Family Matters (CC, Mature) - Chapter 88 - Completed - 01/10/2024

[totallizfan]

That was a lot to digest.
Thank goodness we got to the part where Max finally asks the question.
Hopefully Philip will give him an honest answer.

[Parker1947]

A day later,

Max was still steaming as he drove his car and tried not to drive it right off the ledge. His mind was gone, and he was trying to keep himself composed but he was finding it was difficult to do because his mind was still thinking of the day before when everything had blown itself all to hell. And he was still reeling from it. As he turned off the engine of the car he was driving in because he had not been able to go home again.

That is ever so appropriate, he would now admit but it was true for the night before because he had not been able to stay in the house once he knew the truth. Instead, he had stormed out, and ended up spending the night over at his sisters’ place because Michael and Maria were too new in town, and he did not want to impose and instead he ended up at Isabel couch even though she had offered the guest bedroom, and even though he had intended on checking into the local motel.

But Isabel would not have none of that and insisted on her brother staying at her house. With the kids all gone in their directions, she was alone. And she and stayed at Max’s house, our family home often enough after Neil passed away. When she and the kids needed the time away from the family home. And they stayed with her father and brother, and now her brother needed somewhere to stay, and she knew it was not going to be permanent because eventually Max would be able to go home somehow.

Even though she was plenty pissed off at her father as well, mostly on her brother’s behalf how Dad could have kept that to himself she thought now that she was finally coming to know why her father had fallen so dramatically over the last six years. Always thinking it was about her mother, now she knew it was more…

Much more.

Although half of it had to be about her father’s love for her mother, which she always assumed to be absolute. Phillip and Diane Evans had been a marriage she had looked up to even if you could ignore the fact they would eventually take in and adopt two strays who they did not know and could not have known the drama that would come into their home from that decision.

But she had known that her parents had loved each other, and she had wanted to model her own marriage on them.

If she had been lucky to have one. And she would be, living to a high school future study, one that had been under dubious motives they would learn, but they were sincere in what they would bring up, and therefore she would find out she and Jesse were just too different, and therefore she had been heartsick to know it was not going to be the same for her as it was her parents.

Then she met Neil, and it had gotten better.

And before she lost him, and then she would lose her mother and see how the heartbreak settled in on her father. And as much she wanted her father to come back to them. She saw his behavior as how much he had loved her mother, and how they had a marriage that worked until the very end.

If you truly love someone. Then your heart will break when they are gone.

So, she would not have guessed that her father could be capable of such deceit. To lie to her own son, to keep such a secret.

Okay, maybe I do, Isabel knew because this is a man who put surveillance cameras in my childhood room to find out my secret she muttered. And I was lured home by my own mother, who knew the camera was there…

She forgave her mother and especially her father for that, when she knew she did not have too because she knew it was for a good cause because we did not tell them the truth. And therefore, they did not know who we were, and of course we did lie to them, and sometimes to their faces, she thought.

I never thought he would not tell us something we deserved to know.

She knew that I did not need to know; Isabel would mutter to herself. But Max deserved to know why his wife left him and ended up taking his daughter with her.

About the sacrifice she muttered.

Sacrifice Isabel thought. Something Liz had done before, and it was something that had altered their very destinies, and changed the tracks they were on, we were catapulted into a new timeline without our consent, she thought.

A timeline that would lose us Alex. Isabel muttered now.

Alex.

Someone who did not deserve to die. Someone who did not deserve to have been lost to them, and it was all Liz’s fault she muttered because she was not about to be that magnanimous to her former sister-in-law, despite knowing now what she had not known twenty-four hours before,

She knew she should be.

But she had to deal with a broken-hearted brother who lost the only woman he ever loved, and his daughter. A child that was very real. And he had assumed it was because she found him to be too dangerous. She said those words to my brother Isabel muttered. When it was so much more. So, yes, she had welcomed her heartbroken brother into her home and watched out for him and even stood guard and had not slept well.

Neither did Max.

And he was closely watched by both his sister and honorary brother in Michael when he was summoned, with the instructions to not tell his wife, why he was needed at her home, and he had shown up with double shots of coffee, and alien approved snacks, and Max had been silent.

He had not wanted to talk about what he now knew.

He knew he had not been very good company. Until finally he had stormed out when his sister or Michael who tried to talk to him, and he had gotten into his car, and instead of going home and to a showdown with his father, he had gotten into his car and drove around town, seeking a solution to his problems.

Now he stared at a building that he had been so joyful for him the day before, when he was in a glow of seeing the love of his life.

But the glow was gone, and the feeling of being pissed off, and being royally mad had taken its place. And that was something to behold.

All he could think do was think back to what he had heard, and what he now knew, and how his former wife had made the biggest sacrifice to protect him.

And all he could think of was, I did not ask her to do that…

Why could she not come to me?

And he swung back twenty-four hours and back to the storm that had collided in his childhood home that he now paid the mortgage on…

*

The day before,

“You cannot be serious? Max’s mind was screaming, and he even had said it because he did not think it was possible to be deceived by his own father. Sure, he knew he had deceived his own parents during his life. But that was out of worry for their safety were they to know the truth about himself and his sister.

Time would show that their parents deserved to be in on the secret. But to know he had been lied too, by his own father.

It did not make sense and he was standing next to his sister, with a glare coming out of his eyes, and knowing it was one he had not felt in many years. But now it was directed at his father because of what he had overheard coming from the man who was talking to the town Sheriff.

A family friend.

Some friend Max now stewed because it was obvious Jim knew whatever he had been speaking to Max’s father about, and the carefree visit he had with his best friend as he and his sister welcomed him back to town was now all but forgotten, and he was staring at the two men who had been talking oblivious that the owner of this house could return at any time.

And maybe they should be talking somewhere else, but nope, they were not. And now Max was looking at his father with fire in his eyes. As the older gentlemen were trying to tell the younger Max and Isabel their version of the conversation.

Isabel stood silent, unsure of how to react because she was worried for her brother as she stood and watched and knew her brother was seething. And she would be too if someone she loved had done this to her…

And maybe they did she would muse herself after all because she was Phillip’s daughter.

“Are you telling my wife made a deal to leave our marriage?” Max asked, “To protect us?” he asked of his sister and him and in the broad statement, they all knew that he could count Michael in it too.

Hating the situation, Phillip knew his back was against the wall, and he had to tell the truth to his son. Because he could not hide Liz’s secret from him anymore, not that he could contain the blowback at him, because unfortunately Jim only knew some of it.

Phillip knew more.

Not a lot more, but still enough. And so, Jim was first to speak because Phillip was trying to come up with the courage and figure out what he could say to his son to make it better instead of allowing it to get worse. “Personally, I do not know everything. Anything I do know, came in the ensuring years.” The town Sheriff and family friend and ally would tell his friend. “But I gather that the government came to me, doing what they do best, in asking questions.”

“What did you say?” Isabel asked softly, trying to take some of the pressure off her brother, and trying to deescalate the situation instead of trying to enflame it, because she could feel it ever so gently exploding.

“I ignored them,” Jim said. “I cited my duty, and the fact I was just back on the job a short while and was not even in charge when everything went down over your graduation, and therefore I was not in the know,” as he looked both Isabel and Max with that statement, and they knew that was a lie because Jim had known too much of what had gone down during those three years.

Too much…

Right Max and Isabel could only think now that it was because of them that Jim had been off the job in the first place and therefore, he had gone on a real journey before being able to get his Sheriff job back, because if it had not been for them, he would not have been forced to go the lengths he did to protect them, and therefore it was pretty hard for Max to feel malice against the Sheriff.

He would help me through thick and thin Max would think.

“I was not going to help them, and I made that clear to them both times they came to see me, and unfortunately, the second time, they would go and find Liz.”

Liz Max thought. He was sure that 18 years had steeled him to think what he was thinking about the situation that took his wife and daughter from him. When Liz found our life too complicated and dangerous, and she did not to want to raise Claudia in our life, he thought.

“They came to me,” Phillip said finally and hated to see the look on his son’s face, and knowing it was directed at him. Sure, the last six years had brough a lot of angst in his relationship with his son, but still, it had never been this bad, and it was never Max who looked at him with true anger in his eyes. “But there was so much I did not know so I could not answer any of their answers, and they quickly realized that and went on their way.”

“I do not understand any of this,” Isabel muttered as if she was talking for the whole room as Max just stood silent. Unsure of what to think or to say, because Isabel was right, and none of this made any sense. “You said both times?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

Simple Jim muttered. “You created waves when you left,” Jim said for the first time because there was so much unsaid when those who came back, did come back. “While the government tried to step back from the mayhem that they were going to unleash on the graduation ceremony and on several unarmed teenagers but still, it did not end their involvement. They could slink out of the auditorium without anyone being the wiser, but they would come to us, the parents.”

“You did not say anything?” Isabel asked as she stood stunned to be brought back to those days when everything changed for everyone. As Max stood unsettled, but still glaring at his father. Even though the two alien human hybrids did know they had never really talked about what it was like once they left, because even though Jim had told Kyle that a commotion was caused at the ceremony, they had not asked questions about what exactly happened in the wake of them leaving the ceremony in the manner they did.

