Searching for the Truth

By Anthony Kelly

On a chilly, fall, October morning, a young mother gave birth to a set of twins that were eventually to be named, Jake and Emily. Once Jake and Emily were born, the mother and her husband were contemplating to put the twins up for adoption because they thought they couldn’t handle or afford having twins. Every time they looked into Jake and Emily’s eyes, they knew that there was no possible way to afford and care for them the way that they deserved. They loved them very much, but knew it was going to be impossible to give them what they needed. They took all actions possible to make sure that they ended up with a good mother and father. As Jake and Emily were still babies, they weren’t aware that their parents were putting them up for adoption. After thorough research, Jake and Emily’s parents found the adoption parents that they were looking for, Andy and Elizabeth. Andy and Elizabeth looked for years to find the perfect children to complete their lives.

Once Andy and Elizabeth adopted Jake and Emily, they couldn’t have been happier. Jake and Emily turned out to be great kids that had many wonders about the world. One of them being if their parents they had were really their birth parents. Andy and Elizabeth held this information from the kids for their entire lives. They didn’t want Jake and Emily to feel different or left out in any way. At about 10 years of age, Jake and Emily really thought about that question. They started to notice several different traits about them and their parents. They noticed that they had different colored eyes, different color hair, and that they could roll their tongues (which Jake and Emily couldn’t do.) All of these factors built up and made the kids very suspicious and curious throughout their young life.

At 20 years of age, Jake and Emily were very mature and still had so many questions about their parents. They both had jobs and their own apartments. No matter the responsibility they had to fulfill or other life issues that got in the way, they still wondered about their parents. One day, Jake and Emily called up Andy and Elizabeth and asked them for the first time in their lives if they were adopted. The parents told them the entire story and asked Jake and Emily to forgive them for hiding it all their lives. Andy and Elizabeth also gave Jake and Emily a picture of their birth parents holding them when they were babies in the hospital. Jake and Emily took the picture and gazed at it for a whole 10 minutes. Finally, they admitted that they understood the circumstances and decided to go on a mission to find their birth parents. They started their journey by looking on the internet to find information about their heritage and their ancestry. They took a DNA test to find out who their true parents were. Once they got the results back, it was said that they were indeed not the kids of Andy and Elizabeth. As much as this hurt them, they had to go on the quest to find their birth parents.

It was July 5th, 2015. This was the day that Emily and Jake took a plane from Chicago, Illinois to New York City. This is where their birth parents were supposedly living. While they were on their 3-hour plane ride, they gazed at the picture of their parents wondering and hoping they would eventually find them. Once Jake and Emily’s plane landed, they got off and noticed an older man sitting on the airport bench. This man looked very ill and homeless. The man winked at Jake and Emily as if he had known them for years. After this incident happened, Jake and Emily continued on to New York City and showed everyone they saw the picture and asked if anyone has seen their parents. Not one person recognized the picture they were showing them.

After an entire month of searching for their birth parents in New York, Jake and Emily decided to fly back home to Chicago to try and find more research about their birth parents. Once they got to the airport to fly back to Chicago, they saw the same man who winked at them when they originally arrived in New York. They decided to get a meal at the concession stand at the airport and give it to this homeless man as a sign of kindness. When they walked up to the man to hand him the meal they bought, they saw that he looked like someone they knew, someone they have seen before. They realized he had a similar face as Emily. As they approached the man to hand him his food, he asked, “Are you looking for me?”