Lindsay was glad the plane trip was finally over, exhausted from trying to take care of two children under the age of two during the trip home. Casey was supposed to have gone with her to Oklahoma to pick up Nicole, but there had been a problem at his company, and he had to work at the last minute. Since Austin couldn’t be away from her for any length of time, she had taken him with her. Then once she’d arrived at her in-laws, Nicole had latched onto her, refusing to leave her mother’s side and had even sat on her lap when she nursed Austin.

It had been hard on Lindsay to explain to the Haggards about Casey and their pending wedding, as well as telling them about the baby she was expecting, but she shouldn’t have worried. Matt and Helen Haggard were happy that she had found someone new, especially happy to hear she had found not one, but two of her three sisters.

Carrying Austin in his carrier and Nicole in her arms, she slowly walked off the plane. The diaper bag’s strap fell off her shoulder and down her arm to the carrier, and started banging against her leg as she walked. Once she was out of way of the other passengers, she set the carrier and diaper bag down onto the floor, then started searching for Casey. When she saw him walking towards her, she smile and waved at him. She was so absorbed at seeing Casey that she didn’t notice another man waving at her too. Both men walked towards her, but it was the stranger who reached her first.

The man stopped in front of her and suddenly grabbed hold of her arm. “Do you want to explain to me why you disappeared on me the way you did? I thought our night together meant something special to you. Why didn’t you even leave me a note before you took off? I didn’t know how to get in touch with you,” he flew his questions at her, then he looked down at Nicole and Austin. “Why didn’t you tell me you had children?” he asked, screaming this question at her. “You knew I had a child.”

Lindsay roughly jerked her arm away from him. “Sir, you have me confused with someone else. You do look familiar to me, but I definitely haven’t slept with you. If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll scream loud enough that the whole airport will hear me.”

The stranger laughed. “That’s a load of crap. You expect me to believe I have you confused with someone else,” he hollered at her.

Casey grabbed hold of the man’s arm, jerking the man around to face him, ready to do him harm, but was surprised to see it was his brother. “Morgan, what’s going on here?” he demanded.

“Casey, this is a private matter and I expect you to mind your own business.”

“Since Lindsay is my fiancée that makes this my business,” he replied coldly.

“What? This is the woman you’re going to marry?” Morgan turned back to Lindsay. “Then why did you sleep with me? Why did you tell me your name was Lesley?” He fired at her, not even giving her a chance to answer the first question before he asked another.

“Lesley? You’ve met Lesley?” She started crying as she seized hold of his arm in a tight grip. “Where did you see her?”

Morgan’s expression showed his confusion. “What are you talking about?” he asked, pulling his arm away from her. “Are you crazy or something?” he asked, his eyes searching deeply into hers.

Casey touched his brother’s arm. “Lindsay and Lesley are Mariah’s twin sisters. The twins and their sister, Whitney, were separated from Mariah when she was nine years old. Lindsay and Whitney have just been be reunited with Mariah. Lesley hasn’t been found, but apparently you’ve seen her.”

“Why haven’t I ever heard anything about Mariah having any sisters?” He was hurt that his family hadn’t bothered to tell him about Mariah missing sisters.

“I guess none of us realized you didn’t know?”

“When did you find out about Mariah’s sisters?”

“Shortly after your wife’s death. We were talking about loses and Mariah told Chandler and me about her sisters.”

A hurt expression showed on his face. “I still don’t know why didn’t she tell me about them?”

“You were grieving for Traci and weren’t in the state of mind to hear about her losing her sisters when she was a child. As time passed, I forgot about them and it wasn’t until I met Lindsay on my trip home with Austin that I remembered Mariah’s story.”

“I still don’t know why nobody mentioned that the woman taking care of Austin was Mariah’s sister.”

“I assumed you already knew. Otherwise, I would have told you at Alexandra’s funeral. Why are you at the airport anyway?”

“I took Hailey down to Traci’s parents so she could spend some time with her grandparents. I had just gotten off the plane when I noticed Lindsay. How long ago did Whitney come back into Mariah’s life?”

“Recently. In fact, I haven’t even met her yet.”

“How did they meet?”

“Whitney met Evan during his trip to Chicago.” Casey was unsure if he should be the one to tell Morgan about their relationship and the baby. “Morgan, I don’t know if I should be the one to tell you this, but,” he looked at Lindsay and saw her nod. “Whitney is pregnant with Evan’s baby.”

“What? This is a joke, right?” he asked, looking back and forth between the couple. “You can’t mean our Evan?”

“I’m afraid I do.” Casey then went on to explain how the situation had come about, as well as about Chandler proposing to Whitney.

