Olivia was left reeling, and if Liz had known what the guard had just told her daughter she would be a mixture of pissed, and forlorn because as she was herself admitting to how it ended for her and Max back as Maria and her son, Alex, who was also Olivia’s boyfriend, who were at her house, trying to support her. The memory banks were reawaken, and the memories were back in a flood as she was forced to admit that her father’s attempt to keep her safe, and send her to boarding school were what had ended her and her now husband, and left their daughter without a father. Jeff was only slightly repentant but then it had been Liz’s decision to go to boarding school, but still, if her father had not wanted her and Max to end, then she might have gone other routes, and they would not have ended her and Max.
As she remembered that in the ensuing drama as it was discovered by the government of the debacle in Vermont and how that ended, and the circumstances of how Liz came back from a very short stint at boarding school out East. There turned out to be a camera all over the place, and unfortunately in the exact sections of the school that the fight had taken place. And they found the footage of the final confrontation between Liz and what looked like Max, and how she had very nearly been killed. Of course, they didn’t know of the circumstances of what was going down, or that she had very nearly killed him herself before the bastard
Clayton Wheeler who had took over his body after his angry wife,
Maris Wheeler engineered the forced healing of her elderly husband by Max because she refused to allow nature to take him from her. It had involved kidnapping Jim Valenti who had gone undercover at their company Meta Chem in the hunt for a worker’s killer. While it hadn’t worked, but it led to Max’s demise, because his healing power failed him or was too supercharged for some reason, and he turned into dust, but his essence transferred into Clayton, and he was recreated into a much younger man much to his wife’s delight. But Max’s memories were trying to break through. Riding the belief that to get final control, Clayton needed to remove the only person who was drawing Max back… and that was Liz. So, he found her at her boarding school, and tried to kill her. She tried to fight back, and it led to her flying out the window, and the camera’s saw all… Ultimately, they didn’t realize that Max had committed the ultimate sacrifice in that to protect Liz, he gave him his only chance of coming back to life. They only saw that he sent her out the window. Also, ignoring the fact that she had brought him back to life or she wanted him back in her life. They theorized that Max was controlling and did not like that she was wanting to break free by going away to school. They told the jury that he followed Liz to Vermont, and tried to kill her, because she had tried to leave him and they had shown the damage that the flight out the window caused to the school, and the grounds, in the footage as the government pressed attempted murder charges against Max, for his attack on Liz.
Liz had been horrified. She even refused to testify, and she did not want them to press any charges, related to her, and their marriage prevented her from her testifying against him. And therefore, she could not be forced to, but to keep that from happening, they had to stay married. Therefore, any thoughts of a quick divorce to save Liz the embarrassment of a husband in prison was thwarted which Max had floated, but Liz was adamant against. Still, Max refused to see Liz once he was sentenced to prison, and therefore she did not tell him about the baby when she found out she was pregnant.
And now sixteen years later, her baby was there visiting her father.
“It doesn’t matter…” Liz muttered as she fretted at the experience her daughter was having because she had known this day was coming, but she did not want to be happen yet. Not only because Max would find out the truth that he had a child out there in a world, with her, but he did not know her, and missed her growing up. Although what kind of father could he be, from behind prison bars?
“Yes, it does,” Maria sighed. “It is not like anyone really believes Max was in his right mind and you refused to testify,” as she sighed at the memories that invoked in her of the same incident. Because she had gotten very lucky, that Clayton hadn’t wanted her, and barely grazed her, but still it hurt to wake up, and to realize what had gone down with her friend, and how she almost had died at Max’s hands, not that she blamed him. In the aftermath, it had taken its toll on his friendship with Michael, and for the fact his seal that told him he was the rightful King and leader of Antar transferred to Michael. The transfer of power led to a brutal and short reign by Michael and forced Max who might liked to have abdicate the responsibility was forced to take it back because of what Michael could potential and had already done, and so it led to a brutal fight to get the title back…
“But there was surveillance video,” Liz muttered. “And they had evidence of what he did to you, even though you lied on the stand” she sighed. “They didn’t need the testimony from me to prove it.”
