Page 66 of An Unfinished Story
Back on the highway, he looked at Claire in her gold-rimmed prescription sunglasses, driving her convertible with the top down, singing with the reggae that seemed to ooze from deep within her, and he wondered where he’d be without her. Probably halfway through a miserable first draft ofI Hear Thunder, figuring out how the character was faring in his attempt to break free from the Mafia.I’m serious, Matteo. I’m done.
Every time Claire’s phone dinged, Whitaker would check to see if she’d gotten lucky fishing around the photo to friends and family. And one by one, they responded that they had never seen the boy in their lives.
The burning question that kept returning to their conversations was, How do you find a boy in foster care with a first name and a picture? They’d jumped the gun by hopping in the car to drive down to Sarasota, but what else were they going to do? Whitaker certainly wasn’t going to sit around his house and wait for answers.
He had reached out via text to a couple of his contacts, including a case manager in St. Pete and a woman named Carissa at the local child-placing agency, but he hadn’t heard back yet. He and Claire had agreed to drive straight to the placing agency’s office.
Inside a one-story office building close to downtown, the young man—possibly an intern—at the front desk wasn’t nearly as impressed with Whitaker’s local celebrity as much as he was with Claire’s brief story. He did warm up once Whitaker mentioned Carissa, though. “She’s out of the office today, but let me ask Sophie if she has a minute to help you.” A few minutes later, Sophie came around the corner wearing a pink suit jacket. After introductions, she led them to an empty meeting room with a large chalkboard covering most of one wall. The words THINK WITH YOUR HEART,NOT WITH YOUR HEADwere written in large block letters in the center.
Once they were situated in the chairs around the long conference table, the woman in pink looked at Claire incredulously. “So you’re trying to find a young man who may have known your deceased husband?”
“Yes, exactly.” Claire handed her the photograph. “We think my husband, David, was possibly helping him, perhaps acting as a mentor. Honestly, I’m not sure. I just know that this boy has some answers I’ve been looking for.”
“And you’ve heard, I’m assuming, how much effort the state puts into attempting to protect the children. I’m not saying you two have any ill intentions, but there are many parents we’d like to prevent from discovering their child’s location.”
“Yes, I totally get that.”
Sophie looked at the picture. “What’s his name?”
“Orlando.”
“You don’t know his last name?”
Claire shook her head. “All we have is the picture and his first name—or what we think is his first name.”
Sophie blew out a slow breath and shook her head as if they’d just asked her to find a sunken ship in the Gulf.
“And his age,” Whitaker chimed in. “We think he’s about fourteen.”
“If my husband was mentoring him, you know, spending time with him, wouldn’t he have had to register in some way? Wouldn’t there be paperwork?”
Sophie nodded. “He would have had to do a background check, get fingerprinted.”
“Which would be in the boy’s file?”
“Yes, but not something you could access.”
Claire was scrambling. “Is there a way to reach out to every case manager in the area via email with the photo?”
The woman stifled a grin. “Not that I’m aware of.”
Claire sighed. “What do we do then?”
“There are a few websites where children that are up for adoption are listed ... with pictures. I’d start there.” She named four sites as Claire typed them into her phone. “These are only children up for adoption, not everyone in the system. And they’re not exhaustive lists by any means, but at least it’s worth looking through.” She tapped her pen in thought. “DCF won’t help you without a court order.”
“DCF?” Claire asked.
Whitaker knew the answer. “Florida Department of Children and Families.”
Claire removed her glasses. “What else do we do? What would you do?”
Sophie pondered the question. “It’s a tough one. You could perhaps convince someone to share the list of licensing agents, the ones who license all the homes. They know their kids. But I don’t know that they’d help you. We’re all working to protect the children.”
“Could you help us get the list?” Claire asked.
“I don’t have it.” She looked at Whitaker. “Maybe Carissa can help you. I’d try Google. I’m really sorry, but they take this seriously. Honestly, you’re going to run into a lot of brick walls. Please don’t tell anyone I told you this, but I’d say the best thing you can do is try to get lucky on social media. You can find a lot of Facebook groups with foster parents in the area. Maybe they can help you.”
Whitaker had joined a few local groups involved with the foster care system as part of his research, but he’d never posted before. It wasn’t a bad idea. He’d do anything to find Orlando, even if that meant using his celebrity and getting the media involved.