For Isabel, Maria, Liz, and Kyle, it was on their feet.

For Max, it was on the back of Michael’s bike. As they would all gather and decide their next course of action.

Which was to get out of town quickly. And they did. And Max would not come back for a year.

Isabel and Kyle had come back earlier.

Liz had not come back at all.

And life went back to what it was before, with very little questions asked. Because after all Isabel and Max had to deal with the remnants of their lives while also going on knowing Michael was living elsewhere with his wife, as they had to figure out new futures for themselves because both were coming off divorces.

For different reasons. But still, they were alone, and it was easier not to talk about it with their parents because so much needed to be said, and since things were quiet. To talk about it, would mean memories would arise in Max because of what would eventually be taken from him.

Everything.

“It was easier not too, and you did not want to know” Jim muttered and Isabel and Max both knew this was true. “Anyways, the government managed to make it out of that auditorium without causing waves with the media or to the other parents, but they certainly knew who was missing from the graduation and therefore they came around the different families and asked questions.

Oh god Isabel muttered as she glanced at her brother who could only stand silent.

Unsure of what to say.

What could they say? What can we say Max would think? We are the reasons our parents were interviewed.

“We did not know much,” Phillip would say. “You guys vanished into thin air. The only tip that the government would hear was that you were headed south?”

Which was a lie.

As Max and Isabel would look at the town Sheriff, who as a newly hired deputy had made that secretive call. Because yes, Jim had phoned that tip in himself. And he knew it as he nodded at Max and Isabel who had been glad because it had allowed them to get a head start. A direction to go, as they would move around, seesawing around. Until the group would start to fracture and go their own way because it became obvious quickly that six teenagers could not be ignored for long.

A summer on the road is fine, but anything more gets you noticed. Max and Isabel would think as they each brought their attention back to the conversation at hand. One that still did not make sense but some of the gaps were filling up.

“Kyle coming back with Sue Ann helped,” Jim muttered. “But then they never wanted him anyways, and he was not connected to it all.”

Sue Ann, Isabel knew was Kyle’s first wife. Someone he had met on the way back here to town, and a marriage that did not last long. But they had a better co-parenting arrangement than marriage once their son Tripp was born and they eventually would break up.

“But then the government agents started to come around again, even though much of the furor over the graduation had died down, and the Special Unit disbanded, but there were some rogue ones, off shoots of Agent Burns still interested in getting to the bottle of it,” Jim sighed as he glanced at Isabel who almost winced because of the knowledge that she had added to the death count within their group. But it was not me, she thought. Not this time she muttered to herself. It was Jesse but I got rid of the body she sighed of the dual secret she held with her ex-husband. A secret that continued to be held between us, she thought. It was why our marriage flamed out, she thought of the attempt they had made. Even in a new town. The actions of their old life had haunted them, and eventually they knew it was too much, “And so they would pop up every now and again, but this time, only coming to see me, or to your father.”

“And?” Max said softly, unsure of what to say as he steered his concentration. As he was trying to understand why his marriage ended up dying.

“You were not back yet, and I did not know where you were,” Phillip said. “Isabel was off with Jesse…”

Isabel openly sighed. Because she had loved Jesse, but she had been too young. But because of who she was, their marriage had not been able to take the knowledge he now had about his wife, and the months apart had not helped their marriage, so the initial burst of passion and happiness to be together fizzled very quickly, and she had come back to Roswell.

Divorce papers would follow.

They would be signed. Jesse stayed behind and started a new life.

And then Max would come back.

Without his wife and daughter.

Alone.

And it made her misery seem tame in comparison because it had been a mutual parting between her and Jesse in the end. But for Max, he was brokenhearted, and mourning what was lost to him because he could not keep the two people who meant the world to him.

And it would not help that later they would learn the truth about Tess’s son.

That debacle was a mess.

And Max thought he had come to terms with it, and now everything was changing again and all he knew was different and none of it made sense as he stood and glanced with true hurt at the lack of trust between him and his father. He had thought they had rebuilt it, in the wake of high school.

But now he knew he was wrong.

Completely wrong. “Dad?” Max said as he looked at Phillip as if he was trying to get his father to say something that made sense, about why his father would know what he knew and did not tell him. “Why?”

“I honestly did not know what was going on son,” Phillip sighed and thought of that phone call he had made to his former daughter-in-law and wished she had called him back so that he had some frame to speak to his son, but knew it was too much. Because he had to be honest to his son. “I would have known without Liz coming to me.”

“Why would my wife come to you?” Max muttered, not that interested at the moment in putting the worse ex or former before the word. “Why would she come to you. It does not make sense. If they found her, she made a deal.” Which was something that still did not make a lot of sense, Liz would never make such a deal, he thought.

Why would she?

“I really don’t know. I think it was because she wanted someone to know. I was her lawyer once, even if it was temporary and I loved you, and I would care. I knew by then what you and your sister did tell your mother and me before you left town.”

Max and Isabel only looked at each other because they knew they should have been honest with their father and mother earlier than they were, and it was Isabel who wanted to be after a certain point in their growing up, but Max with the devil on his shoulder that was Michael talking them out of it because they were afraid of what it would mean. And in the end, it had grown so complicated. But still he had wanted them to know so they could love him and his sister with the truth.

“You should ask Liz that,” Phillip murmured. “All I know is one day out of the blue. She called and arranged to meet in the park. She showed up, and she told me about the deal she had made with a government agent that was there in the park, holding the carriage that had your daughter in it, I did not know what was going on, or what to make of it” he sighed. “She told me that they caught up to her, and forced her to leave you, and to go into some protection.”

“Witness protection?” Isabel asked as she looked at Jim, who would nod.

“But it was not anything formal like that,” Phillip muttered as he turned to Jim who nodded. “Just an agreement she got them to make before she signed her participation too. The essence would be that they would leave you guys alone. Everyone in the circle, which meant you Max, you Isabel and Michael and Maria who by that time we know had settled in Tennessee. I don’t know if they knew where they were, but Liz was insistent that they were prepared to mess things up for everyone if she did not agree.”

“Why?” Isabel asked as she glanced over at her brother and could tell her brother was starting to fall apart at the thought of Liz making a sacrifice deal to save them. A deal we did not know about Isabel now would think. Was all the quiet because she took the fall for us?

“They know about Vermont,” Phillip muttered. “And Utah before it.”

Vermont Max thought. The worst thing he had done to this point he thought, and it was bad he thought to himself. As he had put his hands on Liz and almost ended her life. All because I was possessed by a mad man. I was not in my right mind he now could not help but think. I would never have done that to Liz if I had been in my right mind, he muttered. “I will always regret that.”

Forever.

“Jim told me some of what happened,” Phillip muttered even though he had been doing his investigation at the time and found out one of the reasons Liz had come back from her short-term stay at her boarding school. Max was dead.

At the time, it did not make a lot of sense.

And there was so much that was not told to him, although Max had confided in the former town Sheriff. Whom for fortunately for Max was off the job at that point, so there was little he could do about it? And of course, it all occurred over state lines, and Jim had no jurisdiction in Vermont. And without his badge, he did not have the moral responsibility to report what he had known of what had happened on that day in Vermont.

One of the very few times that Max was grateful Jim was off the job. Even though he knew how much Jim loved his job. But legally, it was better. Still, he had reported it to Jim, who kept it a secret and did not have to say or do anything.

But did it make sense? Even now Phillip muttered. It still does not. “From what I gather from talking to Liz is that there was Utah, and we all know what happened there,” he sighed.

And Max stopped. Another one of our crime sprees he thought. We have quite the rap sheet if people knew the extent of what we had done he thought. It did not make it easy to know what had happened back then. And he was still living down of the time that had begun his parents’ distrust of them, and the need to know. Of course, when you land in jail for armed robbery, the questions will start he would think now. Any parent would have questions.

Phillip sensed the burden in his son and hated how he was contributing to it. Then and now. “There was also videotape footage and the damage around the outside of the school, which is why the school would not refund Jeff’s tuition or deposit. At the time, they would not cite a reason,” he muttered. “Because of how it looked. But there was enough there that the government could root out the truth. So, they had enough ammunition for when they would find your wife, and therefore, she knew they could cause a lot of pain for the family, and you and Liz. Rake you through the mud. Put you in jail. And by then Claudia was born. And Liz not only had to think of you and her, but your daughter.”

She could have come to me, Max thought as he grimaced at what he now knew. “So, she made a deal?” Max asked. Claudia, he thought. And of all the time he had missed. We could have been together all these years if only Liz had told me he muttered to himself. Why Liz, why not come to me?

“I cannot speak for her motivations,” Phillip muttered and felt for his son. “All I know is that they got to her, and she feared what they would do to you guys if they got to you, and held you for any length of time,” he sighed. “She indicated they did not make it easy for her before she negotiated the agreement…”

Oh god Max winced at the mere thought “What did they do to her?”

