Disclaimer: Ownership is neither claimed nor implied.

A/N: How did my life begin? How did I get here? Beth Corcoran wants to know...

"I have decided, from now on, that I shall call you Shelby," Beth Corcoran informed her mother. There was a little sting of animosity in her words, in her tone of voice. She still wasn't entirely pleased with her mother's veto on searching for her birth parents.

"Is that so?" Shelby Corcoran asked, she displayed very little interest in her daughter's latest mood swing, her latest attempt at flexing her fledgling wings. Shelby knew that soon enough, Beth would regain her sunny temperament and apologise for all the nasty things that she'd said in an attempt to hurt the woman who had brought her up and had loved her like no other.

"Yes, and when I do finally get to meet my birth parents, I shall call her mom and him dad," Beth added and sniffed before she rose from the stool at the breakfast bar to continue getting ready for school. "At least look pissed off then," she thought as she watched her mother continue to study the newspaper, continue to sip her coffee, just continue to do everyday things, despite the fact that Beth's world had just shattered.

"Fine," Shelby replied, distracted by a piece in the Lima section of the Allen County Gazette. "Holy crap," Shelby thought to herself as she studied the picture and the write up. "If Beth sees this she's going to know who her mother is, Jesus, I'd forgotten how much like Quinn she looks. And Noah, she has his smile. Crap, look at them. So freakin' happy together. At least something worked out for them."

"Did you see this?" Robyn Sylvester hissed when she found Beth at her locker. "Didn't I tell you?"

"Tell me what?" Beth asked, she was purely pretending disinterest, she desperately wanted to see what Robyn had to show her.

"Look at her," Robyn instructed and thrust the newspaper clipping in front of Beth's eyes. "Tell me you aren't the double of her, Quinn...something or other, I forget," she muttered then grabbed the piece back to check the name again. "Puckerman, Quinn Puckerman," Robyn finished triumphantly and nudged her glasses back up her nose. "I told you, I found all this information in my mothers journals, she doesn't give real names unfortunately, I don't think anyone was ever dumb enough to name their child Snotball, do you?" she asked, her face screwed up rather comically.

"I would hope not," Beth replied. She'd always liked this kid, sure she was a couple of years younger than herself, but there was an affinity there, a connection, something almost inevitable about their friendship. Like they had known each other before, in another lifetime, in another universe. "Oh there you go again, Miss Fantasia," Beth mocked herself. Her mother was always telling her that life did not revolve around books, she had to do something physical too. "Mother, ha, that's a stretch." Beth looked up as the bell went to denote the next lesson.

"Hello, class," Quinn Puckerman said with a warm and welcoming smile. "I am your new English teacher," she announced and turned to write her name on the whiteboard. "There are a few things that I expect of every student in my class. I don't have unreasonable expectations," she explained as she wrote her simple rules underneath her name. "I expect everyone to turn up on time, I expect everyone to have their books and their homework with them. I expect everyone to act with courtesy, politeness and I expect people to be honest."

Beth gulped as she read the name. Quinn Puckerman. Quinn. Puckerman. Quinn Puckerman. She gulped again and raised her hand. "Excuse me," she said quietly, her voice sounded muffled, it sounded as though it had come from someone else. "Excuse me?" she repeated, a little clearer when it was obvious that Ms Puckerman hadn't heard her.

"Yes?" Quinn responded to the young blonde girl in the middle row, the one with her hand raised in the air. The one who looked as though she could have been modelled from Quinn herself. Quinn felt a shiver go down her back, she gulped and automatically, in a sub-conscious gesture, her hand drifted protectively to her stomach. "Yes?" she repeated, trying desperately to keep her smile from quivering.

"May I ask you something?" Beth asked, she was following Quinn's request for politeness.

"Yes," Quinn replied, although her tone held a touch of uncertainty.

Beth suddenly clammed up, she didn't know if she could say it out loud. What if she was wrong? What if everyone laughed at her? What if she was right? What if she was right? "Doesn't matter," she croaked and sank lower down in her seat, slightly embarrassed, a lot hurt when she heard the mutters and the giggles from the popular girls at the back of the class.

"Ok, let's begin," Quinn sighed, she felt like she'd just dodged a bullet and it took a moment to get her concentration back. Pretty soon she was in the swing of the class, up to speed with the curriculum, she assessed each student's level and need. The class seemed endless and by the time the bell rang, Quinn was exhausted.

