AN: Thanks to everyone who waited patiently for me to get my life back in order and also to anyone who left notes! They meant a lot to me during my span of Writer's Block. I actually had a lot of chapters written but see, they were later in the story and then I couldn't figure out how to actually get to those parts of the story. So you may note in this chapter and the next that some parts don't seem up to par with my normal writing. Meh, here you go!

Rachel grimaced down at the offending dust spot on her uniform, swiping it away as she went to the door. A lady stood on the doorstep dressed in a crimson walking suit. The woman glanced at Rachel disdainfully before brushing past her into the townhouse.

"Can I help ya miss?" Rachel asked the classy lady.

"I'm here to see Alex," the woman replied sneering.

"May I take ya name and tell him you're here?" Rachel said sharply, stepping between the woman and the stairs. Rachel looked down at her archly from the second step.

"Denise Taylor," the woman replied at last, giving Rachel the evil eye.

Rachel smiled gracefully at her and turned her back to the interloper, marching up the stairs. She paused at the library door, adjusted her apron and knocked softly. She heard Mr. Macmillan's muffled command to enter and pushed open the door. She entered the well-lit book-filled room and walked quickly to the great black desk. Macmillan looked up from his accounting book in askance.

"You look ruffled my dear," he teased her. She'd been working for the widower for nigh on a month steadily, arriving each morning promptly and departing at the end of the day. She and her employer had come to understand each other's personalities well.

"You have a visitor sir," Rachel said, setting herself into a chair before the desk and crossing her arms unhappily.

"A visitor?" Alex echoed. His schedule had been cleared purposefully to allow him time to balance his stores' accountings. He wasn't expecting any visitors.

"Yep, a lady. This'un seems worse than the last," Rachel added with a roll of her eyes.

Macmillan's last 'visitor' had been a floozy out to snare the poor man into marriage by claiming she was pregnant. She hadn't been of course. "Her name's Denise Taylor if it's worth anything."

"Denise Taylor?" her employer asked blankly. Rachel shrugged, if Macmillan didn't know who she was, Rachel was even more ignorant. "Taylor…I think that it may be Dr. Richard Taylor's young wife."

Rachel's eyebrows shot up in surprise. The Doctor was a good friend of Macmillan's, coming over often for card games and dinner. Rachel thought the older man was endearing, almost like an uncle. He had taken to patting her head affectionately when he walked by her. He called her Birdy, which she had answered to out of habit thanks to a certain Brooklyn newsie. Dr. Taylor said the name Rachel was too severe for such a mousy girl.

"If this is Dr. Taylor's wife why is she here to see you? And she looked determined as a mule to get up here," Rachel added.

"I honestly don't know. Go tell her I'll be down in a few minutes and set her up in the sitting room, get her tea and all that," Macmillan said distractedly, reaching over the desk for his phone.

Rachel nodded and left the library.

Dr. Taylor came and collected his young, apparently unsatisfied, wife within the hour. Alex had only sat with Mrs. Taylor for fifteen or twenty minutes, evading all of her coy flirtations expertly.

"I'm terribly sorry Richard," Alex said softly after Dr. Taylor had seen his wife safely ensconced in a carriage waiting outside.

"It's I who should be apologizing Alexander." The Doctor shook his head sadly. "I shouldn't have let her have her way so often. She's gotten used to getting whatever she wants. I'm sorry she bothered you Alex. I know how much it still hurts you to be around women."

Macmillan and Taylor made their goodbyes and then Macmillan turned and retreated back into the library upstairs. Rachel, more than her fair share of curious, followed the widower up the stairs. She sat back down in the chair she'd occupied earlier. Alex was used to her sometimes following him around, watching him as he went about his days. This time however it was obvious that something was on his mind.

"What did the doctor mean by that? About how it hurts you to be around women," Rachel asked at last when Macmillan's fidgeting had scraped along her final nerve.

"He spoke of my late wife, Amanda," came the soft reply.

"Late? When did she die exactly?"

"It was actually several years ago," the man set down his pen and leaned back in his chair. He steepled his fingers and gazed into the distant past. "But sometimes it feels as if it were yesterday. She meant a great deal to me."

