“For the men, Mike. Not a hookup.”
“Oh. Well, I’m looking for them, too. I’m blending here. I’m being seen, so when I make the approach, I’ll be a known entity, not some stranger who could be a cop.”
“Right. What’s your cover? That’s a pretty crappy part of town to just hang out in.”
“Restaurant consultant. And it’s not that bad here. There’s a couple good places to eat. A chicken joint and some gyro thing. And I got a nice hotel.”
“How nice, Mike?”
“Nice.”
“Mike.”
“I’m away from kids, Ange.”
“Okay, okay. Just make it nice-ish, all right?”
“Yeah, yeah. How’s your pop holding up?”
“Better, thanks. Call when you got something. And Mike, thanks for being there for me. I owe you.”
Walt left during the seventh inning stretch, but Madeline made it all the way to the ninth. “We’re still on for next week, right?”
Angie slapped her own forehead. “Sarah’s mom.”
“Every year. She looks forward to our visit.”
“I’ll be there, of course,” Angie said as she gave Madeline a hug. And Sarah won’t, because Sarah’s dead. Sarah’s body has decomposed down to the bones. Angie kept her thoughts private, but Madeline would have agreed.
When the house was finally quiet, her father snoring softly in his chair, the e-mail queue down to something respectable, the phone calls answered, the work fires all put out, Angie got into her pajamas and read a magazine in her old bedroom, but not on her old bed. The home had been renested after Angie left for college, the furniture changed long ago, and all echoes of her childhood subsequently silenced. All echoes except for the one made by a little girl Angie didn’t know, who had some connection to her and to her mother.
All this got Angie thinking about the attic where she’d found the picture in the jewelry box. She would let her father sleep in that chair a little longer, so she could return to the attic uninterrupted.
She began rummaging through boxes, plastic containers, and sundry bags, mostly filled with clothes. There was nothing of real interest, nothing until she found a container with her mother’s old check registers inside. There were boxes full of registers going back years—decades, actually. Not that this surprised Angie, who knew of her mother’s penchant for keeping papers because she was too busy to shred them, and never threw anything in the trash that could be used by identity thieves, even bank registers from accounts closed long ago.
It was fun and a little sad to review a lifetime of purchases. She found plenty of pedestrian entries—food, clothing, utility bills—but the more personal ones were what Angie found most touching, including all the lessons (dance, swim, horseback riding, tennis, soccer, art camps); all the home repairs; all the charitable giving, including one check for fifteen hundred dollars labeled a loan made out to Susie Banks, a close friend of Kathleen’s. Aunt Susie, to Angie. All the women close to her mother were aunts to Angie, except for her real aunts who Angie didn’t know.
As Angie looked at her mother’s handwriting, she thought of the words on the back of the photograph. Forgive me. “Forgive you for what, Mom?” she said aloud.
As she flipped through the check registers, years passing in seconds, a blur of purchases speeding before her eyes, one entry caught her eye. It was a two hundred dollar sum paid to MCEDC and recorded as “Microtia Gift.” The gift had been made five years ago, recorded as paid on March the fourth.
Microtia was the little girl’s ear deformity. Angie had looked up the condition online, but learned nothing revealing or helpful in her search for the girl’s identity. Using her phone, Angie typed MCEDC into Google and found the Microtia-Congenital Ear Deformity Center in Burbank, California. From what she could tell, it looked to be the world’s most prominent institute for research and surgical repair of microtia and a related condition called atresia.
Angie combed the check registers again with a different focus. The more recent check registers should be downstairs in her mother’s desk, but in these older registers she soon came upon another entry for a payment to MCEDC, that one also made on the fourth of March, also for two hundred dollars. She kept looking, register after register—thirty or so registers in total, stored in a dozen check boxes. Angie found the same entry made year after year. The checks were always written on the fourth of March and always for two hundred dollars, which told Angie it was significant, though she had no idea why.
The last entry Angie found dated back to 1984. It might have been the first entry recorded. She didn’t know if other, older registers were anywhere else in the house.