Maxie took a sip of orange juice.“We’re looking for the rest of our family.”
Billy eased back and folded his arms over his chest.“How many more of you do you think are out there?”
“Not more of us—” Roxie broke off and sent a startled look at Lexie.
Their eyes rounded to the size of saucers.It was clear they hadn’t considered that possibility, but then Lexie’s eyes narrowed.She cocked her head, and a sly smile settled on her lips.“You’re terrible, Billy.”
“You are.”Maxie let out a laugh.“There couldn’t be…”
They’d probably thought the same thing before there were three of them.
She shook her head decisively.“We’re looking for our parents.”
And boom, there it was.
That bad feeling settled into his empty stomach.
“Birth parents,” Lexie said, a bit more subdued.
“We’re looking foranswers,” Roxie said, her voice flat.
Billy tossed the bear claw in the trash.He wasn’t feeling hungry anymore.
“Be careful with that,” he said, dropping all pretense of joking.Answers could be painful, and they could just open up more wounds rather than provide the illusiveclosureall the pundits liked to talk about.
“Why?”Maxie asked.
For the first time, he worried about her sweetness.“The answers you get might not be the ones you want.”
Roxie gestured with her chocolate donut.She hadn’t taken more than a bite.“At this point, I’d be happy with anything, even another clue.”
He glanced around the table.So, this wasn’t a new venture for them; they’d clearly been at this for a while.“What do you have?”
“Not much.”Lexie tapped her pen against the table.“The private investigator Cam hired has run into a brick wall.The paperwork behind our adoption is a mess.It may have been a closed adoption, but he can’t get confirmation on that.”
“Zac hasn’t made it any further either,” Maxie added.“He’s trying to pull some strings, but we were minors.The system takes that seriously.”
“The system,” Roxie snarled.“Social Services couldn’t find their asses with both hands.”
It echoed the thought running through Billy’s own head.He had little faith in anything official.He had too many scars to trust otherwise.
“We filled out their forms weeks ago, but they haven’t gotten us anything.I’ve called and I’ve emailed.I swear they lost our files and don’t want to tell us.”
Lost.He glanced around the table.That was what the four of them had in common.Suddenly, he didn’t feel so much like an outsider.
“Were you two adopted?”he asked.
Both of Roxie’s sisters nodded.
“By different families.I was adopted by the Underhills, and Maxie was taken in by the Millers.”
He frowned.All three of them had been separated?What the hell?Even back then, it hadn’t been Social Services’ policy to break up siblings.Probably another reason for the paperwork delay.Someone was sensing a lawsuit.
Frustrated, Roxie pushed at the laptop that sat on the table.“The online search has been a disaster.”
“No luck?”He rounded the bar and took the open chair next to her.Turning it around, he straddled it.
“Who can tell?There are so many sites, it’s hard to know where to start.Once we put the identical triplet thing out there, we get swarmed with well-wishers and looky-loos wanting more of the dirty details.So many people posted comments on the boards, I can’t find any piece of information that might be valuable.”
