A/N.- I’m sorry I’m late, but I’ve lost everything I had written the first time
and I had to put some days off the fic so I could get over the trauma.
I hope this chapter gets as good as I thought the other one was getting. This is the #1 surprise I had kept for me. Now it is time to uncover the truth. Enjoy!
A/N. 2- Oh yeah, this chapter may get a little angsty, but even loving fluff like I do, I always end up writing something a little darker. I can’t help it.
But I hope you guys seriously enjoy it. Now let’s get to it!
7
The next weekend
Isabel looked at herself in the mirror and smiled lightly. Despite it all, she still thought she looked good no matter what. She rearranged her short, dark highlights, put on her high-heeled beige sandals, grabbed her purse and got out of the room.
It was time to finally blurt out all that was making her suffer. She needed to, no matter how bad the others would understand (and she was sure they wouldn’t). She was ready for accusations. But her last days had been miserable and she needed to talk to someone. That’s why she had taken that decision. No matter how much that costed her.
“Hey mom”, Leo said, when he crossed with Isabel in the hallway. “Where are you going?”
Isabel smiled. Only her son could cheer her up in a moment like that.
“Hi sweetie. I... just need to get out for a minute, I have... something important to do, but I promise it won’t take long”.
“But where are you going?”, Leo insisted. Then he noticed the look on his mother’s face, a tired look. “Sorry... I shouldn’t... I have nothing to do with it, you may want to keep your things private...”
Isabel smiled, feeling the touched tears behind her lashes, thinking how her little boy was so mature only for a 7-year-old.
“No, it’s okay, sweetheart. I’m going over to Aunt Liz’s, ok? But I won’t take long, I promise. Can you tell that to your sisters?”
Leo nodded.
“Sure”.
Isabel kissed the top of Leo’s head.
“Thanks, honey. Will you be okay with Maya? Can you warn her too?”
Leo nodded once again.
“Don’t worry, mom”.
Isabel kissed his forehead.
“I’ll be going, then. Bye-bye, honey. I love you”.
“I love you too, mom”, Leo replied.
***
Isabel took a few deep breaths, before ringing. She felt her hands starting to get sweaty and her heartbeat starting racing. “What is wrong with me?!”, she thought. “I’m feeling like a schoolgirl!”.
When Liz finally opened the door, she gazed surprisingly at Isabel.
“Isabel? What are you doing here?”
Isabel laughed softly.
“What? Is it that rare that I drop by sometimes?”
Liz quickly shook her head.
“No, no, don’t get me wrong, it’s just... I wasn’t expecting to see you here! Come in, come in”, she said, letting Isabel get in.
“Are we... by ourselves?”, Isabel shyly inquered.
Liz nodded.
“Yeah. Honey and Zach went over to Maria’s the whole day to play with Mandy, and Max went with them. I had to stay because I have some work stuff to finish...”
Isabel bit her lip nervously.
“Look, if you are busy, I can go and come back some other time...”
Liz shook her head and grabbed her arm.
“No, you don’t need to to that. I was just about finishing. But what can I do for you, Iz? You still haven’t told me...”
Isabel kept on bitting her lip.
“Liz, I need to talk to you”.
Liz eyed Isabel’s expression carefully and she figured it must be pretty serious.
“Sounds serious. Here. Let’s go to my room”, she said, leading Isabel by the arm towards her and Max’s room.
“Sit”, Liz instructed, sitting on the bed. Isabel did the same.
“Are your kids alone?”, Liz asked.
“No!, I left them with Maya, my housekeeper. They’re fine”.
A heavy silence starting floating above their heads, and none of them knew how to break it.
“Look, I...”, Isabel finally began. “I don’t know where to start. This isn’t something I can talk about lightly...”
Liz was getting more and more concerned by the minute.
“You’re worrying me, Isabel. What is it?”
Isabel closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Liz, I’ve been having problems..”
“Problems? What kind of problems?”, Liz asked.
“With... Jesse”, Isabel finished.
