Chapter 3 - The Name He Was Forbidden to Say
Celeste pulled a chair beside Eli's hospital bed.
The room smelled faintly of disinfectant.
A pair of hospital socks had been placed on his feet, but he kept them tucked beneath the blanket as though he was afraid somebody might take them.
"I didn't know where you were," she said.
Eli watched her closely.
"But you knew Ellen."
"Yes."
"She said you knew exactly who took me."
Celeste felt the weight of those words.
"I told the police Ellen's name as soon as you disappeared. They searched for her for years."
Eli looked down at the locket.
"She said you didn't want me."
Celeste closed her eyes for a moment.
Then she opened them again.
"That wasn't true."
He didn't respond.
She understood why.
From his perspective, she was a stranger wearing expensive clothes who had suddenly appeared after almost nine years.
The woman who had fed him, dressed him, and controlled every part of his life had told him an entirely different story.
A social worker named Grace Williams entered and gently explained that detectives would need to speak with Eli about his experiences.
Celeste was asked to wait outside during part of the interview.
She agreed, though leaving him again felt almost unbearable.
For the first time, she understood that protecting him might require giving him space rather than holding him close.
Over the next several hours, the truth began emerging.
Ellen had raised Eli under the name Samuel Price in a rented house near Beacon, New York.
She told neighbors he was her grandson.
He rarely attended ordinary school.
Instead, Ellen taught him at home using workbooks and old textbooks.
He was allowed into town occasionally, but never alone.
Whenever he asked about his parents, Ellen told him his mother had given him away.
"She said rich people don't want children who make their lives complicated," Eli told the social worker.
But Ellen had also made a mistake.
She kept a small locked metal box inside her bedroom closet.
Several weeks earlier, Eli had found the key while helping her fold laundry.
Inside the box were old photographs, documents, and the silver locket.
One photograph showed Celeste holding two toddlers.
Both were wearing matching blue sweaters.
Eli recognized one of them as himself.
He also recognized the other child's face.
It looked almost identical.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written:
"Eli and Theo — First Birthday."
He confronted Ellen.
She became furious.
She told him his mother had known who took him from the beginning.
"Then why didn't she come?" Eli asked.
According to Eli, Ellen answered, "Because some mothers choose the child they want to keep."
Those words stayed with him.
He began scratching a message into the back of the locket using the sharp end of a broken safety pin.
SHE KNOWS WHO TOOK ME.
He wanted someone to see it if Ellen ever took the necklace away.
But he also wanted to remember the question that wouldn't leave him alone.
If his mother knew the truth, why hadn't she found him?
Then he discovered an old magazine clipping tucked among Ellen's papers.
It contained Celeste's photograph beside an article about her interior design company.
The article mentioned her Manhattan office and showed her standing outside its building.
Eli studied the picture for days.
He copied the address onto a piece of paper.
Then, when Ellen left for a medical appointment, he took the locket, a little cash he'd saved, and ran.
He rode a train into the city.
For three nights, he slept in places where he thought nobody would notice him.
His shoes disappeared after he left them beside him while sleeping.
He spent hours near Celeste's office, hoping the woman from the clipping would appear.
He had almost given up.
Then he saw Theo.
A boy with his face.
Walking beside a woman he recognized from the photograph.
For the first time, Eli believed he'd found the right person.
When Celeste heard this, she cried in the hospital corridor.
Grace stood beside her without interrupting.
After several minutes, Celeste wiped her face.
"Was there anything else in the box?"
Grace nodded.
"Eli mentioned some envelopes and older documents. Investigators are following up."
That night, a detective named Martin Reyes came to speak with Celeste.
"We've confirmed that the vehicle outside your office was registered to a company connected with Ellen Price's latest address," he said.
Celeste straightened.
"Have you found her?"
"Not yet. But we have a location to investigate."
He paused.
"There's something else."
Celeste waited.
"The boy says Ellen kept telling him there was a reason she chose him instead of his brother."
Celeste stared at him.
"What reason?"
"We don't know."
But suddenly she remembered a conversation from the week before the abduction.
Ellen had asked whether the twins would eventually inherit equal shares of Daniel's family estate.
May you like
Celeste had dismissed the question as harmless curiosity.
Now, for the first time, she wondered whether Ellen had been interested in more than simply taking a child.
