The Girl in Lincoln Park Who Knew the Name Marcus Had Buried

“Dad, she looks exactly like me.”

Lily’s voice carried across the Lincoln Park path before Marcus Blackwell could decide whether the resemblance was real or some cruelty his grief had learned to play on him.

He was already crouched between the girls. Lily’s small finger pointed past his shoulder. The other child stood three feet away in a pale pink lace dress, crushing an old tan teddy bear against her ribs. Behind her, a young woman in a long pink gown had one arm around the child’s waist and the frightened posture of someone prepared to run without knowing where she could go.

Marcus looked from Lily’s heart-shaped face to the stranger’s.

Same chin.

Same narrow bridge of the nose.

Same brown hair pulled into a ponytail, though the stranger’s had been tied with a cheap elastic instead of Lily’s green ribbon. Even the height was nearly exact. The differences made the resemblance worse. The other girl was paler. Her cheeks looked tired. Her fingers trembled against the bear’s repaired stomach. Her eyes were a bright, impossible green.

Grace’s eyes.

The tense pressure behind Marcus’s breastbone sharpened into something cold.

The woman behind the girl pulled her closer.

“We should leave.”

Her voice was low, but Jonah heard it. Marcus’s bodyguard stood beside the black SUV at the curb, broad shoulders squared beneath his suit. He had been watching pedestrians, traffic, windows, reflections. At the woman’s words, his head turned. When he saw the girl’s face, his discipline cracked for less than a second.

Marcus noticed.

He noticed everything when he was afraid.

Lily lowered her hand and stepped nearer to the other child.

“What’s your name?”

The girl looked at the woman before answering.

“Emma.”

“I’m Lily.”

“I know.”

The woman’s fingers tightened around Emma’s shoulder.

Marcus rose slowly. The autumn light came through the oak trees in strips, touching the tattoo that climbed above his open collar. Somewhere beyond the path, a stroller wheel clicked over a seam in the pavement. A dog barked twice and was corrected by an owner who had no idea the world had just shifted.

Marcus kept his voice level.

“How does she know my daughter’s name?”

The woman swallowed.

“She’s seen pictures.”

“Pictures from where?”

“Marcus.”

She said his name as if she had once been allowed to use it.

He studied her more closely. She was younger than Grace would have been now, perhaps thirty, though fear had made her difficult to place. Dark blond hair. Small scar beside the left eyebrow. A face he almost remembered from hospital corridors and wedding photographs.

“Karen Holt,” he said.

Her expression confirmed it.

Grace’s personal assistant had disappeared the night Grace died.

The police had assumed she had been in the car. No second body had been found, but there had been blood on the passenger seat and enough confusion around the explosion for people to invent explanations. Marcus had paid investigators in three states to find her. They had brought him rumors, false addresses, two women with the same name, and one body in Wisconsin that belonged to somebody else.

Karen took a step backward.

Jonah moved away from the SUV.

“Don’t,” Karen said.

He stopped, not because she had authority, but because Marcus lifted one hand.

Emma pressed her chin into the bear’s head. Its fur had worn thin around one ear.

Marcus looked down at her.

“What was your mother’s name?”

The girl’s gaze moved to Karen. Karen’s lips parted, but nothing came out.

Emma answered in a whisper.

“Grace.”

A dry leaf scraped across the path.

Marcus felt the name in his jaw before he felt it anywhere else.

“Grace what?”

The child’s green eyes lifted to his.

“Grace Blackwell.”

Jonah’s hand closed around the edge of the SUV door. He did not otherwise move.

Marcus looked at him.

Jonah stared straight ahead.

Lily reached for Marcus’s sleeve. Her certainty had begun to give way to confusion.

“Dad,” she said, quieter now. “That was Mommy’s name.”

Emma looked from Lily to Marcus, then pushed one thumb into the rough seam across the teddy bear’s stomach. The thread had been repaired with clumsy brown stitches. She worked at the loose end until the seam opened wide enough for two fingers.

Karen leaned forward.

“Emma, no.”

The girl flinched but did not stop. She pulled out an aged envelope, folded twice, the paper softened at the corners. Karen reached for it, then let her hand fall.

Emma held it toward Marcus.

His name was written across the front.

For Marcus Blackwell.

The loops in the M. The heavy downward stroke in the B. Grace always pressed too hard when she wrote his last name, as if she still resented having taken it.

Marcus accepted the envelope with a hand that had not trembled at funerals, police raids, or the birth of his daughter.

It trembled now.

“I buried her seven years ago,” he said.

Emma hugged the bear to her chest again.

“Mommy said you buried the wrong woman.”

For several seconds, Marcus heard only the lake wind moving through dead leaves.

Then he looked at Karen.

“You’re getting in the car.”

Her fear changed shape. It became anger because anger was easier to use.

“No.”

“I’m not asking twice.”

“And that is why she stayed away.”

Lily looked up at him. The words landed harder because his daughter heard them.

Marcus lowered his voice.

“You brought a child who may be mine into a public park while somebody has been photographing my family from parked cars for the last six months. You recognized me. You tried to leave. Now you’re going to tell me why.”

Karen’s face lost a little color.

“You knew about the cars?”

“I know when a pigeon changes benches.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting here.”