louise and Walter, she helped with the cleanup. Angie checked in with her father. She didn’t like seeing him in this new way: frail, old, and sad. Her heart ached for him, for them both.

Tears came to her father’s eyes, but he managed a strained smile. “Well, that was hard.”

“We’ll get through this together, Dad.” Angie gave her father a big embrace.

Nearby, Louise and Walter joined the huddle for a group hug, with Walter calling the play.

“As long as we stick together, we’ll be all right. Anything you need, Angie, Gabe, anything at all, you don’t hesitate to ask.”

Walter and Louise lived down the street from the DeRoses. They had been in that house since Angie was a baby. She had fond memories of rolling down the hill in their front yard—Odette Hill, she called it—and exploring the variety of flowers that Louise grew in a small greenhouse out back. Walter was retired law enforcement and Louise was a homemaker who had raised two children, both of whom were off on their own.

Louise was a master cook as well as a gardener. “Angie, don’t worry about your dad. I’m going to make sure his fridge is fully stocked.”

But Angie did worry. She worried about him being alone and lonely. Kathleen was her father’s life. They had many friends, but most of those friends were tethered to Angie’s mom. Her dad had his work, his daughter, and his wife. Now it would be easier for him to devote even more time to crunching numbers. Perhaps Angie could get her father to try fly fishing, a hobby Walter enjoyed, or some other pursuit to keep him from vanishing into the protective shell of his work.

That would come later.

They needed to grieve and keep busy, so Angie helped with cleanup. She had washed all the extra tablecloths and put them back in the plastic bins where they were stored. She turned to her father, who was washing some platters. “Dad, I’ll take this up to the attic.”

BOOK: Forgive Me
2.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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