As the next week passed, Grace and Allie found themselves growing closer. Each morning, their individual teams would gather together to play games and prepare for evening competitions, but during the afternoon, the girls could hang out with whoever they wanted. Jamie spent a good deal of time on her phone, and Brooke was spending more and more time with her teammates - leaving the two lookalikes to head out to the lake on their own. Their mutual love of all things related to water kept them busy.
"Wanna take a canoe out?" Allie asked Grace as they looked out over the water.
Grace smiled. "Sure!"
Allie grinned back and led the way over to the canoes. "My mom and I are planning to raft through the Grand Canyon when I finish middle school. I gotta build up my paddling skills."
Grace's eyes widened. "That sounds like such a cool idea!" she enthused. "I don't typically get on rivers like that - just lakes like this one."
"Nothing wrong with a nice lake," Allie replied. They grabbed a canoe and made their way into the water. "Mom and I like to go fishing. My dad loved it, apparently."
"My dad does, too. He always takes me fishing at our cabin in Minnesota right before school starts," Grace remarked as the two of them paddled their canoe to the middle of the lake. "This lake kinda reminds me of it."
"In Minnesota, huh?" Allie asked curiously. "My dad had a cabin up there, too. Mom didn't keep it after he died."
Grace's brow furrowed. We've got too many "coincidences" here, she thought. Their looks. Parents in the Air Force. Their fathers having cabins in Minnesota and loving to fish.
"What does your mother do?" Grace questioned, trying to seem nonchalant. Shouldn't stir things up until we figure out what's going on with us.
Allie hummed, distracted by something she saw in the water. "She's the head of R and D - that's research and development. Her doctorate's in astrophysics so whatever top secret experiments and stuff they do has got to be cool!"
Grace's breath caught. Her own mother had gotten a doctorate in astrophysics, and had briefly been the head of R and D at a base out west before becoming pregnant with Grace and moving to DC to be with her husband.
This was getting to be really weird.
"My mom did that, too," Grace said slowly.
Allie looked back up at her. "Really?" She was clearly growing puzzled.
"Yeah..." Grace trailed off. She braced herself to ask what might be the most important question she'd ever had. "What happened to your dad?"
Allie's face paled a bit. Grace almost withdrew the question, worried she'd gone a bit too far, but her friend rallied. "He was the General in charge of the Cheyenne Mountain base. He decided to go out on some mission just to help out. It was supposed to be easy, but... it went sideways. He was killed in action."
Grace winced, before growing pale herself. "That's how my mom died, too. I mean, she wasn't in charge like that, but..."
Allie's eyes narrowed. "What was your mom's name?"
Grace took a deep breath. "Samantha Carter."
Allie's face turned completely white - and Grace knew.
"Oh. My. Gosh," Grace breathed out.
"My mom goes by her middle name, though," Allie quickly clarified. "It's -."
"Renee," they said simultaneously. Grace was now genuinely worried that Allie would pass out.
"What the heck is going on?" Allie asked, her voice trembling.
Grace still wasn't sure. We're not twins! she reiterated. Unless we were somehow delivered two months apart...but that just doesn't make sense! Even if that somehow had happened, she knew her father would have never split up his daughters and spent the rest of their lives ignoring the existence of the other. If he didn't leave a man behind, he wouldn't have left Allie.
But still... "Do you have a picture of your mother?"
Allie nodded, and began rowing them back to the shore.
Allie could feel her heart pounding as she and Grace walked in to their cabin. Jamie, for some reason, was not in the cabin, leaving the two girls alone. She was glad of that - she didn't need an audience for her confusion.
Their moms had the same name. And while Allie didn't know her father's last name, she had a sneaking suspicion that Grace's father went by the same first name as her own dad - Jack. Well, Jonathan, really. But Mom said he only ever went by Jack.
Mom hadn't told her very much about her dad. He loved fishing - like Grace's dad - and hockey and The Simpsons. Allie had tried watching the show, but wasn't exactly a big fan of it. Hockey, now? She loved it. She'd even started playing it, and she never felt closer to her dad than when she cheered with the rest of her team after a big win.
She started pulling up a picture of her mom on her cell phone, which she'd left charging beside her bed. Wait a minute. She realized - her mom had a picture of her dad. She'd looked at it so many times his face was engraved in her memory.
"Do you have a picture of your dad?" Allie abruptly broke the silence they'd kept since leaving the lake. If they were going to verify they had the same mom, they might as well go ahead and confirm whether or not they had the same dad.
Grace nodded, moving to her own phone. "Yes," she replied. Her voice sounded a little tense. Allie could just imagine the thoughts tumbling through her head.
"This is so weird," Allie gave her feelings a voice.
Grace nodded in agreement. "Completely." She finished pulling up a photo while Allie found a good one of her mom.
The girls looked at each other for a long moment. Allie knew their worlds would be rocked if they turned out to have the same parents. But a part of her that was beginning to grow really wanted them to be... sisters? Allie didn't have any siblings, and Grace was pretty cool.
There was only one way to settle this. In some unspoken agreement, the two of them each turned their phones to face the other - and gasped.