“What? Is there anything wrong with you guys?”
“We... we’ve been fighting a lot lately... ever since Honey’s birthday. Though we try to be discrete, ‘cause we don’t want the kids to know and get involved, it’s getting each day harder to hide it. Things aren’t doing well, Liz”, Isabel said sadly, biting her lip.
“Is that all?”, Liz asked, seeing in Isabel’s eyes something else to be said. Something deeper, darker, something that was haunting her. The reason she had dropped by.
Isabel shook her head quickly.
“No”, she responded. “That’s not all. I wish it was though... there’s something else... something worse. Something that I’ve been hiding for half of my life to everyone”.
Liz’s eyes and concerning started getting bigger. She was definitevely worried now.
“Isabel”, she said softly, placing her hand in hers. “You can talk about it with me, you know. Just talk. It’ll be better for you. You need to get a lot of things out, I see. Go ahead, Izzy. You can trust me”.
Isabel shook her head. “I don’t know if you will understand... I feel that no-one’s going to understand. And they’ll have a right not to”.
“Talk, Isabel”, Liz insisted. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t crucify you. I’ll just listen. I’m your friend, Izzy. You know you can rely on me anytime you need to, don’t you? I’m here for you now”.
“There’s something else”, Isabel continued. “Something about my kids”.
“Is it anything serious?”, Liz asked with true concern. When it came to Isabel’s children, things were a lot different. And possibly worse.
“Kind of”, Isabel answered. “I... I don’t really know how to define this”.
“Try it”, Liz softly suggested.
Isabel took a deep breath.
“First, is about me. I thought I was fine, and happy. I thought I had finally gotten over... gotten over the...”
Liz kept staring at her softly, but her heart started beating a little bit faster. Oh. That was a completely new perspective of her problem and she wasn’t really expecting Isabel to pull the matter after all those years.
“Alex... Alex’s death”, she quietly completed.
Isabel nodded.
“Yes. I have... I’ve started thinking of it again. I started having... I started having nightmares again”.
“Oh, Izzy”, Liz said sweetly, stroking her hand. “I’m so sorry. But I thought... I mean, I myself and the others were very shocked with Alex’s death and I don’t think any of us has completely gotten over it, but I... kind of thought... you had gotten over it already”.
Isabel shook her head.
“No. So I thought, though”.
“What kind of nightmares are those?”, Liz asked.
Isabel took another deep breath, feeling her heart twist in her chest.
“I’m in the middle of the ocean, and I see a ... kind of an island far away. Alex is there. I’m swimming towards him and calling his name, but he doesn’t listen to me. He starts walking away without turning back, though I am positively screaming by that time. But he doesn’t listen. And he disappears”. Isabel felt the tears sting her eyes by the moment she quit talking.
Liz started feeling the same, but swallowed and kept her hand placed on Isabel’s.
“Since how long have you been having those nightmares?”, she asked.
“Kind of since Honey’s birthday, like I said. Almost every night. Then I wake up crying, but thank God Jesse doesn’t hear. With some luck, sometimes I can fall asleep and sleep sound till the next morning without waking up again with nightmares and crying”.
“Does Jesse know why you’ve been feeling like that?”, Liz asked.
Isabel shook her head.
“No. That’s the reason I guess we’re fighting, though. He feels there’s something wrong with me, but I don’t tell him a thing and start acting picky, then he gets mad and before we know it, we’re at it again”.
“But what was it concerning your children?”, Liz asked carefully. Her heart was beating way faster than it was at the beginning, and she sensed she was about to hear something that would change her... maybe forever. Something that she definitively wasn’t expecting to hear.
“God, Liz, I don’t know if I should... this isn’t...”. Isabel’s eyes were full of tears now, and her voice started shaking.
“So it must be really serious”, Liz thought.
“Go on, Izzie”, Liz sweetly said. “Trust me. You need to release yourself of that angst you’ve been carrying. You’ll feel better after that, believe me”.
Isabel sniffed, passing her hand by her nose.
