Forgive Me (39 page)

Here’s the hard part for me. Just being honest here. I can’t decide if Ricardo is really to blame for what happened to me or if I am. Did he really manipulate me into doing all those horrible things or do I just think he did so I can have someone to blame? And whenever I think that, I think, damn he’s still controlling me, and that I can’t win, and that’s when I start to feel hopeless.

I know I’m worth more than I think I am. I know it, but it’s still hard to accept it. I guess that’s why they’re called emotional scars. It’s like having little x’s scratched all over my body to mark the spot, but instead of digging up buried treasure, you’d unearth my worst nightmares.

I decided to stop cutting. And no, my shrink didn’t get me to stop. I just know it’s an addiction, like Tasha’s little blue pills. Life isn’t all one long horror show. That’s what I’m starting to believe. There are good people out there, people like Sophia and Tasha, doing their best in a sometimes pretty crappy world. Where does this epiphany (thank you again SAT prep) come from, you ask? Well, Tasha came through for me yesterday. She came through BIG TIME. She called to tell me she got the information from Casper. I guess she told Casper the police were going to file charges or something unless he could prove Jade was alive. Ha! He totally bought it and Tasha is totally brilliant. So now I know where to find Jade. I guess the whole experience made me realize there is good in this world. Now I’ve got a chance to pay it forward. So I’m going to put down the knife for a while, stop cutting, and try and prove to myself that feeling better doesn’t mean I have to make myself feel worse.

CHAPTER 53

“J
ust tell me,” Angie said. “I’m a big girl, Dad. I can handle it.” “You’ve got to promise me that it’s over. You and the photograph, this investigation of yours, it’s done. No more digging.”

“You know this girl?” Angie said, holding up the picture of Isabella Conti. Blood gushed like a rapid through her veins as she recalled her father’s ominous warning.
I can assure you, you’re not prepared for this.
If he did know Isabella Conti, it would mean he had lied to her, time and time again.

“No,” Gabriel said. “I don’t know the girl in the photograph. I promise you that’s true. But I do know why your mother—well, why you couldn’t get her social security application.”

“Why?” Angie’s jaw set tight as she placed the photo face up on the table. Isabella’s sad expression gazed up at her.

“Your mother never had one filed,” Gabriel said, “at least not with that number.”

Angie put her hand to her mouth. Something about what her father said, or how he said it, triggered a thought. She came up with a reason, one inspired by her research into the Conti clan, and her theory caused her stomach to drop. “Was my mom—was she in witness protection?”

One look into her father’s eyes told Angie had struck the bull’s-eye.

“Not exactly,” her father said. “I was. Your mom came along because of me.”

Angie’s head began to spin. “Wait. Then . . . then that means—”

“Yes, sweetheart. It means you’re in witness protection, too. You grew up in the program, only you didn’t know it.”

Without warning, Angie’s stomach lurched as her head began to buzz. A dizzy feeling overcame her and set the room on a tilt. “Everything is a—It’s all a lie,” she said, stammering. “The orphanage, your scholarship to college, meeting Mom, the fight with her family over me, it was all . . . all a lie.”

Angie gasped for breath. She pushed away from the table and rushed to the bathroom, where she sent what little she’d had to eat into the toilet. Afterwards, over the porcelain sink with the water running, she gazed into the mirror, seeing a phantom of herself, a sickly pale reflection of a woman she didn’t know, of someone with a secret past.

Questions peppered her like shotgun pellets. Who were her grandparents? Did she have other relatives? Were they living? Were they nearby? Why did her dad enter witness protection? Who was Angie beforehand? She had to have a different last name, something other than DeRose. What was it?

Her father was right—she wasn’t prepared for this. No, not in the least.

Emerging from the bathroom on shaky legs, she used the wall to keep upright. She gazed ahead vacantly, focused on nothing at all.

Eventually, she retook her seat, but had a difficult time making eye contact with her father. “How could you do this to me?”

“What difference did it make?” Gabriel answered, reaching across the table for Angie’s hand.

She pulled away from his touch.

