"Moms," Trixie yelled as she bounded into the kitchen of Crabapple Farm. "Moms, are you here? I need my birth certificate so I can renew my passport."

Without waiting for a reply, Trixie ran down the hall and into her father’s den. Since her mother appeared to be out of the house, Trixie went to search of the birth certificate by herself. She crossed the room and pulled open a drawer of the file cabinet. She thumbed through the folders in the drawer until she found the one labeled BIRTH CERTIFICATES. She pulled it out and laid it open on the top of the file cabinet. She sorted through the various documents she found inside.

"Let’s see, Brian, Mart, Bobby, Moms, Dad…..what’s this?" Trixie stopped and picked up a birth certificate and examined it more closely.

"I don’t get it. This birth certificate is for a baby girl, born on the same day as me, yet the birth is labeled as a stillbirth."

Trixie looked at the certificate. She turned it over and found a snippet of a blond curl tied in a pink ribbon taped to the back of it. She looked back at the front and realized that the baby listed on the birth certificate had a twin sister born that same day.

Trixie frantically went through the rest of the file, looking for her own birth certificate. She found it and quickly reviewed it. She was stunned when she noticed the indication on her birth certificate that said it was a twin birth, but that the other baby had not survived.

Trixie sat back in her father’s chair.

"I had a twin sister. I had a twin sister."

The words played over and over in her mind. She stroked the soft blond snippet of hair while she pondered the reality of what she had found. As Trixie sat at her father’s desk, her mind tried to imagine what life would have been like if the little baby had lived. The thoughts overwhelmed Trixie. Staring at the piece of paper in front of her, Trixie had a painful realization.

"Every time somebody called Mart and I the 'almost twins,' that most have broken Moms' heart."

Crossing her arms on the desk in front of her, Trixie laid her head down as the tears came. She mourned the sister she never knew and she grieved for the life that could have been. But most of all, she cried for her mother, who had silently carried the unbearable pain with her every single day.