“What are you talking about?” Alex asked stunned at the unheard knowledge of what happened so many years before, and before he was born. Obviously, he was discovering that there were layers to the family stories that had not been told to the next generation, including him and his twin sister, and cousins via his Aunt Isabel.
“It doesn’t matter,” Maria now repeating Liz’s line because her son was too impressionable to know the nitty gritty about his parents’ three-year entrance into the alien chaos. “You had to be there. What did matter at the time was that they didn’t have evidence to pinpoint what happened to me, on him but the charge was two counts, but they had to withdrawn that one because I refused to testify, or when I did, I made it to be less serious so that couldn’t prove it. But because they had actual evidence and footage of Liz’s attack, the judge wouldn’t dismiss the charge… and it proceeded to a verdict” Maria sighed. “Despite the fact that they were lacking your testimony?”
“And they had the damage to the gazebo from the fall,” Liz muttered. “No wonder the school wouldn’t refund the money to my father?”
Maria nodded as he remembered that time and the worry on their group as it was evident that Max’s parents were investigating their son and had pulled in their families. Only Jim was able to sidestep it, but Jeff had given up evidence, and he was forever saying sorry to his daughter once he realized that Max was instrumental in why Liz was still alive. Vermont exempted. But “Phillip Evans is forever regretting that investigation lens he put on his kids, that led to all kind of evidence being used to nail his son” she sighed because Phillip hadn’t hidden his evidence board well enough and when the government raided his office, they found it, and therefore they had that evidence along with the tape of Isabel. It made it look bad for the group, which is why Max confessed in the first place, to save the others. But it ultimately ended up being worse for him.
“I can understand it. We were not being upfront, and we were suspicious as hell. What parent would not figure that out eventually, but yeah, it ended up biting them and Phillip is letting the guilt consume him,” she thought of her daughter’s grandparents. She might have kept the news from their son about his re-entrance into parenthood, and the birth of his daughter but she had allowed Phillip and Diane a role in their granddaughter’s life, and they were forever grateful to have a chance to be in Olivia’s life.
“It still was evidence that nailed their son,” Maria muttered as she had known her husband had spent the last sixteen years trying to get his brother in arms, and best friend out of prison along with Isabel, who was using the legal arm of the system but so, far nothing has worked.
“I think she just wants to know her father,” Alex muttered as she thought of everything the obviously did not know about their parent’s generation. “I would have, if it had been reversed and they had captured Dad.”
“I know that,” Liz nodded as he could understand why Olivia would want to know her father. She was sixteen, and her entrance to teenage hood had been rocky recently. “I just don’t want her to think he tried to hurt me.”
“He
did try to hurt you,” Maria muttered as nothing could change that fact on numerous counts where Max did end up hurting Liz, and Vermont was the most violent but you couldn’t blame that one on him because someone else was possessing him, and forcing him to fight, and he tried to prevent the carnage, and ultimately saved her, but the government couldn’t see that… “It was just that he was not in his right mind when he did, and then after all that, he still kept you away…”
“Only because he didn’t want the burden to be on us, on Michael, Isabel and me…” Liz muttered as she went for her purse as she knew a decision would have to be made. “He was thinking of us, when he sacrificed himself,” she sighed as she thought of her daughter out there in the world, alone. So, I guess I better go, and make sure she makes it through this in one piece.” She asked. “And you better come with me,” she said of Alex. “I want to throttle the girl, but she doesn’t need that right now, and she will want to see you…”
“Can I?” Alex asked of Liz.
“Yeah,” Liz muttered even though she hadn’t wanted to ask in the first place but knew that her daughter would want to see her boyfriend more than her mother, and if indeed she did learn the true extent of all the charges against her father, than she might be in a middle of a classic freak out, which was not something that was good, given her gifts, and what was going on emotionally in the girl.
“I’ll tell your father,” Maria muttered. “Come home, when you’re through…”
“Yeah,” Alex muttered as soon he and Liz were on the road to the State prison located north of Roswell while Maria only sighed and went home to her husband and daughter.
