Forgive Me by Daniel Palmer Page B

varieties of cuisine both would normally shun, and seeing the sights tourists were supposed to see. Angie didn’t care about taking the road less traveled. She and her mother were perfectly fine with trodding a well-worn path. There was a reason people went to Venice and Florence, and visited the Vatican in Rome.
    Angie had a second Italian-themed poster, this one of David, the only nude male to occupy her bathroom in quite some time. How a block of marble could become something so magnificent astounded Angie and fired her imagination. Seeing the sculpture in person had been an item on both Angie and her mom’s bucket lists. Angie would have to check that item off for both of them.
    Angie’s dad was more a homebody than a world traveler, a polite way of calling him a workaholic. For him, a plane ride was a grand ordeal. Angie often wondered about her father’s ancestry, his heritage—more than her father did, she thought. He seemed content with not knowing, resigned to the mystery. Perhaps that was why he didn’t care to venture too far in this world. Everything he wanted, all he needed, existed within a fifteen-mile radius of his home.
    She did the wondering for him. DeRose was a French name, and perhaps Angie’s paternal grandfather was French, or maybe her father’s mother kept her maiden name. Included in the basket with the baby left at the orphanage door was a card with her father’s first and last name written on it, nothing more. Gabriel DeRose’s past was like a block of marble that would never be carved.
    Angie had her own personal history to keep carving out. She thought again about giving Tinder a try. Do it for her mother, who wanted Angie to settle down.
    She settled down, all right—right on the couch with a glass of white wine and the Thai food set out on the coffee table before her. She sank into the well-defined divot on her sofa where she ate most of her meals in front of the TV. She took a bite of food, but her thoughts went to the picture she’d found in the attic, and her appetite went with it.
    The small girl’s sad sweet smile came to her in stunning clarity, cauterized into her memory, same as her mother’s cryptic note on the back. What will Bao find?
    Angie would eat later. She decided to call her father, who answered on the first ring. They chatted for a while, while her food went cold. It comforted her to hear him sound so strong.
    “You sure you don’t need company tonight?” she asked. “I can pack up my dinner and drive it over. Plenty to share.”
    “I’m fine, sweetheart. Honest. Walt and Louise are over and we’re watching the game together. They’re keeping me company.”
    “He’s doing okay, Angie.”
    Angie heard Walter’s powerful baritone clearly in the background. Her father had good friends to lean on, to her relief. Worrying wasn’t just her father’s prerogative. She turned on the Nationals game, but kept the volume down.
    “Maybe tomorrow we can get together. I have some estate business to go over with you.”
    “Whatever you want, Dad. I’m here for you.”
    “I know. I’m so lucky”—his words got cut short as he became overwhelmed with emotion—“to have a daughter like you.”
    Angie had tears in her eyes as she looked at the photographs hanging on the wall. Some were pictures of her and Madeline, a few with Sarah Winter, as well. But the one that drew Angie’s attention was a black and white photograph of her parents, arms draped around each other, big smiles on their faces. It was taken at Lake Anna, where her family rented a cabin at least once each summer.
    Angie felt her mother’s absence profoundly. Angie’s life had always had holes, left by the family she never knew, but her mother’s absence was a new, bigger hole. A hole shaped like the most important woman in Angie’s life, a woman she could see only in pictures, thoughts, and dreams.
    “I love you, Dad,” Angie said and hung up. She turned up the volume on the Nats