“I knew,” Brian said simply as he sat next his wife’s bedside and looked at his wife who looked so weak as the hospital room filled with uncertainty and anxiety as she looked around and then concentrated on her husband. “I knew I wasn’t the one you wanted, and there was always someone else.”
“You knew?” Liz asked as she tried to come to the terms with the sudden new dynamic of her life… as she saw the truth on her husband’s face and knew she had been kidding herself to think he could have been so oblivious all this time, and for her to think she could lie to him and think they could be happy.
“Yes,” Brian nodded. “It was obvious there was someone else in your past, and then of course my father couldn’t help but check up on you before we got engaged” he admitted of the background check that he had fought over with his father when he found out that his father had gotten his investigator friend to conduct one when he came home the first time with Liz to introduce her and then announced his intention to marry her…
“Oh god,” Liz thought of what her father-in-law might have discovered and knew how he was distrustful of her when she first got involved with his son, despite being on the track to medical school, and while he had slowly come around, she knew it was never absolute trust or approval, and yet Brian still wanted her, and gone against her family, and now she felt guilty. “What did he find out?”
“That you were involved with someone in high school, and it got you into trouble and how you almost went to prison due to your association with him…”
“Oh god,” Liz thought. “There is more to that story…” she murmured as she tried to make sense of how the past was raining on her present and she couldn’t quite comprehend it. “Wait, if your father did a check on me, and you knew I had a past… Why didn’t it stop you from wanting to marry me?”
“Simple. I loved you, and that hasn’t changed Liz. I love you” Brian said softly. “I told my parents I trusted you, and they could trust you too. It never mattered to me there was someone else before me, and I knew when you came home last summer that you started to become distant and I knew from my father’s investigator, that you had a ex here in town.”
“Brian…” Liz tried.
“I knew he was married to someone else, and therefore I thought I had a chance” Brian asked. “I thought wrong, didn’t I?”
“I love you too,” Liz whispered.
“Did you?” Brian asked. “Do you?”
“Yes,” Liz said. “I did want to marry you, and I said yes because I wanted to, but yeah when I came back to town, I ran into my ex…”
“I knew when you said yes to us eloping that you were running from someone, and something” Brian asked. “I knew that day surprising you in your suite, as the signs were all there as I have seen to many cases of beds in that kind of disarray in my time as hotel manager, and that is why I proposed that we elope, because I knew you would take having the ring on your finger seriously, once the vows were said, and if we were married, I thought we could make it work, and when we moved to Vegas, which I knew was you wanting to be away from whoever was in your heart, and still, I thought it was working but lately I felt you distancing from me again, and I knew that I couldn’t compete with your past.”
“Brian,” Liz said softly.
“I know I am not the baby’s father” Brian revealed to Liz’s shock. “I always knew, from the minute you told me you were pregnant, I knew it was your past.”
“I though it was you,” Liz asked. “I truly did…”
“I had an injury when I was younger and it made me very unlikely to be able to father my own children,” Brian revealed to the paleness on his wife’s face. “I wanted tell you, and then you told me you were pregnant, and I knew I couldn’t be the father…”
“But you wanted me, and the baby?”
“I love you Liz, and I always have” Brian sighed. “I thought we had something special despite the past being so present for you, but I guess I can’t compete with the past. I know your baby’s father is the one who saved your life…” he murmured because he knew immediately after finding out Max saved his wife, and knew from the angst on the face of Max that he was the one, and knew that he was on in a losing battle despite knowing it was his ring on Liz’s finger, and despite knowing how Liz viewed that…
“I am sorry Brian,” Liz said softly as the weight of what she had done came crashing down on her. “I never wanted to hurt you which is why I didn’t want to tell you because it meant hurting you, and I thought the past was the past. Last summer exempted. The past was indeed the past to me, and I wanted us to work, but lately, I knew I wasn’t being fair to you, and I was hurting you.”
“I wish we could have worked…” Brian asked. “But you still love him, don’t you? The baby’s father?”
“Yes,” Liz admitted. “I wish I didn’t, but I met him when I was fifteen and he was such an important part of my life. We screwed it up, and I don’t know if it could possibility work and I don’t even know if I want to try, but I don’t want to hurt you anymore because it’s clear I am, and for the baby’s sake, well, I need to protect her”
Brian nodded. “I am here for you, regardless Liz” Brian said and Liz felt like a fraud as he took her hand and squeezed it as Max popped his head in and went pale at the warm moment he witnessed, and he quickly rushed off.