"How did she die?" Rachel asked quietly.

"Grief. The year before she died our young daughter disappeared. Amanda was never the same after that." Silence stretched. "She was never supposed to have children. But she had her heart set on a child, a baby girl, so she defied her doctors' orders and gave birth to Audrey. Audrey was her world for three years. Then she and her nanny went to the park and Audrey just wandered off. Poor Christine was horribly distraught. She thought we would kill her for losing our daughter. I suppose I wanted to but it wasn't necessarily her fault that Audrey did indeed have a tendency to wander off. The little tike did it even with us. But that was the day everything began falling apart. Audrey's disappearance tore my Amanda's world apart. It broke her heart and she just gave up. She couldn't stand living in such a cruel world."

"I'm so sorry," Rachel whispered, longing to reach out and take some of the pain off the widower's face. She hated seeing someone so alone in all this world.

"You know, Audrey's middle name was Rachel. I think that's why I like having you around so much," Alex smiled slightly. "You're just a little older than she would be and you're so alive. You have so much energy in you. It does this old heart of mine good to have you around."

Rachel couldn't help but laugh. At thirty-eight years old, Alex wasn't old just yet. "You aren't old yet sir."

"I'm glad to see that some people still think so," Macmillan smiled.

"Rachel?" Rachel looked up from the pot, pausing in her stirring.

"Yes Mr. Macmillan?" she called back.

"Could you come here a moment?" Rachel looked at the pot and sighed, setting her spoon down. She wiped her hands on her apron and exited the kitchen, turning and going up the stairs. She peeked her head around the door and searched for the master of the house in the library. He wasn't there so Rachel turned and headed down the hall.

"Mr. Macmillan?"

"I'm in my room Rachel," was the reply from the end of the hall.

Rachel knocked on the partly open door. Alex opened the door hurriedly and ushered her within, receiving a more than confused look from Rachel. He whirled her into a chair by the window and rustled through a pile of papers and photos spread out on the floor. Rachel watched him curiously before looking around taking in the deep blues and golds of the master bedroom. Macmillan let out a triumphant cry and stood, approaching Rachel with several pictures and shiefs of paper. He handed the papers to Rachel who set them in her lap as she watched her employer. He held two pictures, moving each one alongside Rachel's face as she watched him in confusion.

"What are you doing Mr. Macmillan?" she asked him worriedly.

"I finally realized who you remind me of!"

"Who's that?"

"My wife, Amanda," Alex said, casting aside a picture. He held the remaining picture out to Rachel. "That's Amanda when she was nineteen, that was when I first met her."

The girl staring back at Rachel looked nearly like the reflection that greeted Rachel each morning. The girl's hair was just a bit longer, her face not quite as lean from years of too little to eat. But her smile! It was just like Rachel's as were her wide, almond eyes.

"Give me your hand," Mr. Macmillan demanded. Rachel held up her hand and Alex held it to his stamping pad. Then he pressed her fingertips to a piece of paper, whisking the paper off the desk and regarding it under a bright lamp alongside a sheet of vellum. "Dear God in heaven."

"What is it Mr. Macmillan?" Rachel wondered.

"Look at this, look at this!" He held the two sheets of paper beneath her nose. The vellum was a birth certificate, complete with a tiny set of fingerprints. Rachel scrutinized the tiny fingerprints that belonged to Audrey Macmillan and then turned to her own fingerprints. She took the pages from Alex's hands. The fingerprints, they were identical. Larger yes, but the prints themselves were undeniably alike. Rachel stared at the certificate in shock.

"What does this mean?" she asked blankly.

"It means, Rachel, that you're her! You're Audrey. You're my daughter!" Alex crowed happily, sweeping Rachel into a bone-jarring hug. "We'll have to get a professional to look at the prints but I'm sure his findings will be the same. And you look just like her, just like my beloved Amanda."

Rachel stared up at Macmillan, her mind still struggling to grasp what this meant. It meant she had a real family. This meant she had a family that would love her no matter what. But what would this mean for the family she'd be leaving?