Forgive Me(21)

Angie flashed on a memory of a family trip to Annapolis maybe twenty-five years ago.





Kathleen sat in the front seat of the family car studying a map. An idea struck her. They should continue driving east and go to Bethany Beach for the afternoon, she said, then asked, “Why not?”

“It would be a three-hour drive home,” her father said. “That’s why not. ”

It was late spring, and the sun beat bright, and the air was warm and inviting. The next thing Angie knew, they were off with no suitcases packed, no plans for an overnight.

Soon they were splashing in the ocean, laughing as they raced to beat the waves that crashed against the sandy shore. Mother and daughter dared each other to venture out into the low tide as far as their bodies could stand the cold water, while trying not to get their clothes all wet. Kathleen wore a long dress that she hiked up above her knees. She twirled and danced on the sand while Angie ran circles around her mother, laughing under the call of the gulls that circled lazily overhead. Behind them her father, his pants hiked to his knees, leather shoes in his hand, watched his wife and daughter frolic on the empty beach.

Afterwards, they went out for ice cream—before dinner even—and her mother pleaded with her father to spend the night, to not make the long drive back to Virginia. “Do it in the morning,” she said.

After much cajoling, Gabriel relented and they found a decent enough motel—not a chain, but a family-run business. They bought pajamas at a Wal-Mart, and while her father snored beside her, Angie snuggled against her mother’s side, basked in the television’s flickering glow, and fell asleep to some program.





She’d long since forgotten what program. The pajamas were probably in one of the boxes in the attic along with all the other bric-a-brac her mother couldn’t bear to throw away, but some memories hadn’t faded, like the pine-scented smell of that motel room and the sound of her mother’s laughter as she’d twirled on the beach.

Angie gazed across the table at her exhausted father and thought of his childhood memories. Of the orphanage he talked about only on occasion, of the mother he never knew, but whom he believed was a good person, a woman in crisis who did her best in a difficult situation. In that moment, Angie felt blessed beyond measure to still have her dad in her life.

Her heart swelled with love as she pushed the box of notes over to her father. “You can look through them, but it’s definitely Mom’s handwriting on the back of the photograph.”

Madeline returned with the tea. Everyone spent a few quiet moments taking tentative sips as the drinks cooled. Then she took the photograph in her hand and examined it more closely. She was a prosecutor, accustomed to evaluating evidence. “What do you make of this poor girl’s ear?”

Angie glanced at the young girl’s smiling face, focusing on that misshapen ear. “A birth defect, perhaps.”

“Or maybe she was maimed and that’s how it healed.”

“Like a dog attack or something,” Angie said. “Possible.”

“What city do you think this was taken in?” Madeline asked.

“That would be helpful to know,” Angie said.

Gabriel had gone silent. He was shuffling through Kathleen’s notes, perhaps conjuring up his own memories of his life with Kathleen. Angie moved her chair closer to Madeline’s so she could better see and study the photograph. The buildings were made of brick and fire escapes were affixed to some of the exteriors, suggesting that people lived in apartments above a row of shops. It was morning, Angie believed. Many of the shops were shuttered with heavy-duty roll down metal doors.

Because the photo was taken from street level, Angie couldn’t tell how high the buildings were. Could be three stories or could be just two like a strip of row houses in Philadelphia. Angie didn’t know if any of them had stores on the first level like this street did.

The shop signs were all for mom-and-pop type businesses. BEAUTY SALON. PATSY’S PIZZERIA. TONY’S PASTRIES. The street was peppered with bits of trash and a nearby mesh barrel was filled to the brim. A poster had been plastered to the side of a building, but a figure blocked out most of the letters. What Angie could see meant nothing to her.




000

DS

THS

’m I

IN’?




It looked as though there was some additional text between 000 and DS, but it was written in a much smaller font and too blurry to make out. The photograph’s main subject, the girl with the sweet sad smile, stood in the foreground near a fire hydrant that had one of its caps missing but no water shooting out. Meaningless graffiti marked up the staircase to one building entrance. It was a hard landscape, an urban one.

Angie thought of big cities like New York, Chicago, but it could have been the North End in Boston or a neighborhood in Detroit, Philadelphia, even someplace in DC. The milieu was gritty and old in a way that made her think it was an east coast city, not some newer place such as Dallas or Columbus. The picture included no cars with identifying license plates, and the phone number on the sign to the beauty salon didn’t include an area code.

“Any ideas?” Madeline asked.

“Yeah,” Angie answered. “Lots of them. But I need the right one, and for that I’m going to need some expert assistance. I need Bao.”