*
Olivia was still reeling as she sat in her car and looked up at the prison where her father resided, and had for the last seventeen years, sixteen of it, is how much she was alive. She had never known a life that had her father in it. It had just been her and her mother. She had always known he was alive, but unable, not by choice to come home. For many years of her childhood, she had dreams he was in a coma unable to speak, and unable to wake, but dreaming of her mother, and maybe even her, if he had known of her, but then as she grew, reality set in and she realized he was in a colder place than some dream. He was in prison.
For a mass killing that had inflicted much damage, and loss of life on two fronts. The initial was killing of many innocents when a spaceship was thought to have come to this land. Folklore had a tiny little baby being found, and the parentage could be traced to her mystery dad and a woman he had a fling when her mother was out of the picture in a mutual breakup. Then her father put her half brother up for adoption, and no one had seen him since.
The kid would about a year or so older than me, she reflected, assuming the folklore was true.
She couldn’t happen to wonder how many of the stories she had been told were true as she took advantage of the fact that it was 2019, and history of their world was at her fingertips in such ways that wasn’t able to be when her parents were her age. She could just use her fingers, and walk through the history of her parents, assuming they were recorded on the thing called the internet, and she was sitting her car, and reading how her father had been arrested after he turned himself in on charges related to the army base explosion and massacre, despite there being rumors that the real culprit had been thought to be
a blonde girl. But the media went with the government spin, and Max confessed of course, so they had their guy, and it went out nationwide.
But in smaller print was the bombshell disclosure she had not been told. That her father had also been charged with the two counts of assault against two unnamed women, teenagers at the time the articles read. Names were withheld due to the ages of the victims, and family insistence, but the descriptions of the females spelled out that it was likely her mother;
Elizabeth Parker, and
Maria Deluca, and one of them had been described as the suspects wife.
Fuck! She had not been told she mused. Her father was mass killer, but also someone who hurt women.
So, she was reeling when she saw out the corner of her eye a car was pulling up. She saw the brunette female get out of the car, and then another, a dirty blonde male.
She saw them approach. “I knew it,” she muttered. But she had bigger problems, as her mind was reeling.
She got out of the car and glanced at her pursuers. “You didn’t tell me?”
At that moment, Liz knew her daughter knew the truth. The faulty truth, but the truth, nonetheless. “You don’t know the real story. Whoever told you what you think you know, doesn’t know the true story or the truth.”
“The stories say there is footage of it happening?” Olivia accused her mother. “And they posted video of it, and I saw it. It was there is black and white. Mom, how can you still defend him, knowing what he did to you?”
“He wasn’t in his right mind,” Liz said in defense of her husband, despite the fact she had not seen the man in many years. “If he had been, he would never have done it, because he loved me, and I fought back, and in the end, we got over it.”
“Jesus Mom, he nearly killed you, and because you loved each other, you just got over it.” Olivia accused, hurt as she looked at her boyfriend. “Did you know that he also attacked your mother?” she asked of Alex.
“Some of it,” Alex muttered as he was also reeling. “Mom says they dropped the charges…”
“Only because she lied on the stand,” Olivia muttered. “Everyone could tell she wasn’t being truthful, but they had more evidence against Dad in relation to you, didn’t they so they didn’t care that he did the same thing to Maria?”
“As I said, you don’t know the full story. We loved each other. Your father has always regretted that day, and is forever haunted by it, so do not think he is a monster because he is not. He is a human who was not himself when he did what he did. He apologized to me, and I accepted it and we got married after it happened, and we were incredibly happy until we weren’t…” Liz muttered. “I never regretted it honey. I love your father, back then, and today. I have never not wanted him in my life.”
“Jeez,” Olivia muttered as she never thought of her mother as one of those women, but now she wondered .”Did it ever occur to you that maybe he married you so you wouldn’t be able to testify against him?” Olivia asked. “That he only cared about staying out of prison if the truth ever caught up to him. That he was using you?”
