They were young, uneducated, and completely broke. In their panic and grief, they signed the papers the doctor put in front of them. They went home with one healthy baby, believing their other son had died in a specialized facility a few weeks later.

But Dr. Aris had lied. He was not trying to help them. He was running an illegal, private adoption scheme, taking babies from poor, vulnerable couples and selling them to wealthy families out of state. Thomas had been adopted by a well to do couple from Michigan who had no idea his parents were actually alive and looking for him.

I sat there on the kitchen chair, my hands shaking as I listened to the story. The little blue DNA kit had exposed a forty year old crime in a matter of seconds.

I reached out to Thomas again that night. I did not tell him the whole story over the app. I just asked if he would be willing to meet me at a Bob Evans off I-75, halfway between Toledo and his home in Michigan.

When I walked into the restaurant that Saturday, I saw him sitting in a booth near the window. He was wearing a flannel shirt, and he had the exact same cowlick in his hair that I had struggled with my entire life. Seeing him was like looking at a version of myself that had grown up in a completely different world.

We sat in that booth for three hours. He told me about his life. He had a good upbringing, his adoptive parents had been kind to him, but he had always felt a strange emptiness, a sense that part of him was missing. He was healthy. He had never had a single heart issue or developmental delay in his life.

“I want to meet them,” Thomas said, his eyes searching mine. “I’m not angry at them, Mark. I can’t even imagine how scared they must have been.”

I called my father from the parking lot of the restaurant. I told him Thomas wanted to come to the house. There was a long silence on the line, and then my father said, “We will be waiting.”

When we drove up the gravel driveway to my parents’ house, my mother was standing on the front porch. She was wearing her best blue sweater, the one she usually saved for church on Sundays. Her hands were clasped tightly in front of her.