Sydneyyyy123 : pwalk95 and I just met CooperAnderson from #FreeCreditRating on the ferry to Alcatraz! It was a literal dreamboat XD #bestfieldtripever
Peter's phone buzzed with the notification of Syd's tweet. He wished she had waited a little longer to post it. Sure, Cooper had told them to do it, but now all their classmates would know he was there. He had just trapped himself on an island prison with rabid teenage fanboys and fangirls.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cooper look at his phone too, and realized that the celebrity had just gotten the same notification. Peter was ready to melt from embarrassment, but Sydney didn't even seem to care.
Once on the island, Cooper, Pam, and James waited for the schoolkids to scatter before they began their tour. Cooper spent the time trying to scratch the itch that had popped up when he saw those kids on the ferry. What was it about them? Why did they have this strange impact on him?
He was glad he'd thought to tell them to put the picture on Twitter. Sure, it might alert a few people to his whereabouts, but really, he wasn't that famous. Most importantly, though, the picture was now on the internet ( the internet is forever , Mr. Ellison's voice from I2I said) and he could see if maybe that would make the pieces click.
Peter loved San Francisco. Back on the bus after exploring the Castro and getting to know the LGBTQ history of the city, he felt drunk on freedom. This was what he wanted. Maybe he could come to San Francisco for college. Close enough to home that mom wouldn't freak out, but far enough that she couldn't insist that he live with her.
When he got home after the trip, mom had made chicken salad for dinner. Maybe it wasn't the sort of grand meal Syd's parents treated her to for special occasions, but Peter knew what it was. It was a sign of progress. Mom only cooked during her good periods. If she'd made chicken salad, she was on the up.
Once Cooper was back in his apartment in LA, and Pam and James were en route to Columbus, he finally allowed himself to try to scratch that itch again. Obviously the kids weren't actors as well, they'd been too starstruck at his presence, so it's not like he recognized them from TV. He thought that it had been a local high school group, so they couldn't be people who were, somehow, from back home in Ohio. Maybe they just had those faces.
Or maybe…
It hurt Cooper to think about Blaine. About everything he was missing, Blaine was missing, their parents were missing. But Blaine would be nearing 16 now. Those kids looked like they were about 16. Maybe he just wanted to put Blaine's face on another kid's body.
Blaine's face.
Cooper had gotten more age-progression photos from the PI back in Philadelphia, ahead of Blaine's 16th birthday this coming July. He had just been looking them over, ready to send them to Gus for the website, before his parents arrived. Cooper pulled up the files on the computer and looked.
It wasn't a perfect match, by any means. The hair was wrong, the face was a slightly different shape. But there was a resemblance between the picture on Cooper's computer and the kid from the ferry. He pulled up the Tweet to make sure he wasn't crazy and held the phone screen up to his computer.
No. There was definitely something.
But just to be sure, Cooper clicked on the boy's handle, glad his friend (Sydney, judging from her handle) had tagged him.
pwalk95
Not that P Walker. SHS 2013.
So the kid had a sense of humor and was the right age. He scrolled through more tweets and mentions feeling like he was verging on Humbert Humbert territory, but that itch needed to be scratched. He figured out enough to realize that the "P" stood for Pete (or Peter, or Petey, depending on his friends' moods, apparently) and that "SHS" was Sacramento High School.
So he switched over to Facebook.
Someone needed to give these kids a lesson in internet privacy, maybe an I2I class of their own. Tomorrow, though, because right now it was working in Cooper's favor.
The kid had most of his profile visible to the public. He lived in Sacramento, so that was a big sign that this wasn't the right kid. But then there was a video of Peter singing "Giants in the Sky" from his school's production of Into The Woods , and it would make sense for Cooper's brother to also have an affinity for the arts, right?
And then he saw it, the piece of information that finally soothed the itch:
Places He's Lived:
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
Current City: Sacramento, CA
Life Events:
September 1999: Moved to Sacramento, CA.
That couldn't be a coincidence.
Cooper took screenshots, he copied photos, he collected as much information as he could. And then he began to compose the email he never thought he'd send.
To: Len Carter
Subject: Possible Lead?
Hey Len,
Thanks for sending the age progression photos of Blaine. I can definitely see why you asked for my school pictures from when I was 16 – your guy gave him my hair! I forwarded them to Gus, so we'll put them up on the website soon, rather than waiting for his birthday.
