That's What Friends are For

"Belinda stayed the night and we started seeing each other on Saturday nights. Then it was Friday and Saturday nights, and then we added Sunday afternoons. That went on for about six months before I decided being with a woman was OK, but I really wanted a man again. I just didn't know how to tell Belinda that. Now that I know she likes men too, it'll be easier to tell her why we need to stop seeing each other."

Marjorie left after I gave her the USB flash drive with the pictures. She said she was going to ask Belinda if her guy had a friend. As I poured myself two fingers of Glenfiddich, I was wishing I could be that friend. Yeah, I know I'm too old to be chasing pussy that young, but a guy can dream, can't he?

The next morning I went down to the bank to deposit the checks I'd gotten for serving subpoenas, and then had lunch at the Chinese restaurant down the block. By one, I was sitting at my desk and looking over the mail I'd gotten.

The woman who walked into my office then looked about my age, but with a little work, she could have passed for ten years younger. She wasn't wearing much makeup, but what she was made her one of those women you look at, then look at again and keep looking until you couldn't see her anymore. Her pants and blouse were obviously business attire, and I don't see that very often. Most of my clients don't have jobs that require that, so they just wear what they wear every day.

Her pants didn't fit tight, but they didn't have to to so show me the soft, side to side sway of her hips when she walked in. Her lace trimmed blouse didn't fit tight either, but it was a pretty sure thing that under that white cotton was a pair of really fine tits.

She walked up to my desk and smiled.

"I'm Barbara Wicks, and I got your name from a woman who works where I work. Maybe you remember a girl named Marjorie? She said if anyone could help me, you could."

I asked her to have a seat and then asked what she wanted help with.

"I want you to find my daughter."

Well, that seemed pretty normal, so I started asking my normal questions.

"I can do that. What's your daughter's name."

I had my pen on the paper when she said, "I don't know."

Well, that wasn't normal. I put the pen down and looked up a Barbara.

"Uh...why don't you know your own daughter's name?"

Barbara looked at her lap.

"Because I haven't seen her since the day she was born. I know. I need to explain that.

"The spring of my senior year, I got pregnant by a boy I was going to high school with. It was my fault. I was eighteen and thought I was a woman, and John acted like he loved me. We did it in the back seat of his car one night. After that, he never spoke to me again. I found out later he'd done the same with three other girls. He just didn't get them pregnant like he did me. I told him he was going to be a father when I was three months along. I figured we'd do what most people in that situation did then. We'd both quit school, he'd get a job, and we'd get married.

"John's daddy owned the hardware store and wanted John to go to college. He also didn't think I was the kind of girl he wanted for a daughter in law. See, Daddy's job didn't pay very much, so we lived on the wrong side of town. John's daddy told my daddy he'd pay us ten thousand dollars if we'd agree to never tell anyone John was the father and never contact him or his family again about anything. Daddy said it was up to me, because I was the one who'd need the money.

"Ten thousand dollars was more than Daddy earned in a whole year, and we were barely getting by. There wasn't any way Daddy and Mom could afford to help me. I didn't even really read the contract the lawyer brought for Daddy and me to sign. I just told him it was for the best and he should sign it. We signed two copies, one for John's daddy and one for me. John's daddy wrote me a check and then left.

"I knew if I stayed at home, everybody would have been talking behind our backs about how I was such a bad girl to have let that happen. I knew how that worked because I knew another girl who had gotten pregnant a year before. I didn't want to put my family through that.

"Mom had a sister who lived in Nashville, and nobody else in Nashville knew me or my family. Aunt Sally told everybody I was her niece and my husband was in the Army and stationed in Germany. She took care of me and talked to me about what I was going to do after the baby was born.

"Aunt Sally never went to college, but she was a smart women, and she helped me see some things I hadn't been thinking about. What I thought about was the baby growing inside me and all the things my baby and I would do together. Aunt Sally listened to me up until my eighth month, and then sat me down for a serious talk.

"She said since I didn't have a high school diploma it was going to be very hard for me to support myself, let alone support a baby too. She also said most men wouldn't want anything to do with me if I already had a child. She wasn't being mean. She was just trying to make me see reality. She said it would be better for the baby if I agreed to adoption.

"Aunt Sally worked as a secretary in the Hull Building, and she knew a woman who worked for Children's Services. She took me to talk with the woman. The woman was really nice and explained all about what would happen if I gave my baby up for adoption and what might if I didn't.

"One thing she said really hit me. She said bringing a new life into the world was a big responsibility, and I should try to make sure my baby had the best life I could manage. After Aunt Sally's talk with me and then this one, I realized I wasn't going to be able to give my baby much of a life. When my daughter was born, I got to hold her until they cut the cord. Then they took her away and I never saw her again. I signed over my parental rights later that day.

"After that, I stayed with Aunt Sally and got my GED. Then I got a part time job and started going to Nashville State. I got my associate's degree in social sciences and then transferred to MTSU for my bachelors. When I got out of college, I started working for Child Services in Nashville as a counselor to women who can't take care of their children. I still do that.

