Episode 9 - Secrets from My Twilight Zone

Echoes & Shadows

If this is your first encounter with my story, you may want to start at the beginning here: Secrets from My Twilight Zone.

Photo credit: John Moyer c. 2006

Family secrets, like shadows, have a way of lingering—no matter how deeply buried, they find their way into the present, shaping lives in unexpected ways. After dropping the vintage quarter down the hole at John O’Toole's grave, a gesture that felt like casting a spiritual thread to the past, I thought my journey of discovery was nearing its end. But the O'Toole name had more surprises in store.

In late summer 2021, just before the buzzing cicadas in Pittsburgh signaled the approach of autumn, we were deep into the second year of the COVID19 pandemic, and my life took another unexpected turn. On one of the major DNA websites, I received a notification about a new distant relative—a match from Denver, Colorado.

Denver? I had no relatives from there.

I'll call her “Cathleen.” She was close to my age, an adoptee desperately searching for h…