ODHS is spread over a city block. A single-story redbrick building houses the Child Welfare Office. Double glass doors lead to a white linoleum hallway lit by rectangular fluorescent bulbs. A woman with closely cropped black hair sits behind a high counter. Her bright orange dress defies the dismal atmosphere. She taps away, eyes glued to a computer screen. Her name tag: clementine webster.

Clementine glances up. “Can I help you?”

I smile. “Yes. Hi. My name is Sylvie Peters Young and I’d like to see my foster care file.”

She slides a form onto a clipboard and hands it to me with a pen. “Just fill this out and bring it back with your driver’s license.”

“It’s that easy?” I ask, quickly filling out the short form.

“Sure is, kiddo. You have rights and we’re happy to provide that information. What years are we talking about?”

I hand back the clipboard and dig my driver’s license from my purse. “I was born in 1996 and adopted in 2002.”

Clementine grimaces. “Ah. That’s a problem.”

“Why?”

“Department policy is to destroy records seven years after a child is adopted or ages out of the system at eighteen.”

“When we called, the woman I spoke to said a lot of the older records are still in storage,” Thomas says.

Clementine nods. “True. The policy is seven years but no one actually has the time to regularly sort through all of that mess down there.”

I ask, “Could someone check for me?”

Clementine makes a copy of my driver’s license then says, “Sure thing. You never know. We might get lucky.” She ushers us into a small room. As we wait on opposite sides of a table, Thomas drums his long fingers on his plastic chair. “Quit it.” He folds his hands.

Fifteen minutes later, Clementine walks in and produces a faded brown file with a flourish. “Ta-da! Hard to believe the clerk found it. That’s practically a miracle. First, that it was still there. Second, if you saw the storage in the basement? It runs the length of this building, tight aisles, a claustrophobic wouldn’t last five minutes—total rabbit warren. But your file was right on top of the year 2002! I’ll be at my desk if you need anything else.”

My fingers tingle as I open the file. There’s a single sheet of paper inside that lists my date of birth, 5-10-1996; biological parents’ names, Becky and Seth Peters; arrival in foster care, 9-15-2000. The date I was sent to foster parents Hana and Wess Young, 4-12-2002, and my adoption date, 6-1-2002. “It took one month and change for Mom and Dad to adopt me,” I mutter. “Whoever Heidi was, she worked fast.”

“The average time for foster parents to complete the process of adoption is a year to eighteen months,” Thomas says.

There’s nothing about how my birth parents died, or who fostered me in the year-and-a-half before Mom and Dad took me in. My early childhood is summarized in one lonely paragraph. I hold up the sheet for Thomas to see. “There’s no caseworker’s name.”