by E A Owen
The morning came quickly and we were waiting at the courthouse to be called by the judge. We waited for over an hour before my name had been called. I approached the stand.
“Mr. Williams, I understand you are here to petition your closed adoption records be unsealed,” The judge bellowed.
“Yes, your Honor,” I replied.
“You do realize that closed adoptions are sealed for a reason,” the Judge commented.
“Yes, your Honor I am completely aware.”
“Mr. Williams could you please address the court and explain your reasoning behind wanting these records unsealed.”
“Your Honor, the only reason I want my adoption records unsealed is so that I can access medical information that may save my daughter’s life. My daughter Isabella is five. She was diagnosed with a heart condition called cardiomyopathy, and she is on the organ waiting list. She must have a heart transplant or she will die. My wife died during child birth and both her parents were killed in a car accident almost ten years ago. My daughter has a rare blood type and she may be on the donor waiting list for years. I know I was adopted and would like to access medical records due to dozens of diseases and medical conditions being identified as genetically inherited. Finding my birth family could save my daughter’s life,” I replied as I wiped the tears that were running down my cheek.
The judge sat there without saying a word, which made me nervous. After a few moments, he spoke up. “Mr. Williams, I am very sorry for your loss and it’s heartbreaking to hear that your daughter is very sick. Due to her condition, I will grant that your records be unsealed so that you can find the answers you are looking for.”
“Thank you, your Honor.”
It took us all day, but we were able to get a court order to access my original birth certificate at the State Registrar of Vital Records. We also went to South Dakota Department of Social Services to obtain my adoption records. My birth mother’s name is Natalie Hamlin, but there was no name for my birth father, which I was informed is very common in adoptions. To my surprise I am a twin, which is pretty cool. I have a sister somewhere out there I have never met before but I’m sure it’s going to be a real challenge finding her. There was an address for my birth mother, but who knows if she still lived there because it had been 25 years, but it was worth a try. We decided to go back to the hotel room to relax. It had been a very long emotional day. We will try to track down my birth mother tomorrow.
I was super nervous as I drove to the address alone. My parents stayed with Isabella since we didn’t want to overwhelm my biological mother. If my biological mother still lived at the address provided, she was going to be shocked to find me on her doorstep. I wondered why she had my adoption sealed in the first place. I pulled up to house, which was a nice house but the lawn hadn’t been mowed in a while. I sat in the car on the side of the road for several minutes. The palms of my hands were sweaty and I took a couple deep breaths.
“You can do this,” I said out loud as reassurance. I stepped out of the car and walked toward the front door, my heart pounding in my chest. I knocked on the door and waited patiently. I waited a couple minutes, but no one came to the door. I knocked again, louder this time. This time I heard a couple thumps from inside. I took a deep breath. The door opened slowly. A much older lady stood in the doorway.
“Can I help you?” the lady said in a quiet tone. “Yes. I’m looking for Natalie Hamlin. Does she still live here?”
“I’m sorry, but Natalie died twenty-five years ago,” the lady said with sadness in her eyes. I just stood there, frozen. I didn’t know what to say. “Can I ask how you know of Natalie?” she questioned.
“My name is Trevor. I’m her son.” I replied shyly. The lady’s eyes widened.
“How did you find me? We had the adoption sealed,” she replied.
“Are you Natalie’s mom?” I asked.
“I am.” She paused. “I apologize. I’m so rude; please come in. We can talk more comfortably inside if you would like,” she said as she opened the door wider.
“I would love to,” I said with a half-smile.
We sat and talked for a long time, a couple hours at least. She was very friendly and inviting. Even though I didn’t get to meet my biological mother, I at least got to meet my grandmother, Mary, and I learned a lot. The news was a little overwhelming, to say the least. My mother died in a car accident on her way home from the hospital after I was born. They were going to be moving and starting a new life. A lot of tears were shed as we talked. My poor grandmother has been through a lot in her life. I could tell she had a tremendously hard time telling me about my biological father.
He raped my biological mother for years during her adolescent years and she ended up getting pregnant with twins. And that’s the reason for the closed adoption. Natalie was only fifteen at the time and my grandmother felt she was too young and didn’t want to be reminded of the rape every day. Natalie’s father, and my grandmother’s husband, Elliott, committed suicide. From what I gathered, he was having an affair with his secretary from work and his friend watched over Natalie while he was cheating on his wife, my grandmother, while she was away on business trips. My grandmother did not suspect him of infidelity but only thought that Natalie and her father were getting plenty of father-daughter bonding time. Instead, my poor grandmother lost her husband, her daughter, and two grandchildren all in less than a year.
I told my grandmother about my life and about my daughter’s condition and why I was able to get the closed adoption unsealed. My grandmother said she would like to meet my parents and my daughter before we headed back to Virginia. She made it very clear that she hoped I would not “be a stranger” and keep in touch. She also said she would contact as many people as possible and do some research into her family history as well.
Now that I have found out quite a bit about my biological parents. It’s time I spend some serious time trying to find Julia’s biological family now.