“I do not know,” Phillip muttered. But it was probably bad. “Just that it made her know she did not want to put you guys through it if she could prevent it,” he sighed even though he probably had a good sense that this was not something his son should be hearing from him, because he was pretty sure something had to have happened to make Liz made the deal she did. “She told me that she was doing it,” he sighed. “I tried to convince her to tell you, and not to do it because it was too much. That the government would hold all the cards. And especially that you deserved to know what was going on, and to choose what you wanted to do.”

“And?” Isabel asked.

“She said the government was insistent that it was something that could not happen with you and her, that it could only be her, and Claudia” Phillip muttered. “She had to convince them that Claudia was a normal little girl who needed her mother and should come with her.”

“She could have said no?” Max said at the thought of his wife lying about their child’s status. Although at three months, how could we know? “We could have been together…” he muttered. I would have hidden forever if that was what it took to be with wife and daughter, he thought. Why would I want to live this life without them?

Isabel knew what her brother was thinking, and she hated Liz for taking that away from her brother. Even though she accepted that she was very likely saved in any potential deal. Because if her brother’s torture was what was fated for her, and Michael and because she knew it was hell on earth and it had left her brother with plenty of scars, and scars that he was still dealing with in many ways to this very day.

or not dealing with for that matter.

Still, her former sister-in-law deciding to take a deal that separated her brother from his daughter was awful, and she hated that pain for her brother.

“I know that son, and I am sorry” Phillip sighed. “I truly am, but she was not listening and even if she was, the deal was made and she needed to deal with it,” he muttered. “She told me that I needed to convince you to come back home, and to divorce her…”

“That is why you and Mom wanted me to come back?” Max asked. Of the demand that came on a phone call to his parents. They had insisted that he needed to come home to Roswell. Something he should have done because he had no reason to want to stay in his old town. But he was resisting it. I had no reason to want to stay back there when I did not have my wife and child with me, he muttered at the insistence that his father had put an end to his marriage and filed for divorce. “It was you?”

“It was your wife who asked me to make sure you come home. She knew you needed to be back here. Isabel, you were back here by then, and Max, you needed your family.”

Really, Max asked incredulously. I needed to be with a family who was denying me what I wanted most in this world? “I needed my wife, and I needed my daughter” Max muttered. “I came home, and all the time, you knew where they were, and you kept it a secret from me. You saw Claudia did you not?” he asked with hurt and anger in his voice. “Today was not the first time, was it?” he asked he asked of the encounter that morning, which seems like eternity now…

“She was a baby; and it was only a glimpse, obviously, she has changed a lot since then” Phillip mourned, and Isabel could only shake her head with shared disappointment at her father. She could not believe they were here today, discussing this.

“And I have missed it all,” Max muttered. “You had no right to keep that from me. Liz might have made the decision and you were not going to change her mind because I know her when she has her mind up, because yes, when she does have her mind set to it, then it is as stuck as mud is,” he muttered. “But and it is a big but. But she kept you apprised of what was going on?”

“Only ever so briefly over the years,” Phillip muttered. To try to soft pedal that he had known and seen pictures of his granddaughter growing up. Which was something that was denied to his son.

“Which is more than I got,” Max muttered. “I missed eighteen years with my daughter. Liz is a grown woman, and she made her decision, but you kept me from my daughter, and I cannot forgive that. Yes, she needed to be with her mother, I was never going to deprive her of that, which is why I agreed with Liz’s need to take her, but come on, you knew where they were, and you did not tell me. You even allowed me to divorce her, and to give her everything she wanted without a chance of going and finding them and convincing her that it would be better to deal with it together.”

“She was protecting you.” Phillip muttered. “She was protecting you from harm?”

“She did not need to protect me,” Max said. “I could have protected myself. I am not exactly powerless you know,” he would spat of his powers, that were a lot mightier today than they were as a teenager, "I could have helped her, and you did not give me a chance.”

“I am sorry,” Phillip muttered.

“That is some consolation when it is eighteen years later, and I could have known the one child I have with me” Max muttered. “You kept me from them,” he muttered before storming out and flying out house…

Out of his mind.

And it only left the others back in the house and staring at a devastated soul. “Dad, how could you?” Isabel muttered as she stared at her father. And then thought of her brother. “Even though I do want to stay and reem you out. I am going after my brother so that he does not go off the cliff or do something he will regret.”

“Thank you honey,” Phillip sighed.

“Don’t thank me, Dad,” Isabel muttered as she only shook her head in disappointment. “You did this to yourself. Because I admired you. I looked up to you. And I thought you were bigger than this,” she said as she walked off and fled the house, and it would only leave Phillip to stay in the house that was once his own, and now belonged to the son that he had just angered.

“They hate me?” Phillip muttered to Jim.

“They will come through it,” Jim assured Phillip but was not so sure because he knew how much Max had loved Liz, and still did…

*

And now…

Max was staring at the building and feeling so many emotions that he did not know how he could function. She once loved Liz with every ounce that was in his body. And he still did if he was honest with himself. But he knew that with love came disappointment and pain that was unlike anything else. As he stared at the building in front of him and did not know he could get up the steps and face his former wife.

And the choice she had made.

To protect him.

I thought we agreed once that you did not need to protect me, Max thought. That once before had come when as a teenager she had agreed with a future version of himself, from 2014 he thought. She had changed their very words on the assumption that the future version of himself was telling the truth, of great carnage. And the death of both Michael and Isabel. Now that they were in 2021, the thinking that the worst could have come about was a little much. But we are in a new timeline he thought. Not everything that is happening was what was in the lineup for when we started in 1999, he thought when that shot rang out inside the building he was looking at and trying to come up with some courage to walk into the closed facility and face the wife who had given up everything for him and ended their marriage.

To save him from probable jail, or worse…

You could have left it to me to decide for myself, Max muttered to himself. “I loved you Liz, I loved our daughter. And I did not deserve to lose you when we could have fought the government and won, and if did not win, then we could have fled and been together…” he vented out loud. As he was getting the guts to get out of his car and walk up and have it out with his former wife.

The wife of his heart.

Getting the courage that had been denied to him until now, he got out of the car and walked back and edged open the locked door. You do not need keys to be who I am, he thought as he opened the door, and walked in, and walked up the stairs, and knocked on the door.

Prepared to finally come face to face…

“Liz,” Max called. Please open the door, he sighed. “We need to talk.”

As he waited, but would not be Liz who answered, but it was someone he had been robbed of watching grow up, and now she was standing of an independent minded, strong willed eighteen-year-old. “Dad?” Claudia asked, surprised to see her father.

“Is your mother home?” Max asked.

“What’s the matter?” Claudia asked because she could sense that her father was tense and upset about something.

Max softened his posture. Because he did not want to scare his daughter. My daughter, he thought. Someone I have been deprived of for too many years to count, “Nothing for you to worry about, but it is something I have to discuss with you mother,” Max murmured. “So, can you answer me, where is your mother?”

“She is not here?” Claudia muttered.

“Then where is she?” Max asked. Because he did not have much more stamina to keep this going. He needed to see his former wife, and deal with this once and for all. Max needed to see her and make some sense of all he now knew of what had gone on back then. A lot of it now makes so much sense even when it does not, he thought. Why she decided to up and ended our marriage so suddenly he thought.

And now he needed to hear it come from her own mouth, instead of his father’s.

“Claudia?” Max asked softly.

Claudia Diane Evans did not know what was going on but knew her biological father definitely was on edge for some reason. An edge he had not been on the previous day, so something was going on, “She moved out” she said ever so bluntly.

What… Max asked as he was left stammering.

[totallizfan]

Angst....angst..and more angst.
Where is Liz?
Looking forward to Max finding her and....the talk.

[Superman86]

Omg! So much revealed, Where the heck did Liz move to now!! Can't wait for more

[Parker1947]

Claudia Diane Evans thought herself to be a strong-willed young woman. She had led her life to this moment under a degree of wishing and wanting sometimes both at the same time, but also knowing she was different. Still, she was on the brink of her future, if I can just figure out what I want to do to gain that future she thought as she muttered to herself. Mom always knew what she wanted to know, from the very beginning. Sure, she is having a midlife crisis now as she approaches forty, but still, she knew…

I do not, and I am looking at the man who changed the track Mom was on, even though she in the end reached for the stars, she thought, just in a different manner. She knew her mother and father had a unique relationship. She saw love in her father’s eyes. It did not mesh well with the fact she was raised by a single mother, void of a father. All her mother said was that we cannot be together, but you were loved.

Loved, sure. But that was different than knowing the man who fathered her, and now he stands staring at me, like he was on some kind of edge…

Ready to go off Claudia remarked to herself as she stared at the confusion in her father’s eyes, and knew it was warranted. Everything the last few days felt so drawn out but also so whirlwind, and it gets your mind going if you really think about it, and now she had to explain what had happened to a man who looked like he had experienced too much, which was the opposite of their last encounter, when he looked exhausted but exhilarated to know her, so to hear, the What… come from her father, she knew something was up.

“Mom moved out” Claudia muttered.

From the other side of the door, Max looked stunned. This was not what he was imagining he was going to find. Sure, he wanted to have it out with his former wife, and there was a high percentage chance that their daughter would be here, or Liz’s own son but he never imagined he would hear what he did hear, “If she did, why are you here,” he said softly, almost too softly for his daughter to hear him. “Claudia, what is going on?”

