“I’m good.”He pulled back a kitchen chair and sat at the table.He set the folder on the tabletop in front of the empty chair beside him and waited.
Maxie didn’t want anything either.Her hands were too unsteady, and her stomach felt queasy.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?”he asked.
With determination, she unfolded her arms from around her waist and walked over to take the seat he’d prepared for her.Still, it was a moment before she could bring herself to open the file.
She flinched when she did so, but not because anything jumped out at her.Zac’s chair rasped against the floor as he slid closer to her, turning to get a better angle.The move put him at her side once again.His shoulder brushed hers, and she was surprised when she found the touch supportive.Stabilizing.Taking a breath that finally made it past her throat, she started going through the paperwork.
Once she did, she forgot to be nervous around him.
The file was detailed.Whomever Roxie had hired, the man had been painstakingly thorough.The first few pages focused on the other woman’s background, which helped Maxie ease into the situation.Whoever Roxie Cannon was, she’d grown up in the foster-care system.The PI had started there, learning what he could about her, before branching out.There were files from social services, school records from countless grade schools, and even medical records.Maxie didn’t know how she would have felt opening up her own records to others like this, but when she turned to the following page, her breath caught—and she realized both why Roxie had shared and why the two women who had visited her today believed there was a third sister.
Named Maxine.
Maxie stared at her crossed-out name.An old medical record was detailing Roxie’s height and weight, only whoever had taken the measurements had first written down the wrong name.Her heartbeat slowed to a dull thud, and she traced the strike-through line.Maxine wasn’t a common name, not in this day and age.She remembered asking her grandmother how her parents had come up with it, but the only answer she’d gotten was that they’d liked her nickname.
She did, too, but now it took on such a different cast.Roxie, Lexie, Maxie…
They fit.
“It’s only one piece of a big puzzle,” Zac said.“And there’s no surname.”
She tapped her finger against the piece of paper.He was right.Going from a crossed-out name to identical triplets was a leap, and there was a lot more information to go through.
Only the more she looked, the more she understood why these two strangers had sought her out.
Once the investigator had a name—and a unique one at that—he’d broadened his search.Knowing Roxie and Lexie’s birth date, he’d combed records for another little girl and had found the birthday greeting her parents had put in the Indigo Falls newspaper on her fifth birthday.Maxie stared down at her younger version’s smiling face.It had been posted for the world to see, and its similarity to a photograph of Lexie Underhill on the same day was undeniable.
“Oh my God.”She picked up the photograph by its edges.It was taken in a house she didn’t recognize.There were delicate vases in the background and heavy silverware around formal plates on a long dining room table.There were adults she didn’t know and a small towheaded boy lunging at the cake, unable to wait.It was Lexie Underhill’s family, but if nobody had told her, she would have thought the photograph was of herself.
“I’ll be damned,” Zac swore, peeking at the page underneath the photograph.“That son of a bitch even got your blood type.”
“Hmm?”Maxie was surprised to find the sheriff angry.His blue eyes were flinty, and his jaw seemed downright hard.
He pointed to a school flyer for a blood drive.What’s your type?the tagline asked saucily.A-, Maxie Miller had signed with a flourish, along with a dozen other students.
“Don’t tell me,” she whispered.
“Yup, they told the truth on that one.They’re both A negative too.”He tossed the medical records onto the table.“I don’t like how close this guy got to you without you knowing about it.”
Maxie didn’t like it either.For a summer day, she felt awfully cold inside.It wasn’t only the investigation that had been done behind her back; it was how so much of the information lined her up with the two women who’d appeared at her door this morning.
Could they possibly be right?
“Could this have been faked?”she asked.
“Anything can be faked these days,” Zac said.
He glanced at her, and she remembered that, even now, they were faking being a couple.The tightness in her belly slid lower, and she once again became aware of how close they were sitting.She tried to ease away, but there wasn’t far she could go with their chairs placed so near.
He cleared his throat.“Do you remember that newspaper greeting?Or this flyer when you were in—what was that?—the tenth grade?”
“They’re both real.My grandmother has that newspaper clipping in one of her scrapbooks, and I helped design that flyer.”
“Well then, I need to concentrate on the twins’ side of the story.Make sure that those papers are legit.”
“You can do that?”
