THE UNKNOWN FATHER

In 2002, a 21-year-old man lost touch with a woman he had just hooked up with in the back of her friend's car, and 23 years later, he thinks she may have had his child.

He is 45 now, but the night keeps coming back in pieces. Back then, he was visiting a friend at college, about 100 miles from home, when he met a woman at a bar or club. They hit it off fast. She showed him her ID, he learned her full name, and noticed she was from a city in Florida he had just vacationed in. They were both heavily intoxicated, flirting hard, and before the night was over they hooked up in the back of her friend's car.

Afterward, they were walking back toward the bar and were just about to exchange numbers when his friends pulled him away. He ended up going to a house party instead. He tried to find her again, but this was before the internet could help much with a search like that. Eventually, he let it go.

Then came the holidays, and an old conversation with the same friends brought her back to mind. Her name popped into his head out of nowhere. He googled it and found her Facebook profile. She was married now, with teenage kids.

Then he saw a photo from a few years ago. It showed someone's 21st birthday, with the caption: "Can't believe my baby is 21." The timing made him stop and look again. If the child in that picture had just turned 21 a few years ago, the age lined up with the night he and the woman had been together.

He kept digging. On the same kid's Father's Day post, he found the line: "You might not be my biological dad, but you're still my father."

That only made the poster look harder. The daughter, he said, looks a lot like one of his nieces, which has made the whole thing feel even more uncanny.

Now he is stuck on the same question: whether he should reach out, or leave it alone. He says he's not sure if he's overthinking it, and he wants to know whether there is any way to find out for sure without contacting the woman first.