Chapter 45
Greco took Vega’s recorded statement while Vega gobbled the rest of the melted Hershey bar and waited for the stack of insurance forms, prescriptions, HIPAA privacy statements, and doctors’ follow-up instructions he had to sign and review before he could be discharged. The stack was as thick as a robbery case file.
Greco offered Vega a ride back to the station house to fetch his truck but, aside from the candy, Vega hadn’t eaten all day. He needed some real food in his stomach first. Something filling and soothing. The hospital cafeteria’s cuisine would go down just fine.
“I can walk back afterward,” Vega told Greco. “It’s only a couple of blocks.”
“Walk, nothing,” said Greco. “Just call the station house when you’re ready. One of the patrols will drive you over.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Vega had forgotten how bright the hospital cafeteria’s fluorescent lights were. They made his headache worse. So did the lingering smell of tomato soup. But at least it was quiet at four in the afternoon. The lunch crowd was over and the dinner crowd hadn’t started.
Vega chose something basic for his battered stomach: overcooked chicken and a plate of soggy white rice. The blandness of the food comforted him and their coffee wasn’t half bad.
He was struggling with his plastic knife, tearing at the limp chicken, when a figure walked toward him. He didn’t take her in until she stood across the table, resting her fingers on the plastic chair.
“Detective Vega? What happened to your face?”
Vega lifted his gaze slowly so as not to assault his eyes with the lights. He took in the pale blue scrubs first. Then the tea she was cradling in her brown hands and finally, the black kinky hair pulled back tightly in a ponytail, revealing those articulated shoulders and oversized earlobes.
“Ms. Osorio—”
“Cecilia.” She put her tea on the table. “You’re sort of a family acquaintance at this point, I suppose.” Her hawkish eyes took in Vega’s swollen and bruised face. “Did you get into a car accident?”
“Line of duty.” He wasn’t about to delve into the details.
She frowned at his T-shirt. He forgot he had the name of a heavy-metal band plastered across his chest. “Undercover?”
“No, unfortunately. The guy who hit me knew he was hitting a cop.”
“I hope he got worse.”
Vega stared at his plate. She seemed to guess that she’d entered a conversation there was no graceful exit for. She pulled out the chair. “May I sit down?”
“Uh, sure.”
“You’ve been on my mind ever since the weekend. I was thinking about calling you.”
Vega couldn’t hide his surprise. “About the case?”
“Nooo.” She pulled off the plastic lid on her tea and took a sip. “About that . . . other matter.” She swept a gaze over her shoulder to make sure they were alone. Satisfied, she pulled her chair closer.
“After we talked the other night, I went through a box of my dad’s old things. I don’t know what I expected to find or why I was even looking. When he died, all his possessions fit into a couple of shoeboxes.”
Her voice caught on the words. Vega put his plastic fork and knife down and pushed his tray aside. He could see it was taking all of Cecilia’s composure to speak. She lifted her gaze from her tea.
“I wish I could tell you I found something about your childhood that could help you, Detective—”
“Jimmy.”
“Jimmy,” she repeated. “But what I found said more about my dad than about you. Still, it was something I wanted to share with you.”
Cecilia took a deep breath. “As I think I mentioned, my father never spoke much about his childhood. But I knew he was angry about his mom just abandoning him like that. All his drug and alcohol problems seemed to be about quelling that anger.”
She dunked her tea bag, then wrapped the string nervously around one finger. “When he died two years ago, I was just so heartbroken that we’d only begun reconciling, that I stuffed all of his possessions into those boxes and stuck them at the back of my closet. I couldn’t bear to look at them.”
Vega understood. His own mother had died a couple of years ago—murdered in a brutal attack. He still had a hard time looking at old picture albums and items he’d boxed up from her apartment.
“Anyway,” said Cecilia. “When I went through the box after speaking to you, I found a letter my father’s mother had written to him. The envelope was postmarked about a year before she died. I thought they had no contact.”
“What did the letter say?” asked Vega.
“She asked his forgiveness.” Cecilia pushed her tea to one side and settled her dark eyes on Vega’s. “She told him she was a teenager when social services took him away. She was abused by her boyfriend and messed up on drugs. She told him in the letter that she was dying and begged his forgiveness.”
“Do you know if he forgave her?”
“I don’t think he ever did,” said Cecilia. “But the date on the envelope corresponds with the month he first reached out to me—to ask my forgiveness—for not being in my life more as a kid.”
“And you gave it to him,” said Vega.
“And I gave it to him.”
She laced her fingers together and tried to compose her words. “Jimmy, I don’t know why you ended up in foster care. I don’t know what happened to you there. But I know one thing from looking at my grandmother’s letter and thinking about the last couple of years of my father’s life. Time is short. We never know how much we have. If you spend it looking for ways to hate and blame people in your past, it will drag you down and poison you. Your mother and grandmother must have been good people. They got you back. They raised you up well. And, until now, you never had to face that dark time.”
“But that’s just it,” said Vega. “I have these half memories. Things, like being locked in a closet—”
“By your mother?”
“No,” said Vega. “I went down to child services in the Bronx and found out that the people who fostered me were taken off the approved list of foster homes two years after I was there. I think they did that stuff to me.”
“And if you find them—then what?” asked Cecilia. “They’re old. They might be dead.”
“I guess,” Vega admitted. “I found out one thing from looking at the records at least. I didn’t get taken away because my mother hit me. It was likely a baseball injury. Somebody anonymously called it into child services by mistake.”
Cecilia regarded Vega for a long moment. “I’m an ER nurse,” she said. “You’re a cop. How many baseball injuries have you ever mistaken for abuse?”
“What are you saying?” asked Vega. “That it wasn’t a sports injury? That my mother did that?”
Cecilia raised an eyebrow. She didn’t believe him. Vega felt angry. He didn’t need to defend his family to this stranger.
“My mother was a nurse,” said Vega. “Not an RN, maybe. But an LPN. She didn’t drink or do drugs. She worked every day of her life. She didn’t even bring men into the house until I was long out of it. Never once do I remember her or my grandmother hitting me across the face like that. Never!”
“Okay, Jimmy. I believe you,” said Cecilia. “Then your mother had an enemy.”
“Huh?”
“Nobody makes an anonymous phone call to child services for a baseball injury. Unless they were looking to hurt your mom by hurting you.”
Vega blinked at her. Luisa Rosario-Vega was a gentle, soft-spoken woman. Private and unassuming. Who would hate her so much they would try to take her only child away?
Someone who blamed her for poisoning their cat.
Someone whose kid sister had been seduced by Luisa’s husband and spirited away.
Gloria Rodriguez.
Cecilia must have seen the fury creep across Vega’s face. She reached out a hand.
“Jimmy, please. Listen to me. The past is the past. You’ve got to let it go. If you don’t, it will burn a hole right through you. That’s what happened to my dad. It ruined his life. Don’t go down the same path.”
“I don’t know if that’s in my power.”