Page 57 of Atonement

“Here,” a man called, and we surged forward as one. In the hard winter dirt were the small bones of a woman’s hand. “We’ll have to call the police.”

I dropped into a squat next to the grave. The hand was so much smaller than I would have imagined.

“Are we sure this is an adult?”

“Possibly an adolescent,” the handler said as he roped off the area with red plastic tape. “The autopsy will say for sure.”

“Jesus,” I muttered, pressing on my eyes. Maddie rubbed her hand across my back, but I could barely feel it. I was so cold.

“Let’s go inside,” she whispered, and pulled at my hand. “We’ll talk more once they have her free.”

*

We had some DNA collected to be run at a private lab, but the police came back with there results almost as quickly. Her name was Ashley Malone, and she was sixteen years old when she disappeared from her parents’ house in Brooklyn. Maddie found every news article he could on her disappearance, but she had come from a poor family, and her disappearance hadn’t held the public’s interest for very long. The police simply pegged her as a runaway.

“We don’t even look alike,” I muttered to myself as I stared at her Missing Persons photo for the hundredth time.

Maddie perched on the chair next to me, more on my lap than anything, and peered at my laptop screen. “She doesn’t look sixteen here. I wonder if they used one of those aged photographs.”

“They used her school picture from that year. It was taken two weeks before she … left.”

Maddie took the laptop from my hands and scrolled through the other photos. My mother had gone missing long before social media was widespread, but friends and family had uploaded scanned images over the years. There was a gallery of photos of her, from all angles, all meant to help find a woman who had been buried for over three decades. The most recent photo had been posted just earlier this year. Some people have never given up hope.

“She played softball,” Maddie said softly, and I snapped myself out of my thoughts.

“What? Where?”

“It looks like she was on a league.” She pointed to a picture of a young woman in a yellow and green uniform, holding a bat over one shoulder and tossing a softball in the air as she smiled at the camera. The photo had been cropped to remove whoever was standing next to her, but the edge of someone else’s arm was slightly in frame.

“That was why he didn’t want me to play. Because my talent was something that came from her, not him.” The realization, far from upsetting me, sent warmth through my chest. I’d never met this woman, but she’d given me something that had brought me immense joy throughout my life. The baseball field was one place I could be free from Conrad’s expectations. And because he had no interest in my success, he didn’t care if I had a bad game or blew a play. It was rare that he even came to my games.

Maddie was beaming at me. “She would have been so proud of you. Her little boy, following in her footsteps.”

My lips were ragged with how often I’d been biting them the past few days. “That is, if she wasn’t ashamed by my existence.” It was hard to imagine that she could love me, being the result of rape and her cause of death. Then again, Eva had so much affection for me. Even Anita had always been treated like her own child. But still, it wasn’t the same situation.

Maddie didn’t get a chance to respond. The doorbell rang, and she closed the laptop as we stood and walked toward the door. Detective Brantley waited outside, and barged in without so much as a hello to get out of the cold.

“They’re closing the investigation,” he said, blowing into his hands as we closed the door. “There’s nothing for them really to look at right now. You obviously weren’t involved in her death, and with Conrad dead, there’s no one to prosecute. Her family was relieved to have her body. You know when someone goes missing, they often have a hard time moving on. This gave them closure.”

I breathed a sigh of somewhat relief. I was prepared to offer another bribe if necessary, but it didn’t sound like he even wanted one. But something was still missing, some sort of punishment. Or retribution.

“Can I meet the family?” The words left my mouth before I finished thinking them. Maddie gripped my hand.

“They said they’d rather not right now. They’re trying to cope with all the new knowledge they have about what happened to her.” He had the decency to look a little sorry for me. “I told them to call me if they change their minds.”

“Give them my number,” Maddie said, and Brantley handed her his notepad. She scribbled her cell phone number on the paper along with her name and gave it to him. “They can call me if they want to talk about meeting him, but not talk to him directly.”

“I’ll do that.” He tucked the paper into his pocket as he turned back toward the door. Pausing with his fingers on the handle, he spoke to me over his shoulder. “You did the right thing here, Schaf. I know that doesn’t mean a lot coming from me. But you should have seen how relieved they were to have her back.” He opened the door and left.

I sagged a little with my exhale, releasing breath I’d been holding for far too long. Maddie bit her nails as she stood near the door, watching him leave through the window.

“I hope that’s the last we see of him for a long time.” She turned toward me but kept her distance, leaning against the cold glass. “How bad are you?”

“I’m okay, actually. Better than before.” I ran my fingers through my hair to fix it, and straightened my shirt. “We can move forward now. Even if I never meet that side of my family, I have her name and her picture.” Joining her at the window, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders as we watched the sky turn from gray to black.

Maddie

We worked on the house, boxing up items we wanted to keep and handing off those we didn’t care about to an antiques dealer. Meyer wasn’t interested in most of the contents of the home where he grew up, but there were a few sentimental keepsakes he didn’t want to let go of. A wooden train missing one wheel. A couple of dog-eared chapter books with his name printed inside the front cover. All of these things he pulled from hidden places in his room, tucked behind furniture or under the false bottom of a drawer. Every once in awhile, he would check one of his hiding places and find it empty. He’d curse softly under his breath and sit back on his heels, hand over his mouth as he contemplated whatever it was he’d lost.

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