Forgive Me (11 page)

I wouldn’t do this if Ricardo didn’t love me, didn’t want me. And I love him. It’s not some puppy dog thing either. We get each other . . . really get each other. He tells me he’d do anything for me and that’s what makes it ok for me to do anything for him. I’m not going to get into all the details. Cause it can be nasty. This isn’t some smut diary. Get your mind out the gutter PEOPLE! This is my journal and I don’t want to write about it because, I dunno, maybe someone will find this someday and I’d be super embarrassed about what I’ve done, but trust me I’ve now seen it all and done it all and well, at least I’m good at something.

Ricardo says that I’m amazing in bed. Amazing. He’s used those exact words. That’s something, right? I’m not grossed out that he has so much more experience than me. I mean he is like seven years older or something. But I’m flattered he thinks I’m getting good. And I really need the confidence boost because none of the pictures are working. We’ve tried everything. Makeup. Hair. We used all the money from my jewelry to buy me new clothes and new makeup. None of that worked. I asked if I could have a new phone and Ricardo said no. I can’t talk to anybody again. To make this work I have to forget about Nadine and become Jessica. But it’s NOT working. We even took some pictures outside and those came out the worst. I look like I belong back in Potomac. I have no edge! A real actress can belong anywhere and can look like anything. I look like a scared little girl from the suburbs hanging in . . . in . . . in wherever I am. I don’t talk to people, so I don’t ask them. Ricardo doesn’t want me to.

One time I started a conversation with a guy in line at the pizza place down the street from the apartment and when we got home Ricardo got really mad. Smashing walls with his fists kind of mad. Like the day he cut up my pictures mad. I asked him what was wrong and he said I had made him jealous. He said if I ever talked to another guy in front of him again, he’d hit that guy so hard he’d kill him.

And then he’d hit me.

CHAPTER 13

A
ngie lived in a one-bedroom apartment at Seminary Towers on Kenmore and Van Dorn. It was an older complex but nice, with good light and easy access to I-395. Plus it was affordable and in a safe neighborhood, easing her father’s worry. The Papa Bear thing was a little endearing, but it also wore thin and quick. She was no longer his little girl to protect. She could handle herself just fine. Just ask any instructor at the gun range, from her self-defense class, or her gym.

The weekend had passed in a blur and still no sign of Nadine. It was almost eight when Angie got home. She had been at the office doing paperwork and would have arrived sooner had Mike Webb not called to offer a recap of his time with MCD, the missing children division of NCMEC. He would meet regularly with the team from MCD until they found Nadine or the missing girl’s parents pulled them from the case.

MCD had two units of case management. The Critical and Runaway Unit (CRU) took point on the Nadine Jessup case. The information CRU gathered would have been confidential, but Carolyn Jessup had authorized access for Angie and any of her associates. Mike and the assigned case manager worked the phones all afternoon and made contact with police in the targeted cities. They also reviewed all the tips—there were plenty—and made sure the police knew which ones they thought were most promising. They hoped for a break in the case soon.

Tomorrow, Nadine will be six weeks gone. She could be anywhere. Alive or dead. Hooked on drugs. Hooked on survival, which could mean any number of things, none of them very good. Making money under the table on the streets often meant under the sheets as well.

Angie had farmed out three new cases to other trusted
& Associates
members. Two of them involved runaways and one was a transport job. It was a busy time for the DeRose agency, but she was fine with taking her cut of the referrals instead of a much larger payday. She wanted to focus on Nadine.

Focus
meant the job and little else, which was why she’d arrived home carrying a plastic bag with takeout Thai food from Rice and Spice on Duke Street, five minutes from her apartment. Cooking required time, and time was something in perpetually short supply. She enjoyed cooking, and collected cookbooks like paperback novels, but she couldn’t remember a time the oven got used for anything other than reheating. The veggie Pad Thai would probably be tomorrow’s dinner, as well.