“Sorry to startle you,” Claudia smiled. “I guess I got you going,” she said a smirk and a smile, but it was one that Max did not feel like enjoying it because he was dealing with too much emotion, “Mom is not that much a of delinquent mother,” she said with a smirk. “She moved across town to the motel.”

“Oh,” Max said as it slowly sunk in, Thank God he muttered to himself. And did not know why was thinking that because it would be so much easier if she had simply left town because then they would not have to have it out, and he could go on with his life, in whatever way that was possible, and they would continue the pattern that they had been in for two decades. “I did not know if she had some work commitment or something?”

“Nope, she left that job in the dust” Claudia said with great flourish. “She got burnt from it and therefore, she is not going back even if this enterprise does not take off,” she murmured. Because the eighteen-year-old was smart enough to know, it might not make it, because it is a lot.

Max nodded.

“Why did she leave here?” Max asked as he did not really care about what made her leave wherever she was living before, because she was here now, and so it was a shock to show up and be told she had moved out. Especially since this was her childhood home. Somewhere that had great memories for his former wife.

A place that I have memories of too, Max thought, especially that balcony.

“My brother needed to get a decent night of sleep, and Mom was not getting one either,” Claudia murmured. “They moved over to the motel on the edge of town,” she said softly. “It might be temporary, I don’t know, but given everything going on around here, they figured JJ needed more stability than being in here because of whatever work will be happening before too long,” she said when Mom figured out what she wants to do. “Better internet connection for the time being, so JJ can do his schooling,”

And yours, how about yours? Max wanted to say and did. “Yours is not that important?”

“JJ has a harder time with on-line schooling. I can manage from here, but because of our different needs, it probably for the best” she said. “And really, all there is left for me, is some reports, and exams” she said. “Graduation is just over the horizon.”

Another reminder of how much I missed Max was telling herself.

“Oh,” Max said softly as he did not know how to respond to the fact, he had missed his daughter’s education years, or to this point he muttered. “You stayed?”

“I am eighteen,” Claudia muttered as if Max needed any reminders of how old his only child was, I know how old you are, and how much I have missed of it. “I figure I can hold down the fort here, and it is not like Mom, and I have not already gotten used to being apart from each other,” she said softly. “With me spending time these last few months with Grandma and Grandpa.”

“Right,” Max muttered. She was so close, and I did not know it. As he was also still a little sore that his daughter had gotten a chance to know Jeff and Nancy when she had not had the chance to know his own father, and especially not his mother who died not even having met her namesake granddaughter. And while he was still steaming mad at his father for what had kept from him, and he was not sure he was going to be in a forgiving mood anytime soon, still, so much could have been different if only Claudia had been back here knowing her heritage, and his family.

“So, I think I can handle it here,” Claudia muttered. “It is not like this place is that big, so it will be fine. So, you do not have to worry about me.”

Max nodded, unsure of what to say. Because so much had been missing, and he did not know so much, on so many levels he thought. “I am glad.”

“You wanted to see Mom?” Claudia asked, trying to make small talk with her father, for reasons she did not know because it was not, she knew the man. And it was obvious something was going on in the man’s head, and he did not want to be there, but needed to see her mother for some reason. “Should I tell her to call you?”

“No,” Max said instantly as he would continue. “You said the motel at the edge of town?” Max asked, as he knew very well that this town was too small to have a big hospitality service, to be able to have a lot of hotels or motels for that matter. We have a lot of people coming to town, although not so much this last year he thought because he knew so much had dried up in the past year. Which is why this place closed and Jeff and Nancy had to move on, even though he knew how much a passion this place was for his former father-in-law which is why he had kept an eye on it for him.

“Yes,” Claudia said. “I figure there are not many, right?” she asked. “Although I do not know this town that well,” she muttered. Although I am beginning too.

“No, you do not” Max said even though under his beath, he wanted to say so much more. But he restrained himself so that Claudia would not think something was up, “I rather talk to your mother in person.”

“Oh, okay” Claudia muttered. “Can I ask, why, is it important?”

“To me it is,” Max said. Maybe it is not for your mother he muttered to himself because Liz kept us apart and took that deal and walked away from everything, I could have given her.

He did not know what he could have provided her and their daughter if the government was wise to them and on their trail, but we would have been together, Max thought now as he looked at how grown up his daughter was looking at 18.

And he had missed all but three months of it. As she looked like a true combination of both her parents, but a little taller than either of her parents.

She is very unique Max thought. “Thank you for talking to me.”

“We are related, right?” Claudia muttered. “You might not have been a part of my life because of whatever went down back then, with you and Mom, but I know I cannot move around this town and ignore you, and therefore, I might as well want to know you…”

“I want to know you too,” Max muttered. I wish I could have seen you grow up.

“I don’t know what that means yet,” Claudia allowed.

“I know, but when you do, let me know” Max said with a smile. But it is a start he murmured to himself. You always have to start somewhere, right? he sighed to himself. “You are so grown up.”

Loving that she was so grown up, but she knew it came at a price. “Sometimes, I wish I was younger” Claudia said with a smile.

“Why,” Max asked. “Most people want to grow up as fast as they can?”

“I need to figure out my direction in my life,” Claudia muttered. “When I was younger, everything was so easy, when now that I am older, it’s all so hard” he sighed. “With graduation around the corner, I expected I would have known what I wanted to do,” she sighed. “By now,” she muttered. “And I do not. Therefore, I am all over the place. And it annoys Mom constantly.”

Max nodded.

“Mom knew,” Claudia sighed. “Which is why we clash, because it was all so easy for Mom.”

“Yes, she did” Max nodded she always knew what she wanted to do but he could not help but think of how much Liz had been always going towards that goal, and how much she got sidetracked by being involved with him, and he was sorry for it. I wished it was so much easier than it was he thought. I should have been, he sighed but then Liz might have been dead. “Your mother did have a goal, but she did get sidetracked there for a while.”

By you Claudia wanted to ask but did not even though her father was thinking it himself.

So much history there in our past he thought. And Claudia did not know any of it and because Liz had walked away, there is so much I do not know of how she reached whatever goals she reached for a time. But one thing he knew, “It is not always that easy, no matter the age,” Max said with bittersweet smile, “It took me awhile,” he said softly. “Too,” he muttered. And knew in some quarters, he was still looking for himself. I have found some kind of life he thought. But it was not the one I had at eighteen and lost a year later but that is for a different conversation, or too much alcohol. “But it sounds like you had some good role models as you grew up,” he murmured even though I wish I could have known you. “Because you, did, you will find whatever you are meant to be, one of these days.”

“That I did,” Claudia murmured a role model that makes me wonder but knew this was not a talk to be having at the door, “Say hi to my mother when you see her,” she sighed because she knew whatever was weighting on her father’s mind, meant he would be seeking her mother out before too long.

“Oh, I will” Max said softly as he turned. “Good to see you Claudia,” he said softly as he knew he would never get used to being able to see his daughter. Even when he was not intending it, and so this day despite everything on his mind, well, it was special.

As he walked downstairs and got back into his car, and Claudia walked to the window over the Crashdown and looked down and saw her biological father roaring away in search of some peace of mind, “I wonder what is going on?” she said softly out loud to the quietness of the apartment. You think I would be used to it, but I am not, as she went to the phone and made a phone call.

To try to shake the quiet off…

“You will never believe where I am, or who I just saw” she murmured when the other person picked up his phone.

*

While at the same time. Max was driving across town to the motel on the outskirts of their town. Isabel was still dealing with the aftermath of the night before, and while she had not gone close to her family home. The shock waves were reverberating in her mind as she did not know what her father was thinking. What was he thinking, keeping such a secret from Max, she muttered as she was trying to do some chores around the house? It was quiet with the girls out of town. She looked forward to getting back into the mother role when Kyla, Poppy and Katy came back to town. She missed them.

This had been the longest she had been away from any of her kids. She was just starting to get used to being away from Kyla because she was on that special exchange program. All semester, as it was exclusive as one of the very rare exchanges that were allowing international students when most of the borders in this world were still close or had major restrictions to them. The bubble environment was a draw. Therefore, the fact that her bright and inquisitive daughter had gotten in was a two good of an opportunity to pass up. So, they took it and went through the major hoops to get her overseas, and then it was just her and the twins all semester.

Until Poppy and Katy took the train to Maine to visit their paternal grandparents. A visit that had been long in the waiting because when Neil had passed away, everything was so locked down. Neil’s parents had been unable to come visit, and so the twins undertook the extensive trip with a good friend of Isabel as chaperone. Because Julia was headed to New York. Portland, Maine was a detour but one that Isabel was grateful her friend had taken.

Flights were still locked down in many ways, so there was not a lot of domestic variety, and they would be leaving within days to come home again. And it would be good to have them home again, so she could get back to what she had been doing for the last fifteen years, being a mother.

With the kids away, she had been a daughter. And now she did not know if she wanted to have that role.

