What Are the Odds, Karma?

31

**Spencer**

I could've told her a better reason for why I was going to talk to Luce, but work was the first thing out of my mouth. Granted I did have documents to pick up from her... but it was about my own family. Jack had gotten word awhile back that a distant cousin of mine was trying to get in touch. I never realized I had any cousins but had grown to accept my family had been interesting needless to say.

Lucinda was holding onto the documents that had the names and information so I could collect it. Jack figured it would be better to give it to her at the party than me. Of course Lydia was going to know about too, but I wanted to know more about this before telling her. There was always the possibility that it was all a hoax somehow.

There was something else I wanted to also talk to Luce about without her sister being present. Granted I probably needed to discuss it with her mother as well, but for now this would have to do.

When I opened the door, Derek came walking over to me with a goofy grin on his face.

"Hey buddy, where's your mom?" I picked him up and reminded myself to start lifting again. These kids were getting bigger every time I saw them.

"Kitchen!" She called out as the twins came rushing down the stairs at the sound of my voice.

"Uncle Spencer!"

"Hey guys!" I braced myself with Derek as the twins wrapped themselves around my legs. "What's new?"

"TJ and Sam are getting a cat." Natalia frowned while Ryan shrugged.

"A cat?" I chuckled while we all piled into the kitchen.

"TJ loved cats when we were younger. It's all we knew." Veronica smiled at me as she flipped through a magazine at the table.

Luce was making some kind of kool-aid for the kids and turned to face me. "If they stay in his apartment for the first year they wouldn't be able to house a dog."

"That's true." I shrugged and put Derek down as he went over to Luce.

"Hi darling." She kissed his head, "I have the papers for you on the table.

"Did you look at them?"

She shook her head, "no. If you wanted me to I was going to wait until you got here." Luce looked at her kids and back at me, "kids can you give us a few minutes? When I'm done we can try out the kool-aid okay?"

"Okay!" Natalia seemed satisfied with that and dragged Derek with her towards the playroom.

Ryan sighed, already knowing what Natalia was going to make them play. "Mom, do I have to?"

"You can go play something else dear. But we have to talk about some adult things."

"Okay." He frowned and walked away, trying to get away with the pout he was pulling.

"He'll thank us later for not explaining everything when we did." Luce shook her head and placed the pitcher in the fridge. "Ready?"

"Ready."

Taking a seat, I opened the documents and leafed through a few pages to see what was there. A list of names were written down, like a family tree but not organized like one. I saw my parents names and mine, along with my grandparents and sure enough some other names I hadn't seen before. Never before did I know both parents had sets of siblings. Something may have been mentioned at one point in time about my dad having a brother or two but they never discussed it further. Why had my parents been so isolated?

"I have more family I didn't even know about..."

Luce smiled and flipped through some documents. "There's photos back here I think."