So, this is going to sound strange, and I know you're going to want to immediately tell me that I'm just seeing things I want to see, but just look everything over before you do, okay?
Mom, dad, and I were in San Francisco a week ago and we ran into this kid (he was a fan, I'm a celebrity, what can I say, haha). Something about him made me pause, so when I let the kids take a selfie I told them to tag me in it on Twitter. I've been looking at the picture and the progression photos you sent me for the last couple hours and I can't stop seeing things. It can't be, but I think there's definitely something there.
Then I went even further down the rabbit hole (maybe if this whole actor thing doesn't work out, I should look into training as your apprentice). His Twitter was tagged in it, and from that I found his Facebook, and there's a lot of compelling evidence there. I think the most important bit is the "Places He's Lived" section – he says that he was born in Philly and moved to Sacramento in September 1999. That's just too much of a coincidence for me.
And yes, I know his name isn't Blaine.
Please, just to keep me sane, will you look into this and let me down easy?
Best,
Cooper
Attachments: Twitter photo , Twitter photo , Facebook photo , Facebook photo , Facebook
Len Carter had retired from the Philadelphia police department early. He'd been a detective for nearly a decade at the time, had worked for the department practically since the day he'd graduated from Penn State, and his pension wasn't too bad by the time he was fifty. His wife had always been the real breadwinner, so when he suggested to her that he wanted to retire so he could start his own PI practice, she hadn't batted an eye.
Not long after he retired, Blaine Anderson was abducted. Two years into his practice, the family approached him. Their other son's school had hosted a fundraiser and they wanted someone they could trust to keep the case from going cold.
He'd been more than happy to take the case. He wasn't always on the clock for it, but as one of his earliest and longest cases, it was often on his mind. He probably invoiced the family for far less than the actual work he did, but it just didn't feel right charging people to look for their child. Especially now that he was a grandfather to a little boy the same age that Blaine Anderson had been when he was taken.
So even though he thought Cooper's email was a shot in the dark, he went ahead and looked through the pictures. He looked at Peter Walker's Facebook profile. He even looked up the school newspaper. He learned what he could about the kid.
It wasn't much, but it was more than he'd had in a long time, so Len kept digging.
It was in a post more than a year back on the kid's timeline. A friend had posted a picture of Peter with a few other kids. It looked to be some time during the night, and they were standing on a street corner with a diner in the background.
The caption read, "Petey's breaking some rules XD What Marilyn doesn't know won't kill her ;) #helicoptermom"
Based on the caption, it seemed like Marilyn was the name of a mom, not another kid or sibling. Since the poster specifically referenced Peter, it wasn't hard to jump to the conclusion that Marilyn was his mother.
The name Marilyn Walker meant something to him.
The names Marilyn and Peter Walker together really meant something to him.
Len had always kept meticulous notes, and while he'd shredded most over the years once cases had been solved or closed, there were some that he kept because they just had too much emotional weight. He filed the pages of notes from that fire back in '91 in the cabinet in his office because it wasn't just a horrific accident – it had also been one of his earliest cases as a lead detective. So even without those notes, Len remembered the names.
But still, he fished them from his cabinet. He pulled up the newspaper archives. And he sent an email to a friend of his who still worked in that precinct.
It took two weeks for the information to start coming to him. He got it, it was an old case, open and closed accidental fire. CPS hadn't been investigating Marilyn because the child was dead, so there was no more information on that front. Everything was straightforward at the time, though no less tragic.
The files that he finally got were thinner than he remembered. The reports on the fire were complete, but there wasn't as much about Marilyn after it as he remembered. She had become a bit of a frequent flier, often coming into contact with law enforcement and the health department when she went off her meds and had to be court ordered to rehab or the psych ward. But she'd completely dropped off the radar after 1999. There was note in the file that her landlord had asked for a police assist for her eviction, but within days it was reported that she'd moved out of her own accord.
That had been in September 1999.
She'd lived only three blocks from Fifth Street Park.
Still, this was all circumstantial. Surely there were other people named Marilyn who named their sons Peter. Even other Marilyn Walkers who named their sons Peter Walker. He couldn't go to a judge just because one Peter Walker died tragically in a fire in Philadelphia at age 5 on September 20, 1991, and another Peter Walker turned up in September 1999 at age 4, both with a mother named Marilyn.