She loved her father, and that did not change but she was pissed on her brother’s behalf. Their father had not kept secret about her marriage, either one of them she thought although we were keeping a doozy of a one from him with her marriage to Jesse she thought. She went into that one not having told Jesse the truth, and that would bite her in the end. She had believed he was the one, but how could he be the one when he did not know me, she thought now.

But then Neil did not know her either, really, even when he knew more than Jesse ever did going in.

Still, it was different from what her brothers had with their soulmates. True understanding, she thought. It was something she had always been missing.

Even if Neil accepted what he knew of her quirks and unusual habits. And they had made it work until he was so unceremoniously taken from her, and the girl’s lives, and so she had to figure out how to make a life for herself and the girls.

And she had leaned on her father, despite his disheveled outlook at life, Dad did clean up for a little while there she muttered to herself as she was disappointed in the man because she had expected more from the man, even though she knew in her heart that her father had been trying to protect her brother, but Max did love Liz more than almost anything in this world she muttered. I don’t think we even rated if she was in the equation she thought, and knew she was the one who had pulled him back from the brink many times, and especially when all was thought lost, she sighed.

And she did not even know it at the time.

But Liz had brought him through it, and so for her father to keep something so fundamental from her brother. Even if Max was unlikely to succeed in doing anything. But he would have wanted to try, and especially would have wanted to try to be there to watch his daughter grow up, even from afar, because she knew, my brother would have packed up and moved wherever Liz was living even if they could not be physically together.

If only to see her walking, after all that is all, he did before the shooting she thought. So, she wished things were different, and wished that their family did not fall apart because of this latest betrayal.

They almost had not come out of the last one. This is a biggie even if she understood why her father did it. It was Liz’s decision after all…

Now Liz, is who I can blame, and she was going on blaming her former sister-in-law because my brother will forgive her as soon as he sees her, she muttered, anyways, thinking of her family problems was getting through the thankless chores she had to do when there was a ring of her doorbell.

Interestingly, she was not expecting anyone because Michael had gone home to his wife and daughter and promised to find her brother the next day and see how he was doing and would call her if he needed her.

Putting the clothes basket down, she went to the door, and was surprised. “Kyle, what are you doing here?”

“I was free, and I thought we could have drinks or something, and talk” Kyle said with a smile, and for a minute Isabel felt something because Kyle was the one person who knew all her secrets, almost all of them but enough to be in the middle of everything even thought he was not changed unlike her former sister-in-law.

“Come in,” Isabel said with a smile as she let her friend in.

After all, they had gotten very close over the years, and they had a friendship going back to almost the beginning. “You do not have Tripp tonight?”

“Nope, he’s with his mother and stepfather” Kyle said softly. “They have dinner planned,” as both of them knew they were very different than they were back at the turn of the millennium, as a lot had changed, and they were linked in a way that no one would have expected back when Kyle was dating Liz and getting under her skin because he was obnoxious. Time would change that opinion of him for her, and today, in 2021 they shared a lot.

The truth, and especially they shared a daughter.

Even if it was only in biology, and not legally.

“Come in,” Isabel murmured.

Kyle came in.

*

Meanwhile,

Liz was listless, and restless as she stood pacing her motel room. JJ was in the next one, next to her because she had not known how long they would be staying and knew neither of them needed to be in the same room together and she had not wanted him back at the apartment with Claudia. It was too much responsibility to put on his sister she muttered to herself, and she knew how it would look, and plus it was why they had moved here to the motel, because JJ needed to be able to get a decent night sleep. Plus, the couch was lumpy because it was the same one that had existed many years before, Mom and Dad did not feel the need to replace it, but she knew, why would they? she asked herself. I was gone, and it was only them. And I did not come back. And certainly, I did not bring the kids she muttered to herself as it was like she was having a entire conversation with herself.

There was not a chance to come back here. Not in those first years, because that would have been a no no for me and for Claudia, and even when that period of our life had ended, and JJ came into our life. Roswell was out of the equation. Because the town was small and therefore you are risk running into someone you know.

And certainly, she had already proved that with this return to town, I ran into the very person I was running and hiding from she muttered to herself as she stood in her motel room. On the edge of town. In a town she had been born.

But a town she had left many years before, but was back, and having to adjust. JJ did have a bedroom in the apartment. And she knew until they found some kind remedy to that, than her son was going to be a very tired little boy. And plus, the wifi connection was not the greatest and therefore they had to get that fixed. After all, her family apartment existed in a time before internet was so commonplace, and I had amazingly big cellphone she thought now they are so small. Mom and Dad did not upgrade their service So, there were going to be plenty of little projects to do and Claudia was able to be there, so someone was going to be on the premises.

She figured also that getting away from the Crashdown would allow her sleep well again because then she would be away from the memories. Memories always are stirred in that place, and probably because her new bedroom was steps away from where I got engaged, she muttered to herself, even though I am not physically in the same bedroom anymore.

Still there were three years of memories, and so much more she thought because of the life she had on the outside of that restaurant, and away from this town for a glorious year, before it all came falling apart, she muttered because of me.

Liz knew she was the reason she was not happy.

And that her daughter was so rootless she would mutter to herself, JJ is only ten. Therefore, he has time.

But Claudia has her future just waiting for her, and she does not know what she wants to do she thought. She supposed the last year did not help her daughter as her bright and unique daughter had to move on-line, and while she zoomed and talked with friends, still, she did not have a direction in her life. Even before going on-line for her schooling.

Which is why I wanted her to spend time with her grandparents. Liz muttered to herself as she was hoping that her father and mother would provide something to her daughter, to get her going towards her future instead of cancelling it all for a wandering life of being with Archie or whatever boyfriend she had at the moment, and the open road.

I did not risk everything for you to not have a purpose in your life, Liz muttered as she thought of her daughter. She hoped that Claudia staying at the apartment would give her daughter some responsibility, and maybe it would help her reach whatever was destined for her daughter, because I certainly reached mine, she thought.

I am just going through a midlife crisis she muttered to herself. Which is why I am holed up in motel with my young child, while I leave my eighteen-year-old in the apartment alone she thought. God knowing what she would do with that alone time.

But Liz did not want to think about that. She needed to make plans for the future. For herself, and her son, and yes, her daughter.

But mostly JJ. Because she knew this was a temporary solution but not a permanent one. It cannot be, she told herself as she was in her own head and knew it, just as there was a demanding knock on her door.

It brought her back into the room, she wondered if her was her precocious son who was known to be demanding, but he knew that JJ was doing his homework, which she had to get over there and check in on him, but his son while hating the on-line culture of school at the moment. Because it lacked a personal touch. Still, her son was crafty, and was a child of the technology age. Able to do things she would never have been able to do at ten years old no matter how smart I was, she thought. I just did not exist back then.

Armed to go and check on her son, she went to the window and looked and was startled to see that it was not her son at all. Or even Claudia coming over for a visit with her mother and brother, which was possible, she thought.

But she knew Claudia would probably reveling in the sense of freedom.

But nope, it was not JJ or Claudia.

It was…

Max, Liz said with a startled moan. How did he find out I was here? she wondered and then she knew it had to be their daughter.

Because even Maria has no idea that I am here she thought of her best friend. The move to the motel had been a sudden change, and it was rash, and she knew it, but she was now realizing that Max was still going to haunt her, no matter where I am staying.

Arming herself, she opened the door, “Max, what do you want?”

“We need to talk,” Max said. As he was short of the joy to see her, and still far too full of disappointment and anger to think straight or exchange in any level of chitchat because it was only delaying the obvious.

And why he had not shied from the moment. I need answers.

“Why?” Liz asked.

Max did not have the energy to be anything but blunt. “Because I want to know why you took a deal with the government and walked out on our marriage, without telling me what you were doing?” Max said bluntly. “Or allowing me to try to convince you not to do it?”

Shit Liz thought. He knows.

Max knows.

[totallizfan]

Getting to the good part.

[Parker1947]

It had all come down to this. It was eighteen years in the making. And Liz knew the jig was up. She knew she could probably stall if she tried hard enough. Because she had her son next door, and was grateful he was not here for this, although he would have been an easy diversion she muttered as she looked at the hurt and the disappointment in Max’s eyes. The love, awe, and clear astonishment that he had the ability to see her again was now over, and in place was a level of distrust and weariness, and while she was not used to seeing it, still Liz knew she had seen that look once before.

When they were way back in their youth, and she had not wanted to have to experience it again. But she did because now both times she had lied blatantly to his face. Saying things that were not true. Both times were out of sacrifice. And both times, she walked away from something good because of deal that she had made. And each time she knew she was looking at the unknown consequences of future events. Especially that first time she thought. This last time, it was a little of that too, she knew because I did not want what was done to me to be done once more to those, I loved she thought. Especially since Max had already gone through it once before. And while she had never been that close to either Michael or Isabel, still she shuddered to think of what could have been done to them.

Especially when she knew what was done to Max ever so briefly due to his kidnapping, and then my own she muttered as she stood and glanced at the man she loved. Someone she had walked away from and felt the consequences for all these years.

18 of them.

“Max,” Liz murmured. Because she was unsure of what of say.