“That’s enough,” Liz muttered as she knew her daughter had hit on one of the benefits of them being married, and the fact they had stayed married despite it only being on paper, and not a real marriage since their wedding night. Yet, there was more to the story than her impressionable daughter knew.
Sixteen, I hate sixteen she muttered to herself “This is why I did not want you to know, because you would jump to conclusions.”
“Of, what, the truth?” Olivia asked. “This is why you didn’t want me to meet my birth father, because I would find out what kind of man you married?”
“Get in the car,” Liz muttered. “Alex will drive with you home, and he’ll make sure you go straight home. We’ll talk when we get there,” knowing that Alex didn’t have his driver’s license yet and therefore wasn’t permitted to drive long distances. Otherwise, she would have traded cars since she had driven Maria’s car since her daughter had taken the only car she owned. And she would have been able to go home with her daughter. “We have a lot to talk about when we get home…”
“I bet we do,” Olivia muttered.
“You think you know Olivia, but you don’t. What has happened between your father, and me is between the two of us, and only us. All you have to know is that we loved each other, tremendously, and you were conceived in love and not hate, and we would have been very happy together, if the fates had allowed us to be.”
“If he hadn’t massacred a whole army base and hadn’t beat up two women?”
“Jesus Christ,” Liz muttered. “Alex, make sure she gets home” she sighed as she wanted to scream, but stayed restrained. “I am not about to have this fight with you outside a prison. Facts of your father’s case are private and should remain private and honey, your life is not ideal at the moment, and you’re going through a lot, and I know that, and I am sorry about that, but we all make choices, and we choose to live with the consequences that come from those choices. Your father and I certainly did, and you will with your own choices. We will talk when you are home, and maybe the drive will calm you down.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” both Olivia and Alex said in almost unison but she lowered her temper, and got in the car, and soon she and Alex drove off, leaving Liz to look at the prison that held her husband and want to scream, and yell and shout at the gods.
But did not, she simply looked again, and then turned and got in the car she had borrowed from Maria and drove back to her hometown for a confrontation that had been brewing for years with her daughter…
*
Inside the prison, Max looked out the window and his mind was in a million directions. All of them were centered on two figures. One that signified his past, and one that signified his current days. Both had brown hair and were visions. Both asking him, looking at him with devotion in their eyes.
He knew both would have that drum out of the eyes. Olivia especially. He had seen the amusement on the guard’s eyes when he realized Olivia was his daughter. Seeing that mean that his daughter would be filled in all the gory details of his alleged and actual crimes. Which meant she would hate him, and not want to see him again.
The only good thing he had done, and now he was a villain in her eyes.
As of he was not already a villain. Someone who had confessed to multiple killings and was convicted of nearly killing his wife. Didn’t matter that he hadn’t, and instead used everything he had to save her life, and nearly died as a result and had died in fact, and Liz was the one who saved his life, and brought him back.
Only to go to prison for life.
He had missed sixteen years of his daughter’s life.
It made him want to fight back, and try again, as he finally banged on his cell door. It took endless minutes, but a guard finally came, “What?”
“I need access to the computer lab, as soon as possible. I am told all inmates are allowed” Max asked as he knew this was his request to do anything that wasn’t forced. He had rather sit in his cell and count down the hours, and minutes, and just blend into the prison, and not want anything that the prison provided to stimulate a person in in less adult ways.
“Yeah, you’re allowed, but you need to make an appointment?” said the guard as he taken back by the request. “What brings about this request?”
“I am curious about the outside world,” Max muttered as an idea crystalized in his mind. “I need to find something out, as soon as I can?”
“Why?” the guard asked.
“I just need someone’s number…” Max asked.
“Whom?” the guard asked.
“Does it matter?” Max asked as this was the first thing in years that had gotten him excited, and he felt compelled to do this. “I am allowed, aren’t I?”
“If you want out, yeah it does,” the guard muttered. “You haven’t wanted out of this cell unless it’s mandatory service. So, what has gotten you to change your mind?”
