With slightly trembling hands, her mother took the phone and closely studied the image. A look of wonder changed her face. She touched her fingers to the digital image.
“A princess bride,” she whispered. “She’s so beautiful.” Miriam looked up into Angie’s eyes. “She’s you. She’s our Angie. My baby is getting married?”
Tears sprang to Angie’s eyes. She cleared her throat. “Maybe. Remember Detective James Maddocks? I brought him here to meet you—tall man with dark hair and blue eyes?” She looked up at her dad, whose eyes glittered with emotion.
“We’re talking about tying the knot. Would you give me away, Dad, if it all goes ahead?”
Her father stared at her. He then turned to this wife. Blinking back the tears now leaking from the corners of his eyes, he nodded. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and soft. “Do you forgive us, then, Angie? For what we did? For the secrets we kept.”
She came to her feet and hugged her father. He pulled her close, and he folded his arms tightly around her body. And she felt him cry. He smelled right, like his old sweater, like his aftershave, like her dad, and she buried her face against that old wool sweater with the leather patches on the elbows.
“I love you, baby girl,” he whispered against her hair. “I love you so much. I am so, so sorry for not—”
“Shh.” She pulled back and placed her hands firmly on his shoulders. Her gaze bored into his. “Don’t say it. You’re a good man, Dad.”
A man so much better than Dr.Doug Hart. Your peer. A fellow academic of around similar age.
“I’m lucky you found me.” She kissed his cheek.
He stared at her. Time stretched. Rain began to drum against the sunroom panes, and the sky grew darker. “I needed to hear you say that, Ange—you have no idea how much I needed to hear that.”
“I needed to say it, too. I love you.” She looked down at her mom, who was staring at the rain running down the window. “I love you both. With all my heart.”
Her mother began to rock in her rocker again, and her voice rose softly in song.
Ave Maria
Vergin del ciel
Sovrana di grazie e madre pia ...
“Maybe Mom can sing that at the wedding,” Angie said to her father.
“Maybe.” He smiled.
Despite her fatigue, Angie was filled with an incredible lightness of being as she drove for home. She turned down the waterfront road. Lights in the storefronts glowed warm and friendly in the cold foggy evening as bundled-up shoppers made their way along sidewalks, umbrellas leaning into the sea wind. It would be December next month. A full year since she and Holgersen had been called out to the Gracie Drummond sexual assault case. At the time she’d been dreading Christmas, as she always had, for reasons she’d not yet understood. But then she’d met James Maddocks, and he’d turned her life on its head. He’d become her partner, boss, and lover. And now, possibly, husband-to-be. The thought shimmered inside her as she stopped at a red light.
Her phone rang while she watched pedestrians crossing. She answered via Bluetooth.
“Angie here.”
“Is that the private investigator, Angie Pallorino?” The voice was female. Hesitant.
Something about the woman’s tone made Angie tense. “This is her, yes. Who’s speaking?”
A clearing of a throat. “I’m Sophie Rosenblum. Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum. I used to be a close friend of Jasmine Gulati’s back at university. I ... I just returned with my family from vacation. I heard the news that Jasmine’s body has been found and identified. My house sitter said you came by with questions and that she referred you to Mia.”
“Oh, thanks for calling, Sophie.” The light turned green. Angie moved her vehicle forward. “Mia managed to help me out, thank you.”
“I phoned Mia. She told me she’d informed you about Jasmine’s abortion.”
“Yes, she did.”
“Jasmine never went through with it.”
Angie’s chest constricted. Her brain doubled in on itself. She hit her brakes and screeched into a loading zone. “Whatdid you say?”
“I accompanied Jasmine to the women’s center on the mainland, but she chickened out at the very last moment. She couldn’t go through with it that day. Jasmine never had the abortion.”