The two pictures in his new file told the same story: compelling, but circumstantial. One was a somewhat grainy blown up image of a wallet-sized portrait. It was all that had remained of Peter when Marilyn's father's home had burned down. The other was a posed picture of four-year-old Blaine Anderson on his first day of preschool. The two boys certainly shared some similarities. They could have been cousins.
He still needed more.
Len found a friend of a friend of a friend who worked for Sacramento PD. Detective Amanda Quinn was willing to work with Len, but insisted that there wasn't much she could do. Even with her cooperation, he still couldn't access certain records – educational, medical, or otherwise – without Marilyn Walker's permission. And for obvious reasons, he couldn't just ask her.
So Len planned the next best thing.
He was completely upfront about his motives, about a case that was a tough nut to crack that he'd traced to California. And then he suggested to his wife that they kill two birds with one stone and go on vacation to San Francisco. He could rent a car and drive to Sacramento when he needed.
Len found Peter's school easily enough, but had more trouble tracking down the boy himself. From there, he was able to backtrack and found the boy's home. He spent several hours outside, waiting to get a photo of Marilyn.
From there, he met up with Det. Quinn at the SPD office. They ran the photos through facial recognition, as did his friend back in Philly, and the only match that came up was Marilyn Walker, sole survivor of the tragic fire back in '91.
Once all the evidence was on the table, Det. Quinn was convinced enough to bring it to her captain and request permission to open a formal investigation, which they would conduct in complete cooperation with Len and the Philadelphia PD. This way, they could obtain vital records on Marilyn. It wasn't completely out of the question that Peter was her son, a replacement for the one she'd lost. But with the records that Len had from her time in hospitals around Philadelphia, it was damn near impossible.
This was the break they needed in the case.
In the last two months, Cooper had heard next to nothing from Len. Following his email, he'd gotten an infuriating, " Looking into it ," in response. He'd known Len long enough that he truly believed that the man would let him down gently, not ghost him.
Peter was hoping that he'd get more freedom with the summer. He was, after all, 16 and almost a junior in high school. But his mom still wouldn't budge on the driver's license front, nor would she allow him to get a job. He'd barely managed to convince her to let him do community theatre in town, and only then because she dropped him off and picked him up daily.
During the day while she was at work, Peter was free to an extent. His mother had realized that she couldn't hide him from the world and had just requested that he only get in a car if a friend's parent was driving. Considering how freaked she was about him driving, that made sense. It just severely limited his options.
When out and about he often felt an odd prickle on the back of his neck, but never saw anyone when he turned around.
He couldn't explain why, but something about this summer felt different. Like it was building to something more than just a new school year.
Maybe it was his dreams at night.
They were now filled with vague figures, and he always awoke feeling lost. He figured it was just memories of his grandpa and aunt and the fire coming back to haunt him.
The school faxed over all paperwork they'd received from Marilyn. It didn't take an expert eye to quickly realize that a lot of the documents were forgeries. They were decent, but clearly fake. They did confirm that Peter was supposedly born in Philadelphia on February 8, 1995. Other than the year, those were the exact details of the Peter Walker who died in the fire.
A quick search with the Pennsylvania Vital Records division confirmed that there was no other Peter Walker (or a child by any other name) born to Marilyn Walker.
They had it.
Even if there was no evidence as to who Peter was , they knew who he wasn't .
Peter was waiting outside the community center where his play rehearsed when his mom pulled up. She had a bag of groceries in the backseat and music was blaring loudly from the speakers. After an exhausting rehearsal, Peter was happy to sit back and enjoy not having to talk.
Mom set to making dinner when they got home, and Peter quickly showered. The rehearsal space was poorly ventilated and it could get all kinds of hot in there. He was looking forward to tech if only to get into the freezing auditorium.
He was just helping his mom set plates for dinner when there was a knock on the door. She looked to him, almost accusingly, and asked, "Did you invite someone over?"
"No," he said, furrowing his brow. "Maybe it's Sydney? You know that she sometimes pops over when she has exciting news."
Marilyn smiled fondly. "Why don't you go get the door?"
Peter didn't even think to look through the peephole, so sure he was that it was Syd.
But before him stood two police officers, their uniforms crisp, badges shiny, and guns holstered at their hips.
"Is it Sydney?" Marilyn called from the kitchen without looking over her shoulder. "Hi, Syd!"