“I need a lawyer’s name…” Max sighed.
“Whose?” the guard asked, curious.
“
Anyone’s as I am suddenly in need of a lawyer. But I need a new one since my old one got me into this place, and I am not able to give him anymore of my business, and I need someone as soon as possible…”
“Fine, I’ll look into it for you, and I’ll see if I can get you time tomorrow…” the guard asked. “Does this have anything to do with seeing your daughter?” because as stories had filtered through the guard ranks of the meeting with a teenager.
“Yeah it does. It has everything to do with that…” Max muttered as his mind was full of images of Liz in her youth and now his daughter, at the same age that he fell in love with the love of his life, her mother. “I didn’t even know I was a father until today.”
“That’s rough…”
“Tell me about it,” Max muttered.
*
“Doesn’t it make you mad, or want to scream out loud,” Olivia asked as she drove, and they were ten minutes from town. The drive had been long and tedious, and almost over and she would be soon home, and knew her mother would make sure she made it not long, and they would have it out, in many ways. “Shouldn’t you be angry because your mother was one of my father’s victims?”
“You’re angry enough for the both of us,” Alexander Guerin admitted. “Both your mother and my mother say there is more to the story, and maybe we should believe them. Mom obviously doesn’t hold it against your father, or you for that matter so maybe you should listen to your mother and get the full story.”
“I don’t want the full story,” Olivia muttered.
“Why not?” Alex asked.
“Because she’ll just give excuses or weasel out of the fact that she fell in love with a man who used her, and then hurt her, and she still goes and marries him to prevent justice…”
“He went to prison because of what he supposedly had done to your mother” Alex wondered. “I think that is getting justice” he sighed. “And she probably is right, there is probably more to the story than either of us know. It’s her story after all, and given our clan, of course there has to be more to the story than we know?”
“She didn’t testify, and she stayed married to him…” Olivia asked.
“Ask your mother for the full story. You should not stay angry at your father without knowing the truth. Your mother is right, it is her truth with your father. For whatever reason, things happened the way they did. She doesn’t blame him, and she loves you, and she wants what is best for you, so, don’t hold it against either of them, unless you know what really happened.”
“You’re annoying when you make sense,” Olivia muttered because as her anger calmed, sanity was starting to return, and she knew she did not know her mother’s side of the story. She did not even know her father’s side of the story. He wasn’t even the one who told her, and it did seem like he was genuine when he indicated how much he had loved her mother, and she had wanted to believe in that love because it made her creation make
sense.
“How was your visit until you learned what you learned,” Alex asked.
“It was fine,” Olivia muttered.
“Olivia, how was it? Alexander asked as he was growing concerned about his girlfriend, and knew the anger she felt was not good for her, not now, or ever…
“It was like a dream,” Olivia admitted. “I looked at him, and it was like I was seeing home. It felt familiar. He was stunned to realize who I was, and I honestly believed he did love my mother for a minute there…”
“Maybe he does…” Alex asked. “Who told you anyways?” he wondered. “I doubt he would have told you, not during the first visit at least.”
“The guard who was escorting me out. Told me to be careful and told me what Dad was in there for because I think he wanted to bust my naivety.”
“That jerk…” Alex muttered.
“Then I checked my phone and could see all the article related to my father’s arrest, and even the footage. It stunned me, and I sorta unleashed on my mother.”
“I noticed,” Alex sighed.
“She didn’t deserve it.” Olivia sighed as she stopped outside the Guerin household, and they noticed the curtains rattling, and then Maria coming outside. “Just great. This is not what I wanted.”
“It’s going to be fine,” Alex muttered as he got out of the car and smiled at his approaching mother. “I am going in?”
“Do your homework?” Maria said.
“Yes, ma’am” Alex nodded as he walked into the house. Leaving Maria with Olivia. “Olivia…”
“You don’t have to say it,” Olivia muttered as she looked up at her godmother, and boyfriend’s mother.
It was a bizarre situation she conceded to herself. “I know what you want to say?”