Max was not about to allow his former wife to weasel out of facing the past. Because he deserved to know why she had done it now that I know the truth, he would tell himself. Why? he was asking himself but having a hard time actually asking her the question, why? he muttered. “I need answers.”

Liz did not know what to say.

“If you are going to say that I am dreaming it, or something” Max asked as he looked around the motel room. Small and definitely a different atmosphere than being at the Crashdown, and they both knew they were no longer the kids they once were. Consequences had come throughout the years, and now they were nearly two decades from when it all started, and they were in a very different world.

No, I am not she thought, “I would not say that.”

“So, it’s true?” Max asked softly as he glanced at the only woman he could love and knew from the hesitancy that it was the truth. There was no denying like last time he asked blatantly if he had seen for himself was the truth, he thought, and that time was only sex he thought. Seems tame he was trying to convince himself. When Liz had hurt him deeply by sleeping with her ex, Kyle, or had seemed to at the time. Later, he would learn the truth, that she had only made it seem like the sex had happened, but in the end, she had not slept with Kyle.

She lied.

Just like she lied about the reasons for wanting out of our marriage. Max muttered. Or was it the truth, and he was only assuming it was lies he thought. After having to live eighteen years with the knowledge that she had wanted out, and I was not enough.

Because of whom I am he thought as he brought himself back to the discussion at hand, “So, it is the truth?” he asked once more as he came back to the conversation they were having. “You took a deal the government gave you, to leave our marriage.”

How can I explain it? Liz asked herself. “Yes,” Liz murmured. “How did you find out?” she asked. “No one knew.”

“One person did, my father” Max said with hurt in his eyes as the truth was now out. And there were no more secrets. Just details that were not truly known to Max. “How could you ask my father to lie to me?”

“I did not ask your father to do any such thing,” Liz muttered even though it was probably what she had done, and she knew it. She had come to Roswell and gone to see Phillip against her better judgment because she had known how much Max needed his family, and Phillip would be able to convince his son to come back to Roswell. And she needed to tell someone. She knew she could not have gone to Jim, for fear he would talk her out of it or what he would do with the information. And really, it was because she knew in the deepest of her heart that she was not entirely sane in what she was doing, and she was probably making a mistake.

A big mistake she thought.

She needed to stand firm, no matter the consequences. And consequences would come from my decision she thought. Ones that even I would not know of…

But she needed to save Max, and she knew if they went against the government. We would be on the losing end she muttered to herself. I did not want that for Max, and I did not want to raise Claudia fearing she muttered even though she knew that she did that even more by taking the deal and going out on our own.

And trying to hide and being different from who were then…

And without Max.

“You told him what you could not tell me,” Max muttered. “Liz, you told me our life was dangerous. That I was too dangerous for you, that I had changed you, that it was too much, and you would not raise our daughter in that life…”

“All that was the truth,” Liz muttered softly even though she was trying to convince herself it was truth. It was true. I was different than I was on that September day before the bullets flew out of that gun she muttered. “We were fleeing for our lives Max,” Liz said softly. “I had to leave my family. We had to hide who we were, we had to use alias’, and figure out to be one step in front of the government all because you slept with the wrong person, and she betrayed us, and forced us out of our lives.”

“Tess is not why you in the end took the government’s deal,” Max muttered as he felt a stab in his heart because Tess had betrayed us, and only he would know how much by the end he thought when he found the devastating truth about the baby he had believed was his, but that was a lie he muttered to himself, so the two girls I was involved with me lied to me he thought. In the end they lied to me.

But he knew he would have expected it from Tess, even if I did not expect to be deceived like I was he thought with a baby coming back, only to find out I was not the father.

“Tess is why we left town. She killed Alex,” Liz said softly, as the wound in her heart still felt that loss deeply, no matter how many years later, still the loss of Alex had cut deeply and she did not think she could ever truly be over it, and knew Maria was the same. We were three musketeers, and even though life took us through different challenges, she thought. We were friends, and Tess took him away from us. “And because you slept with her, and she got pregnant, and therefore she had to leave the planet, only to come back and take us down even more…”

Or so, we thought and so she thinks… Max would tell himself, but also knew that his former wife did not know the revised version of their life, or how Tess had lied to him and the baby in the end had not been mine he thought. And he did not like how his former wife was forgetting her own role in sending him into Tess’s arms.

I should not have done it because I was in love with Liz, but still I would not have done it if Liz had not lied to me about her and Kyle… and if she had not pushed me away…

We could have had our first time, together…

“Liz,” Max said softly.

“Max don’t” Liz muttered, as she was trying to get away from what she had done. Or the reasons for why she had to do it and to get in a whole circle of talking about Tess, and what she did, and how they were fooled was not going to change the fact the past was the past, and they were now in the present, and we have to deal with it. “I did what I did…”

“Are you sorry for it?” Max asked. Even though he knew his former wife wanted to be over talking about their past, and her decision but she was not going to end it so easily.

Am I? Liz asked. “I did what I had to do, and no, I do not regret it.”

“You tore us apart?” Max asked.

“I kept you alive,” Liz muttered.

*

Next door,

JJ Parker was tired of his schoolwork. He only did it because he knew his teachers reported to his mother, and she would hear if he did not show up on-line, and this place has better wifi than the apartment does he thought but he had enough of it and was surprised his mother was not stopping by to check on him because she had not quit it since they moved over here to the motel, always stopping in.

Deciding to pay his mother a visit, he walked out of the motel room. Even though he had very direct orders to be careful who he talked to, or when he left the motel room. Because he was only ten, he was reminded, yes, I know I am only ten he thought. But I lived in Boston. I can handle myself.

Going next door, he was about to knock on the door, but he heard loud voices. Very loud he thought. Interested, he peeked in through the window and saw his mother arguing with Claudia’s father. Not mine, he reminded himself.

“Interesting,” JJ muttered to himself as he heard a “Give a Break” from Claudia’s father and knew this was not the conversation he should be witnessing or interrupting, even though his mother probably wished he would interrupt so that they could end it, and Max would leave.

But nope, JJ went back into his motel room and went to the phone and dialed. “Claude, can we talk…”

*

Claudia came running, in an effort to rescue her brother. Even though JJ told her that he was fine, just that their mother was busy, but she knew it had to be more, so she was quick about it. And drove over to the motel and arrived within fifteen minutes. “Hey, short stack,” she said of her little brother, and knew they liked to tease each other, and he usually called her out on it, but not this time. Usually, she told him that he would eventually grow taller.

He was like their mother; she would tell him.

Even though they both knew how JJ came into the family.

Through adoption.

But Claudia loved her little brother for it, because he had always wanted a sibling and loved having a little brother, despite their age difference. They were close. And she came calling whenever he called, and when she was in Arizona, and he had been home in Boston. They always zoomed with each other.

Despite her brother’s hatred for the on-line service. Because he spent too much time on similar programs for school. It did not bother her, but it was not what she thought her final years of high school would be like, but it was something she had to get used to. There is something simpler in only dealing with a screen for your studies, she thought. But she knew it was different for her brother. He is too active to sit and deal with a screen. “What is wrong?” Claudia asked as her brother allowed her into the motel room. “Cool set up here,” she said with a smile.

“You have a better one,” JJ reminded of his sister.

“Soon you will be home,” Claudia reminded her brother. “You know that this will be only temporary until we get the apartment set up better,” she murmured but she did know what the plans would be, Mom knows all that.

“So, you say” JJ muttered.

She sighed at her brother’s jaded nature. You are too young to be questioning it all. “What is going on?” Claudia asked, unsure of why her brother was so forlorn, “What has got you so blue?”

“You did not pass Mom’s room, on the way here?” JJ asked.

“I don’t know which one it is,” Claudia muttered as she knew she had the information back at the apartment, “Why does it matter which room Mom is in?” she murmured. “She is probably close by?”

“She’s next door, #15” JJ muttered. “Are you sure that you do not hear the loud voices?” he asked, “Because I do” and technically Claudia had not because there was suddenly a loud voice, “Cut the crap Liz,” that came out of the blue because there had been a pause, and a silence. No sound had been heard unless you were listening for it.

Uh, oh Claudia muttered, because she knew that sound. It was the sound of the man she had been talking to not that long before, and who she had told about her mother now being at this motel set up. “Ignore it,” she suggested.

“I am trying,” JJ sighed. “But it is hard,” he muttered. “Do you know what is going on?”

“Who knows,” Claudia sighed. They may be my parents, and still I do not have any idea what the anger in her father’s voice was all about, but she knew that something was up, because her father was about to fall apart earlier. It was so obvious she thought as she turned her attention to her little brother. “It will all come together.”

“Will it?” JJ asked. “Everything is so topsy turvy,” the ten-year-old muttered.

“Learned that word in class, did you?” Claudia asked with a smile.

“Something like that,” JJ smiled.

“Okay, I do not know what is going on next door with Mom, but it will work out, because it always does,” Claudia said with encouragement so that her little brother would calm down. “But in the meantime, you are coming with me, and I will treat you to dinner at some place called the Pizza Pan,” she said with a smile. “I hear they have awesome pizza,” she murmured because she knew her brother loved pizza. “Then we will stop over at Aunt Maria’s place. And see Lucy, okay?” Claudia asked.