"Um, mom, you better get in here," Peter said, staring at the officers in confusion.
His mother's face lost all color as she turned the corner and saw the two officers standing before her son.
"Marilyn Walker?" the woman said.
Mom nodded slowly.
"You are under arrest on suspicion of kidnapping. You have the right to remain silent…"
Peter stood in slack-jawed silence. What was going on? His mother was being arrested right before his eyes and –
He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. The male officer had apparently escorted his mother from the apartment. He looked up into the eyes of the woman. "You can come with me," she said kindly.
Peter nodded dumbly, and followed her from the apartment, locking the door behind him. All he had were his keys and his phone, which he slid out of his pocket to text Syd.
Peter: SOS!
Syd: Whats up?
Peter: I have no idea, but two cops just showed up and arrested mom
Syd: you're joking right
Syd: Right?
Syd: PETE?
Peter: No. I have no clue what's going on but they just took her away and now they're driving me to the station because they just freaking *arrested* my mom and I don't know what they're going to do with me
Syd: Okay, calm down
Syd: I'm getting in my car
Syd: actually better idea
Syd: I'm grabbing my parents and we're getting in *their* car and we're going to meet you there
Peter: thanks
Peter was left to wait in what looked like an employee lounge or break room, if TV shows were anything to judge by. Nice to know they were at least somewhat realistic. There was a couch, a vending machine, a microwave, a fridge, and a small table with chairs. He'd sat down at the table only because he didn't know what else to do.
The door opened and he recognized the female officer, Detective Quinn, from his home. Behind her was another woman. She was dressed much more casually and looked just as out of place as Peter felt.
"This is Ms. Greene from the Department of Social Services," Det. Quinn said. "She's going to talk with you, okay?"
Peter just nodded numbly.
Once the door was closed and Det. Quinn was gone, Ms. Greene sat across from Peter and pulled out a notebook.
"Hi Peter," she said, her voice kind. "You can call me Laura, none of that Ms. Greene stuff, okay?"
He nodded.
"Now I can't imagine how you're feeling right now, but I want you to know that I am here to be on Team Peter, okay? I don't care about anyone else in this building right now other than you."
Peter wanted to find comfort in that, but still. She was just some social worker. This was just her job.
"Peter, how much did Detective Quinn tell you about what happened earlier tonight?"
"Not much. They just handcuffed my mom and brought me here –" he cut himself off, shocked to find he was near tears.
"That can't have been easy to see."
He was silent for a moment. "What's going on?"
"I'm going to be honest with you, Peter, this is a very complicated situation. My supervisor is outside right now trying to figure all of that out. But what we do know is that the police have significant evidence to have arrested your mother on suspicion of kidnapping and –"
Peter interrupted her right there. "No way. Mom's – she's my mom. She would never do that to someone. Besides, she's always at home with me, how would she kidnap someone?"
"Peter," Laura said gently, and he knew that there was something that he was missing. "Peter, the police believe that your mother kidnapped you ."
Mon, Jun 27, 7:06 PM (just now)
To: James Anderson; Pam Anderson; Cooper Anderson
From: Len Carter
Subject: Conference Call
As soon as you are available. Line is 1-916-555-0624. Password 826943#
I will be on until 11 PST.
L.
Laura's supervisor, Howard, was out in the lobby of the police station, working with the detectives and Len to come to a conclusion.
"The fact of the matter is, regardless of his identity, with his current caretaker incarcerated, the department will be taking emergency custody. So anything you want to do regarding the boy in that office will have to go through us."
"Look," Len said, "I've been working on this case for damn near a decade. I have three loving family members who will want to know if that's their son and brother. I know that you are here to protect the kids in the system, but this is a very delicate situation."
"I understand that," Howard said. "I really do. And if what you're saying is true, then I hope we can reunite the boy with his family. But for now, we need to consider his immediate needs. And that is all about ensuring that he comes out of this building as un-traumatized as possible."
"And when he leaves the building?" Det. Quinn added. "Where will he be going? If Mr. Carter is right, this is going to bring a lot of attention. You can't just ship him off to a foster home."
"And you can't honestly think a residential facility or – god forbid – JDC is a better option?" Howard responded.
There was silence for a moment. Then, an intake officer came from around the corner.
"Um, excuse me?" he said. "I've got a bunch of people who say they're here for Peter Walker."
