Their New-Found Family

“Okay. Here are two numbers. Are you ready?”

“Yes.” She’d reached for the pad and pencil her grandmother kept on the kitchen counter.

He gave her the information. While Natalie wrote down the digits, she could hear her mom honking out in front.

“I’ll be at the second number for two weeks starting tomorrow. Then I’ll be back at this one.”

“Okay.”

“Tell her to call me at this exact same time.”

“I will. Now I have to go. Goodbye, Alain.”

“Goodbye.”

She hung up and called her grandma at Bleylock’s to tell her she was going home with her mom. Then she hurried out to the car where her mom was waiting.

“Hi, honey!”

“Hi, Mom.” Natalie leaned across the front seat to kiss her cheek.

“Before I left the office, Steve called,” her mother said, reversing to the street. “He’s taking us out to dinner tonight at the Brazilian Grill, so we’re going to have to hurry to be ready on time. Friday nights mean a long line. If we’re there early, there’ll be time for a movie after.”

“I don’t want to go.”

Her mother flashed her an anxious glance. “You look a little flushed. What’s wrong, honey? Don’t you feel well?”

“My stomach’s kind of upset.” It was the truth.

“Well I’m not leaving you if you’re coming down with flu. It’s going around.” She reached out to touch her forehead with the back of her hand. “You feel warm. That settles it. I’ll call Steve and cancel.”

“Don’t do that yet, Mom. I’m not sick the way you mean, but I do need to talk to you in private before we go anywhere.”

In a few minutes they’d reached the house. She hurried inside. Her mom followed with the duffel bag Natalie had forgotten.

The concern in her parent’s eyes had turned them a dark green, providing a contrast with her blond hair that made her more beautiful than any of her friends’ moms.

When Natalie first met Steve, she’d heard him tell her mom how gorgeous she was. Even Kendra’s dad had told Natalie, “Your mother’s a real knockout.”

Tris Monbrisson must have thought so, too. He’d asked her to marry him twelve years ago. But for that accident…

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT’S wrong, honey?” Rachel Marsden put the bag on the floor.

“I have something to tell you. I think you’d better sit down.”

At her daughter’s tone of voice, a chill invaded Rachel’s body. “Why? Does this have anything to do with your grandmother?”

Rachel’s father had passed away two years ago. Her mother had taken it hard, but Rachel had thought she was doing a lot better these days. It would be unbearable to lose her mother, too. Rachel wanted her around for a long, long time.

“No—this doesn’t have anything to do with Nana.” After a slight hesitation she said, “Mom? While I was over there, someone called trying to find you.”

Her brows knit together. “Who?”

“Alain Monbrisson.”

Alain Monbrisson? Just hearing the name made Rachel feel faint. “That’s what Tris called his baby nephew.” She put a trembling hand to her throat. “I don’t understand.”

“Did you once write my father a letter on the ship’s stationary?”

A moan escaped Rachel’s lips. “Yes.”

“Well, Alain found it in his uncle’s old backpack. He tracked you down through your school in Geneva and then phoned Nana’s house. She was next door, so I answered it.”

“Oh, no—”

“Don’t worry, Mom. Alain doesn’t know his uncle is my father. He thinks you’re married and I’m another man’s daughter.”

“Honey—I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant,” Natalie broke in, sounding older than her eleven years. “The reason Alain was calling was to tell you about the terrible hockey accident that happened while my father was at hockey camp in Interlaken.”

An accident—

“Sit down, Mom—you look like you’re going to be sick.”

Rachel felt sick. She sank down on the end of the couch. “Tell me what he said.”

As she listened to her daughter, she started to tremble and couldn’t stop.

Tris had been in a coma?

“Alain thinks that if you phoned his uncle and filled him in about your time together on the ship, it would ease his mind concerning the period of time he doesn’t remember. Hopefully it will help cut down his headaches.”

Tris could have died and Rachel would never have known. She buried her face in her hands.

“I was afraid to tell you about this because it changes a lot of things, Mom. I always thought my father was a horrible man to have hurt you the way he did. But now I know he didn’t do it on purpose, I want him to know he has a daughter. Maybe he’ll want to meet me. What do you think?”

What do I think?

With one phone call, the world Rachel had built so carefully for her and Natalie had just come crashing down around them.

She could hardly comprehend the fact that a block of amnesia was the reason Tris had vanished from her life.

If his nephew hadn’t found that note, they would all still be in the dark. Unfortunately Natalie had been given enough information that it would take an act of nature to stop the rising tide of hope in her heart.

To be united with her father had always been Natalie’s dream, though she’d never expressed it verbally to Rachel.