“Okay,” JJ asked a little wearily as if he did not know what to believe.

“Hey JJ, everything is fine,” Claudia said in reassurance to her brother. “No matter what, you can count on me, and Mom will figure it out. Everything is a little new for all of us, and I promise you that it will figure itself out, and even if it takes Mom a little time. You can count on me, I am your big sister, no matter what. We are family.”

“I love you,” JJ muttered.

“I love you too,” Claudia said with a hug for her little brother, and she collected his jacket and handed it to her brother, and they were soon out of the room, passing by her mother’s motel room, “Talk to me,” came an adamant voice of her father.

Leading Claudia to know something was up, “What do you think is going on?” JJ asked of his big sister as they walked past the room.

Something tells me nothing good Claudia murmured to herself but did not answer her brother, just smiled and walked faster. She was not used to the sounds of adults fighting. After all, she was the daughter of a single mother. Whose parents dissolved into nothingness when she was three months old.

JJ suspected his big sister knew more than she was saying.

She did not.

Only her parents would know what was going on, and they were battling it out at the moment as she helped her brother get into her car, and they headed back to the main part of the town and found a restaurant that met both of their tastes, her spicy taste buds, and his love of pizza.

*

Room #15,

While back at the motel, and in the room that held Claudia’s biological parents. The adults were in a holding pattern. Neither talking, despite Max’s efforts to get her to answer his question, which was quite simple. Why? he would mutter. But it was something she had not answered except to give the standard, I was saving your life bit which Max batted down, I heard that before.

Well, it’s the truth, Liz would mutter.

Max was not going to take it laying down. When he knew that she could have come to him? “I was not a child Liz; I could handle my own life. I did not need you making any kind of sacrifice for me, without even telling me what is going on” Max muttered as he thought back to the original sacrifice when she went and teamed up with a future version of himself. Something that did not make a lot of sense, and still did not. But it was something she had kept to herself until the summer after junior year when it all went to hell in a handbag, and she finally confessed that sleeping with Kyle was a hoax. He had gotten it out of her in that classroom, but it was later when he finally got her to tell what was going on.

And she had told him about his future self, coming back from the year 2014 and was trying to prevent Armageddon. Or most importantly Isabel and Michael’s death because without Tess in their lives, because she left after he and Liz had cemented things, he thought basically sex he told himself. Tess left, and Max, Isabel and Michael missed the powers that Tess brought to the group as the “four squares”.

He did not understand it, and he still did not get it. But he appreciated that she was willing to save his sister and even Michael for the greater cause, even if it meant they would break up. Forgetting that, it meant he would sleep with Tess, and Alex was dead. When he would likely have been alive in the original timeline, Liz changed timelines. That had not been the easiest of realizations in terms of comprehending know so much could have been prevented if only she had not gone along with the future version of himself crazy story he thought.

He did not want to know that one day they might have lost his sister and Michael, and Liz had been trying to prevent it, but it was a worthy cause he would mutter to himself now and in the end, it had been done, and there was nothing that could have been done to change it, so they moved on, and he would eventually become obsessed with finding his son, which would end up being a disaster he thought.

Therefore, now he was finding out that she had done it again. She had made another sacrifice for him. But this one hurt deeply, because it had taken herself out of their marriage along with their daughter. My child he thought. The one child I have, he muttered to himself as Liz stood paralyzed, not wanting to talk and he had been doing the lion share of the yelling.

Trying to get through to her, with the muttering responses coming from his former wife. “Tell me why,” he asked once more as a text came on the phone his ex-wife was holding as a lifeline and she frowned when she read it, it is from Claudia she muttered out loud.

“What does it say?” Max asked.

She did not recite it out but read it silently as Max stood stewing at what she would not tell him, As Liz read the message, Mom, when you and my father are finish with your shouting at each other. You will see that if you were paying any attention to my brother that I took JJ with me because he was tired of fighting coming through the thin walls and therefore, he called me. We are going to dinner, and maybe we will swing by Lucy’s place. Call me when you are respectable enough for my brother to return.

Perfect, she thought as she did not particularly appreciate the oddly appropriate warning coming from her eldest child was Max could only stare at her.

Which is all he was doing.

“Claudia took JJ to dinner,” was all she said and left it at that. “I am tired of this Max. This is not getting us anywhere.”

“At least tell me, why?” Max asked.

“I told you the truth, I was saving you” Liz asked. “You need to believe me,” she sighed. “We both know what they would have done to you, and I was saving both Michael and Isabel as well because if I had said no, then they would have come after you guys, and I could not have that.”

“I did not ask you to save me,” Max muttered. “For Christ’s sake, I am a big boy Liz, and if you had come to me than we could have fought them together,” Max sighed like we did on occasion when we were younger and not married, as he faced the woman had loved since that day in third grade when he saw her on the playground playing with Maria, and other friends. He was new to school after taking time to assimilate to the world around him, and having the adoption finalized after a stint in the foster system, not as long as Michael would be in it he thought but still he remembered that day, and it all became crystal clear that day when he rushed into the fire to save his dream girl who was lying with flood flowing out of her, on a kitchen floor of the local diner, that he had spent way too much time in. “We could have fought it together.”

“If I said no, it would have been worse than the short-term pain of walking away from you” Liz murmured. As if that would have meant anything.

“Short-term pain?” Max asked with a look of pain on his face. “I say that it was long lasting, and it was never ending” he muttered. “I lost a lot by you taking the deal.”

“We both did,” Liz murmured as she did not want to recognize at the moment. How much Max did lose by her actions because she knew it, but still it was not easy to reconcile that she was the one to have done it? “It might have ended us, but you and your sister remained alive. I could live with my choices because you were not harmed. And it would mean Michael and Maria could have their life together in Nashville without the government crashing Maria’s dream, and Isabel could come back here and become a mother and become a wife in a marriage that worked instead of the alternative,” she sighed. “I could not have had it on my conscious if something had happened to you. When it already had cost you big time,” she muttered because she remembered that time in the White Room.

They both did.

But I made it out. “I survived,” Max muttered. “We could have figured it out, and made it work if we were together.”

Liz wanted to believe they could have worked, maybe we could have she sighed. But she knew the truth, that it would be a lot harder, and the deal was not for them to be together. “But they knew about Vermont. They could have cost you a lot,” she whispered. “If we had found a way to resist their control. It would have been a feeding frenzy if they let it be known who you guys were, and some of what we did to get out of this town, and really at the end of the day, I had to think of if not me, then I had to think of our daughter. I had to protect her and taking the opportunity to walk away from a life on the run.”

“You continued to run,” Max muttered.

“That was different,” Liz murmured. “Sure, that was part of the deal, but Claudia and I managed a new but different kind of life. Normal almost. Yeah, it was not the life I would have wanted because I was looking at a life with you, but I took it so that you were able to stay alive, and therefore they were not able to hurt you. At no time was it in their plan for us to be together. I was human. You were not. Our daughter is a slightly different situation, but I was able to show them that she was just a baby, and she was just like me” she sighed. Thankfully, that dumbass agent bought it. Because time would tell Claudia was just like her birth father. And not so much like me. “They did not believe in you guys, Max,” she sighed. “They did not want the hassle of it being the two of us, and they did not want me with you, and I cringe at the idea of what they might have done to you, to get proof of who you are, because they did not want you guys out here in the general public.”

With Liz’s words, flashes were coming to Max, of just what had happened in that White Room, and therefore he could not help but cringe at what might have been done to the woman he loved, because she was so fearful of what they might have done to him. It was not a fate he would have wished on anyone, even his worst enemy.

“What did they do to you?”

Liz winced at the thought of what she had to endure, but she did not want to talk about it, but it was to the very core of what she was so resistant that it could have worked out for Max and her, because she knew it probably would not have, they were too powerful she thought. “It does not matter Max, what they did to me.”

“Yes, it does” Max murmured as he thought of what he witnessed before with his ex-wife’s injury, and JJ’s comment that it had happened before his arrival. Back when Claudia was a baby. It will always matter to me.

Even when it should not, and when I should be pissed off what you did to us, he thought, and he was, but still, it is Liz.

It was always about Liz in the end.

“At the end of the day, you were free Max. We both know how ruthless they were. And the new one I dealt with was no different than Fisher, or even Topolsky in her own way. Cunning and ruthless. Even trying to resist would make them get the general public to side with them, and against us. They would have hung up you for Vermont, even though you were not in your free mind with what you did but they had enough evidence of what you did to Maris, and then to me…” and even Maria.

‘They never knew about Maris,” Max would mutter as he cringed at his actions because they had not been pretty. How does Liz even know? I mean, I did not even tell Liz what happened to Maris Wheeler, he thought. Because there was a lot I did not want to talk about, just like when the White Room happened, but later, getting possessed by a mad man was a very different kind of experience, and I lived, didn’t I?

I just did not want to talk about what I did to Maris, or even what I almost did to Liz.