Cooper called his parents to make sure they saw the email; it was already 10 PM in Ohio after all. They hadn't, but as soon as Cooper filled them in, they hung up and everyone called the conference line Len had sent.
Peter was standing with his arms crossed across his chest while Laura remained in her chair.
"No. No way. She's my mom . She didn't take me, you've got this all wrong. There was a fire back in Philly, it killed my grandpa and aunt and destroyed all our stuff, so maybe that's why you think she took me, because she doesn't have all the paperwork and records anymore but she didn't - she's my mom."
Laura never interrupted him, never made any movement as if she wanted to interject. She simply sat and waited and allowed Peter to say what he needed to say.
"Okay, Peter. The police are going to continue their investigation, and if they're wrong, then you will go back to your mom. But they wouldn't have arrested her if they weren't pretty sure."
Peter scoffed.
"So here's my idea: tonight, I have to take you into the custody of the Department. You said yourself, it's just you and your mom. I'm going to do what I can to find a good foster home for you to stay in, or if you have anyone who's a really good family friend, so close they're basically family. I need to know what you want."
Peter sat down. "I just want to be with my mom."
Det. Quinn went to the lobby and found an impassioned teenage girl with two rather abashed looking parents behind her.
"You're here about Peter Walker?" Det. Quinn asked.
"Yes," Syd said. "What's going on? Why won't you let me talk to him?"
"Why don't you come back with me, and we can get this figured out."
"This is Len."
"Len, we're here, it's all of us," Cooper said, somewhat breathlessly, though he'd done no more than sit on his couch for the last hour or so.
"Good, glad you were all able to make it."
"What exactly is going on?" James asked. Cooper could hear the faintest note of hope in his voice.
"There's been a break in your case."
Silence reigned on the line.
"'Our case' - you mean Blaine?" Pam finally asked timidly.
"Yes. On Cooper's information, I tracked down a suspect in Sacramento. I've been working with Sacramento and Philadelphia PD for a few weeks and they arrested the suspect earlier tonight."
"On Cooper's information?" James asked.
"You mean - it was - it's him?" Cooper asked, knowing he would have to fill his parents in later.
"That's not confirmed yet. Even if this isn't Blaine, though, you still managed to find a kid who had been abducted, so this is a win. I wanted to brief you about this, before anything leaks - though everyone is keeping it hush-hush. That means I don't want to see it on that website of yours, Cooper."
"Got it," Cooper said, unsure how else he could possibly respond.
"So what's next? Do we go out there?" Pam asked.
"Not yet. I'll reach out to some of the labs that work with your local PDs to see if you can get in for appointments for DNA tests. We'll run it with the kid, and then see what happens."
"We can approve you as a kinship home on an emergency basis, since your family seems to be very close with Peter," Howard explained to Sydney's parents, Paul and Heather Johnson. "We'll still need to complete all background checks and home study requirements within 30 days, but that would mean that Peter is able to go home with you tonight - providing you are okay with this?"
Paul and Heather nodded somberly. If this hadn't just been explained to them by uniformed officers and a state social worker, they would've thought someone was playing an elaborate joke. But it was all true, and they had to do whatever they could to help Peter. He and Sydney had been friends for so long that he was practically their other child.
Laura drove Peter back to his and his mom's apartment to grab some things. He wasn't sure how long it would be, or if he would be allowed to come back. Would they be evicted if mom was still in jail at the end of the month? What would happen with all their stuff?
He decided on stuffing enough clothes for two weeks into a duffel bag and grabbed his phone, iPod, and chargers before closing the door. He didn't bother cleaning up the dinner, which still sat on the small Formica table, uneaten.
Pulling up outside of Sydney's home was strange. It was like a second home to him, but tonight – tonight it meant something else. Peter numbly followed Laura up the walkway and allowed himself to be whisked away by Sydney while Laura had Mr. and Mrs. Johnson sign some forms.
Peter fell into an uneasy sleep that night, with more lurking figures populating his dreams.
When he woke at 5 the next morning, he counted it as close enough to a full night's sleep, and made his way downstairs. Only Mr. Johnson was up, an early riser by habit so he could exercise before going to work. The man quietly considered Peter and then offered the boy some coffee.
Peter had never had coffee in his life, but this felt like the moment to start.
But even with cream and sugar added, he nearly spat it out on his first sip. Only a sense of proper decorum kept him from showering the kitchen table with coffee.
