Chapter 4 - The Name I Buried
"Adam Prescott."
I hadn't said that name in sixteen years. It landed in the room like something with weight.
Delia repeated it under her breath, feeling the shape of it. "Adam Prescott."
"Yes."
She was quiet a moment. Then: "And Marcus's father knows him."
"Apparently."
She looked back at Marcus. "What did your dad tell you?"
Marcus came all the way into the room and sat down in the armchair across from us. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and for a second he looked a lot older than eighteen.
"Not much," he said. "Not tonight. It's just — when we walked into my house for pictures, he saw the photo on your lock screen. The one of you two at the lake last summer."
Delia nodded slowly.
"He went white," Marcus said. "I mean actually white. He stepped out into the hallway and I followed him, and he said, 'I know that woman. That's Rachel Whitfield. She's got a daughter, and that girl needs to know the truth about her father.'"
"That's all he said?" I asked.
Marcus looked at me. "He also said your name wasn't always Whitfield."
The air went out of me.
Delia turned. Slowly. "Mom."
"My name before I got married," I said. "Before any of this."
"What was it?"
I'd changed it legally. I'd changed hers too, before she was old enough to know she'd ever had a different one. I had done everything by the book. I had been so careful.
"Kessler," I said. "Rachel Kessler."
Delia stared at me. "You changed our names."
"Yes."
"When I was a baby."
"You were sixteen months old."
She stood up. Not in anger — not yet. She stood up the way people do when they need to feel solid ground under their feet.
"So my name isn't even really Delia Whitfield."
"It is now. Legally. It has been for sixteen years."
"But it wasn't always."
"No."
She walked to the window and stood with her back to me, looking out at the dark street. Marcus didn't say anything. He was watching her the way you watch somebody standing too near the edge of something.
"Where is he?" she asked. Her reflection in the glass didn't move. "Adam Prescott. Where is he now?"
"I don't know," I said. And that was true. I had spent years making sure I didn't know.
"But Marcus's dad does."
I looked at Marcus. He hesitated.
"My dad said he'd stayed in touch with him," Marcus said carefully. "On and off, over the years. And he said — I'm just repeating what he told me — he said Adam never stopped looking for you two."
The words dropped into the room like stones into still water.
Delia turned around. Her eyes were dry, but her face had that blank look people get when something's too big to feel all at once.
"He was looking for us," she said. "And you didn't know."
"No."
"Or you didn't want to know."
I didn't answer. Because she was right, and we both knew it, and saying it out loud wouldn't have helped either of us.
She crossed the room and picked up her water. Took one sip. Set it back down.
"I want to meet him," she said.
"Delia —"
"I'm not asking you, Mom." Quiet and very clear. "I'm telling you what I've already decided."
Marcus's phone buzzed in his pocket. He looked at it, and his face changed.
"What?" Delia said.
He turned the screen toward her. She read it. Her hand went up to her mouth.
I leaned forward. "What is it? What does it say?"
May you like
Marcus looked at me. "It's from my dad."
He read it out loud. "Tell her Adam Prescott is in this city. He has been for three months. He came here looking for them."