Most nights, she preferred to eat lighter meals. Stakeouts had a way of packing on the pounds, and her mother’s healthy eating habits (doctor-recommended on account of the lupus) had become Angie’s as well. But the day had worn her out, and the strange photograph continued to weigh heavy. She craved carbs.

Hanging on the kitchen wall was a large framed poster of Tuscany. The poster represented a dream she and her mother had shared, to travel together to Italy. They’d talked at length about lazy afternoons drinking wine, sampling varieties of cuisine both would normally shun, and seeing the sights tourists were supposed to see. Angie didn’t care about taking the road less traveled. She and her mother were perfectly fine with trodding a well-worn path. There was a reason people went to Venice and Florence, and visited the Vatican in Rome.

Angie had a second Italian-themed poster, this one of David, the only nude male to occupy her bathroom in quite some time. How a block of marble could become something so magnificent astounded Angie and fired her imagination. Seeing the sculpture in person had been an item on both Angie and her mom’s bucket lists. Angie would have to check that item off for both of them.

Angie’s dad was more a homebody than a world traveler, a polite way of calling him a workaholic. For him, a plane ride was a grand ordeal. Angie often wondered about her father’s ancestry, his heritage—more than her father did, she thought. He seemed content with not knowing, resigned to the mystery. Perhaps that was why he didn’t care to venture too far in this world. Everything he wanted, all he needed, existed within a fifteen-mile radius of his home.

She did the wondering for him. DeRose was a French name, and perhaps Angie’s paternal grandfather was French, or maybe her father’s mother kept her maiden name. Included in the basket with the baby left at the orphanage door was a card with her father’s first and last name written on it, nothing more. Gabriel DeRose’s past was like a block of marble that would never be carved.

Angie had her own personal history to keep carving out. She thought again about giving Tinder a try. Do it for her mother, who wanted Angie to settle down.

She settled down, all right—right on the couch with a glass of white wine and the Thai food set out on the coffee table before her. She sank into the well-defined divot on her sofa where she ate most of her meals in front of the TV. She took a bite of food, but her thoughts went to the picture she’d found in the attic, and her appetite went with it.

The small girl’s sad sweet smile came to her in stunning clarity, cauterized into her memory, same as her mother’s cryptic note on the back.
What will Bao find?

Angie would eat later. She decided to call her father, who answered on the first ring. They chatted for a while, while her food went cold. It comforted her to hear him sound so strong.

“You sure you don’t need company tonight?” she asked. “I can pack up my dinner and drive it over. Plenty to share.”

“I’m fine, sweetheart. Honest. Walt and Louise are over and we’re watching the game together. They’re keeping me company.”

“He’s doing okay, Angie.”

Angie heard Walter’s powerful baritone clearly in the background. Her father had good friends to lean on, to her relief. Worrying wasn’t just her father’s prerogative. She turned on the Nationals game, but kept the volume down.

“Maybe tomorrow we can get together. I have some estate business to go over with you.”

“Whatever you want, Dad. I’m here for you.”

“I know. I’m so lucky”—his words got cut short as he became overwhelmed with emotion—“to have a daughter like you.”

Angie had tears in her eyes as she looked at the photographs hanging on the wall. Some were pictures of her and Madeline, a few with Sarah Winter, as well. But the one that drew Angie’s attention was a black and white photograph of her parents, arms draped around each other, big smiles on their faces. It was taken at Lake Anna, where her family rented a cabin at least once each summer.

Angie felt her mother’s absence profoundly. Angie’s life had always had holes, left by the family she never knew, but her mother’s absence was a new, bigger hole. A hole shaped like the most important woman in Angie’s life, a woman she could see only in pictures, thoughts, and dreams.

“I love you, Dad,” Angie said and hung up. She turned up the volume on the Nats game.