“No, you don’t” Maria muttered as she knew the conflict in the girl, and it had to be confusing for her. “Your mother called and told me that you know…”
“I am sure she did,” Olivia muttered.
“Olivia, your mother and father truly did love each other. I was there that day where it all changed for them” she mused of the shooting that started their three-year descent into chaos. “Until that day, when it all went down, and while there is no defense for what he did, but your mother is right when she said that your father was not in his right mind. If he had been, he would not have done that, especially not to your mother of all people. Think of who you are and what you can do. And then think of it in your father’s terms and know that some funky stuff can happen. Let your mother tell you her story, and do not prejudge and think you know because you do not. The media only knows one side, and even then, it is slightly one sided. You never do know what you’re capable of until you do it.”
Olivia nodded.
“Then come for my side if you want. But know your father and mother loved each other, and he would die before he hurt her willingly.”
Olivia nodded again and started her car. “Thank you…”
“You are welcome…” Maria said turning and walking into the house and seeing her son, daughter, and husband and knew she had a good life. She only wished that her friend could have had the same joy these last years. She would never take for granted what she did have, and what she could have lost.
“Mom is it true” Alex asked his mother. “Did Olivia’s father almost kill you…”
“Yes, but I didn’t take it personal” Maria muttered
I was over it quickly. “Neither did your father, right Michael?” she asked of her husband of sixteen years.
“No,” Michael muttered even know the transition after Vermont had been tough on all of them and he hadn’t taken Max’s return from the dead that well, and had done things also that if he had been caught than he would have been looking at serious time in prison alongside his best friend. He almost took it as guilt that Max got caught, but he did not. “I can’t, because I should be in prison alongside Max,” he said the eye wide glare of his son and daughter. “So, take this as a lesson for the both of you, okay. I took someone’s life. Someone evil, who deserved it but still it ate at me. Max is innocent. Liz will probably be telling that to their daughter. Max is not a killer, or at least he did not commit the army base massacre. Unfortunately, he committed other wrongs, so did I. So did your Aunt Isabel. We all did so none of us are without blood on our hands and we cannot pass judgment. So, yes, he did something he will always regret with Liz, but he was not in his right mind, as he should have been dead at the time. It’s a damn miracle he is alive.”
“Are you kidding me,” Alex asked. “What is it with our families?”
“You’re just getting started. So, watch out because it will get dicey if you are not careful, so always be careful, okay?”
Alex and his sister Amelia nodded as they simply walked away as they both would be consulting with each other about how bizarre the family they had been born into truly was, as if they hadn’t already gotten a clue in their first fifteen years. “Tess may have taken us
all down, but Max and Liz paid the greatest price” Maria muttered to Michael, who could nod. “We have at least those two in our lives, and we have made something of ourselves despite our circumstances but on the other side of it, Max hasn’t been as fortunate, and neither has Liz as she has paid the price for loving Max.”
“So, Olivia went and met Max, huh?” Michael asked softly as he missed his friend. Max had turned away from all them, everyone one of them when he went to prison and it had been hell to experience, and knew Isabel still was not over it.
“Yeah,” Maria murmured as they hugged. “And something tells me this is just the beginning of this newest chapter… and because of her visit, I wouldn’t be surprised if Max doesn’t get a visit from Liz as well, whether he likes it or not” she muttered although she knew her friend wasn’t ready for that possibility at the moment, although she didn’t know if she would ever be…”
“Maybe something good will come from this,” Michael asked and yet acknowledged the reality they were operating under. “But it’s still sixteen years too late…”
*
Olivia let herself into her home she shared with her mother, and eventually found herself up in her bedroom staring at the mirror and thinking about all she had learned. She wondered if her mother was onto something with rarely mentioning her father’s name. Sometimes you are better off not knowing or poking the bear and even ripping off the band-aid. Now that she had, she felt a lot worse than she had this morning before she had undertaken her mission.
All she wanted was to know her father. But she did not want to know the scum that was underneath the layers of concrete. All she wanted was a normal family. A mother and father who loved her and would support her through anything she might do with her life. She had that with her mother.
