You start with the phone book, if you’re lucky enough to know what you’re looking for. But I didn’t have a full name that I was sure of. I had pieces. So I went to the computer lab at the university. I typed his name into Yahoo and WhitePages.com and hoped something, anything,would show up. I wasn’t even sure I spelled it right.

Eventually, I found a number.

It felt like finding a needle in a haystack or maybe more like finding a match in a gas tank. My hands shook when I wrote it down. San Antonio area code. A name that matched. I still remember holding that slip of paper like it was something holy. Like if I breathed wrong, it would vanish.

The phone sat heavy in my hand for hours. Dialing those numbers felt like opening a door I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk through.

But I called anyway.

Because in 2005, you had to make that call. There were no likes, no messages left unread, no photos to scroll through to prepare yourself. You picked up the phone, and if they answered, that was it, your whole world could shift with a single “Hello?”

And mine did.

But that year, in 2005, I found him. With no GPS. No search engine telling me where he worked or who he loved. Just determination, a name, and a deep, aching need to understand where I came from

The phone rang.

Once. Twice. Three times.

I had rehearsed what I would say, over and over in my head… how to sound calm, respectful, non-threatening. How to say, “Hi, I think you might be my father,” without it catching in my throat. But I never got the chance.

A woman answered.

Her voice was clipped. Older. Latino. Suspicious.

“Hello?”

“Hi… I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for—” I said his name.

Silence.

And then – click.

She hung up.

Just like that. No questions. No “wrong number.” No curiosity. Just a slammed door in my ear.

Hours passed. I went on with my life, school and my job. Pretended to care. Ate something I barely tasted. I shoved the feeling of curiousity down where all the other ones went.

And then my phone rang.

Unknown number. San Antonio area code.

I stood in my tiny kitchen, hand trembling, and picked up.

“Hello?”

A man’s voice this time. Low. Hesitant. “Is this… ?”

I don’t even remember what I said. Something like “Yes” or “It’s me” or just a sound that meant I was still there, still hoping.

He cleared his throat. “I—uh… I think I know who you are.”

The air felt thin. My heart pounded so loud I could barely hear.

We talked. Not long. Careful words. I could tell he was trying to piece things together, trying to remember a version of himself from two decades ago. He told me he had two kids, boys and his wife wasn’t willing to admit I existed. I was trying to stay composed, but every second felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, waiting to see if he’d pull me up or let me fall.

He told me he was a young kid when I was born, made excuses. The one thing he didn’t know was I had read the entire deposition. Memorized it. Knew it word for word. He would make a statement, and in my head I would know it was a lie. I would ask him point blank about certain details, and he would tell me something fragmented, minimizing his involvement in anything other than a consensual one night stand with a girl he knew in high school. I knew everything was a lie, but again, like with my mother, the puzzle needed to be complete.

I made the decision to drive out and meet him.

It wasn’t impulsive. It was something that had built in me over time, curiosity, aching, a kind of homesickness for a home I’d never seen. He invited me to his mother’s place. A farm on the outskirts of San Antonio, where both his mother and father still lived at the time. He lived next door, in a white broken down trailer with a picket fence. I remember thinking how odd it looked, this trimmed little fence around something so plain and isolated, like dressing up a wound with lace.

I went alone.

I was young, but not stupid. I had grown up around complicated people, so I knew what to look for. I knew how to read a room the second I walked in. But still…I wanted this. I wanted to see him, hear him, sit across from him and figure out if I could trace myself in his expressions, his voice, his hands.

That first night, late into the evening, we sat outside on his porch. It was the kind of quiet only the country gives you, just crickets, a far-off barking dog, and a million stars that felt closer than they do in the city. He was 6’6”, towering over my 4’11”, but I never felt scared. Not at first. He seemed gentle, almost aloof, like he wasn’t quite grasping the significance of it all. I asked him questions, small ones at first, like testing the water. He answered vaguely, deflecting a little, then suddenly would shift and say something like, “You’re gorgeous, you know that? I’d love to take you to the bar with me, shoot some pool, show you off.”

I laughed, but only because I didn’t know what else to do. The red flags were there, waving like fire, but I wasn’t ready to accept them. I had come all that way. I wanted to know him.

But then he reached out. Quietly, casually, he laid his hand on top of mine, then started rubbing the back of my hand with his thumb like he had some right to it. My stomach turned. Everything in me clenched. There it was….that switch. That line crossed. That moment where your body goes cold but you smile anyway, just to get through it.

I got up and went inside.

I locked the door behind me and laid in bed, fully clothed, the ceiling spinning. Grateful he hadn’t done more. Angry that I had to feel grateful for that. But mostly, just sad. Because that fantasy I’d held, of a father, a protector, a part of me I could finally recognize, shattered like cheap glass. Even though I knew who he was from the beginning.

The next day, I stayed mostly with his mom. She was sweet in that Southern, apron-wearing, jar-canning kind of way. We canned squash and strawberries together. She talked about quilting and how proud she was of her only son. How handsome he was. How the world had always been a little too hard on him. I listened and nodded, already feeling the walls of that house close in around me.

Later that afternoon, I met his dad. Same energy, different age. He looked me over like a man scanning a menu. Told me how “the boys must be knocking down your door.” Said I looked just like him…lucky me. He laughed at his own flirting, and I laughed too, only because I’d learned by then that it was safer than confronting it.

I left two days earlier than planned.

Something in my gut said to go. That this wasn’t just disappointment. This was something darker. That whole family… it was sick. I couldn’t put my finger on it then, but I knew it in my bones.

And that’s the thing no one tells you when you go searching for your blood…you might find it, but it might be poison.