Forgive Me(94)

Mike suddenly got interested. “You’re going to contact your mom’s family?”

“Yes,” Angie said. “And I’m going to ask them about Isabella and Antonio Conti.”

“Cool,” Mike said. “How are you going to find them?”

Angie fished out the death certificate—a life summarized and encapsulated on a standard size sheet of paper. It was an official looking document, designed to be hard to forge, and authorized by the state of Virginia. On it was Kathleen DeRose’s social security number. “With this,” she said, holding up the certificate for Mike to see.

“A death certificate? How’s that going to help?” he asked

“I’m going to get my mom’s social security application,” Angie said.

“What for?”

Maddy seemed to forget about the movie as she walked behind Angie’s desk for a better look. Angie showed Mike and Maddy her browser window, which was open to a webpage on the Social Security Information website. The web page header read ELECTRONIC FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT. The sub-header read REQUEST FOR DECEASED INDIVIDUAL’S SOCIAL SECURITY RECORD. Specifically, Form SSA-711.

“Applying for a social security number requires all sorts of information about a birth, including family and employment details,” Angie said. “Lucky for me, the Paperwork Reduction Act put access to all this information online.”

Mike acted impressed. “How’d you know all that?”

Angie shot him a sideways glance. “We’re private investigators, Mike. It’s kind of our job to know these things.”

Mike got the subtext. “Right,” he said, acting like he knew. “I just forgot for a moment, that’s all.”

Angie gave him a weak smile, then returned to the web page. She was excited about her potential discovery, and felt no guilt about not heeding her dead mother’s wishes in regards to their extended family.

Mike took another bite of his Snickers bar.

Angie filled in the form. She gave special attention to the required fields and selected the option to pay a sixteen dollar fee for a computer extract of the social security card application. Angie entered her mother’s name as Kathleen Eleanor DeRose, provided the date of birth, gender, and her mother’s social security number. When all that was done, she took in a breath and held it. Maddy placed a comforting hand on Angie’s shoulder.

“Well, this is it,” Angie said, her eyes glued to the computer pointer hovering over the SUBMIT button on the web form.

In a moment, Angie’s maternal grandparents would materialize on the computer extract. From there, it would be a relatively easy task to track them down or locate other relatives on her mother’s side if her grandparents were dead.

Angie felt a sudden wave of sadness for all she had missed. What had been gained from keeping separate lives? Walt and Louise were fine substitutes for her blood relatives, but she craved a deeper knowledge, a connection with her past, and once more, Jean Winter’s words came to her. Life is too short for petty differences.

Angie hit the SUBMIT button and waited. The web page reloaded, but with an unexpected red letter error message posted at the top of the form.

NO APPLICATION FOUND.

Additional prompts implied that Angie might have entered the wrong information, a mistyped number perhaps. She checked and everything was correct as documented on the death certificate, so she hit SUBMIT again, counting on it having been a technical glitch. The web page loaded again and the same error message displayed. NO APPLICATION FOUND.

Mike scratched his head. “Angie, if your mom’s application doesn’t exist in the system, where the heck did her social security number come from?”

He was asking the right question and Angie feared her father knew the answer.





CHAPTER 50



It was Friday night when Angie entered her father’s house. She went in through the kitchen and pulled the door closed with a loud bang. The television blared from the living room, but she chose to remain rooted in the kitchen, hands clenched into fists at her sides. She took in a shaky breath that failed to calm her down. Her heartbeat continued to accelerate as her body heated up.

“Dad, I need to see you in the kitchen! Right now!” The imperative summoned her father with haste. The tenor of her voice suggested trouble. She hadn’t called ahead, didn’t want her father to have time to prepare an answer to the question she’d come to ask. And the answer, “I don’t know,” was no longer acceptable. He knew something, all right. Angie was certain of it.

Gabriel burst into the kitchen, his slippers losing traction on the tile floor. The short sprint had left him breathless and evidently without time to tie his terrycloth robe. He was dressed for bed in the usual attire, white T-shirt and striped pajama bottoms.

Angie observed the rapid rise and fall of his chest. He had the look of someone roused roughly from a deep sleep, which at that hour was probably the case.

Gabriel fished out his glasses from a pocket on his robe and asked, “Angie, honey, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

To get herself grounded, Angie took a seat at the kitchen table in same spot where weeks ago she had shown her father the picture of a sweet little girl with a sad smile. She motioned for her father to take the seat across from her, which he did without hesitation.