“I see. That’s going an interesting relationship.” He then turned to Lindsay. “I apologize for my temper and rude words.”

“I understand, but please tell me how you know Lesley,” she asked, as she couldn’t wait another second to ask about her sister.

“You remember that bad snow storm we had a couple of months ago that stranded Hailey and I in Columbia?” he asked Casey.

“Yes.”

“Lesley was the woman who we stayed with that night.” A smile covered his face at the memory of Lesley and the wonderful sex they’d had.

“You’re kidding?” Casey knew how the night had ended for the two of them, but hadn’t ever said anything to Lindsay about it. Of course, now she knew that Morgan had slept with her sister. He was surprised that he and his brothers were all involved in some way with the four sisters.

“No, I’m not.”

“Do you know where she was from?”

“She said she lived in St. Louis and that she was a nurse by day and a writer by night. She was in Columbia to attend a writers’ convention, but I don’t have any way to contact her.”

“My sister is a writer?” Lindsay asked, tears filling her eyes. “Did she say what type of stories she wrote?”

“She said she wrote romance novels, but hasn’t had anything published yet. She mentioned her mother used to be a writer.”

Lindsay let out a sob. “My mother was writer too? I can’t believe this. What was Lesley’s last name?”

“She told me her last name was Arrington, but I don’t know if that was her maiden name, her pseudonym name, or what.”

Lindsay repeated the name. “I can’t swear to it, but that name does seem familiar.”

Casey pulled out his cell phone and dialed Evan’s number.

“Hello?” Mariah answered absentmindedly, wishing they could find Lesley.

“Mariah, this is Casey. You’re just the lady I wanted to talk to.”

“Oh, you are a smooth talker,” she teased. “What’s up?”

“Do you remember what your last name was before your adoption?”

Many different thoughts ran through her head, but she couldn’t figure out why Casey was asking her this question? “It was Arrington. Why do you want to know?”

He smiled at her response. “Are you sitting down?”

“Just a minute.” Since she was pregnant, she didn’t want to take any chances, so she sat down in the nearby chair. “Okay I’m sitting, now tell me,” she stated, holding her breath as she waited for the news.

“I’m at the airport to pick up Lindsay and we ran into Morgan. When he saw Lindsay, he assumed she was Lesley.” Casey was expecting to hear Mariah say something, but all he heard was silence on the other end of the phone. “Mariah, are you still there?”

“Why would Morgan think she was Lesley?” she asked slowly, trying hard not to jump to any conclusions.

“You won’t believe this, but Lesley was the woman he and Hailey stayed with when they were stranded during that March snowstorm.”

Mariah gasped. “Let me talk to him.”

Casey handed the phone to his brother. “She wants to talk to you.”

“Did she sound mad?” Morgan asked. When he saw Casey shake his head, he spoke. “Hello.”

“Morgan, why didn’t you tell me you knew my sister?” Pain filled her at his thoughtless gesture.

“I didn’t know she was your sister until just now,” he informed her quickly.

“She looks exactly like Lindsey,” she cried.

“Mariah, this is the first time Lindsey and I have met. With her being busy finishing her book and taking care of Austin, and with me busy with Hailey and my job; it’s been too hectic for us to find the time to meet.”

“Lindsay looks like I did when I was younger. How could you’ve missed it?” she asked, her teeth clinched tight in her anger.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know until today you had any sisters, let alone looking for them. I’m sorry I didn’t detect the family resemblance.”

“Do you know where she’s living?”

“She said she lived in St. Louis.” When Mariah didn’t respond, he handed the phone back to Casey. “I can’t talk to her.” He felt bad for unintentionally hurting his sister-in-law who he loved as a sister.

“Mariah, it’s me,” Casey told her.

“What happened to Morgan?”

“I’m afraid he feels too bad to talk.”

“Does he have Lesley’s phone number?”

“No, but he does know that her mother used to be a writer.”

“Our mother was a writer,” she informed him.

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Pam Arrington.”

Casey turned to Lindsay. “Mariah says that your mother’s name was Pam Arrington.”

“Oh, my God,” Lindsay muttered, her face suddenly turned pale, her eyes rolled back of her head, and then she fainted.

Casey quickly dropped his cell phone to grab her before she could hit the floor. Nicole started crying, and Casey had to attempt to comfort the child, while struggling to revive Lindsay. Morgan picked up the phone to let Mariah know what was happening, all three concerned as to why Lindsay had fainted.

Slowly Lindsay opened her eyes. “What happened?” she asked. She quickly pulled Nicole into her arms to reassure her and she quickly quit crying as her mother held her tightly against her chest.

“You fainted when I mentioned your mother’s name.”

