Courted by Trouble: A Courting Romance (In Hyacinth Book 3) by Bree Cariad Page A

turned to the wedding photo and saw what her mind had tried to point out before. The woman she had thought was her mother was actually her aunt. Looking at the photo it was so obvious. Her mother had had a mole on her chin. Jeanie Alverson did as well. Jessica did not. Putting the book down, she stared at the one in Dora’s hands.
    Chris held her as Dora turned the page. There was only one last news-clipping before the rest of the book was empty. The headline made her shake her head. Stephanie Trundle And Jeanie Alverson Are Missing . “Two days before Major Trundle returned from being a prisoner of war, little Stephanie Trundle went missing,” Dora read quietly. “It is feared that her aunt, Jeanie Alverson who has lately shown signs of severe depression, has taken her and run for some unknown reason. Major Trundle and Jeanie’s father, Garrison Alverson, plead for her to return the little girl.”
    Hiccupping, Stephanie’s body trembled, the shaking getting worse every second. “My entire life’s a sham!”
    Gathering her up in his arms, Chris pulled her close. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he murmured as she burst into tears. She couldn’t believe it. The woman she had always thought was her mother was, in fact, her aunt.
    “Why!” she screamed, slamming her fists against his immoveable arms. “Why did she lie to me?” Huge sobs erupted from her throat and she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on. “I’m not me,” she cried.
    “Of course you are,” Chris said quietly. “Sweetheart, you’re still Stephanie.”
    “But everything I thought I knew was a lie. My mother wasn’t my mother and my father wasn’t my father.” As Dora went to put the scrapbook back into the box, an envelope fell out. Picking it up, Dora handed it to her. “You open it,” Stephanie sniffled.
    The envelope contained her birth certificate, something she had never seen before. “Wait. Stephanie! By this, you’re a year younger than we thought.”
    “What?”
    “You’re not twenty. You’re nineteen.” Dora flipped through the pages of the scrapbook to her birth announcement and the date corroborated it.
    Her mother had even lied about her age? Shaking her head, Stephanie leaned against the man who held her tightly. “This is insane.”
    For several days, Stephanie didn’t do much. She couldn’t. Her entire body was in shock. Christopher did all of his work by phone so he could stay with her during the day and she mostly just sat staring at the photo albums, more and more turning to the news clippings about Taylor Trundle, her biological father. On day five, Chris forced her to wake up out of the numbness that she felt. Of course, he did it rather sharply with a hard slap to her rear.
    “Chris!”
    “Enough, Stephanie,” he said firmly. The love in his eyes made her lips quiver. She didn’t want to cry again. “What do you want to do?”
    “About what?”
    “You wondered who your father was. You now know. What do you want to do?”
    “I don’t know. Why did Jeanie take me from them? Why did she leave my brother? Why did she pass herself off as my mom? None of this makes sense, Chris.”
    “Maybe you need to find out from them.”
    Startled, she gazed into his loving eyes. “Them?”
    “Your father, grandparents. Your brother. You have blood relatives, sweetheart. Your only way to find answers, if you need them, is to contact them.”
    “But what if they’re bad people?” Her fear was that her mother… aunt had taken her from them because her father was a bad man.
    “Like you said, why would she leave your brother if they were? Plus, you have me, Steph. I won’t let them harm you.” Wrapping her arms around him, she held tight. Chris was the most stable person she had ever met. Maybe with his help she could figure this out.

Chapter 7
     
    The plane banked, making its descent. Stephanie gazed out the window at the forest below them. Missoula, Montana. She had never heard of it until