Hey. As alway a few words from me before the chapter starts. I hope everyone still enjoys the story and where it is going. I actually got inspired for this story by me and a friend of mine. She is two years younger than me and as our mothers did their vocational training together and both still are good friends, me and my friend knew each other from when she was born (even though I don't remember much from that time). We unfortunately didn't live as close by as Piper and Alex in the story but still are really good friends especially as our families went on vacation together a lot when we were younger. So here goes the next chapter. Hope you like it.

Chapter 6: Like sisters

The next year was pretty uneventful. Until the girls turned five Diane and Louis enjoyed their first year being married, Carol started a membership at the local country club, the girls got taller and learned more about the world and picked up many more words to use.

One evening Carol and Diane sat together - they had decided that they'd at least once a month tried to do a friends night where the two women could talk about their everyday life. Usually between dropping the girls off or going out there wasn't much time for a serious talk and some time for just the two friends so they made it a monthly thing to spend time without the kids and their husbands. They tried to do it more often, but both women were pretty busy with the kids, their hobbies, Danny had turned into a big fan of soccer and joined the team at his school, and the everyday operations to keep everything together.

They were already on their second glass of red wine and had talked about different things when Carol turned the conversation to a different topic and asked "Well now that you and Louis are married for nearly a year, have you thought about giving Alex a little sibling?"

Diane smiled. "We talked about this. Yes. And we would very much like to, we just have to discuss our options a bit further as the natural way won't work unfortunately." That got her a questioning look from Carol. "Louis had an accident when he was a teenager and unfortunately can't father a child. I think he is a great dad and even though he biologically can't be he's got the father genes. We think about finding a donor though, or maybe adoption but Louis says he prefers the donor version, because then the kid would be biologically related to at least one of us."

"Oh, I didn't know that. I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm sure you two will find a way." Carol said empathetically. "You two seem so happy, that I'm getting a little jealous actually. I think the glowing just been married feeling went away too quickly between Bill and me. I wish I could go back to those first days of our marriage sometimes. It was amazing. Currently we are down to the everyday life. I can't remember when we went out the last time. Like just the two of us, on a real date." Carol tried hard to think what and when their last date was but nothing came to her mind.

"Maybe you two should do that. Like do a date night every other week or how often you can fit it in your schedule. I'll be happy to watch the kids for you, you know that." Diane offered.

"Maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea. Don't you aside from the 'freshly married glow' sometimes feel so tired in the evening or by the end of the week that you are too exhausted for anything else than what you had to do this day anyway, if that makes sense?!" Carol wanted to know.

"I think I know what you mean, even though I really think managing three kids and a household is way more work than one kid. So, currently I don't really feel like this." Diane replied.

"Lucky you. Wait until you have a second child and I'll ask you again." Carol laughed. "No. But seriously. I'm glad you found someone like him. He seems to make you very happy."

"He does. He's the perfect husband and the best dad to Alex. Sometimes I can't believe I was so lucky to meet him." Diane smiled widely showing pure happiness.

XXXXX

The girls fifth birthday was celebrated two weeks after Piper's actual birthday as around the time both families were on vacation. Every year they got a few more guests. The kids had fun so far and enjoyed the party. Danny was nine years soon to be ten, by now and found the birthday party for five year olds a bit boring so soon he retreated back into the house to play with the console he had gotten as a christmas present. Cal was two and a half and happy he could run around in the garden which was just about what he did until Carol got Danny out of the house again and asked him to take care of his little brother so he wouldn't run off. The party was good and when they guests left the four parents sat together chatting and enjoying the rest of the evening that was still nice and warm.

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Diane and Louis had been talking about it for a while but eventually decided to try it with a donor. The IVF procedure however wasn't very cheap and they knew they didn't have many tries if the first failed. It was a couple weeks after they first tried and about time to test if it had worked out. Diane nervously went to the bathroom to take a test and Louis waited anxiously in the living room. When Diane returned he looked at her with hope she could tell him already.

