banner by nikkisue
DISCLAIMER: The characters of Roswell are the property of Twentieth Century Fox Television and Regency Productions. All original characters and concepts are the property of the author. No profit has been made from the distribution of this work of fiction.
CATEGORY: post-Departure, future fic, Pathos trilogy
RATING: MATURE, for language and sexual situations
SUMMARY: Maria Grace Valenti worries about her mother's sanity and their future together.
Author's Note: If you haven't read Pathos, Chaos or Terminus, you're going to be sort of lost (relationship confusion, whose child is that, etc.). If you'd like links to these fics, please PM me.
I'm also not sure if this will be 2 or 3 parts long. Things just seem to keep happening, you know....
Enjoy!!
JO
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PART ONE
June 2036
I’m graduating from Roswell High today. It’s a monumental achievement in any life, a much more stunning achievement given the uncertainty of my future, a future the enemies of my parents would have liked to have destroyed. But those enemies are long since dead and after this final summer in Roswell, I’ll be on my way to San Francisco, my birthplace. I hope that by going back to the place that held such happy memories of my childhood, I’ll begin to heal from the chaos that has plagued me here. Maybe I can come back to Roswell refreshed and healthy, and help my mother heal.
Isabel Evans is my mother. She has never fully recovered from my father’s death, another in a series of blows to her life since she was a teenager. Uncle Max says my mother is a shadow of her former self, the ice princess of West Roswell High. My mother loved my father, and his death is a nightmare from which she cannot awake.
She thinks I can’t hear her crying at night. She cries a lot, much more than other women her age, I guess. I don’t imagine Aunt Liz crying as much as my mother does, and Aunt Liz is really the only other woman my mother’s age that I have to compare to. But unlike most women her age – the mothers of my friends, for instance – my mother’s life has held extraordinary circumstances.
A boy named Alex Whitman loved my mother when they were in high school. To hear Aunt Liz tell it, my mother could be hot or cold toward Alex, depending on her mood. But when Alex was killed in a car accident, Aunt Liz said my mother grieved for Alex. As fate would have it, Alex Whitman’s death was at the hands of another alien, Tess Harding, and that knowledge caused a rift between the close group of friends.
But my mother overcame her grief for Alex Whitman, and fell in love with another man. They married and had a little boy my mother named Alex. Her new husband was killed less than a year into their marriage and Alex was killed along with my Grandma Evans when he was 12. My mother and my father had been friends in high school, but it was after Alex and my Grandma’s deaths that she allowed Kyle Valenti into her life on a more permanent basis. I was born four years later, a surprise to both my parents, but they loved me. And even though it’s been thirteen years since my father’s death, I can still feel his love for me. It’s my mother I’m worried about because for thirteen years, she’s been slipping away.
“MG?”
Standing up from her desk, Maria Grace smoothed her black dress and took a final look in the mirror. She felt Evan as he entered her room, a small white bag in his hands, but she ignored him, continuing her graduation preparations. No one but Evan had ever called her anything but Maria Grace, his childhood nickname for her following her into adulthood. He was dressed casually in a white Oxford shirt and crisp khaki pants, and Maria Grace felt her stomach flutter.
“You look beautiful,” Evan whispered, stepping further into the room, and Maria Grace smiled, her eyes downcast at the new black strappy sandals she bought with her tip money, specifically for graduation.
“Thank you,” she replied as she placed the square maroon graduation cap on her head. She hadn’t done much to her hair because she knew the cap would flatten it. It would be embarrassing when she removed the cap to throw it into the sky once she was pronounced a graduate, but for now, her hair didn’t matter.
“Your mom let me in,” Evan continued sitting down on the edge of her bed, the small white bag still in his hands. “She was on her way out the door. I’m surprised she didn’t wait for you. Did you need a ride?”
“You’re going to my graduation?” Maria Grace couldn’t contain her shocked tone. She had always been acquaintances with Michael’s only son simply because their families were so close. They spent every major holiday together, celebrated birthdays and sometimes went on vacations together, but she and Evan had never been alone since the previous summer when she had kissed him.
