Forgive Me(98)

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.