Gabriel pushed his chair back and lowered his head. “Your story was going to be the same regardless. Either way, your mom and me were going to be the only family you knew, we were all you could ever know. What we told you was a lie, yes, but in a way, not much of one if you think about it. Your life isn’t that different from the truth.”

Angie forced herself to make eye contact. “How can you even say that?”

“You are a DeRose, and what matters is that you had us.”

“Who—Who am I really?” Angie’s voice trembled while her stomach continued with an array of somersaults.

“You’re Angie.”

“No, no. My birth name. What is the name on my real birth certificate?”

Angie had seen a copy of her birth certificate before, when she’d applied for a passport. The United States government had evidently manufactured the document she’d used to prove her citizenship.

Gabriel hesitated then in a quiet voice, he said, “Your birth name was Amelia. It was your mother’s choice, but we both agreed to rename you Angie, because well, it reminded us of your first name.”

“You mean my real name,” Angie said through clenched teeth. The quake in her voice foretold tears. “Amelia what?” Her tone was harsh.

Gabriel pulled his lips tight. “Amelia Harrington,” he said, before a sob came out. A crack in the dam of long held secrets had released a torrent of emotions. Gabriel began to cry, tears streaming down his face.

“Spare me, Dad,” Angie said. “Please spare me your emotion right now. You are my dad, right?”

Gabriel’s aggrieved look normally would have pained Angie, but not this time. “God, sweetheart, please. Yes, of course I’m your father.”

“Don’t make it sound like a given.” The anger came on strong and tempered Angie’s other emotions. Everything was happening so fast. In a blink, her world had inverted.

“You’re my daughter,” Gabriel said, his lips trembling, a pleading look cast in his watery eyes.

“Who are you?” Angie asked, fearing the answer. “Why did you have to go into hiding? What did you do?”

Gabriel’s resolve took over. He knew there was no turning back now. “My given name was William Harrington. My mother was Pam Greenfield, my father Henry Harrington. Your mother was Claire Connors. Her mother was Rebecca and her father Joseph. Those are your grandparents, Angie.”

“Angie,” she repeated with disgust. “I’m Amelia, remember?”

“No, you’re Angie DeRose. It’s the only name you’ve ever known.”

“How old was I?”

“You were just a little girl.”

“How old?”

Gabriel hesitated to answer. “You were an infant.”

“A baby?”

“Yes, a beautiful baby girl, who I had to protect.”

“From what? What did you do?”

“I made some terrible choices,” Gabriel said.

“Well, I can attest to that.”

“Please, Angie, you don’t understand the circumstances.”

“Then enlighten me.” Angie couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.

Gabriel said, “As William Harrington, I was a young financial hotshot, living in New York, married to your mother and running the equivalent of a very sophisticated Ponzi scheme.”

“Like Bernie Madoff?”

“Similar but a little different. You see, Madoff stole from ordinary people, while I stole from mobsters and drug dealers.”

“Like Antonio Conti?”

“People who knew Conti, yes, but not from him directly.”

“But you heard of him?”

“Yes, of course. But like I said, not the daughter. I didn’t know her or recognize her face. I swear to you that’s true.”

Angie believed him. For someone like Dot at the Microtia center, Isabella Conti meant a great deal. She was a connection to her son’s condition and a possible conduit to increased awareness and research funding. But for her father, Isabella was just the daughter of a man who ran in the same circles as the people he stole from.

“Did Mom know Isabella?”

“Maybe,” Gabriel said. “I don’t honestly know.”

“What’s honest about you, Dad, really?”

“What I’m telling you is the truth whether you want to believe it or not.”

“So you lived in New York.”

“Yes, we did. All of us, you, me, and Mom. And New York back in the eighties was a crazy place, so much money being tossed around. I got greedy, and then I got crooked, and then I got downright stupid. A friend of mine introduced me to some—well, let’s call them connected fellows, and I soon became one of their trusted financial advisors. What they didn’t know, and what I couldn’t tell them, was that my exemplary record with stock picks was all fabricated. The statements, the returns, everything was a lie. I couldn’t tell them this, of course, because it would have exposed me as a fraud, so I took them on as clients and gave them the biggest returns.