She remembered the moment exactly. It was a Tuesday afternoon after the lunch rush and very few customers were in the café. He was wearing a light blue suit and carrying a brown briefcase. He sat at the counter and gave his order to Rachel from memory. Maria Grace hadn’t seen Evan until he entered the café that day in several years; he had been attending the University of New Mexico and had gone onto the University of Arizona for law school. She had overheard her mother, Michael, Uncle Max and Aunt Liz the night before discussing the possibility of Evan renting the building where Phillip Evans’ law practice had once been, since both her mother and Uncle Max owned it.
With Evan a permanent resident of Roswell once again, Maria Grace continued her summer by daydreaming about him. She had confessed her crush to her fellow waitress Junie, who had convinced Maria Grace that she should make a move on the eligible attorney before someone else in Roswell did. So after a busy work day and a lot of chocolate, Maria Grace had cornered Evan on his way out of Absalom and Lily’s apartment and kissed him. It had taken them both by surprise, and Maria Grace had successfully avoided Evan at every social gathering their families shared since the kiss.
“Why wouldn’t I go to your graduation,” Evan questioned, snapping Maria Grace out of her memory. “I got something for you.” He placed the white bag beside him on the bed, and Maria Grace hesitantly sat down on the opposite corner.
“You really didn’t have to -”
“I know. Just open it.”
Maria Grace nodded and carefully opened the bag. Inside was a solid white box almost the size of a wallet. Tilting her eyes upward at Evan, she continued to open the box, not sure of what she would find inside.
“I had to do a lot of digging to find that.”
Tears misted in Maria Grace’s eyes as she pulled a small black frame from the white box, a photograph of her mother and father smiling back at her through the glass. It was a photograph she had never seen, her mother and her father looking at the camera, wide smiles on their faces. They looked like they had been laughing and someone had managed to record the moment for eternity. She lovingly traced the outline of her father’s face and smiled, raising her head to meet Evan’s blue-green eyes. “Thank you. I…I love it.”
“Liz helped me, and we went through some of Mom’s things in storage, so -”
“I…I don’t know what to say, Evan. Thank you.” Maria Grace pressed the frame to her chest, working very hard to control her emotions. “How do you do it?”
“What?”
“Live…without your mom. How do you do it?”
“It’s not easy, MG, I won’t lie.” He ran his hands through his shaggy hair, and Maria Grace stopped herself to keep from tucking a wayward strand behind his ear. “There was a time when I thought our family would crumble. Dad was drinking, Liz was doing everything she could to help us, it was rough. But somehow, we made it. By the grace of God, I guess.”
“Don’t you miss your mom?”
“Yeah, every day. But more than that, I’m pissed off. I’m pissed off that she wasn’t here to see Livvie get married or Nina go to her prom or to see Maddie and Evan be born and grow up. I’m pissed off that she died because even though I know she’s watching over us, she’s missing out on the true experience.” Evan paused and turned toward Maria Grace, who was still clutching the picture frame of her parents tightly against her chest. “What’s going on, MG?”
“I’m scared,” she confessed, her voice so full of emotion she didn’t know how much longer she could contain herself. “I’m scared I’m losing my mother. She…she’s lost so many people, Evan, and I’m just scared. I can’t lose her. I can’t.” Before she knew it, she was swept up in Evan’s arms, his warm breath against her forehead. He held her tightly, the picture frame crushed against her chest but she didn’t mind. She sighed as Evan placed a kiss on her temple, his lips lingering for several seconds after the kiss had ended.
“Have you talked to Isabel?” Evan dropped his arms and inched away from Maria Grace
“It’s hard to talk to her,” Maria Grace admitted. “She’s so closed off, it’s like there’s a wall between us.”
“People grieve in different ways, MG.”
“But this isn’t grieving, Evan. This is a self-imposed exile. She’s not who she once was. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t laugh.” Maria Grace stared at the photograph of her parents, smiling and happy. “I…I’ve never seen her look like this before.” She stepped further away from Evan and placed the frame on her desk. Unable to control herself any longer, Maria Grace buried her face in her hands and cried. She never expected to feel Evan’s arms around her again and she collapsed against his chest, his arms wound tightly down her back and around her waist.
“We’ll fix it, MG,” Evan whispered, his hands lightly stroking her back as she continued to cry. “I promise we’ll fix it.”