"I think I'm pretty good at my job because I can identify with the women. A man probably can't understand what having a baby means to a woman. You carry a baby for nine months and you feel her moving inside you and kicking you. I'm sure a woman and her baby connect mentally too. I don't know how that happens, but I know I felt it. I never forgot that feeling. I still feel her today and I want to find her and see how she turned out."

I said I figured since she worked for the same government department that arranged the adoption of her daughter, she'd be easily able to find her, but Barbara shook her head.

"I can't just walk down to Records and ask them to give me my daughter's name and name of the family who adopted her. That information is sealed unless she's filed a consent for it to be released and she hasn't. I was able to get her original birth certificate since I'm her birth mother, but all it says is "Baby Girl McClain". McClain was my maiden name. I got what we call "non-identifying information", but most of that was on her birth certificate anyway. The only other thing I could do was sign a consent form so if she's looking for me, she'll be able to get my information. She hasn't tried, or at least I've never been informed she has. That's why I need your help."

I'd only done one of these investigations in the past and it had been ball-busting work. You haven't experienced the fucking government bureaucracy until you dive into the adoption system. Most of the laws are old and were intended to keep birth parents and children from ever finding each other. Tennessee does have consent laws now where birth parents can release their information and how they want to be contacted and their child can do the same, but it depends upon both doing that and then sorting out who is who.

I didn't want to burst her bubble, but she had to know what it was going to entail.

"Mrs. Wick, I've only done one other investigation like this, and it took months. That means it's going to be expensive, and I still might not come up with your daughter's name and a way for you to contact her. You might be better off going to one of the bigger agencies. They do this sort of thing, not frequently, but more often than I do and they have some more resources than I do."

She shook her head.

"I don't want a bunch of people knowing my business and in a bigger agency that would happen. Marjorie said you're very discreet and I could trust you. As for the money, my late husband owned twenty-three pawn shops in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, and I own them now. My share of the profits comes to about three hundred thousand a year, depending upon how the economy is doing. Money isn't a problem."

Well, she was serious, and far be it from me to turn down money when somebody offers it to me.

"OK. I need as much information as you have. Let's start with the father's name. We need that to make sure he hasn't signed a court order denying release of the information we need."

Barbara smiled.

"His name was John Ferguson, but you don't have to worry about John signing anything. He's dead. His daddy had enough money to buy me off, but he didn't have enough money to bring John back to life after he ran his new Corvette into a bridge abutment at a hundred miles an hour."

"OK, do you still have the contract you signed when you were seventeen? Sometimes lawyers write things into a contract that neither party really understands. I'll show it to a friend of mine to make sure you're legal in what you're trying to do."

"Yes, I still have it and I already had a lawyer look at it. John and his family gave up all their rights in return for not having to pay to support me and my daughter."

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I got as much information as Barbara could give me, and almost all that information was on the copy of the original birth certificate she gave me. I also got the name of the woman she'd talked to at Children's Services. Barbara said the woman had passed away three years before, so I wouldn't be able to talk with her, but she might have left notes or something else with her son.

I didn't hold out much hope that those notes or any other non-government information still existed. Barbara's daughter was born in 1975, and it wasn't likely any of the people involved were still working in Children's Services even if they were still alive. It would take forever to track them all down. That's what had taken me so long on that first case. I did have another idea made possible by modern technology.

As you've probably gathered, I'm not a big fan of the internet. It's a good way to waste time looking at pictures of cats doing stupid shit and their owners doing even stupider shit. The amateur porn is pretty good on a couple of sites, but other than that, I don't use it much.

The one good thing the internet has done is make it easier to get around a lot of laws designed to keep people from finding other people. Since I'm not a cop, I can't access NCIC or any other police database. I can get a person's credit history if I have to, but that takes a while. I also can't get anybody's phone records.

I don't have to fuck with any of that now because of social media. I'd used the social media sites before to track down a person. People are just fucking dumb when it comes to giving out personal information on these sites.

They won't just come out and say I'm Lisa Ann Snuggledick and I live at 69 Kummer Lane or anything like that, but they put up pictures of themselves doing stuff where you can see the names of places where they did that stuff. They think they're still being secretive enough when the give you the name of the city and state, but once I have that, all I have to do is figure out where they were doing what they were doing and then start talking to people.

The other thing that's happened is people looking for their birth parents don't have to navigate through fifteen goddamned government employees who's main concern is if they're going to get laid that night. All they have to do is register for one of the sites that helps people find each other. They're kind of like dating sites without the pictures of women in bikinis and guys with their shirts unbuttoned half-way down.

I have accounts on all the social media sites. I don't use them to post pictures of me standing in front of a statue of a naked woman with my hands on her tits like a lot of guys do, but I do use them to find people.

After Barbara left, I pulled up my account on each of those sites and then typed "adopted children looking for birth parents" into the search box. That got me to the group or groups of people on that site looking to reunite with their birth parents or other relatives.

Like any of the groups on social media, these groups are full of ads for people who'll search for you for a price, a lot of testimonials about how people found each other, and a bunch from assholes who just write shit like "I'm so happy for you", because they like to see their name in the header. I wasn't going to look through all that crap. I just typed enough information to get a response in the box where you add a post.