“I ended up getting more clients like them, these mafioso types. Eventually I needed to rob Peter to pay Paul, and my house of cards was teetering on collapse. I drained the bank accounts of men who threatened to skin me alive for what I did, but only after they killed you and your mother and made me watch. That was a direct threat, by the way. Not hyperbole. The only way I could protect my family was to go into hiding.

“I knew everything about their financial dealings, so I was valuable to the government. I could avoid paying for my crimes and save all our lives, but only by going into hiding after turning state’s witness.”

“Walter Odette,” Angie said. “That’s how you two became friends.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “He was my handler. He got us into the program. Relocated us from New York to Alexandria. Provided us with our new names, everything. I know you would have found all this out eventually, so that’s why I’m telling you the truth. You’re right, Angie. If you dig around enough, you could turn over the wrong rock. The people I stole from do not have short memories. Now, I’m counting on you. You’ve got to keep your promise and let this go. If we’re found out, we’ll both be dead.”

“By who? Who will kill us?”

“With the kind of money I stole, basically anyone who had ties to my crimes. A pound of our flesh for revenge.”

Angie forced herself to stand, hoping it would stop the room from spinning. It did not. “And Mom’s family, your family, nobody has heard from any of us all these years?”

“No,” Gabriel said. “Not once. Not ever. It’s simply too dangerous.”

“My God, Dad, why didn’t you ever tell me?” But she knew the answer. Living as Angie DeRose had kept her out of danger. She was safely cocooned inside her phony identity. And what good was the truth, anyhow? She could have gone on living a lie and not suffered from his deception in the slightest.

She knew only what she’d been taught. She was Angie. She lived in Virginia. She was born and raised there. Her father grew up an orphan. Her mother had had a falling-out with her family. And those beliefs became rooted in her, woven deeply into the fabric of her being. Her father was right. Angie or Amelia, either way she would have ended up essentially in the same place—a girl from Virginia with no extended family to speak of. But would Amelia have become a private investigator? Would Amelia have gone to UVA? Would Amelia have become friends with Maddy and Sarah Winter? What kind of person would Amelia be?

Angie saw Amelia and the age-progressed image of Isabella Conti as one—two fictional personas existing only in a place of potential, a place of
would have been
, and
could have been
.

“Why did Mom write
forgive me
on the back of Isabella’s photo?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I told you everything, Angie. I swear.”

She believed him, but didn’t believe he was right about her life not having turned out so differently if she had grown up knowing the truth. It
was
different now. And to think, all this was because of questions she’d raised about a mysterious photograph, a photograph with a connection to her mother she still didn’t understand, and perhaps never would.

But that wasn’t the worst part anymore. The worst part was living with the truth. Nothing Angie had learned could change the facts of her past. It had only changed her perception of the people she loved.

“How could you do this to me?” Angie said again, pressing her hands hard against the edge of kitchen table, readying to flee her father’s home in a hurry. “How could you?”

“You still don’t understand,” Gabriel answered in a breathy voice. “I didn’t do this
to
you. I did it
for
you.”

“No,” Angie said. Her father’s words rang hollow. “The charade you put on let you
really
escape one life for another. You weren’t hiding the truth from me, Dad. You were hiding it from yourself.”

CHAPTER 54

T
he office, as expected, was empty when Angie showed up, though the quiet offered no respite from the noise blaring in her head. Questions rolled and tumbled about her mind with the haphazardness of a dust storm. Outside her office window, the twinkle of city lights stood like stars against a black landscape, while the outlines of nearby buildings shone beneath the spotlight of a moonbeam.

Angie sat in darkness, with only a faint light cast from the glow of her computer monitor. She had several web pages open, and searches going on in various professional databases. She wanted to learn everything she could about William Harrington and Claire Connors. When did they get married? Where? She wanted details about her grandparents. Did she have any aunts and uncles? What about cousins?