Page 139 of The Lost Book of First Loves

“Thank you for the ride. And for everything else.”

Ali reached out to hug her. “I’m so glad I found you, June.”

As she returned the hug, June thought of all that had happened since the two of them met.

Her life had been saved first and then changed forever.

“I’ll miss you so much,” Ali said. “But it won’t be for long. Grandma will make sure we see each other again soon.”

“Goodbye for now, then,” June said. After a final squeeze, she released her sister and let Glen help her up the steps into the luxurious interior of the plane. In a weird way, she felt as if she were stepping back into the familiar.

Her last sight as they headed into the clouds was of the jagged Tetons in the distance, cutting into the sky.

Chapter 48

Juniper

One month later

She would kill for an actual cup of espresso, not the decaffeinated garbage she had been drinking since her cardiac arrest.

Finishing her third meeting of the morning, June left the executive conference room and headed down the hall, wishing she had time to slip off her heels and curl up on the sofa in her office for a few hours. Unfortunately, she had a full slate of meetings all day. A nap would have to wait.

With a sigh, she turned the corner toward her office and spotted her two assistants chatting with a third person, someone so unexpected it took several seconds for her brain to register what her eyes were seeing.

“Ali!” she exclaimed as joy rushed through her. “What are you doing here? We just talked a few days ago and you never said a word about coming to Seattle.”

Her sister gave her an impish grin, looking worlds different from the nervous, timid intern she had once been in these very halls.

“I wanted it to be a surprise. I wasn’t about to let you celebrate your birthday without bringing you presents. I have some from Grandma and a few from me.”

She gestured to a basket at the edge of the desk, piled high with beautifully wrapped gifts.

“You should have told us it was your birthday.” Margaret sounded hurt, as if June had purposely withheld the information from her.

She had never really kept her birthday a secret from anyone, but it hadn’t been a big deal to her in a long time. Without a family to celebrate with her, most of the time her birthday felt like any other day.

“You didn’t need to come all this way,” she said, touched anyway.

“I wanted to. I have two presents you have to open now.”

“Should we go into my office?”

Ali exchanged looks with the two assistants. “No. Let’s do it out here. Open this one first,” she said.

Her staff had been stunned when she had told them the truth upon her return, that the intern they had once believed was incompetent as an executive trainee was none other than her half sister, who actually had zero interest in the job.

“Yes. Open them,” Jason urged. “You’ll have to wait on a gift from us, since we didn’t know it was your birthday.”

Alison held one out to her and she didn’t see any choice but to take the package from her.

Torn between feeling touched and feeling uncomfortable, she tore away the wrapping to reveal a slim box. When she opened the box, she discovered a folded piece of paper.

“It’s our DNA test results. They actually came a few weeks ago and I already looked at mine so I know what it says.”

She didn’t need to see the results. Seeing that inscription to her mother at the beginning of Carson’s missing manuscript had been all the proof she needed.

Still, she looked through the results and saw the laboratory had offered further confirmation. She shared a substantial number of DNA markers with Alison Wells, too many to be a coincidence. They were close relatives.

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