Mr. Johnson laughed his hearty laugh. "I think we've got tea and hot chocolate around here, too."
Peter couldn't help but grin. Syd's dad was always able to lighten up any situation. "I think I'll just stick to water."
"Help yourself." Mr. Johnson gestured at the cabinets and kitchen sink.
It felt so natural to be in their kitchen, that Peter could almost forget why he was there. But he had never been allowed to sleep over at a friend's house before, so the early morning hour quickly shattered any illusions of normalcy.
"Bud, no matter what is going on, we're all here for you, okay?" Mr. Johnson said, as if he could sense the sudden change in Peter's thoughts.
Peter simply nodded, but didn't look back over. He couldn't let Mr. Johnson see him cry, not yet.
The rest of the day was almost normal. Mrs. Johnson took Peter to his rehearsal, and he and Syd joked together in her bedroom until dinner. Again, it wasn't until he was getting ready for bed that the total not-normalness of the situation crashed down on him.
"I can't believe this is what it took for us to finally have a sleepover," Syd said, as if reading his thoughts.
Peter looked up at her, wanting to be scandalized, but knew that was just Syd. She was treating him like normal. He was the one acting strange.
"C'mon," she said. "Let's watch Mamma Mia! "
Laura came to pick Peter up the next day to bring him to the local hospital. There was a lab there that could run a DNA test to see if he was who his mom said he was.
She sat him down in the lobby and explained everything to him. "Now, technically, I am your legal guardian. But we're not going to force you to do something that makes you uncomfortable. Even if we don't know your birthday, we know that you're old enough to make your own choices. Figuring out who you are would make a whole lot of things a whole lot easier or more complicated, depending on the outcome, so that shouldn't be the deciding factor. It's about you, what you want, what's best for you."
Peter nodded and was quiet for a moment. "And what happens if I'm not - if it's -"
"There's a private investigator who's been working with a family who lost their son. He's the one that found you. If you want, we can test to see if you match with them."
It hadn't hit Peter until then, that there was another side to this whole mess. For his mother to have kidnapped him, that would mean that she had taken him from someone else, and there was someone else out there who was suffering through the loss of a child.
If she really had done that, would he want to know this family? Would he be able to forgive his mom? Could he even make the decision to find out?
"But that's in the future. Right now, all we're doing is checking your DNA with your - with Marilyn's. Is that okay?"
Peter looked down at his shoes and scuffed them over the hospital floor. Finally he looked up. "Yeah, okay."
It was the longest week of Peter's life. Several days after going to the hospital, Laura picked him up again, this time for his five day hearing in court. She said that it was all very straightforward, but he felt so untethered that he insisted on going, just to imagine he had some agency in his own life.
The Department of Social Services' lawyer quickly explained the circumstances of the removal, that they were still waiting on the results from the DNA tests, and the judge quickly agreed that it was in Peter's best interest to remain in care. The whole thing was over in 10 minutes and Peter felt even more unmoored than ever before.
Then came the call to Sydney's parents. Laura wanted to hold a team meeting at the department offices. Peter knew what it meant: the test results had come back and now was the moment of reckoning.
The meeting had started simply enough. Laura explained to the gathered crowd (Syd, her parents, Peter, Howard, Det. Quinn, and a few of the lawyers from court) that they were all there because they cared about Peter. She asked Peter and Syd's parents to say a little bit about how things were going at home. The county attorney explained the decision that had been made in court. Then Det. Quinn spoke up. The DNA results had come back. Peter wasn't Peter.
He didn't hear much of anything after that, if anything was said.
How do you react when your entire identity is stripped away?
He is no one.
"Pete. Peter!" He felt a familiar elbow jab his ribs and looked up at Syd and then around the rest of the table to see everyone staring at him.
"Sorry... what?" He wasn't sorry, though. How could they expect him to continue with this meeting as if everything was normal, when all that he was had just been taken away?
"I just asked how you are. I can't imagine how difficult this news is for you," Laura said.
"I guess I know why she didn't let me get my license or go anywhere without her," he muttered. He almost wanted to laugh. Why did he want to laugh? This was the least funny thing that had ever happened to him.
Other than that time you were kidnapped and forgot it, apparently, his brain offered.