*
Maria found herself in front of the nursery window. Liz’s little girl was now in a basket, and still unnamed as she sighed when she saw the image of both Liz and Max in the little girl’s face as Michael found her. “She’s so precious.”
“She’s very unique,” Michael allowed.
“How bad was it Michael?” Maria asked as they bonded over the baby in front of them and thinking of the one, they had at home in the car of her adoring grandmother who was spending time at the house with the kids.
“Tess believed she had found the ticket back home,” Michael muttered. “It would have worked if she had been a boy,” he sighed. “I don’t know how it would have worked but it was clear she was letting Liz die, regardless of whether she was able to get back there…”
“She’s a monster,” Maria murmured with the knowledge that Tess had already taken so much from them, in Alex and now she almost gotten her final revenge on Max.
“Who threatened Liz before she went and eloped. Which is why Liz married Brian” Michael muttered to the shock of Maria who listened with fascination. “I don’t know what she used, but she got to Liz.”
“Now that makes total sense,” Maria murmured as they looked at the baby. “I never could figure out why Liz would elope so quickly after being with Max. She would only say that seeing Brian burst the fantasy and she saw Brian as the one she wanted as she knew Tess was never going to give Max his freedom. Michael, Brian knows about Max…”
“Are you kidding me?” Michael asked.
“Liz and Brian are talking now…” Maria muttered. “I don’t know how it will go…”
“Why don’t we go home,” Michael sighed as he saw Max coming down the hallway, and knowing Max needed privacy. “I am sure you want to see the girls,” he asked as he smiled at Maria as they gave each other a small kiss and walked off together as Max saw them walk off as he approached the nursery.
Max winced at the wording of the name,
Baby Girl Douglas but he stayed and watched as the baby slept. To him, she looked like Liz, wrapped in a pink blanket and could watch her forever and forget what he stood to lose, even greater now than he did just a day before as he stayed and watched and got lost in the moment.
“She’s beautiful,” said a small voice and he didn’t know if he was dreaming when he heard it and turned and saw Liz in her hospital gown in a wheelchair and watching him watch the baby.
“She looks so much like you,” Max said softly and was struck by her beauty. “How are you doing?”
“Better,” Liz said. “I wanted to come and meet my daughter given I couldn’t do it the traditional way although Isabel showed me her face in the ambulance.”
“Liz…” Max murmured.
“Max don’t” Liz said simply, drained from the experience despite the sleep she had gotten “It’s over…” she murmured as she didn’t want to discuss the fact his wife nearly killed her, and would have if he hadn’t arrived in time.
Max nodded as nurse came out and asked if they wanted to see the baby, and Liz smiled, and Max felt for one moment like this was all a dream.
“Do you want to come in,” Liz asked of Max and his eyes went wide.
“Really?” Max murmured.
“She deserves a chance to meet you too,” Liz said softly, and Max nodded as he pushed the chair into the nursery, and to the basket, as she up into the basket, and he looked down at the little girl wrapped in a pink blanket.
“Who wants to hold her first?” The nurse asked.
“Go ahead?” Max said softly as the nurse took the baby out of its basket and placed her in her mother’s arms. Liz felt in awe by weight of what was in her arms as she looked down and felt a bond form between mother and daughter, and then she saw in the baby
Max. “I see you…” she whispered.
“She’s something right…” Max asked.
“She is,” Liz nodded as they spent time with their daughter.
*
The fire filled the desert skies hours later as Michael, Isabel and Kyle watched as fire took away any evidence of Tess from their lives. Max was at home trying to deal with a new reality, as he sat his son down after he woke up from a dream when he heard the front door open, as he saw Max send off his babysitter.
“Daddy?” Zane asked.
“Yes Zane?” Max asked as he settled on his son.
“Mommy is dead, isn’t she?” Zane asked, as he felt the moment that Tess left their earth and existence.
“Yes, son” Max sighed a he looked into his son’s eyes. “She has left us,” he murmured. “He did care about you know,” he lied to the boy who looked at his father like he knew the truth. “She would want you to remember her kindly,” he lied so brazenly that he felt like a fraud.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Zane muttered.
“It’s the truth,” Max muttered as he saw the bedroom open and out came Michael and Maria who had overheard the voices in Zane’s bedroom.
“I know she wasn’t my true Mommy,” Zane said matter of fatly that it stunned Max who stared at the boy confused. “You are not my true Dad either, or so Mommy says. I saw her talking to your friend Liz…”
“What are you saying?”
“She took me from your planet, but she’s not my Mommy” Zane said as Max looked up widely at Michael who was cursing under her breath.