Adeline raised her eyebrows.
“Your name. It’s so pretty. Sam and I have really struggled to find one we love. I wondered if you would mind if we named our daughter Adeline.”
“Not at all. I’d love that.”
*
Adeline’s investment accounts continued to swell that summer, but she didn’t spend much of the money. She did, however, buy a used Camry that had just gotten off a corporate lease. She needed reliable transportation for what was about to happen.
On Monday, September 8, 2008, around lunchtime, Adeline was sitting in the nursery, unboxing the baby monitor, when her mother called from the master bathroom, through the bedroom across the hall.
“Adeline!”
She ran in and found her mother clutching her bulging stomach. “I’m having contractions.”
“Just breathe. They might pass. How close are they?”
*
An hour later, Adeline was behind the wheel of her car, driving her mother to the hospital.
The expectant mother had her eyes closed, whispering. “She’s over a week early.”
Her phone vibrated, and she answered it. “Sam. She’s coming.”
*
But he didn’t get home in time. Adeline, however, was there to see her mother holding her infant form, the glow on her face, the twinkle in her eyes. It was the happiest thing she had ever seen.
Adeline knew it was about time to go. She made a deal with herself: she would stay one more night.
Her mother’s eyes were still closed the next morning when she leaned over the hospital bed and kissed her on the head. She lingered a long moment over the bassinet, staring down at herself, thinking about what an unexpected life awaited that young child.
As she was walking out the front door of the hospital, her father was rushing in, gasping for breath, his clothes disheveled. Geneva was nine hours ahead. He must have caught the red-eye.
The LHC would go live later today. He had missed both births, but his life was about to change nevertheless.
In the used Camry, Adeline drove to Draeger’s Market on University Drive, at the corner of Santa Cruz, and made her way to the bakery section. The woman behind the counter spotted her, set down a pastry bag, and wiped the excess icing on her hands on a white apron.
“What can I get you, dear?”
“I’d like a birthday cake.”
The woman plopped an order pad on the metal counter and clicked a pen, ready to take notes. “Size?”
“The largest you have.”
“Would you like a name on it?”
“Yes. I’d like my own name on it.”
The woman looked up, surprised.
“It’s my birthday today.”
“All right. What’s your name, dear?”
“Daniele. You spell it with one N and one L.”
FIFTY
In the fall of 2008, Adeline moved to Santa Barbara. Her mother was taking maternity leave from teaching that semester, and she felt that it was best to leave the Bay Area. There was too much risk of running into her father or being photographed.
And besides, she knew from living with Daniele that San Andreas Capital had been based in Santa Barbara initially.
For a while, she lived the life of a loner. She learned all she could about quantum physics. She planned the events she knew had to happen. In the winter evenings, she read by the fire. When the weather allowed, she took long walks, listening to audiobooks and learning foreign languages, including German, Korean, and Chinese.
She kept in touch with her mother, who gave her updates on the infant that was now the center of her and her husband’s lives.
In March of 2009, as the stock market was reaching the nadir of the bear market brought on by the financial crisis, her mother remarked on a lengthy call that “Sam wants to sell all of our stocks. He’s convinced the bottom is going to fall out of everything. He wants to use the money to buy a bigger house. They’re practically giving them away right now compared to prices a few years ago.”
Adeline glanced at a real-time quote of the S&P 500 on the monitor on her desk. The index was trading around 700. It had lost about half of its value from its recent peak. It didn’t have much more to lose, but Adeline couldn’t tell her mother that. And it answered some of how her parents would find themselves in such bad financial shape before Sam joined Absolom.
The correct answer to her mother’s question was to stay the course and stay invested in low-cost index funds and high-quality companies with long-term growth potential. Instead, Adeline said, “I don’t know. I’m not much of an investor.”
Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t change the past.
Her job was to ensure everything happened as it had.
*
If Adeline could use one word to describe her life in Santa Barbara, it would have been “quiet.” She lived on a quiet street, in a small, quiet-looking house, and she herself was quiet (most of the time). She exercised, and she studied, and she went to art galleries and a few bookstore readings for her favorite authors—and not much else.
She was preparing for the future. She was also dreading it.
In the summer of 2014, she drove her new Toyota Camry for two hours down to Beverly Hills, to the office of a plastic surgeon whose work no one knew about but everyone saw on TV almost daily.
He sat on a round rolling stool, wearing a white coat, his hands pressed together as if he was about to pray.
“Tell me, Daniele: what would you like to change about your appearance?”
“My face.”
“And why is that?”
“It’s not quite right for my future.”
*
After recuperating from the cosmetic surgery, Adeline drove up to Stanford for the first time since leaving.
It was her birthday, and she wanted to ride by her old house.
The streets were quiet in the Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto, where her family lived. Her parents had bought the modest home shortly after she had arrived in the world. Adeline now knew they had used the money from stock sales to make a down payment. The timing was wrong on the stock dispositions, but the house was a good investment.
In front of the Spanish Revival home were letters in the yard that read HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY.
People were streaming into the backyard, carrying presents and smiling. Adeline recognized the group entering through the wooden gate. It was Elliott, his wife, and their only child, a son named Charlie, who had just turned fourteen that summer. He was wearing a high school letter jacket and stood two inches taller than his father.
Adeline didn’t dare go in. But she vividly remembered one scene from the party, the one that was about to occur. Beyond that gate, her younger self was standing with two of her new friends from kindergarten. She was wearing a floral dress her mother had made for her.
Approaching were three girls that lived nearby who also went to Adeline’s school. For the past two weeks, the group of girls had heckled her mercilessly about her, in their words, “homemade hobo clothes.” Looking back now, Adeline figured it was simply the stress of starting school that made the girls lash out. Adeline had been an easy target. Her clothes looked different. So they picked on her. But that ended on her birthday.
Charlie walked up, carrying her wrapped present. Within the hour, she would discover that it was a small speaker and microphone that could be tuned to different voice effects. Shortly after unwrapping it, she would overhear her father in the kitchen, opening a beer and handing it to Elliott as he said, “Seriously, dude, what did I ever do to you?” Adeline had loved that little singing machine. Her parents had likely popped champagne the night it broke (as she cried in her room).
But there was to be no crying at the party—or on the way home from school after that—because the teasing about her “homemade hobo clothes” came to an end when Charlie handed her the gift and looked her up and down.
“Adeline, love the dress. Where’d you get it?”