Houston, Texas

"For you mademoiselle?"

Appearing beside her about an hour into the flight to Paris, the stewardess drew her attention away from her magazine and back towards the menu that had been distributed earlier.

"May I please have the sole meunière."

Waiting for the series of small plates be arranged on a tray, she thanked the stewardess after she set the tray down in front of her, "merci."

Travelling abroad since birth had taught her a number of things, one of them being that people were instantly kinder and more willing to assist if she made an effort to communicate in their native language. She never wanted to appear to be a confused, uncultured tourist and she couldn't imagine anyone thinking she were when they reached their destination, a place she practically considered home away from home. They were on their way to one of her favourite places in the world, Switzerland, via France, and having spent the last 17 pre-Christmas through post-New Year periods doing something similar, she truly did feel like the tradition was a part of who she was. She was American, Texan to be exact, but she was more than that, she didn't confine her identity to one country when she spent significant periods travelling internationally.

Watching her parents as they accepted their own trays and began to eat, she considered her identity, specifically the part of it that her mother was hiding from her. She had an older brother and had had an older sister, one she'd never meet now, she knew that for a fact, but her mother continued to pretend as if they didn't exist.

There had to be something to the story, JR Ewing had practically told her that, but still, even with confirmation that her mother had previously been Rebecca Blake, not Rebecca Burke, she hadn't been able to unravel the story. She was going to have to ask her mother again and she had a plan to do just that.

Their days over the winter break weren't filled only with skiing, dining and sightseeing, they took time to relax and enjoy the hotel amenities and take in their surroundings. She didn't know exactly when the opportunity would arise, just that it would, and when it did she intended to take it. She would ask her mother what had happened all those years ago and why lying about it now seemed to be her chosen method of dealing with the past, and she wouldn't accept her silence on the subject any longer.

She had her own understanding of what had happened, but assumptions were no substitution for the truth and she deserved the truth. Her mother's first family weren't hers and hers alone, they weren't a secret to keep until she died, they were real people and for Pamela it was too late to reunite, but for her and Cliff it wasn't.

She'd met Cliff once and although hadn't revealed her true identity to him, nor truly bonded with him, she did feel he deserved more than what she'd given him and he definitely deserved more than their mother had given him.

In Cliff's mind, their mother had died, but in reality, she was worse, she'd abandoned him and Pamela. Perhaps telling him that was cruel, perhaps it was better to let him think his mother had died years ago, perhaps there was nothing to gain by telling him the truth; she really didn't think so though. She was in deep with her investigation and she couldn't imagine that someone else in her position wouldn't also want to know what had happened.

JR had told her to keep at what she was doing and she'd taken that encouragement to heart. If she were wrong to continue pushing then he would have told her so and she knew it because he'd had no problem keeping her away from Bobby when he believed her attention would do more harm than good.

She hadn't given up on meeting Bobby, especially not after seeing the picture in JR's office and going over the newspaper articles on microfiche again. Bobby was a handsome man, one who had married her sister, he had a completely different perspective on Pam than Cliff or JR did and she wanted to hear it. She had a desire to meet him to understand the choices Pam had made for herself too. She'd never had a sister but she had friends and had dated, she knew the amount of discussion that occurred before and after a date, the analysis of whether the boy, or man, in question was worth allowing the pursuit to continue. She couldn't talk with Pam the way she might have had things been different, but she could make up her own mind about the type of man Bobby was.

She'd discovered mother's secret two and a half months ago and she'd made a reasonable amount of progress since then, so she felt confident that by the time another two and a half months passed she'd know everything. She had two weeks in Switzerland to get the answers she wanted from her mother, then she'd be back in Texas, back to school for her final semester before college, but more importantly, back in the vicinity of those who could assist her with unravelling her history.

She was desperate to discover how things had come to be and nothing was going to stop her investigation. No matter how desperate she was to know what was what though, she wasn't going to accuse her mother in front of her father of hiding information without first figuring out what the whole story was. Her father clearly had no idea of his wife's prior life and she'd done a detailed job attempting to hide the facts, but he loved her, and he wanted to believe her. Father and daughter had a strong bond, but if there was any doubt to be had in a story if the choice was between father and daughter and husband and wife she had a strong feeling he'd believe her mother over her. For that reason, she had to do things in order, which is exactly what she planned to do.

To be continued…