"Ms Puckerman?" Beth muttered beside Quinn's desk, out of earshot of any of her classmates.

"Yes, sweetie?" Quinn replied, hoping like hell that Beth hadn't heard the tremor in her voice.

"Are you my..." Beth began to say but broke off to gulp back a bubble of nausea. "Are you my mother?" she asked faintly. Her mouth dried up as she saw the teacher's face drain of colour, saw her sink to her seat as though her knees had given way.

"Erm, what did...what did your mother tell you?" Quinn asked, unable to make and maintain eye contact with the girl. She shuffled a few papers on her desk, busied her hands to stop herself from grabbing Beth and holding her so tight.

"Nothing, she told me nothing," Beth replied, she sounded weary, drained. "I found out just a couple of weeks ago, that I'm adopted," she explained. "And my mother, Shelby," she substituted the name, it was annoying her to call Shelby 'mother', "refused to give me any details, she says I have to wait till I'm eighteen," she sneered.

"So maybe you should abide by that?" Quinn suggested, she didn't want to go against Shelby again, she'd done that before with disastrous consequences.

"What? And lose another six years with my natural parents?" Beth demanded, shocked at the answer.

"I think that maybe you should talk to your mom again, maybe ask her if she would share some details with you," Quinn advised, she was trembling, her knees were literally knocking together underneath her desk, it was almost comical. Beth sighed heavily and left to go to her next class. Quinn heaved a huge sigh of relief that she had a free period.

"And it was definitely her?" Puck demanded as Quinn regaled him of her day across the dinner table.

"Oh yes, she hasn't changed a bit," Quinn said with a contented sigh. "Her hair maybe isn't as blonde as when she was little, but she still has your dopey smile," she grinned.

"You love my smile," Puck murmured as he came around the table to take Quinn in his arms. "You've always loved my smile," he reminded her. "This smile can make your panties drop at fifty paces, that's what you told me," he said in almost a sing-song voice.

"Ooops," Quinn gasped, as between them they made her panties fall to the floor. "I guess it does," she admitted and sucked in a breath as Puck fell to his knees in front of her. "Mmmm," she moaned as Puck's tongue worked it's magic on her to relieve her of her day's worries. "Oh God," she sighed when he guided her to lay back across the table top. When he entered her, all she could do was groan with pleasure, lay back and enjoy the ride. Perfect. As always.

"I think I met her today," Beth mumbled to her mother as they sat together, the uncomfortable atmosphere was not conducive to good meal time chatter. Or digestion.

Shelby was so tempted, so very tempted. "Did you?" she asked, instead of asking 'who', like she'd wanted to. "Did you say anything to her?" she fished.

"I asked her if she was my mother," Beth confirmed and looked at Shelby with angry, mistrustful eyes.

"I should have told her from the start," Shelby remonstrated herself yet again. "Rachel always said, I should have told her from the start, it was only a matter of time till she found out."

"Are you talking to yourself?" Beth asked as she became aware of her mother muttering something under her breath. "And who's Rachel?"

Shelby almost sobbed. "Rachel is the daughter I gave birth to, twenty-eight years ago," she announced and felt a humongous weight lift from her shoulders. Shelby took a breath, amazed to feel how easy it was, her chest wasn't tight, she didn't feel like she was about to cave in, about to collapse. Wow. If only she had done this years ago.

"Wait a minute," Beth cried, her face showing her disgust. "You gave a baby away, then you took me from my parents and refuse to tell me who they are?" she demanded, absolutely astonished. "I mean, like, how can that happen?"

"Beth, it's not like that," Shelby tried to say, she wanted to explain, really she did, but she couldn't find the words to say, how to start it. "Ok, let's calm things down here, let me just, Beth, I need you to listen to me, without interrupting, without getting on your high-horse, can you do that?" she asked. Beth gulped and nodded. She felt a little afraid, but she really needed to know this, all of it, she had to know her beginnings, where she came from. Beth really hoped that she wasn't the result of something bad.

"Ok. So, thirty years ago, I was a struggling actress," Shelby began, taking it right back to the very beginning. "Let's go in the den, get comfortable, I think this is going to take a while," she said, interrupting herself. The two of them went, they took their drinks with them, Shelby her wine, Beth her juice. "Like I said, I was a struggling actress, I went to audition after audition, after audition. No one wanted me, a slightly gawky, slightly too tall Jewish girl with a nose that was too big for my face," she said with a self-mocking smile. "Anyway, there was an ad in the trade mags, asking for girls with specific talents to attend an interview in Lima, Ohio," she announced, remembering the day when she told her room mate that she was going for it.