"It'll take a couple minutes." she quietly said. Nobody knew what to say in a moment like this. Both waited anxiously for the next couple minutes.

"I think we can have a look." Diane broke the silence anxiously a couple minutes later. They were both shaking with anticipation. If this was negative they didn't have many more tries. Diane eventually collected enough courage to take the test and look at it. When she saw what it showed she started crying. Louis wasn't sure yet if this were happy tears or sad. He quickly took the test from Diane and looked at it. It was negative.

"Shh. We'll try again, okay?" he tried to calm her but felt so sad himself that at the same time he said it for Diane he also tried to make it easier for himself.

The next weeks were hard. They tried not to show their sadness about the failed try too much for Alex's sake who noticed that there was something wrong and asked Diane why she was so sad. Diane first asked her how she would feel about having a sister or brother and Alex said she was okay with that but she already had Piper and she was like her sister. That made Diane smile a little and she didn't go on explaining why exactly they were sad and just said that sometimes she got sad cause she missed her dad. It wasn't a complete lie, because sometimes she really missed him and had moments when she was sad he wasn't with them anymore and Alex wouldn't get to play with her granddad anymore. Alex had loved him, too. Diane thought it was better for now to not tell Alex yet that they were trying for another child so Alex wouldn't get upset about having a sibling and then it wouldn't work out. Alex seemed to accept that and went on playing.

XXXXX

Carol had recently spent quite some time at the local country club and made new contacts there. She enjoyed her friendship with Diane but also enjoyed the attention from the women at the country club. One day she came back and found Piper playing in her room. She told her that she met a woman at the club who has a daughter just a year younger than Piper and asked if she wanted to meet her to maybe play together.

"Like a playdate?" Piper wanted to know.

"Yes. Like a playdate. Her name is Nicole and I think you two would get along pretty well." Carol told her.

"Can Alex come?" Piper wanted to know.

"We can ask her." Carol offered.

"Okay. We can invite her. We can play with my dolls. Or I ask Alex to bring her animals and we open a zoo." Piper already started planning.

"Sure. I'll ask Marka then the next time I see her and we can arrange for you girls to play together." Carol said and let Piper go back to playing in her room.

They arranged the playdate the coming saturday. Alex and Piper were already playing the whole morning when around 2 in the afternoon Carols friend Marka came by with her daughter Nicole.

"Hi." the younger kid said towards Alex and Piper as if not sure how things would be.

"Hi. You're Nicole? I'm Piper and this is my best friend Alex. Do you want to come to my room with us to play?" Piper asked.

"It's okay if you call me Nicky." the girl with wild curly hair answered. The girls went to Pipers room while Marka and Carol stayed in the kitchen to talk.

"Alex brought her animals and I do have some. We want to play zoo. How about I take the giraffe and Alex plays the bears and Nicky you can take the birds if you want."

"Okay." Alex and Nicky agreed.

"We can take this to make the enclosures." Piper suggested and got her pens which she started laying down in a big circle.

"How about we do a zoo where all animals can run free? They don't have to be held in a cage like that." Alex rejected to put the pens down to put her collection of teddy bears in a cage.

"Cause that doesn't work." Piper gave back. "Lions eat other animals. Like giraffes and other animals."

"Yeah, but we don't have lions. We have bears, giraffes and birds." Alex argued.

"True." Piper had to give in.

"And we play them. We can always decide to let them live together peacefully." Nicky threw in. "Even if we had lions. They could be vegetarian."

They agreed to pass on building enclosures and let their animals live freely in their zoo. The birds flew all over the room and sometimes carried a bear or giraffe on their back, Giraffes learnt to jump really high and when the room seemed too small the girls ventured out to the living room until it was enough for Carol and she sent them back to Piper's room.

"How old are you?" Alex asked Nicky a bit later.

"Four. But I'll turn five soon." she answered.

"Cool. Piper and me are five already. But it's not going to be long until we turn six. My mom said we'll go to school soon." Alex told her.

