My husband left me with four small children. “You’re the one who wanted a big family,” he sneered. Alone and broke, I found a homeless old woman on a park bench and brought her home. Months later, she remembered her son’s phone number. When he arrived, a wealthy architect, he fell to his knees, crying. What he did next was not a thank you. It was a proposal. But on our wedding night, my ex-husband showed up with a threat…

The fluorescent lights of the factory floor hummed their final, weary song for the day. But for Lisa, the day was far from over. A power outage at lunch had thrown the production schedule into chaos, and management, with its characteristic lack of empathy, had simply tacked an extra hour onto everyone’s shift. It didn’t matter that some had children to pick up, second jobs to race to, or lives to live.

For Lisa, four lives were waiting.

She had always dreamed of a large, boisterous family, a home overflowing with laughter to fill the quiet corners of her own lonely childhood. When she married Nicholas, she thought she had found a partner in that dream. He was handsome, charming, and seemed to share her vision. His mother, however, saw Lisa not as a daughter-in-law, but as a parasite. Lisa ignored the woman’s barbed comments, focusing on the love she shared with Nick. They agreed on three children, at least. Fate gave them four, when the twin girls, Mia and Maria, arrived.