I kept in contact with my grandmother on a weekly basis. Mary said she would get a petition from the courthouse and try to get the adoption records of my sister unsealed, due to Isabella’s condition. Besides, she mentioned that, after finally getting to meet me, she wanted to meet my twin sister. I was interested in finding out about her too, but my main concern was finding out about Julia’s biological family.
Without Julia’s parents alive to help me find the state Julia was adopted in, I had come to a dead end. I reached out to Julia’s aunt and uncle, but they didn’t have any helpful answers. They had no clue that Julia was even adopted. They said Janessa was pregnant, or at least she said she was, but then, they saw her in the early stages of the pregnancy when women don’t show. They came to see baby Julia for the first time a couple months after she was born and never suspected she was anything but a blood relative.
My grandmother called with amazing news. She was able to get hold of my biological father, Joseph Anderson, on death row for killing two men in prison. She had gone to visit him at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls and he told her that, while serving his ten-year sentence for repeatedly raping Natalie and getting her pregnant, he was attacked numerous times by inmates leaving him with several broken bones, bruises, and cuts. He was even raped several times while the perpetrator said, “I’ll bet you like it. How do you think that little girl felt you raped? She was just a kid!” The guy was tortured the entire ten years without being killed, but once he was beaten until almost his last breath, making him suffer for what he did to my mother. Men, even in prison, don’t like a man who sexually preys on little kids.
During the end of his original sentence, he ended up killing two men with a shank. He was now sitting in death row, and he had waited fifteen years between sentencing and execution—and now he was scheduled for execution in less than a week. I kept hearing her words repeating over and over again, like a broken record player. “He has the same blood type as Isabella and has agreed to be a living donor for her heart tr
ansplant.”
This the best news I’d heard in such a long time that I broke down in tears of joy. I’d been so scared for my baby girl, so afraid she was going to be taken from me that I couldn’t eat or sleep. I’d lost twenty pounds in the last two months and looked sick. This was a dream come true! And to think, my piece of shit biological father was actually going to do something good for this family. But I can definitely say that, after hearing about what he had been through for the last twenty-five years, I think he had been punished enough for what he did to my mother. And for giving up his heart to his granddaughter, I can’t thank him enough.
XVII
The Devastating Discovery
Isabella’s heart transplant, scheduled today, required that the donor heart be delivered within six hours. Our only option was to transport Isabella’s new heart via helicopter from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to the transplant center in Roanoke, Virginia where the surgery would be performed.
The operation went without hiccup. The surgeon said it generally takes three to six months to fully recover from the surgery and Isabella would need to be in the ICU for two to three days, although it all depended on her overall recovery. Once she was stable, she would be transferred to a private room in the intermediate ICU. She would have physical and occupational therapists working with her to build up her strength and stamina before they would release her to go home. At that point, she would have several follow-up appointments at the transplant center. Testing included blood work, echocardiograms, electrocardiograms, and heart biopsies.
My grandmother came to visit us once Isabella was transferred to intermediate ICU. She brought a cute teddy bear holding a heart and a bunch or balloons. Once visiting hours were over, I had my grandmother follow me back to my house and welcomed her to stay with me until she flew back home to South Dakota.
She came bearing more good news. “Trevor, I just wanted you to know that I was able to get your sister’s closed adoption unsealed,” Mary claimed.
“That’s wonderful news, Grandma,” I replied.
“I was able to obtain the adoptive parents’ names and address, but when I went to check if they still lived there, the man who answered the door said his family had lived in that house for twenty years and he didn’t know anyone by that name.”
“How do we find them since they’ve moved?” I questioned.
“I’m not sure. Some families move a lot, of course, and so it might be hard to track them down. Since the adoption was closed, it’s not necessary for them to update any records when they move. Unfortunately, this might be the dead end to our search. They could be anywhere,” Mary said, obviously bummed.
“We could Google their names. We might get lucky. If there are lots of people with those names, at least we can try to narrow it down. You’d be surprised the information you can get on people nowadays just by typing their name into a search engine. It’s actually kind of scary if you ask me, but in this case, it might help us find my sister,” I replied.
“It doesn’t hurt to try,” Mary exclaimed.
“Let me grab my laptop and we can see how popular the names are, which will give us an idea how difficult this might be,” I said then ran to my bedroom. In no time flat, I was back sitting next to my grandmother, anxiously waiting for the names so we could get this party started. “Grandma, I need their names.”
“Oh, yes, that might help. Sorry, but I’ve forgotten already so let me find it. I wrote their names down here somewhere. Yes, here it is. Their names are Alex and Janessa Hendricks,” Mary confirmed. I froze. This can’t be happening. OMG! I instantly felt sick to my stomach. Without saying a word, I bolted out of the room and ran to the bathroom as fast as I could, where I violently vomited up my dinner. I sat down in front of the toilet as sweat was dripping down my forehead. How could this be? I thought my life was perfect with Julia. We had such a strong connection and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. But I married my twin sister and had a baby with her. I threw up again. This is so morally wrong. We are going to be severally punished for this. But neither one of us had a clue, I reminded myself.
