the trees the way they’d come.
He’d been wondering how to bring up a detail to all this that apparently hadn’t occurred to her. As she hurried away from him, he felt certain it was time to just say it. “What about your sister?” he asked, following her.
“What about her?”
“Have you ever considered that she could be connected to us?”
“What?” She stopped in her tracks, holding back the tensile branch of a vine maple to frown at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you thought that…maybe…your box is really hers?”
She appeared shocked by that suggestion, then her eyes lost focus as she thought it over.
“You said your boxes were the same,” he prodded.
“Yes,” she said.
“Exactly the same?”
“Exactly.” She still didn’t seem to see his point. “But my name was on mine, and her name…”
“Yes, but what if somewhere along the line, the lids got switched?” Her eyes widened as she considered that possibility. “And what’s in her box is really yours, and what’s in the box with your name on it is really hers?”
Her brow furrowed as she came to see that as a possibility.
“It could have happened any number of ways,” he went on, subtly reeling her in. “Did you ever move when you were growing up?”
“Twice,” she replied. “Friends of my father’s helped us.”
“Could have happened then. The boxes fell over, and the lids got mixed up. Or maybe one of your parents adding something to the boxes inadvertently did it.”
She stared into his eyes with a sort of horrified awe. “That’s…grasping at straws.”
“Is it?” He held the branch for her when her fingers grew lax and a branch was about to scratch her face. “You were convinced by the old clippings that they must have been intended for you. But since the test proved that wrong, then the other possibility doesn’t seem that far off, does it?” He let that sink in for a minute. “If the clippings weren’t for you, then who else is there?”
CHINA WOULD HAVE liked to push him onto the fragrant grass. Since the day she’d first set eyes on him, he’d stood determinedly in her way. He didn’t believe she was his little sister returned; didn’t believe she wanted no money, just family; blocked at every turn her attempts to be friends with him. Even now, when all she wanted to do was leave, he put up another roadblock.
She didn’t want to stay another minute, was embarrassed and disappointed that she’d turned everyone’s life upside down quite needlessly, as it turned out. But what if he was right? What if, somehow, the lids of the boxes had gotten mixed up and her adopted sister, Janet, was their flesh-and-blood sister?
She met Campbell Abbott’s dark gaze. He stood there like the locked gate he’d been since she’d arrived—an inch or two shorter than his brothers, but broader in the shoulders, and more inclined to seriousness than they were. He’d prevented her from ever feeling completely welcome, and now he wanted to prevent her from leaving!
She turned away, headed for the parking lot. “I’ll call her and tell her to get in touch with you,” she shouted back at him.
He caught her arm at the edge of the parking lot and turned her to him. “You can’t do that,” he said with surprising gentleness. “You can’t just take off on Mom. We all have to talk this out. Come to a solution. And if your sister is our sister, you can’t expect to be able to stay out of it.”
She could expect to, but of course it wouldn’t happen.
Janet was prettier, smarter, loved by everyone for her unfailing good humor and quick wit. China had never resented her for it, only envied her. China was basically shy, but inclined to speak her mind if the situation warranted. The courage she’d required to present herself to the Abbotts as possibly their daughter/sister returned had been huge.
Her grief that she wasn’t theirs was softened somewhat now by the suggestion that Janet might be Abigail. China and Janet had squabbled as children but come to appreciate each other as they grew older. Though Janet had the brains and the boys, China had the domestic skills that kept their home going after their mother died.
They now loved and respected each other, and the last time they’d been together, before each had set off to solve the mystery of her cardboard box, they’d vowed that whatever came of their searches, they would be sisters forever.
“China.” Campbell spoke quietly as his family hurried toward them en masse. “You can’t leave them yet. Please.”
There was something to be said for having reality thrust upon you. It seemed to alter time. Just fifteen minutes ago, she’d been sure she was Abigail Abbott and the report she was about to open would prove it.
Now it seemed as though that moment had been aeons ago. She was not an Abbott. She was still China Grant, the same woman she’d always been. The heady excitement of discovery had been doused, but there was something comforting about familiarity.
Chloe threw her arms around her and held her closely. “You must not leave,” she said, her voice tight with emotion. “We’re all agreed. You may not be my daughter, but you’ve become an important part of the family.”
Chloe leaned back to look into China’s eyes, her own sweet and pleading. China opened her mouth to reply, but Chloe interrupted. “Yes, I know you have a life of your own. A small business you must keep track of. But we need you, too. Killian tells me you’ve done a wonderful job helping run the estate, and if Campbell chooses to leave us to conquer new horizons, then you must stay and help us until we find someone to replace him, oui?”
China would have loved nothing more than to make a little niche for herself with the warm and wild Abbotts, but it didn’t seem fair to the real Abigail. Especially if that was Janet. But maybe she did have to stay long enough to help them determine if indeed she was.
“I’ll stay until I can find my sister, Janet, for you,” she said.
When that met with a confused expression from the rest of the family now pressed around them, Campbell explained his theory about the boxes.
Killian and Sawyer, both with the fair good looks of their father’s first wife, frowned at each other, then at Campbell. “You really think this possible?” Killian asked.
Campbell made a noncommittal gesture. “Seems that way to me. How else would you explain that China has everything in that box that would relate her to us, but she isn’t Abby? Yet she has a sister the same age, adopted at about the same time, who’s gone off on her own quest with a box identical except for the contents?”
Sawyer raised an eyebrow. “He might have a point,” he said to Killian. “You don’t think he’s smarter than us, after all, do you?”
“Never happened,” Killian grinned. “Well, how do we find your sister, China?”
China tried to remember the town in Canada’s north
