PART THREE

She was in Collinsport! Somehow, someway, she had been transported over a thousand miles to this tiny town on the Maine coast and she was suddenly a mommy to boot. She saw traces of her reflection in these tiny girls who called themselves Georgia and Lainey and even felt a happy tinkle in her heart as they raced to a white Saab in the driveway behind the house and climbed into it. Still trying to make heads or tails out of this elaborate mansion, she nearly left their suitcase on top of the car as she pulled out and tried to figure out where their father lived. If she and William had married, where would they be living? The Old House? No, that wasn't right. William wanted to live away from his parents. Where was that house he showed her when she came to Collinsport for his birthday? Was it off the estate? She turned right down a road past the grounds of the estate and continued driving as the girls bounced on the back seat and spoke of details of child important matters. Driving past several charming cottages and homes in this New England community, she nearly missed an obscured driveway as she hit the gas and backed up. Turning in, her memories of this house started returning. When she last saw this place, it was old and falling apart, but now it was painted the most wonderful blue and white and her favorite flowers lined the walk up to the front steps. The best part was the familiar black trans am in the driveway. The girls started bouncing eager to get home as Ally stopped the car.

"Is this it?" She asked as the two brunette pixies raced ahead. Georgia pushed her sister aside as Lainey landed with a thud in the grass. She scowled a bit and then looked up to Ally.

"She pushed me!!" Her tiny lips puckered and her beautiful brown eyes started crying.

"Oh, you little baby." Ally lifted her up to protect her as the child's little arms hugged her.

"I love you, mommy!" Lainey cried out as Ally's heart broke. That's what she wanted. Her life finally felt as if it meant something as she grinned contently as carried the wonderful darling in her arm. Tiny Lainey Collins stared back up to her with undying love with large brown eyes in a delicate doll-like face shaped by dark brown curls of different sizes. Ally actually started feeling like a mommy as she carried the suitcase of these foreign children in her other hand and balanced Lainey in her other arm. Ally found herself gradually starting to love this as she walked into the immaculate surroundings within the large house.

"It's so clean!!!" She paused in the doorway. It just as well had been a haunted house when she first saw it five years ago, but now it looked like something she would have called home. She stared amazingly pleased at her wedding picture on the mantle. There was William beaming next to her looking as handsome as he ever was and there was herself in a wedding gown. It was just as she had always imagined it. Her heart felt light as she glimpsed all the other faces in the photo from John and Nita to Richard and Nell. Renee was beaming as if she had just gotten rid of her and Elaine appeared a bit upset and of course she should have been because it was her she had taken William from. Behind William's head, Richard poked up two annoying fingers. Next to him, Billy and Georgia stood as another happily married couple.

"Billy?" Ally wondered. Wasn't he dead? Her eyes panned from the furniture to the display case of ceramic unicorns and then through open shutters into the kitchen.

"Where's your mother?" William Collins spoke.

"Maybe she's still at Collinwood and these two urchins drove themselves back." Maddie's voice remarked. Was she here too?! Forcing herself forward, she pushed slightly against the swinging door just a crack and noticed a seen she would kill for. William was here as he helped his daughters into seats at the table to eat their dinner as Maddie poured glasses of milk for them and a soda for herself. Ally's heart started pumping faster as she feared William's wife was going to swoop in any minute and boot her from the house. Instead, her eyes panned down to her left hand as she noticed a wedding band on her finger. A light ecstatic giggle came from her chest as she felt like a child at Christmas. She wanted to join in, but what if it was all just another hallucination.

"Ally, honey?" William noticed her and pulled the door open to her as she lightly shrieked out of fear. "Aren't you hungry? I got your plate ready." He gazed upon her and wondered why she was so scared.

"Are you real?" Ally asked still hesitant to accept the reality she was seeing. William gazed upon her for a few seconds then turned back to Maddie and then back to his wife.

"Unfortunately, yes," William spoke assuredly to her. "And your daughters are extremely hungry and you should be too."

Ally just froze where she was and looked back to the enigmatic ring on her finger then back up to William. He seemed a bit heavier than the last time she saw him in Boston. It was just a few months after she had lost Billy and a year before she had left for New York. He had bumped into him on the street after Paula gave birth to his daughter, but now it seemed she had one upped Paula by not only giving birth to one daughter, but two.

"Mom," Maddie looked over the kitchen counter. "Are you okay?"

"What did you call me?" Ally looked back.

"I called you, 'mom.'" Maddie admitted. "Is there something else I should call you?" Maddie gazed back at her a bit worried. Ally gazed at William again, the ring on her finger and then her supposed daughters with another light pleasing giggle. The tiny cute one named Lainey too a bite of her corn on the cob and then placed it to her stuffed Barney as if he had bitten it. The one with the longer hair named Georgia peeled the crust off her fried chicken and then happily bit into a drumstick as William cleaned up the trash, dropped it aside and took Ally by the waist concerned by her distracted response to him and her life. She looked at him a bit scared.

"I got as much as I wanted to eat." He told her. "I'm going to go work at my desk." He gave her a peck on the cheek, but Ally instead grabbed him tight and started kissing him much more passionately. Her leg curled around his leg as Maddie scowled disgustedly at the two of them kissing. William was gasping as Ally let loose with what seemed like twenty years of pent up unreleased affection.

"They're kissing again." Little Georgia cried out.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Maddie screamed at them as her parents looked at her. "Why don't you two just get a room?!"

"Ally, baby," William looked at his wife clinging to her and beaming to him like a sex-starved schoolgirl. "You haven't kissed like that since we were dating!"

""I have never stopped loving you." Ally had tears of joy in her eyes. "This is exactly like what I pictured being married to you would be like." She had tears falling from her eyes. She began kissing him hard again as William's foot slid under him and the two of them crashed to the floor with Ally on top of him.

"You guys shouldn't have to see this." Maddie turned her back to the kissing old people and covered up Georgia and Lainey's eyes in her hands.

"I wanna baby sister I can beat up!!!" Lainey cried out a bit wise beyond her five years.