Jon knocks on his daughter's door.

"I don't want to talk to you," she says.

"You didn't even ask who I was," Jon teases.

"I didn't want to talk to you no matter who you were," came the dry reply.

"Huh, not even if I was Mac Cambell?" he says referring to his daughter's favorite character from Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott.

"He's fictional."

"And if that doesn't seem like a good reason to have a conversation with someone, I don't know what is," her father retorts.

His daughter laughs despite herself on the other side of the door. "What do you want?" she asks, peeking the door open.

"Read your Mom's letters," he says, pushing the box to her. "If you can read those and come out believing that she wanted to put you up for adoption, you read more creatively than I do."

She takes the letters from him with such force that several of them spill on the floor.

"We love you, honey," he tells her with a weak smile.

-0-0-0-

Two hours later, Jane emerges from her bedroom. Supper is over, but Sam stands up to get the portion that she saved for her daughter, "Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?"

"No, I'm fine," Jane tells her. Then, in a much more quiet voice, she says, "Sorry for the things I said."

Sam walks over, and embraces her daughter, "Oh, sweetie, it's ok. I love you so much."

"I love you too, mom."

"And I would not trade you for anything, I'm grateful for you every day. You are the most amazing gift that I ever got."

When Jane finished reading the letters, there was no longer any doubt in her mind that her mother loved her. But if her birth mother loved her that much, how much did the people who raised another her in another time love her? She needed to know about her other family. She needed to know if they were ok. She knows it's going to hurt her mother, but she can't see any way of getting the information without her help.

"Do you know who adopted me?" Jane asks, looking into her mother's face.

"I don't know much," Jon says as he enters the living room, "I know that she was a single mom. The dad left when she was pretty young."

"Wait," Sam says, leaving the room, and coming back a few minutes later.

"Jon brought this through when he came. It was a letter she wrote to her mother, her birth mother, her Sam," Sam says, stumbling for the right words, "Anyway, it has her return address on it, and a last name. I know it's not actually that much, but it's something."

"Thanks!" Jane says sincerely.

"Any chance you'll let me escort you?" Jon asks.

Jane shakes her head, "I really feel like this is something that I have to do alone."

"Ok, but you'll wait until spring break?" Sam asks.

She nods her head.

"Let me know how much money you think you are going to need," Jon adds.

"It feels super weird to take money from by birth parents in order to visit my adoptive parents," Jane protests.

"I don't care how weird it is, I want my daughter to be safe," he says.

"I have enough money, seriously," she assures him.

"We'll give you some extra. I don't want you getting stranded in another state," he says. Then he looks at his wife, "You're going to give that car of hers a tone-up before she goes.

"You want me to go with?" Sam offers after nodding to her husband.

"Ok, just remember that whatever you find, you have a home here with people who love you more than anything," Sam tells her.

"Thanks. I love you, too. This isn't going to change this. I have to know, but… you're my parents. I just have to make sure that whoever she is… that she's fine. That my happiness didn't sacrifice someone else's happiness."

"I'm glad you're doing this. You were happy before. The other you. The first one that I met. You didn't do this for selfish reasons. You did this so that your mother and I could be happy too. You wanted us to be able to have a family.

-0-0-0-

Jane stands before the house, trying to guess what the inhabitants are like based on the exterior of the house. She knows it's kind of a ridiculous thing to do, considering the people in the house might not even be the person that raised her in another time. She is trying to spin together a believable story for why she's there. Finally, she decides her story isn't going to get more logical, and she walks up and boldly rings the doorbell.

"Hello," a dark haired woman who is perhaps half a decade older than her own parents says.

"Mrs. Grent?" she asks.

"Yes, how can I help you?" the woman asks.

"I was… ah… almost placed with you and your husband for adoption many years ago, I just want to see…" she stammers.

"You know, looking at the grass in your neighbor's yard rarely makes you more satisfied with your own lawn."

"I understand, I just had to know," Jane stammers.

"Come on in, dear, what is your name?"

"Jane, but I didn't have one then. I would have only been known as baby Carter."

"I don't remember you, but that's not surprising. We looked at several babies before we landed on our twins."

"You had twins?" Jane asks.

"Yeah, they are seniors in high school this year, so maybe they are… a little younger than you?"

Jane nods, "Yeah, I'm nineteen." She squirms now that she knows that her adopted mother had to wait a few more years to be a mother because of her.

"So where did you end up?"

"My birth parents kept me," she says with a smile.

"Were they good to you?" she asks concerned.

"They are great. I just found out that they almost gave me up. I just wondered…"

"What would have happened to you if they had given you up?" her would-be-mother asked.

"I was just wondering if you got your baby," she says.

"And here you find out it was two."

"Are you happy?" Jane asks, looking at her face.

"Very," she smiles.

"Thanks," Jane says.

She could keep going. Find out where the twins would have been if it weren't for her. But that it an endless battle, and there are enough unclaimed children that she can imagine these were some of those.

She doesn't know who she would have been, but she likes who she is now.