“Which kid is that you’re meaning?”, Liz wanted to know.
Isabel swallowed hard, took a deep breath again and replied:
“Leo. It’s about... Leo”.
Liz nodded silently.
“What about him?”
“He is... different”, Isabel whispered slowly.
Liz stared at her.
“What? Is he... like you?”
Isabel quickly shook her head.
“No! No. Not that I know of, anyway”.
Liz nodded again.
“So what is it?”, she asked softly, trying to make Isabel comfortable and a little less tense. She could see how much Isabel was nervous. She was holding her hands so tight, they were white.
“He’s... he’s different. From his sisters”.
“Different?”, Liz repeated unsurely. Oh, God. It was coming closer. The truth was coming closer.
“Yes”, Isabel said. “What makes him different from Anaïs and Elizabeth Louise is that... he isn’t...”
“He isn’t?...”, Liz was scared now, but made the question soft and sweetly, as it was her habit.
“He isn’t Jesse’s”, Isabel blurted out. “He isn’t Jesse’s son”.
“What?!”, Liz dropped her mouth open. Oh, God. So it was that. Leo wasn’t Jesse’s. He was only Isabel’s. How could that...?
“You mean Leo isn’t Jesse’s child?”, Liz repeated.
Isabel nodded.
“Yes. He isn’t”.
“Oh my God, Isabel”, Liz said, the tears stinging her eyes. “Does Jesse know? He doesn’t know, does he?”
“Of course not”, Isabel replied. “He has never even suspected”.
“God, Isabel”, Liz still couldn’t quite digest the news. “Who is Leo’s father?”
Isabel closed her eyes, letting a tear roll off her face. Liz respected her silence, and her suffering. That definitively wasn’t easy for Isabel. If she had hidden it, she must probably had had a good reason for that.
“Alex”, Isabel said.
Oh God. Oh God. That was other thing. A worse thing. A worse thing to... digest. Alex was Leo’s father??! Of course. Now everything made sense. Leo didn’t look like Jess. He didn’t look like Jesse at all. He had only a few things heired of Isabel, like his delicate features, especially his face. But Leo had some things of Alex. The shape of his face, his lips, his wavy hair, although the light brown color was Isabel’s. Leo was the face of Alex! And his eyes... his eyes. Leo had blue eyes. None of Isabel or Jess had blue eyes. She thought it might have been just a coincidence. It might happen that the kid wouldn’t take after his mother or father in the eye color. But now she knew it. She knew those eyes. They were Alex’s eyes. And why was his second name... Alex? Leonardo Alexander Ramirez... Whitman. Yes, it was clear now. And Leo was also like Alex on the inside. He was caring, loyal, funny, and he was always there for his friends and family, no matter what. Leo was a miniature of Alex.
“Oh Isabel”, Liz said, feeling a tear roll off her cheek too. “I didn’t know that... I thought that... I didn’t know that you and Alex had...”
Isabel nodded.
“We had. I loved him so much, I didn’t care about what I was about to do. It was a prove of my love for him. We made love for the first time, hiding, and then I asked him not to tell anyone. He was a bit reluntanct at the beginning, but then he agreed. He said we would do it because... because he loved me”.
Liz watched the tears rolling silently down Isabel’s face. It was weird seeing Isabel, called “The Ice Princess”, known for hiding her feelings so well, crying. She realized how that must hurt deep inside her, and hiding something like his son’s fatherhood for seven years, mustn’t been easy.
“Liz, I...”, Isabel began, quickly wipping the tears off her face.
“It’s okay, Isabel”, Liz said sweetly. “Cry. Cry whatever you want to. You need to. It’ll be alright for you. Don’t worry”.
“Sorry”, Isabel sobbed, burying her face in her hands. She was now crying hard, her crying sometimes cut by a sob. Liz’s heart saddened to see Isabel suffer so much. When she saw Isabel raising her head slowly, and wiping her tears, before five minutes or so crying, she asked slowly:
“Does anybody know?”