"Okay. You are best friends for long?" Nicky asked.

"We know each other since always. Piper was always my best friend. She is like a sister to me." Alex answered.

"Wow. I don't have a sister." Nicky said sounding as though she wished she had.

"Well, I don't have a sister either. Piper has two brothers though. But we three can be like sisters!" Alex suggested.

"Yes!" Nicky shouted excitedly.

"Piper?!" Alex called her, Piper had run to the kitchen to ask her mom if they could have some cookies.

"Yes?!" she asked curiously when she came running back.

"Nicky and me just decided that as we all don't have sisters we three can be like that! You okay with that?" Alex excitedly suggested. Piper seemed to think about it and showed rather mixed emotions.

"I'll think about it." she just gave back.

Later, Marka and Nicky had already left, Diane came to pick up Alex.

"Did you girls enjoy playing together?" she asked Alex and Piper.

Alex smiled widely. "Yes. Nicky is cool. She is funny."

Diane noticed that Piper's reaction was rather held back and not as enthusiastic as her daughters. "How about you?" she asked Piper and bend down to look at Piper from about the same height.

"I don't know." Piper said silently and Diane sensed from Piper eying Alex the moment she asked her that she maybe wanted to say something that she didn't want Alex to hear. So Diane told Alex to go get her stuff. This way she had a short minute to talk to Piper alone. "What's up, big girl?"

"Well I like Nicky. But I liked playing alone with Alex. Just me and her. Nicky is fun but I don't know if I want her to play with us again. Alex just played with her the whole time. Like I wasn't there anymore." Piper's face turned sadder as as she spoke. "Alex doesn't like me anymore." Diane was surprised that the five-year old turned to such a quick conclusion.

"Sh. Piper. Don't say that. I know that Alex still likes you. I'm sure if you ask her she'll tell you exactly that. But if you meet someone new don't you want to get to know them? You and Alex had so much time and you know each other. But you and Alex both don't know much about Nicky. So it's okay to want to know more, don't you think." Piper nodded. "So here comes Alex back again, do you want to ask her?" Diane suggested.

"I don't know." Piper silently replied.

"What ask me?" Alex asked.

"You just played with Nicky today. Don't you like me anymore?" Piper anxiously said.

"What?" Alex went over and pulled Piper into a big hug. "Of course I still like you. You're my best friend. You're like my sister. Nobody could ever change that." she said which seemed to calm Piper a lot.

"But you said that we all three can be like sisters. I don't want that." Piper pouted.

"Okay. We don't have to be." Alex replied. That seemed to calm Piper completely and she even showed a little smile.

"Okay. But she can be our friend." Piper said and seemed satisfied.

Nicky came over to play quite a few times after that and the girls became good friends. Soon it was Piper's and Alex's sixth birthday and Nicky was invited, too, of course. Soon after that the girls came into school. They were both proud to take this step and their parent had agreed it would be impossible not to send them to the same school. And as Louis worked at the local elementary school the girls went to the same school Louis worked at. Alex was thrilled to see if her dad was a good teacher, although she was pretty sure he was because he was an amazing dad and already taught her so much. Both Alex and Piper could write their names and their best friend's name already before they went to school.

Both girls enjoyed their first weeks in school. They got to know their classmates and made a few new friends. Even with all those new kids around Piper and Alex stuck together and the other kids quickly noticed that the two had a special connection. Both girls were hungry learners and literally soaking up everything that they were taught. The school year went on and the girls enjoyed school. They were proud when they could show their parents how well they could read already and which new words they had learned.

Diane and Louis had started another try for a second child but were devastated when it turned out negative again. It would take them some time to save enough for another try, so they discussed adoption for a while and after a couple weeks of discussion they eventually decided to look into that and start the procedure.

Around the end of January Carol and Diane had one of their friends night. They cooked something together and after dinner watched a movie and too some time to talk. Currently they were working on their dinner, something rather easy to make - spaghetti with carbonara sauce, and talked about their everyday.

