Ignoring the hard foot-tapping of the man in line behind her, Ruth squeezed the paper and waved it in front of the sliding glass window that the clerk had now shut a few more inches.

“I don’t know my son’s name or the names of the people who adopted him. I can’t complete this form because I just don’t know.”

Without looking up from the papers on her desk, the clerk returned to her memorized script. “This is the form. The adoptive parents would have to also be signed up with the registry for you to be matched and for you to contact each other. If the adoptive parents haven’t signed the child up for the registry, you can’t get any information. And don’t expect to hear anything from the state anytime soon. They’re real backed up over there. It could take more than twenty weeks to process your request.”

Twenty weeks. She couldn’t wait five months. Her spirit flagged like the sputtering motor of an old beater car. Glancing over her shoulder at the people in line behind her, Ruth wondered if their quests were as impossible as her own. The clerk scribbled notes and stamped documents. Ruth didn’t move, silently begging the clerk to have mercy on her and help her figure out what to do next.

Finally, the woman looked up and smiled too hard, showing too many teeth. “That’s the form. Fill it out as best you can. Next!”

When Ruth backed away, she bumped into the man behind her in line. Her eyes lingered on the registry consent form. She wanted to spit on this official piece of paper and its absurd requirements. Government had so many gatekeepers to keep you from the truth. To keep her from her son.

Inside the cocoon of her car, with the windows rolled up, Ruth let out a primal scream, releasing some of the tightly coiled tension inside her. When she powered her phone up again, it beeped. Maybe Xavier had texted or left her a voicemail message. She wished he were there to hold her hand, massage her shoulders, and whisper reassurances in her ear.

The missed call had been from Tess, though, not Xavier. She dialed her friend’s number and she answered on the first ring. Tess sounded almost breathless, as if she’d bounded across the room to pick up her cell.

“It’s about time you called me back. Okay, girl. I got the hookup on tickets to one of the Obama inauguration parties in D.C. But we need to order now. Are you in? Please say yes.”

The fervor over Obama’s election seemed so long ago. As proud and hopeful as she was, Ruth had already crashed after the high of that night. All she could think about now was her baby, finding him and then . . . She didn’t know what then.

“Ruth? Are you there? Did you hear me? Hellooo?”

“Yeah, I’m here, back home in Ganton.”

After a brief pause, Tess stammered, “Oh. Okay. What’s going on? Are things all right?”

Ruth felt an overwhelming need to unburden herself and tell someone the truth for once. And who better than Tess, who had kept her own secrets, having waited until after graduating from law school and joining a top firm to come out to her family. By then, she was self-sufficient and could handle their rebuff financially, if not emotionally.

“I’ve been keeping something from you, from everyone. I only just told Xavier a few weeks ago.” Ruth exhaled loudly. “The summer after my senior year in high school I had a baby and I left him behind. I have no idea what happened to him. I’m back home now to find him.”

Tess let out a low whistle. “Okay, wow. Okay, what do you need? You know Penelope and I have your back. How can we help?”

There was no judgment in her friend’s voice. None. Ruth’s throat tightened, a bottleneck of tears trapped there. Tess understood.

“I just need to find him. I need to make things right.” She paused. “And I need to make things right with Xavier. He’s upset that I didn’t tell him the truth a long time ago.”

She waited for Tess’s reaction and possibly any indication of Xavier’s mood lately.

“He’ll be all right. Give him time. He loves you,” Tess said.

“Yeah, I know he does,” Ruth said, not fully convinced of that anymore.

“How can I help?” Tess said.

“I never signed any papers, and Mama and Eli are not talking. They won’t share the adoption papers or give me any names. I’m sitting outside the county clerk’s office and they gave me this form to fill out and it’s asking me all the questions I need answers to.” Everything came out in a rush of breath. Ruth pulled at her twists.

Immediately, Tess went into attorney mode. Her job primarily involved going after companies for monopoly leverage and price fixing. Adoption law was not her specialty, but she was a lawyer and, more important, a good friend. “What year was it that you had the baby?”

“1997. In August.”

Ruth heard Tess typing furiously on her laptop. After a minute, Tess said, “Okay, 1997 is the year the Indiana Putative Father Registry law went into effect.”

“Did you say punitive, like punishment?”

“No, p-u-t . . . putative. From what I’m seeing here, from 1997 on, any unmarried father has the right to register that he may have a child out there born around a certain time. If he registered and the lawyer didn’t give him a chance to weigh in at the time the adoption took place, the whole adoption could be upended.”

Once again, Ruth felt guilty for withholding information from Ronald. She cranked up the heat and blew into her hands to warm them. Rationalizing her decisions made the most sense right now.