Adopted status

Ransom’s adopted status is not merely a fact about his childhood; it is the missing link in his account of who he is. Born Patrick Cartwright and raised by Janice and Raymond Nolan as Patrick Nolan, he has spent years trying to recover information sealed off by a closed adoption. His search turns an old agency file into a bridge between his birth family, his adoptive family, and the name he later makes his own: Ransom.

Identity and Names

Ransom’s records preserve several stages of his identity. He was born Patrick Cartwright, given up to an adoption agency at the age of two, and adopted by Janice and Raymond Nolan. The agency file identifies him as Patrick Nolan, while the birth name attached to his original record is Patrick Cartwright. Years later, he tells Bethany that Ransom is neither the name he was born with nor the name he had until about five years earlier. His adopted status therefore sits within a sequence of names, not a single change: the birth identity, the name associated with his adoptive parents, and the later name by which Bethany knows him.

The account gives two different age markers for the transition to Patrick Nolan. Ransom says he was about two when his birth parents gave him up, and the agency record he finds includes a photograph of him at three. When he later explains his history to Bethany, he recalls becoming Patrick Nolan at about three or four. Together, these details locate the adoption in early childhood without making the paperwork a complete account of his experience.

The Record and the Search

Ransom knows that his parents adopted a child, but for years he has lacked the information that would identify that child as himself or lead him back to his birth parents. Because the adoption was closed, public-record searches do not provide what he needs. A family-court clerk has also warned him that the relevant state paperwork may have been destroyed; the adoption took place about twenty years earlier, and the more useful records are likely held by the agency that handled it. His search is thus directed toward an institutional archive that contains information unavailable through ordinary public channels.

That archive becomes accessible through the bargain he proposes to Bethany. He offers to pose as her boyfriend—or even her husband—for her high-school reunion weekend in exchange for secure access to files at the agency where she works. At first, he does not tell her what information he wants. Later, when Bethany gives him access, she specifies that the login is for the databases concerning adopted children and birth parents, not for other records. She lets him use her laptop because its authorization is recognized. The arrangement gives Ransom a path to his past, but it depends on Bethany’s trust and carries consequences for her if he misuses her access.

Reconstructing a Family Line

On Bethany’s laptop, Ransom opens the Children Served by Us database and searches for Patrick Nolan, a name he stopped using at least five years earlier. The initial search appears to return nothing; moments later, one result appears. The file includes a photograph of a three-year-old child and lists Janice and Raymond Nolan as the adoptive parents. It also records that he was given to the agency at age two and assessed as above-average in intelligence, with minor behavioral issues described as consistent with an unstable attachment to birth parents. The file contains records of an interview with him and his new parents, but it does not name his birth parents.

An attached document supplies the crucial next step: his birth name was Patrick Cartwright. Ransom uses that name in the separate birth-parents database Bethany has authorized him to consult. Among roughly half a dozen Cartwright results, he finds the entry connected to his birth name: Genevieve Cartwright and Alexander Cartwright. The names give him the information he has been trying to find for years. He writes them down, closes both databases, and turns to other records searches he has used in past odd jobs. The archival discovery identifies his birth parents; it does not, by itself, resolve everything about them or their lives.

Disclosure and Significance

When Ransom eventually tells Bethany why he sought access, he explains that his real name is not Ransom and identifies himself as Patrick Cartwright, later Patrick Nolan. He tells her that his adoptive parents were Janice and Raymond Nolan and that he still has a birth father alive nearby. The disclosure turns the database search from a concealed motive in their agreement into part of the story he shares with her. Bethany recognizes the Nolan name as local and begins to connect his history to the place where they grew up.

Ransom also tells Bethany that he remembers her from school: he was a junior when she was a freshman, about two years ahead of her, before his adoptive parents eventually sent him to private school. That recollection places his adopted identity within a childhood he and Bethany partly shared, rather than leaving it as a remote file or a story beginning with his adult persona. The adoption records first separate his birth and adoptive identities into distinct entries; by finding the names and telling Bethany how they fit together, Ransom begins to make that divided record legible as his own history.