"Peter," Det. Quinn said, sitting forward. She was his favorite of the many cops he'd spoken to in the last few days, but hadn't quite managed the kind tone that Laura had. He guessed that was the difference between social workers and cops. "Peter, I've been working with a man who believes that his clients are your family. We have DNA samples from them. Would you let us run your DNA again, to see if these are your parents?"
He looked around the table. Everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to make a decision. But he was no one, they had just told him so. How could he be expected to make a decision like this if he didn't even have a name?
He hadn't realized that he'd stopped breathing until he felt Sydney's hand slide into his and squeeze gently.
He thought about those people, spending so many years not knowing if their son was even alive. Even if he was still no one after the test, it would at least help those people, right?
"Um, yeah," he finally whispered. "Okay."
Laura brought Peter to his old apartment after the meeting. She had a bunch of boxes in the back of her car and she spent several hours boxing up everything he wanted to keep. The department would come collect it later, she explained, and they could put it in storage for him. Everything else in the apartment, once they closed the door, would be dealt with by his mom's - by Marilyn's court appointed attorney.
Just before they left, Peter's attention fell on a picture on the wall: him and mom, standing in front of a waterfall. A few years ago, they'd gone on a road trip into Oregon. On the way, they'd stopped and went on a short hike. Peter had wanted to jump in the water and swim and splash around, but mom had stopped him. He'd been a little annoyed at the time, but after hiking back to the car in dry clothes and shoes, his mood had settled and he'd realized that mom had just had his best interests at heart.
Peter had been moving on autopilot the last several days, simply doing what Sydney, or Laura, or Mr. and Mrs. Johnson told him to do. He hadn't stopped to even think about what he wanted to do since that night.
"Um, Laura?" he asked hesitantly.
"Yeah?"
"Do you think I could see her - my mom?"
The words were in the open air, hanging between the two.
"Honestly? I don't know. I'd have to talk with my supervisor and the police. But if it's something you want, something you think would be good for you, I'll do what I can to make it happen."
Peter honestly didn't know how he felt about his mom, or if seeing her might break him. But he knew that he had to see her. Even if the police were right and she wasn't actually his mom, she had still been the one there for him, looking out for him, for as long as he could remember.
Afterwards, he insisted that she drop him off at rehearsal. He hadn't told anyone there what was going on, but he was sure they knew that something was wrong. At the very least his performance had suffered.
But he found it much harder this time because here he had to play a role playing a role. He couldn't just be himself because he no longer knew who that was. But he had to pretend to be who he used to be, to be Peter, while also playing the role he was cast in in the play.
It was exhausting.
He got his first full night's sleep since this had all begun.
Cooper was used to living for the ring of his cell phone. After every audition, every callback, he was extra careful about where he went, avoiding dead zones as if they would literally cause his death just so he wouldn't miss the call and force them to offer the part to the next guy on the list.
But if he had been frantic about his phone then, it was nothing to now. Nothing compared to the days following his appointment at the hospital when they'd collected his DNA sample.
He didn't leave his apartment. He immediately sent all his friends' and agent's calls to voicemail so that in case the real call came in, he wouldn't already be on the phone. He barely slept, rousing at the slightest noise.
And then the email came.
Fri, Jul 8, 12:00 PM ( just now )
To: James Anderson; Pam Anderson; Cooper Anderson
From: Len Carter
Subject: News
Same number and password as before. I'll be on the line until 3 PST.
L.
Cooper didn't even bother calling his parents first to see if they'd gotten the email. He knew they were just as attached to their phones as he was.
There were no pleasantries exchanged. They didn't even let Len say hello. There was the click, the recorded voice informing them that the organizer had joined the line, and immediately all three Andersons demanded answers.
"The results just came in. You better book your plane tickets because Blaine is in California."
A/N:
I am not a police officer or private investigator (though I did once consider taking PI classes because it seemed like it would be fun and I was pretty decent at adoption reunion searches for really old cases). I tried to look up what PIs and police can and can't do and tried to be as accurate as possible, but there were certain things that needed to happen in certain ways for plot purposes.
I am, however, a social worker. I work in child and family services. However, I've never had any case close to something like this so I don't know exactly how it would be handled. I also only know about kinship services and home study approvals and emergency removals in my jurisdiction, which is decidedly NOT California, nor Ohio. So that may not be 100% accurate. In general, I tried to be accurate with that stuff, but with how unique this situation is, there is a good chance that I am not accurate in every manner with how it would be handled.