Chapter 5 - The Man Across Town
I didn't sleep.
After Marcus left, after Delia went up to her room without another word to me, I sat at the kitchen table with every light on and both hands wrapped around a mug of tea that went cold before I ever lifted it.
Adam was here. In this city. Three months.
That put his arrival in February. February, when Delia was buried in college applications, when I was picking up double shifts to cover the fees, when everything felt breakable and hopeful at the same time.
He'd been somewhere across this city through all of it, and I hadn't known. Or I hadn't looked.
I heard her door open around one-thirty. Her feet on the stairs. She came into the kitchen still in her prom dress, the corsage gone limp on her wrist, and for one second she looked so young that it hurt to breathe.
She sat down across from me. Neither of us said anything for a while.
"I'm not mad at you," she finally said.
"You'd have every right to be."
"I know." She slid the corsage off her wrist and laid it on the table. "I'm not, though. Not yet. I think I'm too — I don't even know what I am."
"In shock," I said.
"Maybe." She looked at the wilted flowers. "Did he hurt you badly? When you were together?"
I'd been turning that question over for seventeen years. Every answer I'd rehearsed was either too much or not enough.
"Yes," I said. "Not in ways that left marks. But yes."
She nodded slowly. "And you were already pregnant when you left him."
"I found out two weeks after."
"And you decided not to tell him."
"I decided to protect you."
"By taking the choice away from me."
That one sat between us a long time.
"Yes," I said. "By taking the choice away from you. You were sixteen months old, Delia. You didn't have a choice yet. I made one for you. And I've spent every year since hoping it was the right one. Some years I was sure. Other years —" My voice broke again. I let it. "Other years I wasn't sure at all."
She reached across the table and put her hand over mine. She didn't say it was okay. She didn't say she forgave me. She just left her hand there, and that was already more than I'd earned.
"I'm going to find him," she said. "I need you to hear that."
"I hear it."
"And I need you not to try to stop me."
"I won't."
She looked up. "Promise me."
"I promise."
She studied my face a moment, checking whether I meant it. Then she nodded and sat back.
"Marcus's dad," she said. "His name is Gary. Gary Doyle. He and Adam grew up on the same street back in Fenwick — the town, not the school. Did you know him?"
"I knew who he was. We never really talked."
"He wants to sit down with us. Both of us. He says there are things he can explain — things Adam asked him to explain, if we ever turned up."
I felt the cold ceramic under my palms. "Adam asked him to do that."
"Apparently he left Gary something. Marcus called it a letter. More like a statement, he said. Just in case."
"In case of what?"
Delia looked at me steadily. "In case he never got the chance to say it himself."
The kitchen felt very small.
"When?" I asked.
"Tomorrow morning," she said. "If you'll come."
I looked at my daughter sitting there in her prom dress at two in the morning, asking me to walk straight into the thing I'd spent sixteen years running from.
"Yes," I said. "I'll come."
She stood, then paused in the doorway.
May you like
"Mom. Whatever he did to you — I'm not brushing that aside. I just need to know who he is. That's all."
She went back upstairs. I sat with the cold tea until the sky over the sink started turning gray.