Her father loved baseball, and his passion had rubbed off on her. In high school, she’d been a serviceable soccer player, but on the softball field she’d been something of a star. She was good at fielding, had quick reflexes, a fast release, and could hit for average and power. Her dad had coached her through middle school, and on Sundays the pair were often found at the batting cages over at Upton Hill.

Her dad was a stickler for technique.
Keep the shoulders back. Start the swing with the legs and the hips. Drive the front shoulder to the ball
. Those lessons got so ingrained they became reflex. When it came time for college, she could see the next level was not for her, but she played on an intramural team where she’d met Madeline and Sarah.

What stayed from her playing days was a love for the game and a commitment to fitness. Angie tried to hit the gym at least three times a week, and she’d recently taken up yoga in an effort to win the battle between her ideal weight and the five or so pounds that crept up on her with the stealth of a panther.

No yoga now, though. Angie was too tired. And there was cold Thai food to eat.

It was the bottom of the fourth in a three-three tie when Angie’s phone buzzed with a text from Madeline.

Are you watching this?

Yeah. Good game.

Not the Nats, goofball!
The Bachelor
.

Oh, no. Forgot it was on. Any good?

Good? It’s a train wreck. I love it. The fangs are out.

Werewolves in bikinis, eh?

OMG! Rick just tossed Krissy into the pool.

Sticking with the Nats. Did you hear back from Sarah’s mom?

Yes, confirmed. She can’t wait to see us. Can’t believe Sarah’s been gone thirteen years.

Wow. Thirteen? Can’t believe it either.

Let’s text later. Abigail just pulled Rick into the bushes. Must. Watch.

Xoxo talk later.

Luv ya. You doing all right?

I’m ok. Thanks.

Ok bye xx

Every year Madeline and Angie made the drive to New Jersey to visit with Jean Winter, Sarah’s mom, and share remembrances. It was supposed to be just that one year, the first year, the hardest year. It turned into an every year thing, not something that was planned. It just sort of happened, sort of evolved, and now Jean was like an aunt to the girls, like a Walt and Louise but with fewer visits.

Since Angie had no extended family of her own, her relationship with Jean Winter was something she wanted to keep and foster. The best gift Angie could give her grieving pseudo-aunt was closure. It would come only when Angie—or someone, but Angie wanted it to be her—found out what had really happened to Sarah.

People who vanished without a trace haunted the lives of those left behind. Crowds became a breeding ground for hope. Angie would see people who looked like Sarah—it could just be a way of walking, a mannerism, something very Sarah. That was because Sarah wasn’t really dead. That was how Angie felt, and she could only imagine how magnified those feelings were for Sarah’s mother.

Carolyn Jessup already felt the same persistent ache, and probably got flashes of hope within a crowd of strangers. Angie had to find Nadine. The likelihood of a happy reunion dimmed with each passing day.

The Nats game held Angie’s interest more than the takeout. She had no trouble finding space for her leftovers. Her refrigerator was mostly empty. Any day now, a new cookbook would arrive from Barnes & Noble—something about clean eats, her most recent purchase—and Angie would peruse the pages, feeling guilty for not having the time or energy to shop and cook.

She returned to the futon when her phone rang.

“What’s up, Bao?” she answered. Her pulse ticked up a notch or two.

“I think I have something on that photograph. You got a minute?”

Her pulse ticked up some more. “Yeah, sure.”

“Better in person. Can you meet now?”

“Of course. Where?”

“Your place.”

“Okay. What time?”

“Now. I’m downstairs.”

Angie rolled her eyes. “Bao, why didn’t you start the conversation with
Angie I’m downstairs. May I come up?
”

“You could have been busy. I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”

“Just come up.” She buzzed him inside.

He had a different way of thinking about things, which was why she wanted his help to identify the girl in the photograph. Who could she be? A sister she never knew?

Bao came in wearing a gray hoodie and carrying his skateboard.

“Is that how you got here?” Angie asked.

“It’s how I get everywhere.” He had a studio apartment several miles from Angie’s place, but his skateboard made getting around town a breeze.