“I’ve read some of Pam Arrington’s books,” she told them.

“So?” Casey asked, unsure the significance of what she was saying.

“Recent publications. That means our mother didn’t die when we were kids.”

“What is going on?” Mariah screamed over the phone at Morgan. “How is Lindsay?”

Morgan looked at Lindsay, then Casey. “Mariah, just a minute.” He handed the phone to Lindsay. “Mariah wants to know what’s going on and I don’t know how to tell her.”

Lindsay took the phone from Morgan. “Mariah, Pam Arrington didn’t die when we were little.”

“How do you know that?” she asked slowly, her eyes filling with tears.

How could she tell her sister that their mother may still be alive? “Mariah, I don’t know how to tell you, but Pam Arrington was still publishing novels as of two years ago.”

Mariah fought to control her pounding heart. “Are you sure of this?” she asked, as the tears ran down her cheeks. “Do you think she’s still alive?” She held her breath, anticipating the worst.

“We won’t know until we can check it out. My guess would be that she is since she’s probably in her late forties or early fifties.”

“We need to have a family meeting.”

“I’ll call you later and we make plans,” she said, then the two sisters hung up.

* * *

For Lesley, the past three months had been horrible for her as she waited for Morgan to call. It wasn’t until the end of the second month after the incident that she realized that she was going to have his baby, but she still couldn’t believe it. So much for all that, monthly cycle safe sex crap she’d learned in school. How stupid could she be? She should have made sure they took the proper precautions that night.

Each day as soon as she stepped into her apartment, the first thing she did was to check her answering machine, but there wasn’t ever anything from him. As the days passed, she became more and more depressed, angry with herself for what happen in Columbia with the attractive man.

She still had to tell her mother her news, but she was too frightened. It wasn’t as if Pam Arrington gave a damn what happened in Lesley’s life. Since the death of her sisters, her mother always seemed mad at her for some reason. Maybe it was because she hadn’t died when the rest of her family had.

She didn’t really remember her father or her sisters that well, but she still had several pictures of her sisters. Lesley thought back to the day she found out about her family. All she could recall was her sisters had been there the day she’d gone to the hospital to have her tonsils out, but gone when she woke up later that day. Each day the pain of losing her sisters became easier, but she still missed them, especially Lindsay, her twin.

When she wandered into her mother’s apartment, the place was quiet, but she was sure her mother was home. “Mom,” she called.

“I’m in here,” a drunken voice called back.

Lesley strolled into the kitchen, and saw her mother sitting at the table with an almost empty bottle of bourbon in front of her. When the last boyfriend moved out, instead of accepting he was gone, and moving on, Pam had started drinking heavily to drown her sorrows with liquor. When she looked at her mother’s face, she could tell she’d been drinking for a while because she was already intoxicated. Maybe this wasn’t a good time to tell her mother about the baby.

“What are you doing here?” Pam asked, slurring her words.

Lesley walked to the table and sat down next to her mother. Thinking it was best to get her news over with so she could go home, she took a deep breath and let it out. “Mom, I’m pregnant.”

Pam brought her hand up and slapped Lesley’s face hard. “You’re a tramp. You’ve always been a disappointment to me. I should have kept one of your sisters instead of you.”

Lesley jerked back from the force of the slap, dazed by her mother’s cruel words. Was it just her mother’s drunken mind talking or was there something else going on. “What do you mean by that statement?” she demanded loudly.

“When your father moved out on us, I got rid of your sisters,” she garbled.

Lesley jumped up and captured her mother’s shirt in her fists. “What do you mean you got rid of them?” Had her mother murdered her sisters? Tears of anguish ran down her cheeks as despair filled her at the thought of her mother killing her sisters.

Pam pulled away from her. “I told you, I got rid of them.”

“Did you kill them?”

“Of course not. How was I going to raise four children on my own?”

Lesley didn’t realize how cold and self-centered her mother was until this moment. “Wouldn’t you have gotten child support?”

“Your father lost his job, so I gave your sisters to the government so they could take care of them.” She knew she’d done the right thing years ago.

“I’m sure he would have found a new one. What about getting government assistance for us?”

“I have you know I do have some pride,” she slurred again.

“Mom, do you know what happened to any of them?

“No, I never asked.” She couldn’t very well tell her that everyone thought that both of the parents had been killed.

“Lindsay was my twin, wasn’t she?”

Her mother looked at her through her redden eyes. “How do you remember her?”

She wasn’t going to tell her about the pictures and have her slap her again. “I just do.” Lesley stood to leave, but stopped as she watched her mother poured more liquor into her glass. All these years she thought her father and sisters were dead. Now she knew it was possible that they were still alive. Were they looking for her? Why hadn’t her father ever come to check on them?

