Light from Her Mirror (Mirrors Don't Lie Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Madeline and Kenneth Reagan were her parents. She had never had any
desire to know the couple who gave her life, then gave her away. She had a
faint memory of a man reading to her on a big blue couch, but she had no memory
of this woman. For the first time, Makenna regretted that fact. The woman in
the picture obviously doted on the two little girls. The children leaned into
her, their faces happy and shining as they shared the spotlight with their
mother.
    “We-We
look like her.” Makenna breathed the words in awe. Reeling in her own shock,
she never noticed Kenzie’s reaction to her wonderment. “We-We have her heart
shaped face. Her eyes. Definitely her full figure. I-I think you have her cheekbones.
And I guess this is where I got my red hair.” Her finger trembled as she traced
the face of her birth mother, a woman she suddenly ached to remember.
    Tears
ran unbidden down Makenna’s face. She thought she was beyond the hurt of being
abandoned as a child, she thought she wanted nothing to do with Joseph and
Maggie Mandarino, the people who so carelessly left her behind. It took only
one photograph to change all that.
    “We
look so happy,” Makenna said. A frown of confusion puckered her brow. “You-You
said she was so stiff. So uncaring. But, look at this!” She thrust the photo in
front of her twin. “She obviously loved us. There’s a glow in her face, a
sparkle in her eyes. She loved us, Kenzie.” Desperation flavored her words. For
the first time, she wanted to believe that. She needed to believe it.
More importantly, Kenzie needed to believe it.
    Kenzie
slowly shook her head, her cheeks ashen. 
    “This
woman loved us, Kenzie. I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what made her
give me away, what made her treat you so coldly, but you can’t deny this
picture!” Makenna’s voice rose with something akin to panic. “Once upon a time,
our mother loved us!”
    Kenzie
continued to shake her head. Finally, a few strangled words squeezed past the
lump in her throat. “Not her.”
    “What
do you mean, not her? Of course her. You saw our room in New Hampshire. No one
goes to that much trouble for their children unless they love them.” Their
adventures in New England had led them to their childhood home, a home they
legally owned. Practically untouched by time, the log cabin was exactly as they
had left it twenty-three years ago. The room the twins shared was hand-painted
with fairies, a little girl’s paradise in lavender and green.
    Kenzie
managed a coherent whisper. “That’s not her.”
    “Not
who? Our mother? Of course it is. We look exactly like her! I don’t remember
her,” Makenna’s voice wavered at the admission, “but this is undoubtedly our
mother.”
    Kenzie’s
head bobbed in the other direction, nodding affirmation. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Our mother.” Kenzie raised grief-stricken eyes to her sister. Her voice was
raw as the words suddenly burst from her. “But that is not the woman who raised
me!” 
     

Chapter Five
     
    A
deadly silence followed Kenzie’s tortured outburst.
    Drawing
in a ragged breath, Makenna stuttered, “Wh-Wh-What are you saying?”
    Kenzie
shook her head in misery. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t
know what it means. But this woman -” she pointed to the picture “- did not
raise me.”
    “Kenzie,
mirrors don’t lie! We look exactly like this woman. She’s obviously our
mother.”
    Kenzie
did not need a mirror. She simply turned her stricken gaze to her sister,
letting her eyes rove over features almost identical to her own. They shared
the same facial structure, the same green eyes, the same generous lips and
smile. The most obvious difference between them was that Makenna had auburn
curls and was an inch taller; Kenzie’s long curly locks were sable and she
weighed five pounds less. Both women were curvy, with generous busts, full
hips, and long legs. And they both looked like the woman in the