If you are a white female born at Centennial Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee on April 2, 1975 and have brown hair, please leave me a message. I might be your brother and I've been looking for you for twenty years.

OK, so I lied a little but there was a reason for that. In the only other one of these cases I'd done, I was looking for a man whose birth mother wanted to find him again. I found him after talking with a lot of people who either had something to do with the adoption or knew someone who did and had told them about the case. It turned out, the guy didn't want to have anything to do with his birth mother. He thought she'd abandoned him and he'd never forgiven her for that.

I might have better luck if I claimed to be a sibling looking for a long lost sister. That wouldn't be quite as traumatic for some people, and I could straighten things out if and when we made contact.

There are also several sites that do pretty much the same thing except they maintain a database of parents looking for kids and kids looking for parents. There are some where you have to pay a fee to register, but I bypassed them. They're out to make a buck, and just like the dating sites, it's more profitable if they keep you on the hook and paying the monthly fee for as long as possible. The free sites looked pretty honest, so I put my ad on three.

I didn't expect all the responses I got on social media. The next day I had fifteen or so instant messages on each site. Some were duplicates, but I had eleven solid leads. I replied to each one and asked the number on their birth certificate. In Tennessee at that time, as well as in most other states, when a baby was adopted, a revised birth certificate was issued. That certificate shows the names of the adoptive parents and the name they gave the baby, but all the other information stayed the same as on the original including the number. Since I had a copy of Barbara's daughter's original birth certificate, if the numbers matched, it was almost certain I had her daughter.

I'd learned from my first case that you have to do this. As cruel as it sounds, there are people out there who will claim to be your long lost son or daughter in hopes of getting as much money out of you as they can. I'd talked to three guys who said they were the guy I was looking for, but when asked for something I'd held back, like the name of the hospital or the doctor's name, they couldn't give it to me.

I checked every day after that and didn't have any return messages from any of the eleven until one a week later. The message gave me a birth certificate number and asked my name. The birth certificate number was a match, so I replied and explained who I was and why I'd lied.

I didn't get a response for another week, and then it sounded a little cautious.

"I won't give you any more information until you tell me more about my mother. Why does she want to meet with me? Does she need money? If I agree to meet with her, can I bring my husband with me?"

I didn't want to get Barbara's hopes up only to have her daughter decide she didn't want to meet. I didn't think Barbara would mind if her daughter's husband was there, because I intended to be there too. I hadn't told Barbara that, but I'd been in a position before where I arranged for two people to meet and it hadn't turned out well. I wrote back that her mother was financially independent and just wanted to see her and how she turned out. I also said I understood her concerns and it would be fine if her husband came with her.

Another week went by before I got an answer. Barbara had already called me three times to ask if I'd found out anything and I'd told her I hadn't but I was still working on it. After this answer, I could finally call her.

Barbara was shaking like a leaf when we walked through the gardens at The Opryland Hotel. That's where her daughter wanted to meet so there would be a lot of people around. Barbara spotted her daughter at the same time I did. The woman looked like Barbara had probably looked twenty years ago. She had the same long, brown hair, the same eyes, and the same build.

Barbara grabbed my arm.

"That's her. I know it's her. I feel it."

I asked Barbara to stay put while I found out for sure. I didn't want her to walk up to the woman with me and then find out she was just some woman who looked like Barbara.

I smiled as I approached the woman and the man beside her.

"Were you born on April second, in 1975?"

"Yes", she said.

"What hospital?"

"Centennial Hospital in Nashville."

I offered my hand.

"I'm Harry, the guy you've been messaging over the last month. I'm sorry I mislead you with my first ad, but it was necessary."

She smiled.

"That didn't upset me once I found out what you really wanted. Is that my mother over there?"

"Yes. She's really nervous about this, so don't be surprised if she seems a little cool. She's just trying not to hurt you or get hurt herself."

I didn't hear what they talked about. Once I introduced Barbara and then found out her daughter's name was Tiffany Rodgers, I stepped back and let them talk. Tiffany's husband, Mark, walked over a little later.

"I didn't know if Tiffany was going to go through with this or not. She's wondered about her birth mother since she learned she was adopted. She kind of wanted to find her but she didn't. Her adoptive mother and father are really great people, and I think she thought she'd be giving up what she had with them. I don't know if she'll want to keep meeting Barbara or not, but I told her this was her chance to find the answers she's been looking for."

I said I understood.

"Barbara's kind of the same way. She kept telling me she didn't want to interfere with your life. All she wanted to do was find out how her daughter turned out. I think she was looking to feel better about giving her up.

Mark nodded, but he didn't say anything more. We spent the next half-hour just standing there and watching them.

It didn't last as long as I thought it would. After that half-hour, Barbara held out her arms and Tiffany gave her a weak little hug. Then she walked over and told Mark she was ready to go home.

When Barbara joined me, I asked her how it went. She slipped her arm in mine.

"I still need to pay you, so let's go back to your office. I'll tell you there."

When we got back to my office, Barbara plopped down on my couch.

"I'm kind of glad that's over. I'm still shaking. I sure could use a drink to settle myself down a little. You have any vodka?"