I spent the next few days trying to return to my normal routine.<\/p>\n
Work.<\/p>\n
Food.<\/p>\n
Bills.<\/p>\n
Sleep, when I could manage it.<\/p>\n
I told myself that the office would eventually sort everything out.<\/p>\n
I had always believed that most problems became smaller when you stopped staring at them.<\/p>\n
This one didn't.<\/p>\n
I began noticing how often I relied on my identity without thinking about it.<\/p>\n
A form needed my name.<\/p>\n
I wrote it.<\/p>\n
A payment needed to be verified.<\/p>\n
I supplied my number.<\/p>\n
A document asked for my date of birth.<\/p>\n
I entered it without hesitation.<\/p>\n
Every ordinary task reminded me of the conversation with Marcus.<\/p>\n
I had spent thirty-two years assuming those details belonged together.<\/p>\n
Now a government record had put that assumption in doubt.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what to do with that.<\/p>\n
One evening, I sat at the kitchen table and tried to remember the earliest thing I could recall about my childhood.<\/p>\n
The memories came in pieces.<\/p>\n
A room.<\/p>\n
A voice.<\/p>\n
The feeling of waiting for someone to notice me.<\/p>\n
None of it proved anything.<\/p>\n
I had no clear memory of being taken somewhere or told that my name was changing.<\/p>\n
I had no recollection of a disappearance.<\/p>\n
I had simply grown up believing the people around me were my family and that my life began where my earliest memories began.<\/p>\n
I couldn't use the absence of another memory as evidence.<\/p>\n
Still, I wondered why certain parts of my childhood felt so difficult to explain.<\/p>\n
I remembered leaving home at eighteen.<\/p>\n
That memory was clear.<\/p>\n
I remembered the feeling of being unwanted and the determination I had carried with me when I started supporting myself.<\/p>\n
I had told myself that leaving was the beginning of my independence.<\/p>\n
I had never thought of it as an escape from a question I didn't know how to ask.<\/p>\n
I pushed the thought away.<\/p>\n
I was beginning to make connections without knowing whether any of them were real.<\/p>\n
That wasn't fair to anyone.<\/p>\n
Especially not to people I might be blaming simply because I was frightened.<\/p>\n
The following day, I contacted the benefits office again.<\/p>\n
I was told Marcus was not available to speak with me at that moment.<\/p>\n
I left my contact information and returned to work.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to spend every day calling and asking the same questions.<\/p>\n
I also couldn't accept sitting quietly while a record threatened to make my life more complicated.<\/p>\n
When Marcus finally contacted me, he asked whether I could return for another meeting.<\/p>\n
I agreed.<\/p>\n
I arrived with the same small collection of documents.<\/p>\n
He had added papers to the folder.<\/p>\n
I noticed the difference immediately.<\/p>\n
"Does that mean you've found something?"<\/p>\n
"It means there is more information to review."<\/p>\n
I sat down.<\/p>\n
He explained that the office was examining the historical case alongside the information I had provided.<\/p>\n
He still couldn't give me a complete account of what had happened in 1990.<\/p>\n
There were details that needed to be confirmed.<\/p>\n
I asked whether the file contained proof that I had been alive after the date of the recorded death.<\/p>\n
Marcus said he wasn't ready to make that determination.<\/p>\n
I pressed my hands together.<\/p>\n
"Then what can you tell me?"<\/p>\n
He looked at me for a moment.<\/p>\n
"I can tell you that your current record and the historical record cannot be treated as unrelated."<\/p>\n
That was the closest thing to a direct answer I had received.<\/p>\n
I waited for him to explain further.<\/p>\n
He said the connection was serious enough that the office needed to investigate it before completing my application.<\/p>\n
I asked whether the problem could be resolved by correcting the record.<\/p>\n
"That depends on what the review establishes."<\/p>\n
I leaned back.<\/p>\n
There it was again.<\/p>\n
Everything depended on something I hadn't been allowed to see.<\/p>\n
I tried to imagine what it would feel like to learn that the record was wrong.<\/p>\n
I would be embarrassed by how frightened I had become.<\/p>\n
I would probably complain about the wasted time.<\/p>\n
Then I would return to work and stop thinking about it.<\/p>\n
But the possibility of a simple mistake no longer felt as reassuring as it had at first.<\/p>\n
A mistake could explain a wrong date.<\/p>\n
It didn't necessarily explain why the case involved a missing child.<\/p>\n
I asked Marcus whether he had found any evidence that the child's death had been confirmed.<\/p>\n
He said he couldn't discuss that conclusion yet.<\/p>\n
I looked at him sharply.<\/p>\n
"Does that mean the death wasn't confirmed?"<\/p>\n
"It means I can't give you a conclusion before the review is complete."<\/p>\n
I understood the answer.<\/p>\n
I also understood that it wasn't the answer I needed.<\/p>\n
I stared at the folder.<\/p>\n
The edge of one page stuck out from beneath the cover.<\/p>\n
I could see a line of text, but not enough to read it.<\/p>\n
I resisted the urge to reach across the desk.<\/p>\n
Marcus noticed where I was looking.<\/p>\n
He adjusted the papers and closed the folder.<\/p>\n
I felt foolish for having hoped he might let me read it.<\/p>\n
Then I reminded myself that he was handling a restricted case.<\/p>\n
He wasn't going to abandon the process because I was desperate.<\/p>\n
I asked what I should do while the review continued.<\/p>\n
He told me to keep any original documents I found and make sure the office could contact me.<\/p>\n
I said I would.<\/p>\n
Before I left, I asked him whether he thought I had done anything wrong.<\/p>\n
He answered without hesitation.<\/p>\n
"I have no reason to believe you have."<\/p>\n
I hadn't realized how much I needed to hear that until he said it.<\/p>\n
For a moment, the room felt less hostile.<\/p>\n
I thanked him.<\/p>\n
He nodded, and I walked back through the hallway.<\/p>\n
Outside, I sat in my truck and let my hands rest on the steering wheel.<\/p>\n
I wasn't relieved.<\/p>\n
Not exactly.<\/p>\n
But I had one thing I hadn't had when I first arrived.<\/p>\n
Marcus wasn't treating me as a criminal.<\/p>\n
He was treating me as a man whose history needed to be understood.<\/p>\n
That was something.<\/p>\n
I drove home and placed my papers in a drawer instead of spreading them across the table again.<\/p>\n
I told myself I would wait for the next call.<\/p>\n
For a few hours, I managed to think about other things.<\/p>\n
Then night came, and I remembered the question Marcus had refused to answer directly.<\/p>\n
Had the child's death been confirmed?<\/p>\n
I didn't know.<\/p>\n
I only knew that the file had made my identity uncertain in a way I could no longer ignore.<\/p>\n
I spent the next few days trying to return to my normal routine. Work. Food. Bills. Sleep, when I could manage it. I told myself that the office would eventually … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36326,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36306\/revisions\/36326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}