Samantha Cooper stepped up to the counter of the Fate Valley Hotel, with her suitcase in one hand and her backpack slung over the other shoulder. She gave the attendant her name.

“Yes, I have you right here. You’re in a room overlooking the town square,” the woman said. “What brings you to Fate Valley? Did you come to see the installation of our town’s founder, Ambrose Morgan?” She handed Samantha the key.

“I did, in fact,” she said.

“Ambrose Morgan was a great man. He was the engineer and founder of the Lake of the Fates. Without him, the town of Fate Valley wouldn’t be here.”

“So I’ve heard,” Samantha said.

“Are you one of those people who’s into history?” the woman asked. “It’s just that you came all the way from New York City to our little backwater town for a statue installation.”

“I’m a historian,” she said. “I’m writing a piece on the founding of the town for the magazine I work for.”

“That’s so exciting. I didn’t know the people of New York City were interested in our little town history.”

“The Historic Times is an international magazine. This place has a great deal of interest. The Lake of the Fates is the largest reservoir in the world,” Samantha said. “The founding of such a landmark is an interesting story.”

“You’ll want to visit the Fate Valley History Museum then,” the woman said, handing her a brochure. “They could tell you all about Ambrose Morgan and the construction of the Lake of the Fates.”

“Thank you,” Samantha said, taking the pamphlet and reading over the cover briefly before tugging her suitcase through the lobby and up the stairs to her room.

She shoved her key in the door and walked into the little hotel room where she sat on the bed and collapsed onto her back. She’d been traveling all day and her feet hurt. After closing her eyes for several minutes, she picked up the brochure and read it over. She made a note to herself to make sure she visited the museum. They might be able to give her clues to do with her real reason for coming to Fate Valley.

Samantha really did work for The Historic Times Magazine and she really was writing a piece about the founding of Fate Valley and the construction of the Lake of the Fates. The Historic Times was something like National Geographic, but for American history. The magazine was distributed to schools and libraries all around the country and Europe. She was proud of her job and was happy to have come so far from her humble beginnings.

As perfect a subject as the Lake of the Fates’ founding in 1930 was for her job, that wasn’t the real reason she had come here. It was something a great deal more personal. Samantha was trying to discover her past. Her own identity. She read over the brochure again and decided to go there tomorrow morning after breakfast. The thought of breakfast made her stomach rumbled and she realized she hadn’t eaten since the terrible airline meal she had on the plane. She grabbed her purse and left her hotel room, making her way down to the lobby.

“Is there a good place to eat lunch nearby?” she asked the attendant.

“There’s Fate Valley Diner and Fate Valley Pizzeria in the square. If you want something a little fancier, I’d suggest the Fate Valley Resort.”

“Very good,” she said slinging her purse over her shoulder as she approached the front door.

“And don’t miss Fate Valley Confections. They make the best chocolates in the county. Maybe the whole state. Maybe the whole country,” the woman said.

“I’ll be sure not to miss that.”

Samantha left the hotel and looked around the quaint little town square. The whole town had been constructed in the 1930s, after the founding of the massive reservoir that had come to be called the Lake of the Fates.

After the valley had been funded to create the lake, the town had boomed with new jobs in the hydroelectric station. Soon resorts sprang up and people from all over the area came here to vacation. Even in 1940s, tourists came from all over the East Coast to visit the Lake of the Fates for boating and fishing. It was one of the most popular bass fishing locations in the entire eastern part of the country.

The sun shone bright overhead in the big blue sky, even as the crisp winter air bit her cheeks. Instead of climbing into her rental car, she walked the few blocks to the restaurant, noting the noisy construction in the middle of the square. The Fate Valley Diner stood directly across the square from Fate Valley Confections.

Even over the dust of the construction, she could smell the chocolate wafting out the door as a patron walked outside. She took a deep breath of the tantalizing aroma, and told herself she would have to stop by to grab herself a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates.

Samantha didn’t have a special someone. Having spent most of her college days just scraping by, she’d been happy to focus on her work after getting her position at The Historic Times. But every year, as Valentine’s Day approached, she couldn’t help but feel a little bit sad that she didn’t have a special someone. She ducked into Fate Valley Diner, and was seated at a booth by the window by a middle-aged waitress wearing a pink uniform and a name tag that said Debbie. Samantha ordered a Fate Valley burger with fries and a strawberry milkshake to go with it. Debbie returned a while later with her meal and set it in front of her.

“I hope the construction doesn’t bother you too much,” Debbie said, setting her straw next to her milkshake. “We’re all pretty excited about the statue of Ambrose Morgan, but the noise sure is getting under my skin today.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Samantha said, tapping the paper off her straw and sinking it into the creamy pink shake. She was used to New York City noise, and the small-town construction wasn’t even a blip on her radar.

“Well, you let me know if you need anything,” Debbie said, before walking off.

Samantha had grabbed a paper on the way into the diner and paged through the articles as she ate. As she flipped to the back, she came across an advertisement for a dating website called Mate.com. It said it matched the male shifters with human females.

Ever since the shifters had come out of hiding about fifty years ago, most humans knew that shifters produced more males than females. She’d even heard of this dating website before, but had never given it much thought. For a moment, she considered signing up. She did feel awfully lonely today. Being alone in a strange town was hard for her, especially on Valentine’s Day. But she flipped past the dating site and continued reading the want ads and classifieds.

She wanted to get a feel for the town. She had an article to write, and something more personal to attend to. The whole reason she had even suggested the article to her editor was still weighing heavily on her mind.

Having grown up in the foster system, after her mother died in childbirth, Samantha had always wondered who she was. But now, more than ever, her curiosity about her origins was at a peak. She intended to put all of her research skills to the test in finding out exactly why and how she was related to Ambrose Valentine Morgan.