Free Forgive Me by Daniel Palmer Page B

I talked about my mom being drunk again and my dad not giving a shit about me, Madison wrote that I should jump off a bridge. That would show them. Ha-ha-ha, she wrote. I thought she was being funny but Ricardo saw it differently. That’s what she really wanted me to do. Jump. Off. A. Bridge. A real friend would never say something like that. I never thought about it until Ricardo opened my eyes. I asked if I could use his phone to send a message to Sophia and Brianna. I wanted to find out if they missed me at all. Ricardo said no way. They didn’t give a shit about me. Nobody did. Except for Ricardo, of course. He’s watching out for me. He’s the only one I trust.
     

CHAPTER 10
    G abriel DeRose sat at the kitchen table and studied the photograph with intensity. Angie sat across from him, while Madeline heated water in the freestanding kettle for tea. The mood was tense.
    “Tea,” Madeline said. “It will settle us all down.”
    “You’ve never seen this photograph before?” Angie asked her dad.
    Gabriel shook his head. “No, never.”
    “And you’ve never seen this music box before?” Angie picked up the burnished maple music box, opened the lid, and again “The Blue Danube” plinked out. It was a lonely tune that warbled with all the energy of a last breath.
    “No, never.” Gabriel rubbed at his temples, fatigue really showing. His eyelids seemed to grow heavier the longer Angie watched him.
    Gabriel took the music box and held it in his hands, turning it over, examining it from all angles same as she had done. “All of your mother’s jewelry is up in our bedroom.”
    “But that is Mom’s handwriting on the back,” Angie said. “You agree with that.”
    Gabriel turned the photograph over and studied it carefully. “I mean, it could be,” he said, but not with assurance.
    “Do you have anything of Mom’s we could use to compare?” Angie asked.
    Gabriel didn’t have to think long. “Look in her desk drawers in the office. I’m sure she has a bunch of notes there.”
    Angie left and returned moments later with a box of papers. They were notes her mother had jotted down on various types of stationery, scrap paper and the like.
    Looking through them was surprisingly emotional. They were frozen moments of time, innocuous events of little consequence, but remnants of the past like footsteps that marked a life’s path. Angie’s mother had these thoughts, these ideas. She’d written them down, never thinking her daughter would go through them after she was gone. Never thinking Angie would use them to try and match the handwriting on a photograph her mother had wished to keep hidden from everyone, her father included.
    The first note was a list of things to do. It included calls to the Lupus Foundation and her friend Tracy, who had been at the house a few hours ago. Angie studied the handwriting. The similarities were unmistakable. The words, May God forgive me and Call Tracy were written in the same neat cursive. The letters were of average size, with narrow spacing between them.
    From her PI work, Angie had learned something of the science of graphology, the study of handwriting. She used it on occasion to get a better sense of the people she was assigned to track. It took a bit of unpredictability out of the equation. Kathleen’s handwriting slanted to the right, which was suggestive of somebody open to new experiences, someone who enjoyed meeting new people. Both were true of Angie’s mom. The i and e were formed using wide loops indicative of openness, spontaneity, and a willingness to try new experiences. This was true of her mother as well.
    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.