Kaylee put one hand under her chin like she was thinking. “Your little one’s probably not all that much younger than Olivia, huh?”

Dread grabbed Ruth by the throat and almost strangled her. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know a lot of girls had babies in high school. For some reason, I just thought you had, too. I didn’t mean anything bad by it.”

Ruth shut down her speculation. “No, you must have me confused with someone else.”

Even saying those words sent Ruth into a spiral of guilt as she once again denied her son’s existence. In obscure moments like these, Mama’s Sunday school lessons came to mind, and Ruth thought of Peter, who denied Jesus before the rooster crowed three times. She had told this lie many times before, but always to people who just casually asked if she had children. But this was different. Kaylee had known her back in the day, and Ruth couldn’t be sure whether she was fishing for confirmation of something she believed to be true.

Kaylee looked confused but not uncomfortable enough to stop talking. “Sorry, guess I was wrong. Good you didn’t get mixed up with anybody from high school. I’m married to a great guy now, someone from a couple towns over. Bobby walked out on us, the bastard. That’s why I’m out here in this cold trying to collect child support from his sorry ass. You can’t just make babies and then walk away from your responsibility. That’s not right. You know what I mean?” Kaylee waited for affirmation.

Pain seized Ruth’s heart and her knees buckled under Kaylee’s proclamation. She couldn’t meet her eyes. This woman she barely knew had exposed Ruth’s own abject failure as a mother. Responsibility. Whether it was walking away from her child or staying silent while her grandmother walked away with him, it all added up to Ruth shirking her duty as a mother. She was no better than Olivia’s deadbeat dad.

Mama had predicted Natasha would be the one to get pregnant in high school. Mark my words. She’ll be next. But it was Ruth who got caught, not her best friend. Looking at Kaylee now, stuck in this town with a kid by a man who had walked out on them, she saw clearly for the first time the life Mama had been trying to save her from.

Inching away from her old classmate, Ruth said, “Yeah, you’re doing the right thing making him pay. Good luck. Nice seeing you again.”

When Kaylee and her daughters left the building, Ruth considered following behind them. Maybe coming here had been a bad idea. Local government operated like a massive machine, churning out reams of paper with little humanity involved. It seemed too officious and dulled by routine to bend to her pleading for information. Still, she had to try.

On her drive to the center of town, she had practiced what she’d say to whatever paper-pushing bureaucrat she encountered, as well as how she’d say it.

I’m here to obtain copies of adoption records for my files, please. Deferential, yet firm and confident. While she continued to rehearse in her head, a woman’s voice emerged, so high and tinny it sounded as if it might break, like a thin thread pulled too tightly. “Next. May I help you?”

The clerk behind the partition had loose reddish curls framing her round face. Some would call her attractive, in that matronly way that comes with the natural rounding of age.

By now three more customers had lined up behind Ruth. She ran her fingers along the braided leather strap of her purse. “Yes, please. I’m trying to find my son.”

That’s not what she’d practiced saying, but now that she’d said it, the woman on the other side of the Plexiglas window almost let her perfunctory smile slip. “Your son? This isn’t the police station and we don’t take missing-person reports here. What is it you need, ma’am?”

That extra title of respect rarely used on a woman Ruth’s age only meant that the clerk had grown impatient. On the woman’s desk was a framed picture of a little girl with bangs and two long red braids. Her granddaughter, perhaps. Ruth thought of asking about the child as a way to build rapport with this woman, but she could tell it would be futile.

Ruth leaned closer to the opening in the window and whispered, “My baby was given up for adoption in 1997. And now I need a copy of the adoption records.”

The woman sighed. “All adoption records in the state of Indiana are confidential.”

Ruth swallowed the panic rising in her throat. “There has to be some way to find and contact my son.”

The woman shoved a piece of paper at Ruth through the partition. “Here. This is the Adoption Matching Registry Consent Form. Fill this out front and back and mail it to the Indiana State Department of Health. The address is on the bottom of the form.”

She had obviously repeated the steps to this process a thousand times. Glancing at the form, Ruth scanned the list of requirements:

Full name of the adoptee’s father

Adoptee’s name after adoption

Full name of adoptive parent 1

Full name of adoptive parent 2

There was no way Ruth could fill this out, since Ronald had no idea that she’d ever been pregnant with his child. But she couldn’t admit that to this clerk. She could predict the assumptions this woman would make: There goes another Black girl having babies out of wedlock.

Regret poked at Ruth. Even if Ronald hadn’t wanted a relationship with her, he had a right to know he’d fathered a child. Maybe she’d been selfish in withholding this information from him. What if he had stepped up and assumed his responsibility as a father? She sighed. Too many years had passed and she couldn’t undo the decision she’d made.