Forgive Me(17)

“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.