“Yes.”
“So what did they do?”
“They made you difficult to find.”
I stared at him.
“How?”
“Your file was altered.”
The surname Marlowe disappeared from later records.
A clerical change turned Anna Rose Marlowe into Anna Rose Morgan for three years.
Then Anna Morgan became Anna Reed after I married Jake.
My Social Security records were corrected eventually, but by then the custodial fund had been emptied.
I thought of all the social workers.
All the paperwork.
All the missing pieces of childhood.
“Someone changed my name intentionally?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“We believed it was an employee named Patricia Keller.”
The name meant nothing.
Then Thomas slid a photograph toward me.
The room stopped.
