The Silent Girl

brings to mind my own daughter, who was younger than this girl when I lost her. My eyes sting with tears, but I don’t try to hide them. 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.”
    “She 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, 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. This 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 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 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. 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 at me. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? That’s why you came looking for me. Because my mother wrote you about him.”
    “Your father was a good man. He loved you, and you dishonor him. You dishonor both your parents.” 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, and 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 this point, she’s seen no reason to fear me and why should she? I am just a woman. But something she now sees in my eyes makes her take a step back.
    “Are you afraid?” I ask her softly.
    Her chin juts up, and she says with foolish bravado: “No. I’m not.”
    “You should be.”

SEVEN YEARS LATER
    M Y NAME IS DR. MAURA ISLES, 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 her gaze on the assistant DA as she answered the question. It was far easier to focus on Aguilar’s neutral face than to see the glares coming from the defendant and his supporters, dozens of whom had gathered in the courtroom. Aguilar did not seem to notice or care that she was arguing her case before a hostile audience, but Maura was acutely aware of it; a large segment of that audience was law enforcement officers and their friends. They were not going to like what Maura had to say.
    The defendant was Boston PD officer Wayne Brian Graff, square-jawed and broad-shouldered, the vision of an all-American hero. Theroom’s sympathy was with Graff, not with the victim, a man who had ended up battered and broken on Maura’s autopsy table six months ago. A man who’d been buried unmourned and unclaimed. A man who, two hours before his death, committed the fatal sin of shooting and killing a police officer.
    Maura felt all those courtroom gazes burning into her face, hot as laser points, as she