“Mom, why didn’t Dad ever try to get in touch with us?”

“I told him there had been a fire and all four of you girls were killed,” she said, then laughed an eerily sounding giggle.

“Mom, I need to go.” Lesley had to get out of the house before she strangled her mother. When she got home, she went straight to the computer to start searching her family’s names on the Internet. It was the first time since meeting Morgan that she hadn’t checked the answering machine the second she entered the house. She went to the white pages website, typed in her last name, then each of her sisters’ first names, but there weren’t any hits for them.

Then she entered Erik Arrington’s name, and when his address popped on the screen, she practically jumped out of her chair, totally surprise to see he lived in Kansas City, just a four to five hour trip away.

She sat there for several minutes, wondering if this could be her father. She had a good sob, then she wiped away her tears, she wrote down his address and phone number. Now that she had this information, she wasn’t sure what she should do with it. She couldn’t very well call him up and tell him that she was his daughter as there was always the off chance that this man wasn’t her father, but some stranger. She would just have to go to Kansas City and meet him in person.

It was then that she decided to quit her job and transfer to Kansas City to be closer to Morgan, and possibly even her own father. She still needed to talk to Morgan, but didn’t know what she would say to him. Maybe she should wait until at least she was living in the same city as he was before she tried to tell him about the baby.

The next week was busy. She applied for a new job in Kansas City, on-line, and was very surprised when two days later, she had an interview at North Kansas City Hospital. She packed a bag and drove to Kansas City for the interview, shocked to be hired on the spot.

Since she’d gotten hired, Lesley rented a small house within walking distance from the hospital, returned to St. Louis gave notice to her job, and two weeks later, she was moving into her new apartment.

Her mother hadn’t ever allowed her to have pets while she was growing up, so the first thing she did after she was settled in her place, was to adopt a kitten from a shelter.

She planned to make a doctor appointment, but never made the call, making one excuse after another to do it. Then before she knew it, she was four months along and she couldn’t put off seeing the doctor any longer, so she made an appointment with one of the doctors who had an office in the hospital she worked at.

The doctor was an older man and she liked his friendly manner, but became nervous when she saw his face get a stricken look on it while he was listening to her abdomen.

“Doctor, what’s wrong?” she whispered. Thinking the worst, she wished she hadn’t waited so long to see him.

His kind eyes looked up at her. “I don’t want to alarm you, but I believe I hear two heart beats.”

“What?” her voice choking with emotion as her eyes started watering.

“You may be having twins. Do twins run in your family?”

She laughed a nervous laugh. “Yes, I’m a twin.”

“I’ll need to schedule you for a sonogram to be sure.” He put his hand on her arm. “How do you feel about this news?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What about the father?”

Lesley didn’t want to tell him the truth, but he would know it eventually. “I haven’t seen him since . . .” She wiped her tears away. “He doesn’t know about my condition yet, but I’ll tell him today.”

“Do you want me to tell him for you?”

Lesley smiled at him. “Thank you, but no, I’ll do it.” She still had the phone number that Morgan had called that day. She’d planned every day to call him, but then she would get nervous, deciding to put it off for another day.

“I’ll leave to let you get dressed.” He wrote out a prescription for prenatal vitamins and handed it to her. “Make an appointment at the front desk for the sonogram and next month’s visit.”

“I will. Thank you, Doctor Rowe.”

When she got home, she fixed herself some hot chocolate, sat down at the kitchen table, and took her cell phone out of her purse. She took a deep breath, and then dialed the number that Morgan had called that day from her phone four months ago.

She was disheartened when the answering machine came on. A man’s voice was saying it was the Clemmens’ residence and to leave a message, but she became flustered as she thought of what she was going to say, and quickly hung up the phone. Her spirit was crushed and she felt like crying, as she’d hoped to get Morgan’s number today. She knew that she was procrastinating by hanging up, and would have to call back and leave a message. She took another deep breath, then redialed the number, this time leaving a message.

“Hello. My name is Lesley Arrington. I’m looking for Morgan Clemmens and this is the only number I had for him. It is very important that I speak with him. My phone number is 816-569-6819. Thank you.” She hung up the phone, set in down on the table, and then stared at it expecting it to ring at any second.

She sat there for an hour waiting for it to ring, but it remained quiet. She wanted to throw the phone across the room, but she knew it wouldn’t have done any good. She debated whether to call her mother, but she hadn’t forgiven her yet for what she’d done to her and her sisters. Besides, as far as she knew, her mother didn’t even know she’d moved away, and probably didn’t even care.