"Are you freakin' nuts?" Gail shrieked at her. "Who the hell are these people? They could be murderers, rapists, anything," she yelled.

"But it's at least a year's work," Shelby cried, "I have to do it, I have to take a chance because if I don't get this, it's game over, I have to go back to Georgia," she reminded Gail. "I only have a month left, that's it. My mom said, if something didn't happen in two years, it was never going to and this might be my last chance," she said with urgency, desperation. "I have to take the chance."

"When I got to Lima, I must admit, I was very nervous, all the ridiculous and dire things that Gail had warned me of came flashing to the front of my mind, it was a very scary day," Shelby explained, a hint of a laugh in her voice. "Anyway, I met with the people who had placed the ad, Hiram and LeRoy Berry," she added and risked a glance at her daughter, Beth was listening intently but trying not to show it. "The job was a bit weird," she admitted, "they were looking for a surrogate," she explained, "they wanted a woman who would carry a child for them then leave. I agreed to do it," she said softly. Beth gasped. "Neither of the men wanted to know which of them was actually the biological father," Shelby laughed and rolled her eyes at how embarrassed the two men had been, "so they mixed their sperm together and it was inserted into me, using a turkey baster, of all things," she laughed, "and we waited to see if it had worked.

"It took five attempts to actually attain a pregnancy," Shelby said, continuing with her story after taking a sip of her wine. "And nine months later I gave birth to a baby girl, I got to hold her for a minute and then she was taken away, as per the agreement. I received a large sum of money, enough to fund me for several years so I went back to New York, back to Broadway and I never returned to Georgia," she said, with touch of pride. "My mother never spoke to me again, she was disgusted with me, apparently, for selling my baby to two gay men," she added the extra information, "but actually, she did belong to one of them, we just didn't know which one," she shrugged. "When I got back, I used some of the money to tidy up my nose a little, got myself a better apartment, hit all the auditions and took Broadway by storm. God knows, if I'd just waited it out, maybe it still would have happened, maybe it wouldn't, I'll never know," she sighed and sipped her wine again.

"Anyway, the years passed," Shelby said, missing out a lot of the highlights of her life as unneccessary, they weren't exactly bed time story material for a twelve-year-old, "I decided I wanted to settle down, have children, so I tried. It just never happened for me," she said sadly. "Something had happened to my uterus during the delivery and I couldn't carry another child, I could get pregnant, but I couldn't carry a child to term. Around about the tenth or so miscarriage, my OB advised me to stop trying," she said through a huge lump in her throat. Beth felt her eyes fill with tears, she felt such sadness for the babies that her mother had wanted but lost. "By this time, Broadway was long past for me, I had found a teaching position, in Akron, Ohio, at Carmel High School, I was their show choir coach," she said with pride. "We were champions, no one could beat us, no one," she insisted and paused for a second to savour the feelings, the memories of all those wins.

"And then one day, this girl appeared in the auditorium," Shelby continued, her voice had taken on a sad, melancholy note. Beth looked at her, she was barely blinking, sat as she was with her legs curled under her, her wine glass touching her lip, still more than half full. "The instant I saw her, I knew," she said and in that moment, Shelby knew the exact feeling that Quinn Fabray must have felt today when her daughter sat down in her class. "I knew who she was, it was like my body knew who she was," she said with a sob that caught in her throat. "My entire being remembered her and I had missed her so much," she whispered, the tears fell unchecked. "I never knew how much I had missed her until I saw her and she was so beautiful," she added with a teary smile. Shelby took a moment to get herself together. "But it was never right," she sighed. "I was looking for my baby, and she was looking for a mother," she said sadly, "and neither of us knew how to be what the other was looking for."

"So what happened?" Beth asked in a husky voice, after Shelby had been lost in thought for a while.