Isabel shook her head.
“Right now, you’re the only one who knows about it all”.
“Not even Max?”, Liz insisted.
Isabel shook her head again.
“No.”
“Oh my God”, Liz murmured. She raised her eyes to look at Isabel. “Isabel, why didn’t you tell us? And how did you manage to... to hide it for all these years?”
“How could I?”, Isabel replied. “I felt no one would understand. I still feel horrible. And I had too little time to digest the news... getting pregnant was the last thing I expected, though we had made it without any protection”.
“When did you found out... that you were... pregnant?”, Liz asked carefully.
Isabel sniffed.
“We made love two days before Alex’s death. The day he died was the day I felt something was going on with me. He died without even knowing we were going to have a child... that he was going to be a father”.
“Oh, Isabel”, Liz clapped a hand to her mouth, trying to stiffle the shock and the sadness. It had been really too much for only a person to handle it. And Isabel was only 19 at the time!
“When I found out I was with child, I didn’t know what to do. I felt so alone without Alex, and I was sure I wouldn’t be able to handle a pregnancy on my own. I just couldn’t tell anyone either. So I had to... I had to use Jesse, because he was already interested in me. Though I knew that no-one could and would possibly be able to replace Alex in my heart, I wanted my baby to have a father. I convinced Jesse to get married sooner, playing the game and pretending I really loved him and wanted to get married. So sometime after the wedding night, I told him I was pregnant... and so it was how it all started”. Isabel talked without having Liz telling her to go on.
“So you had it all figured out”, Liz concluded in a whisper.
“I know you’re probably thinking now that I’m an horrible person”, Isabel said, without looking at her.
“No, Isabel”, Liz said tenderly, stroking her wet face. “No, I’m not. I understand you”.
“You really do?”, Isabel unsurely asked.
“Of course I do”, Liz smiled. “You’ve been really strong, all of these years. You’ve sacrificed yourself for your son. You struggled to give him a happy, normal life. And look at him now. Leo is a sweet kid. He’s amazing. You’ve raised him so well.”
“He takes after Alex”, Isabel smiled weakly, still with tears scattered across her cheeks.
“Yes”, Liz smiled. “He really does”.
“You know, sometimes I feel so horrible because I feel I love Leo more... don’t get me wrong, I love all my children so much I’d die for them, but sometimes I found myself... loving Leo more than my daughters... because he was Alex’s child”.
“That’s natural”, Liz pointed out. “But I know you love your kids all the same. I know it, Isabel”.
“Don’t you hate me?”, Isabel unsurely asked.
Liz smiled.
“Of course I don’t hate you, silly. I’m proud of you”. She paused and sighed sadly. “I wish Alex was alive to see how his son is”.
Isabel sighed too, her eyes dark with longing.
“I wish, too”. Then, after a moment of silence, she said: “I know this sounds cruel, but I never stopped loving Alex. I still love him, so much. Jesse, though he doesn’t know, has been really good raising my kid as he was his, giving him a normal family. But now I don’t know how he will react when I’ll tell him the truth. And the others too”.
“I’m sure they will understand, Izzy”, Liz said softly, but firmly. “I’m sure they will. Something deep inside of me tells me so. We’re all your friends, Iz, we won’t abandon you. Never”.
Isabel smiled.
“Thanks, Liz”, she said. “Thanks for helping me, and supporting me. Someday I’ll screw up my courage and tell the truth to everybody... and Leo. That is going to be the hardest part, despite it all”.
“You have to hurry up, Izzy”, Liz said. “Leo is growing. And he has the right to know”.
Isabel nodded slowly.
“Yes”, she said. “I know”.
A/N.- HA!!! So that was my big surprise #1!!! But maybe you guys haven’t been really surprised...
But I hope you’ve enjoyed it though!!! I’ll be back!!!
Love, Innocent ~ Tania
P.S.- I hope everything makes sense and goes with the show.
), Honey visited them later, let's say they had dinner there. 