The note on the third page was dated 2016, and it said I had previously appeared in that court under a different case number. That was impossible. I had never been to the county before, and I certainly had never served on a jury there. I called the clerk back and asked her to read the note exactly as it appeared in the system. She went quiet for a moment and then said the record showed that I had been present in court for three separate hearings that year.
I asked her who had entered the information, and she said the file didn’t identify a person, only that my identity had been verified using the same address, employer, and emergency contact information I had provided on my driver’s license application years earlier. I checked the address listed in the file, and it wasn’t mine. It was a house I’d never seen before, but the strange part was the name attached to it. The property had once belonged to my father.
My father had died in 1998, and our family had sold his house shortly afterward. I hadn’t thought about the property in years. I called my older sister and asked whether she’d ever heard of anyone living there after the sale. She said no, but then she remembered something she’d forgotten completely: in 2016, someone had called her asking questions about our father and whether he had ever had another child.
I went back to the courthouse the next morning and asked to see the complete file. The clerk brought out a sealed envelope that hadn’t been included in the printed copy. Inside was a photocopy of an old driver’s license, a photograph of a man I’d never seen before, and a handwritten note from the court clerk who had handled the original case. The note contained only one sentence: “Do not contact the person listed under this name — he believes he is your brother.”