"Sorry," Shelby apologised and shook herself to move on. "So, our two teams met in Regionals that year," she explained, taking up the story again. "Rachel was in a team, New Directions," she added and waited for the penny to drop, it did, Beth was amazed that Lima's world famous show choir group was the one that her mother's daughter was in. "And I coached Vocal Adrenaline," she added with pride, back in the day, Vocal Adrenaline had been the team to beat, before New Directions had taken the crown and held on to it for the last twelve years or so. "We crushed them that year, knocked them out of the competition at Regionals," she said firmly. "But the only thing that it made me want was to get out, see, I knew that your birth mother had gone into labour while she was out on stage," she said, shifting to look at Beth as she got to the nitty-gritty of the story. "Right, your birth parents, Noah Puckerman and Quinn Fabray," she said the names out loud for the first time in years, "they were both in New Directions with Rachel, with my daughter, and after the performance, Rachel came to see me, talk to me, and that was when we realised that we were looking for different things. She was the one who let slip that you were about to be born, I had overheard some stuff, an argument between Puck and Quinn, he was begging her to keep you, she was telling him she couldn't trust him, all crappy, emotional, teenage stuff," she scoffed, dismissing the moment to get to better things. "I left my team, I went to the hospital and I found them, staring at you through the glass. I heard Quinn ask Puck if he had loved her, it was such a sweet moment, I don't think they realised that they were being observed or overheard, but anyway, she asked him, he told her the most beautiful thing, he never took his eyes off you but he said yes, especially now and I always thought that was beautiful. I could see then, when they looked at each other, I knew, if I didn't step in then, I knew, they would have kept you, they would have found a way, so I stepped up to the nursery window too, and I interrupted what could have been a defining moment for them, and I wanted you so, so much," she sniffed, the emotion had built up to overflowing.

"The very first time I laid eyes on you, you stole my heart," Shelby told her daughter, and risked a touch to the young girl's chin. "You were laid in one of those awful fish bowl cribs," she said with a roll of her eyes, "I asked if you had a name, Quinn said no but Puck said Beth, he said it with such feeling that I decided there and then, if I was lucky enough to get you, you were going to be called Beth, so really your birth father named you," she smiled. Beth gulped and felt a little closer to the people who had tossed her aside, given her away. And closer to her mother.

"I moved away as soon as the paperwork was signed. Quinn cried the whole time, when we were with the lawyers, Puck did too, though he tried not to show it. I think even both of their mothers did, I seem to remember that they did. I know I did, maybe I just think everyone cried. But anyway, you were in the lawyers office with us, and once the papers were signed, Puck asked if he could hold you one last time, just for a minute, I agreed and when he picked you up, it was like you knew, you knew something was happening. He held you so gently, so tenderly, you'd been asleep in a car seat and even when he picked you up, you didn't wake up, but just when he was about to kiss your forehead, you opened your eyes and stretched and your little head went back and he kissed your lips, it was beautiful. Just for a moment, he and Quinn held you together, between them, it was an emotional thing, even for their moms, I think, but just for a moment, they had an arm around each other, they had an arm each around you and for that time, the three of you, you were a family. And I was jealous so I said that I had to get you home, we had to get on our way, I always felt guilty about that," she admitted and wiped the tears away from her cheeks.

Beth wasn't really sure that she could listen to any more, she felt so full of emotions, raging, swirling emotions, emotions that she didn't know how to deal with. "Mom?" she said nervously. "Mom, do you think we could talk to them? Tomorrow, maybe?" she asked.

"I think that might be a wise choice," Shelby agreed after a moment. She would probably need some time to get herself back under control. "Are you going up already?" she asked as Beth headed for the stairs.

"Have you seen the time?" Beth asked her mom. "And I've got school tomorrow," she reminded her. Shelby blew Beth a kiss, she missed the days when Beth would voluntarily kiss her mom before going to bed, it didn't happen at all these days.

"Rachel, hi," Shelby said with a smile as her daughter answered her phone. "Do you have time to talk?" she asked.

"Sure, Shelby, what's up?" Rachel asked as she checked her stage make up, she was about to go on in front of a huge opening night audience.

"Do you have a number for Puck and Quinn?" Shelby asked after a moment's hesitation. There would be no going back after this because Rachel would surely share with her friends that the number had been sought and that would open up the possibility of the contacting Beth.

"I do, I can text the information to you," Rachel offered, her voice slightly distorted as she fixed a minor flaw in her super long eyelashes.

"Thanks, sweetie," Shelby replied and hung up after a brief good luck message to the amazingly talented, Rachel Berry. "Oh, crap, what have I done?"