For one, Julia didn’t even know she was adopted. Second, she had a different birthday then mine. How could that be? Unless, Alex and Janessa celebrated her birthday the day the adoption was final and she came home with them. I supposed that strong connection we felt was not the world drawing us in to each other because we were destined to be together or soul mates. It was because we were twins and that’s why we had such a strong connection. I started heaving again, but I had nothing left in my stomach. How am I going to explain this to my parents, to my grandmother or my daughter when she is old enough to understand? I began heaving again.
Then I thought of our wedding day, of the unexplained storm that erupted out of nowhere and then vanished as fast as it began. It was a sign from God, warning us that he was angry with the union. Julia’s parents were killed in a car accident shortly after we met that summer. Maybe Julia’s parents’ lives ended because of the lie they lived. Julia died during child birth and Isabella’s heart condition was a result of our unforgiveable union. I’ve always been a true believer that everything happens for a reason, even if we don’t understand it at first. But all this was starting to make sense to me now. We were being punished. What will happen to this family next?
I heard a light tapping on the door. “Trevor, are you alright?” Mary said in a quiet, shaky voice. “I’m okay, Grandma. I’ll be right out. Just give me a minute,” I replied, trying to collect my thoughts.
When I finally sat down with my grandmother, we had the most difficult conversation I ever had to endure. I revealed the horrible, unforgiveable revelation that my deceased wife was the granddaughter that she would never get to meet and my twin sister. My grandmother’s reaction was surprising. I thought she would cry uncontrollably, but instead she sat there frozen in shock for just a minute or two, then gave me a big hug to comfort me. She kept trying to reassure me that everything was going to be okay and that it was not our fault, that we didn’t know. In fact, she took the blame. She said, if she hadn’t of made Natalie give us up for adoption in the first place, Natalie would probably still be alive, and so would Julia’s adoptive parents and Julia. And that’s when the tears started flowing for us both.
***
My grandmother stayed with me for a week as we continued to bond and build a relationship that was missing for the first twenty-five years of my life. Mary was an amazing woman and had been through hell and back. Because she was very kind and comforting, she made even the terrible news I had just received much more tolerable by just being around.
After she left, we continued to keep in contact once a week. Then my grandmother decided there was nothing keeping her in South Dakota and that she would like to move closer to us so to see Isabella grow up, since she missed that with Julia and me. I offered her the guest house on our property since she was retirement age and I could keep an eye on her. She would also be close by for all the holidays and birthdays. I’m so glad I found my grandmother, the closest thing to my actual mother, whom I never got to meet. She was able to tell me all about my mother and showed me lots of pictures.
My grandmother informed me that she was sending a copy of the newspaper article regarding the execution of my biological father, Joseph Anderson. She asked that I call her after I read the article to discuss some information that connected my biological father to someone who impacted her life severely. The article stated: “Joseph Anderson was imprisoned on June 6, 1993 for numerous counts of molesting and raping an eleven-year-old girl over three years, which resulted in the victim getting pregnant with twins at the age of fourteen. After giving up the babies in a closed adoption, the victim and her mother were subsequently involved in a car crash after leaving the hospital that resulted in the death of the victim only days after childbirth. Joseph Anderson served ten years in Sioux Falls State Penitentiary where he was brutally attacked on several occasions. Joseph killed two men
just weeks before his scheduled release. He was executed on March 9, 2018. Only three people have been executed in the State of South Dakota since capital punishment was reinstated in 1979. Joseph Anderson donated his heart to his granddaughter, who shared an extremely rare blood type, AB-, which according to American Red Cross, is present in only 1% of Caucasians. His granddaughter was on the donor list for a transplant. Is this his saving grace? Or will Joseph Anderson be doomed even after death? Joseph is survived by his father Jack Anderson, his mother Janet Anderson, his brother Jonathan Anderson, sister Jennifer Olsen, half-brother Lance Conrad, his son Trevor Williams, and his granddaughter Isabella Williams.”
I set the newspaper down and called my grandmother like she had asked. The phone rang a few times before Mary picked up.
“Hi, Grandma. I just finished reading the newspaper article you sent me.”
“The interesting news I wanted to share with you is that Joseph’s half-brother is Lance Conrad,” Mary said.
“Who’s Lance Conrad?” I asked.
“My parents were killed by a drunk driver when I was twelve. The man who killed my parents was from a wealthy, powerful family in South Dakota. The charges were dropped to vehicular manslaughter, and he was sentenced to ten years in prison with all but thirty-six months suspended. After only serving thirty months, just two and a half years, he was released. That man was Lance Conrad!” my grandmother explained. “Both Lance Conrad and Joseph Anderson have destroyed my life beyond repair.” Mary then started to weep.
I wanted to reach through the phone and give my grandmother a hug. I couldn’t imagine the emotions this news must be stirring up, having to relive her parents’ death and the horrible things that happened to her daughter all over again. I wanted to say the right words to comfort her, but all that would pass through my lips was: “I’m so sorry, Grandma.”