"It's amazing to see how Piper and Alex both like to learn so much. To be honest, I was a little worried before they started school. I mean Alex was good with sitting down for a while and listening when we showed her something, but sometimes her attention span was very short and she got easily distracted and couldn't sit still anymore. I asked her teacher if that changed and obviously she's been really good at that. It's great that this won't be a problem even though I thought it might become one. You think you know your kid and then it surprises you all over again." Diane chuckled.

"That's good. I worry that Piper is still like that sometimes. Their teacher told me that she still gets distracted every now and then. Often because she is looking at what Alex is doing he said." Carol gave a weak smile.

"Do you think it was a bad idea to put them in the same class?" Diane wondered. "I mean it would have been hard and caused a bit of trouble if we had done so but they wouldn't distract each other?!"

"I don't know. I guess we'll keep an eye on it and talk to them about it. I know sometimes they distract each other but at the same time they help each other and push each other, which I guess helps learning too." Carol pondered.

"Yeah. Good idea." Diane answered, they finished the last things on the sauce and put their freshly cooked meal on their plates and went with their plates and wine glasses to eat at the table.

"What's going on, Carol? You seem kind of distracted and somewhere else with your thoughts." Diane asked her friend with a little worry in her voice.

"I uhm, don't know." Carol tried to dodge the question.

"Please, I can feel that something is going on. I can only try to help you if you talk about it." Diane said.

"I think, that maybe, I have this weird feeling, that Bill might be cheating on me." Carol finally managed to stammer out.

"What? How do you get to this assumption?" Diane was surprised. So far she had thought everything was good between her friend and her husband.

"He's gone more often than before. He says he has more business meetings but I have the feeling they aren't business related. He always comes back in such a weird mood. And he always comes back so late. Like way after midnight. And then I found a stain on his shirt that definitely looked like lipstick. And that shirt also had a weird smell to it. It smelled like perfume. Ladies perfume. And not one of mine." Carol explained, the emotion in her voice palpable.

"I'm sure this has an explanation. Every time I see you two together I got the feeling you're still having a happy marriage. Or is this just the image you're trying to convey? How has it been lately between you and Bill? You never said anything that things were off or something wasn't working." Diane tried to calm her but also wondered where all this came from.

"Well it is hard managing everyday life with three kids and in the evening still have enough energy to take care of your marriage. Recently we didn't have so much time for each other as we used to have. But even at busy times when everything was turned upside down we managed to make it work. And maybe I'm just overreacting, but he's been so distanced lately that my mind starts to wander off and worry. Now that the kids are a little older, I mean Danny will be 12 coming summer. Piper soon will be 7 and already got better with keeping herself busy. Cal just turned 4 and is the one who needs the most attention of the three at the moment. But every now and then Bill and I would have time for some time together but whenever that happens he's gone."

"I'm positive everything will solve and have an explanation." Diane said.

They kept talking that afternoon. And Carol kept an eye on what Bill was doing. Some day when she had this feeling again and Bill had been away for most of the night she was very close to confronting him. But then she thought: What if her assumptions were wrong? What if she accused him of cheating and it turned out to be completely different? That would be more than embarrassing. So she let it go even if this nagging feeling didn't go away.

Diane and Carol spoke as they had planned to Piper and Alex about not letting themselves get distracted that easily and that it was okay to see what others were doing but to also pay attention to the own task and doing what you were asked to do.

They got through their first year of school learning a lot and enjoying reading what they could. At some point Alex got the idea and wrote Piper a note which she found later and ran to Carol asking to call Alex to thank her for that. From that point Piper and Alex kept writing each other little notes every now and then. Usually it wasn't more than a 'Hello Piper.' or 'See you later' when one of them was visiting the other but they were always excited to find a note. Right at the start of summer break was Pipers birthday and as everyday she and Alex celebrated their birthdays together. But this time it wasn't just a party to celebrate their 7th birthday but also the end of their first school year.