Sometime later, I wake up and realize that I have slept for hours. When I pick up my phone, I have close to fifty notifications.

Who is messaging me so much? I wonder out loud, expecting to see memes and funny comments from the big group text that my whole family is in together.

Unfortunately, that's not the case.

I have a number of missed calls along with voice mails and at least five messages each from my mother and Brooke.

“Lindsey's in the hospital,” Mom writes. “Not sure what's wrong. Get here as soon as possible.”

“She might be having a miscarriage,” Brooke writes. “We are at Cedars-Sinai, going through the emergency entrance.”

“Where are you? Why aren't you answering our calls? You have to get here as soon as possible.”

Still in a daze from the drive and the impromptu nap, I grab my bag and rush to the hospital. It's at least a half an hour drive from here and the traffic has only gotten worse.

I call Brooke on the way and she updates me on the situation.

“They don't know much yet. She had a lot of blood, but they're not sure if she's having a full-on miscarriage. We are here in the waiting room… Waiting.”

My heart doesn't stop pounding until I see my family sitting in the waiting room. My mom immediately walks up to me and takes me in her arms.

“What's going on? What do you know? What are they saying?” I keep asking, but she just keeps shaking her head and refuses to say a word.

“We don't know anything yet,” Brooke says, putting her arm around my shoulder.

My dad is sitting at the far edge of the waiting room with his head in his computer.

He gives me a brief nod hello but continues typing away.

If I were anyone else, then I would think that he didn't really care.

The problem is that I know him and I know that this is what he does when things get very stressful.

“Where's…” I start to ask about Lindsey's husband, but Brooke interrupts me and says, “He's with her.”

“How far along is she?” I know that it's six months, but for some reason I want to know the precise number of weeks, as if that's going to mean anything.

After we talk a little bit about all the things that we don't know and all the control that we don't have over the situation, I feel a tinge of jealousy toward my dad.

I want to open my own laptop and bury myself in my own work just to think about something that isn't this painful.

Frankly, I've had plenty of pain over the last week and I think I'm due for a break.

“That's so selfish,” I say to myself. “This is something that Lindsey's going through and all you can think about is yourself.”

The truth is that I'm kind of looking forward to being an aunt and having a nephew or niece.

I don't have much experience with kids and I’ve never really given it much thought on having my own, but I've been looking forward to playing with this little one.

“I'm sorry, Mitch, they don't have any French vanilla coffee.” Alex comes out from behind the corner, startling me.

I stare at him, at first unable to open my mouth and say a word.

“Oh, no worries, this is great,” my dad says, taking a sip.

“What are you doing here?” I finally ask.

“I came as soon as I heard. I'm really sorry, Emma,” Alex says and pulls me close to him in a half hug.

I quickly jerk away, but that doesn't seem to faze him one bit.

“Why did you call him?” I demand to know of my mom.

“Craig and I were having a meeting about his investment portfolio,” Alex says. “When he got the call from Lindsey, he took off straight for the hospital and I came as soon as I could.”

I clench my jaw and move it from side to side trying to alleviate the tension in my head, but it doesn't help.

Alex's involvement in my family is more than just irritating, it's offensive. I know that we are all a little bit incestuous here with Craig working for my father's firm and him investing money in Alex's hedge fund.

Up until the day of our engagement, I never saw anything wrong with that, but now?

I can't stop thinking about how involved Alex is in my life and how much I hate that.

“Can I talk to you?” I ask, pulling Alex to one side.

I lead him down the corridor halfway to the nurses’ station but hopefully out of earshot from my family.

When I look at him and his perfectly poised eyes and chiseled jaw, my thoughts scatter.

“I don't like you being here,” I finally say.

“I'm sorry, but Craig asked me to come.”

“I don't like you being so involved with my family.”

“You had no problem with that before.” He points out.

“Yes, that's when I thought that you were going to be joining my family. That's when I thought that you were an honorable person who wasn't going to hurt me and lie to me.”

“I'm sorry for what I did and I will keep apologizing for as long as you need to hear it. To tell you the truth, I wasn't going to come here, but Craig said that he really wanted me to be here. When I tried to leave, your dad insisted that I stay.”

26

Emma

An hour in the hospital is like two days on the outside. I bury my face in my phone, aimlessly scrolling through social media and the news.

It becomes an endless loop of information that just makes me feel worse instead of better.

It feels like I'm being productive, but I'm actually just losing track of time and the grip on my emotional state.

Finally, I decide to just pull out my laptop and do some actual work. I go to Google and again look up the name Parish. The name is relatively popular, but none of them seem like good options for who my Liam is.

I do a similar search on Facebook, Twitter, and even YouTube thinking maybe there are some videos of him out there under that name.

My search comes up with nothing.

Then I do the same thing for Peter Mueller Schmidt.

I was tempted to search that name as soon as I got into the car, but something kept me from doing it.

I guess I was scared of what I might find.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I find nothing.

That name doesn't seem to match anyone who I know as Liam, but that doesn't mean that…

What does that mean exactly?

I'm a journalist, but my research skills when it comes to identities is limited by my experience.

I should really contact that private investigator, but I won’t allow myself to do that until I’ve exhausted everything that I can think of myself.

“Try Liam Carson Benjamin Linville,” Alex says, looking over my shoulder.

I jerk to close my laptop but then pull it back open. He did say that he was going to tell me more about him.

This seems like as good a time as any.

“Carson Benjamin? How do you know that?”

“I went to school with him, remember? I remember because we did some project together in seventh grade and we talked about our names. I think it was a genealogy thing.”

“Tell me more,” I say.

I'm sitting somewhere near my father and our talking is clearly distracting him.