Page 33 of Fighting Happily Ever After

Nick shook his head and groaned. “Not you, too.”

“Me too?”

“All the good ones in this town are getting snapped up and locked down.”

It was such a ridiculous thing to say, they both burst out laughing, and it felt good. In fact, Steph couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so relaxed and completely at ease. A few minutes later, their conversation had shifted to potential business opportunities in Glacier Falls, and Steph found herself enjoying her time so much, that when her phone rang with the familiar ringtone that would normally make her drop everything, she let it go straight to voice mail.

She’d call Dax later.

ChapterThirteen

Hope tookthe envelope from her and slowly pulled out the papers inside. The same papers that Faith had read over and over since she’d discovered them right after their parents’ deaths. Of course, she’d gone looking for them. Hope had never known they’d existed.

Faith waited while Hope read them over. She watched her sister’s face carefully as everything registered and the enormity of what she was looking at settled in.

“Adoption?” Hope asked after a moment. “I don’t understand. Why would Mom and Dad have a proof of adoption?” Her face transformed in a flash and she sat up in bed. “Wait! We were adopted?”

It was a reasonable question, even if it didn’t make any sense at all. The girls were an exact combination of both their mother and father. With their mother’s upturned nose, and long blonde hair. They got their blue eyes, big smile and their height from their father. Faith didn’t need to say anything before Hope shook her head and looked once again at the papers that really didn’t offer much in the way of explanation.

“Help me out here, Faith. What is this?” She held out the paper that outlined the adoption order as well as the birth registration. “This doesn’t make sense.”

“I know. It wouldn’t have made any sense to me either, if I hadn’t overheard them fighting about it.” Before her sister could ask any more questions, Faith settled on the bed and started talking. “It was late. We were about fifteen—almost sixteen, maybe—and I heard them arguing. It woke me up because they never argued. Not like this.” She closed her eyes and remembered the day she’d snuck down the stairs to see what was going on. They were on the porch, the bright sunny day a direct contrast to the hurtful words they were throwing at each other. “Mom and Dad never saw me. They never knew I was there, and so, I guess, they never knew that I knew the truth.”

“Which was?”

“That Mom had a baby before us.”

Hope’s eyes grew wide.

“Before she’d even met Dad, I guess. I don’t know the details.” Faith shrugged. “But the way I heard it, Mom hadn’t told Dad about it. Ever.”

Hope shook her head. “No way. They knew everything about each other. They were perfect together. They were the—”

“The perfect couple,” Faith supplied for her with a groan. That had been the entire problem when she was young. They had been the very image of blissful love. Everyone had thought so—including the twins. That is, until Faith had witnessed the fight.

“They were saying terrible things to each other, Hope.” Faith finally told her everything she’d held in for so long in an effort to protect her sister. “He called her a slut and a—well…worse. And she told him that she hated him. People who love each other don’t talk that way.”

“Couples fight, Faith.”

She shook her head with the memory. “But to say things like that? No. That’s beyond fighting. How do you ever come back from that? You can’t, Hope. For the rest of their lives, they pretended everything was fine and they were still madly in love. As if they hadn’t ripped each other’s hearts out. If that’s love…forget it.”

Hope watched her with sadness in her eyes. “That’s not how it works, Faith. You know better than that. You know they would have fought and made up. You just didn’t see that part. You can’t possibly think that they were pretending the whole time?”

She shrugged and Hope groaned.

“You didn’t?”

“Okay, I mean… I guess logically I must have known that they would have… It doesn’t matter now,” she interrupted her sister. “All that matters is now you know the truth. No more secrets.”

Faith pulled her sister into a tight hug. “It’s so good to have you back, Hope.” Her words were muffled by her sister’s shoulder, and her own tears that had surprised her, but she didn’t bother trying to wipe them away.

“It’s so good to be back.” Hope kissed her on the cheek and sat up. She grabbed up the papers previously abandoned next to her and waved them in the space between them. “Now…what are we going to do about this? I can’t believe you kept this from me for all this time. We have a sister, Faith. A sister!”

Faith sat back and took a deep breath. She’d just revealed to her twin, whom she always told everything to, that she had kept the biggest secret of their lives from her, and instead of Hope being mad, she was…excited? She looked at her sister in question. “You’re not super pissed at me for not telling you?”

“Of course I am!” Hope smacked her on the arm. “But what’s the point of that? Right now, we have more important things to worry about.” She waved the papers again. “Like finding our sister.”

Faith shook her head in wonder, although she shouldn’t be surprised. Hope’s capacity to love and forgive was what made her so great, and as far as Faith was concerned, the better twin. “How do you propose you’re going to do that?”

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