But she wanted a father. And that had been denied to her because of circumstance.
And in a lot of ways she had conducted her life as such, because she had been lacking something fundamental in her life. Guidance from someone who was like her. While she had always known her mother was special, still, her mother had not really had the abilities that did end up showing up in her daughter. Olivia had been special for the day she was born. While she had Alex and Amelia’s father Michael, and her Uncle Kyle who had married her aunt after she was born and taken a father/mentor role in her life, still she wanted to know the person who had given her the powers, and helped give her life.
Her mother did have them, but they were not to the degree that her father did, or that she did. Now she was forced to reconcile a side of her father she had not know about it and prayed in so many ways that everyone was right, and it was all a lie. And she could still admire her father.
Whether I can still admire a man who admitted he was guilty and is in prison she asked herself.
Still, he was her father. Why if he is special like me, and if he was innocent then why did not, he try to get away. Why didn’t he use his powers and come home to me and Mom she asked? But the father she had been told all her life was
good and kind and not a monster the media described him as.
She prayed she got the answer, but her mind was swirling, and she felt like she was out of control. Her energy fields were all frayed, and as result, and so much like her aunt did in the first place back before she was born, or conceived and brought about the drama that would take her father from her, she unleashed a swirl of paranormal power surge and everything went flying around her room.
*
Liz could feel the energy take over the house as she entered and unlike her mother-in-law, she was not so oblivious to what could be happening. She immediately walked upstairs and banged on her daughter’s bedroom door. “Olivia, stop whatever you’re doing?”
Suddenly the excess energy vanished, and the noise also lessened. “Let me in…”
She then heard a power infused sound unlock her door, and Liz opened it. “I almost want to catch you doing something more normal, than what you obviously were just doing,” she asked as she longed for the normal mother worries about her growing daughter, who was sixteen to boot. “It doesn’t help Olivia, letting your emotions get the better of you. I should know, and especially your aunt knows because she did the same thing, and this is what started this whole thing…”
“What?” Olivia muttered as she sat on her bed and looked up on her bed.
“First you should know. Your father is innocent. He might be in prison for appalling crimes, but he is innocent of them. He confessed because he was protecting us; Michael, your aunt and even me, so you shouldn’t think less of him.”
“Shouldn’t I?” Olivia asked. “What kind of man confesses to a mass killing out of protection?”
“Someone who knew he was protecting unknown kinds of abuses from being done to Michael and Isabel?”
“And you, you forget what he did to you?” Olivia muttered.
“No Olivia, I never have. You think you know what happened back then, but you do not know what it was like to be there, and to experience that. Your father and I do, and he will always be haunted by it.”
“He got you to marry him?” Olivia asked. “How haunted can he be?”
“Jesus, you have such young naivety to you Olivia. You exist in a world today where it is important to speak truth to power. To take down the powerful who hurt you and hurt those who are truly innocent. That is the world we live in today. But sixteen, or even twenty years ago, it was a different time, and there were different standards. Of course, you should always fight for what you deserve. But you are young, and yes, you are naïve in the ways of the world. I was that way once, but then I met your father, and he opened me to a world that I never expected to find. The world is hard, and it takes a lot out of you, and expects a lot in return. Yes, I married him. After what happened in Vermont. But it was
not to keep him out of prison. We did not know that was going to be our future. When we said our vows, we were looking to spend it together. I did it because I loved him and because I knew what it was like to lose him. To really lose him. And to know what know what kind of miracle I got in getting him back. Because Olivia, he should have died that day, and he did not. He came back to me. Yes, the footage looks bad, and there is a story there, but you do not know that he sacrificed himself to protect me. Otherwise I would have been dead.”
“Of course, you would have, he would have killed you?”
“No, I admit that he may have sent me out that window, but he also placed his green shield under me and that prevented me from suffering fatal injuries. Instead, he took the full force, and he died Olivia. I could not bring him back. I tried. He died to protect me...”