The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

shrugs. “Then no wonder I don’t remember you.” She reaches in her jacket, pulls out a cigarette, and starts to light it.
    “You’re polluting your body.”
    “It’s my body,” she retorts.
    “Not if you wish to train.” I reach across the table and snatch the cigarette from her lips. “If you want to learn, your attitude must change. You must show respect.”
    She snorts. “You sound like my mother.”
    “I knew your mother. In Boston.”
    “Well, she’s dead.”
    “I know. She wrote me last month. She told me she was ill and had very little time left. That’s why I’m here.”
    I’m surprised to see tears glisten in the girl’s eyes, and she quickly turns away, as though ashamed to reveal weakness. But in that vulnerable instant, before she hides her eyes, she makes me think of my own daughter, who was younger than this girl’s age when I lost her. I feel my own eyes sting with tears, but I don’t try to hide them, because sorrow has made me who I am. It has been the refining fire that has honed my resolve and sharpened my purpose.
    I need this girl. Clearly, she also needs me.
    “It’s taken me weeks to find you,” I tell her.
    “Foster home sucked. I’m better off on my own.”
    “If your mother saw you now, her heart would break.”
    “My mother never had time for me.”
    “Maybe because she was working two jobs, trying to keep you fed? Because she couldn’t count on anyone but herself to do it?”
    “She let the world walk all over her. Not once did I see her stand up for anything. Not even me.”
    “She was afraid.”
    “She was spineless.”
    I lean forward, suddenly enraged by this ungrateful brat. “Your poor mother suffered in ways you can’t possibly imagine. Everything she did was for you.” In disgust, I toss her cigarette back at her. She is not the girl I’d hoped to find. She may be strong and fearless, but no sense of filial duty binds her to her dead mother and father, no sense of family honor. Without those ties to our ancestors, we are lonely specks of dust, adrift and floating, attached to nothing and no one.
    I pay the bill for her meal and stand. “Someday, I hope you find the wisdom to understand what your mother sacrificed for you.”
    “You’re already leaving?”
    “There’s nothing I can teach you.”
    “Why would you want to, anyway? Why did you even come looking for me?”
    “I thought I would find someone different. Someone I could teach. Someone who would help me.”
    “To do what?”
    I don’t know how to answer her question, and for a moment the only sound is the tinny mariachi music spilling from the restaurant speakers.
    “Do you remember your father?” I ask. “Do you remember what happened to him?”
    She stares back at me. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? That’s why you came looking for me. Because my mother wrote you about him.”
    “I knew your father, too. He was a good man. He loved you, and you dishonor him. You dishonor both of them.” I place a bundle of cash in front of her. “This is in their memory. Get off the street and go back to school. At least there, you won’t have to fight off strange men.” I turn and walk out of the restaurant.
    In seconds she’s out the door and running after me. “Wait,” she calls. “Where are you going?”
    “Back home to Boston.”
    “I do remember you. I think I know what you want.”
    I stop and face her. “It’s what you should want, too.”
    “What do I have to do?”
    I look her up and down. See scrawny shoulders and hips so narrow they barely hold up her blue jeans. “It’s not what you need to do,” I reply. “It’s what you need to be.”
    Slowly I move toward her. Up till now she’s seen no reason to fear me, and why should she? I am just a woman, the same age as her mother was. But something she now sees in my eyes makes her take a step back. For the first time she understands that this could be the beginning of her worst nightmare.
    “Are you afraid?” I ask her softly.
    Her chin juts up, and she says with foolish bravado, “No. I’m not.”
    “You should be.”

 
     
    TWO
     

SEVEN YEARS LATER
     
    M Y NAME IS D R . M AURA I SLES, LAST NAME SPELLED I-S-L-E-S. I’m a forensic pathologist, employed by the medical examiner’s office in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
    “Please describe for the court your education and background, Dr. Isles,” said the Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney, Carmela Aguilar.
    Maura kept