“Yes, they did” Liz said. “Even in 2002, the school had surveillance. It is why the families pay those exorbitant tuition fees to send their problem kids” she muttered of her experience at the school, however short it was, okay, not everyone was. But some were, Eileen definitely was looking for a good time she thought. Not having the school atmosphere. While I was just wanting the normal experience, “Okay, not everyone was a problem kid, but Dad would not have wanted to send me, if I was on the straight and narrow?”

“You were what you were because of me,” Max muttered.

“In some ways that is true, but Dad did not know that I was alive, and that is what should have mattered at the end of the day. Even if at the time, Dad did not know it. But you saved my life. I would have been dead if you had not been there, so yes, we went on a detour there for a little while, but at least I was alive.”

“Yes, you were.” Max agreed.

“You paid a price to save me. So, I wanted to keep you alive. If they were going to put you in jail for Vermont, and Maris,” she winced. “Because Max, they did show me the images of you and Maris, Max,” she sighed. “Proof of the two of you at the academy’s library, and they had a body that was discovered.”

“To get you to turn on me?” Max asked.

“Not to turn on you, but to take the deal and to leave…” Liz agreed. “I would never turn on you. But it proved just how dirty they were going to be to get proof of who you were, I know you Max, that you would not have done that if you were in your right mind,” she murmured as Max had the flashes that could not help but exist even if he would eventually take back the body he had been sent into, but still, he remembered Maris’s words of what she was trying to get him to do to Liz. He fought back, but it meant Maris had to die. That is on me, because I had enough whit’s about me to fight back, but still I did what I did to Liz, and I will never forget that he thought as he focused back on his former wife as she continued talking. “While I refused to tell them anything. Even during the interrogation that they would put me through, but they did not want you to be happy. They did not want to show that they were harboring aliens if it were to ever get out in the public, so they are rather I head off…” she sighed. “As long as we were not together, it was a win for them.”

“You should not have allowed them to have that win,” Max muttered.

“We would have still been separated if we had stayed together and they had tried you or put in some prison away from me and Claudia. I took the easier option. That had you alive, and well, back here I hoped, with your family and Isabel and you would have been happier than in some prison dealing with harsh treatment they would have enacted on you because they could, and they would want to prevent your abilities. Even if you were not happy, I know for sure Michael and Isabel were happier than they would have been if we had defied the edict, they came to me with,” she muttered. “I was saving them as much as I was you. Because by the time they got to me, and grabbed me, they had come up with some heavy information that could have taken Isabel and Michael down.”

“They would not have had anything on Isabel or Michael,” Max muttered. Sure, they might have something on me, but they knew nothing about what Michael or Isabel did or did not do.

“Congresswoman Whittaker,” Liz said of Isabel’s crime “And Agent Burns,” she said of the mutual crime that Isabel and her first husband had engaged in which meant Jesse might have gotten drawn into the havoc, and Max flinched at the memories, on behalf of his sister who he knew did not take what she did lightly and it was how her marriage was unable to stand the weight of it all as Liz would continue citing their brutal rap sheet. “Fisher himself,” she sighed of Michael’s crime. “You took out a mad trophy wife, who was using her wealth for sinister ways, or to keep her rich billionaire husband alive, but Isabel and Michael both took out federal officials, along with a rising politician, and therefore, if they got their hands on them than they might have gotten worse treatment than even I did, or you did in the beginning” she muttered. “The government wants to protect their own.” Even if they were murderous and treacherous.

It was almost like Max heard what she was thinking. “They were bad people,” Max winced because he remembered the treatment he had gotten, and it was brutal, and he did not want it on anyone, even his worst nightmare. Because it had taken a lot for him to get over what happened during those hours.

“They did not care,” Liz sighed because she knew what kind of people they had been dealing with since early on in their existence. “We are talking about a shadow society who was trying to take us down. Even though we were teenagers and wanted to live and deal with our own lives. Love who we wanted. We did things. We were lucky Jim looked the other way, or fortunately for us, he was off the job for a time, but eventually it was bound to catch up to us. I mean, despite all the talk of doing it, we could not even turn Tess in really because of what she did to Alex for fear of what she did and had done to the federal military base, which is why she probably took herself out in the way she did,” she muttered, and Max was surprised by the tone in her voice.

“Are you thinking that Tess knew this?” Max asked.

“I think she was not thinking,” Liz murmured. “She never did. She never looked at the consequences of anything she did,” she sighed. “But she knew as well as any of us did that she could not be in custody for what she did to Alex, or even the Army base because she knew too much, and she was capable of too much. She has a fight mentality,” she sighed. “We were innocent of what she did, but it did not mean they were not going to try to pin that on you as well as Vermont, which was over state lines, which meant the federal government had an onus to find out the truth. Whatever that truth was…” she said. “They might have even come after Jim at some point.”

“You are taking it way too seriously.” Max sighed. Even though he knew a lot his former wife was saying was the truth, but it was not like he wanted to hear it. So, he was in denial. “They were trying to get you to buy anything they said, just like that future version of me who had you snowed about the possible future,” he muttered of a time that had separated them. “Therefore, they were going to get you to imagine anything. Yes, they were after us, but I doubt very much the government would have come after some teenagers from New Mexico.”

“Well, they came after us, did they not?” Liz asked as she knew her ex-husband liked to live in the land of denial because he did not want to deal with the burden of being who he was, and there were enemies out there who were not as nice as the Roswell contingent was… He wants to believe the world was just about us, she murmured. I wanted to believe that, but those three years and then the government made me see differently. “Max, they did come after us, it was not a figment of our or Tess’s powers, because they did come and made their presence known with me, as they found me, and took me.”

Oh god Max thought as once more he was reminded that for everything that would ultimately happen, the woman he loved had to deal with some lunatics who had a different belief system. What did they do to you? Max’s mind would cry, but he also knew she was not going to answer him, not yet anyways. So, he was going to stay in denial about it all, I know the world is a brutal place but still… “I cannot see how they would have done much,” Max muttered every though he knew he was probably trying to have it both ways. Of course, he knew they had enemies; we saw enough of them he thought. We did have to worry…

But…

“You might think they were bluffing, but someone had to worry, and therefore I was willing to protect you even if it meant walking away and agreeing to their terms,” Liz muttered because she could not live in the land of fantasy, because she had dealt with the reality of it all. “I had to do it Max…”

“So, you say,” Max muttered.

“I do,” Liz murmured. “We had a life together sure, and I hated to walk away,” she said softly as flashes came of their incredible life during that year before it all fell apart. “I did not leave you because I did not love you, and I know I said some things to you.”

“You more than said some things,” Max muttered, still hung up on all she did say to him as she ended their marriage. “You destroyed me.”

I know I did Liz sighed, because she still remembered every word, she had said that day. “I am sorry Max, I really am sorry,” Liz said. “I loved you,” even though she knew she was saying it as if it was in the past tense, when she knew it was far from being in the past because every part of her still loved the boy who had saved her life at fifteen. You cannot always have the one you want she muttered to herself; I did the right thing.

Max stayed alive she would mutter to herself.

“I loved you too,” Max murmured, also not forgetting for a minute that he did not still love his former wife, as he knew by now that the feeling was never going to change. “You destroyed me,” he muttered once more as it was playing again in his mind, all those words that she did say back when she left our marriage.

“I left because you would never have allowed me to leave,” Liz said. “And I do not mean that in a negative way. I know I would never have wanted to leave if I had any other choice, and I did not” she murmured “Max, believe me when I tell you that I had to say those things. I had to find some way for you to let me go,” she murmured. “Sure, some of what I did say was the truth, because we did have to leave. And I changed a lot after that day in the Crashdown, but I committed myself to you, and I was ready for it, and if it was for any other reason, I would never have left. I said yes, and I meant it.”

“Until you weren’t,” Max muttered. “Those words had to have come from somewhere Liz,” he sighed. “They had to mean something otherwise you would never have said them to begin with…”

“I didn’t mean them,” Liz muttered.

“So, you say” Max allowed because he was unsure of what to believe. It was too much, he thought.

“I do say,” Liz murmured as she stood before Max and could not help but look into the eyes of the man she loved. Someone she knew to the deepest of their depths and knew she had completely screwed things up with the one boy who had meant everything to her at fifteen, and then when at eighteen, she had married him. She never had any regrets about loving Max because he had been the one.

And she hated having to be the one to hurt him.

He hated hurting her, and the same was true for her, even though it was her who had been the one who had hurt them. Because everything else in their rocky journey had come out of what she had done to him. And when it was not, Max usually was not in his right mind. So, she never liked doing that to him. Not in the beginning when it was too much too soon, and then later when things spiraled, and then finally when they had gotten their happily ever after, albeit with a lot of caveats to them she muttered to herself.

She yes, she hated hurting Max.

And she knew he felt the same for her, which is why he had given the warning in the beginning. If we had tried anything, and it worked, because eventually it will fall apart, she muttered to herself as she looked deep into the soulful eyes of her mystery man. Her dark hair mystery man from another world.

Someone she shared a child with.

And someone she had hurt deeply by taking that child away from him, “Max,” was all she could say. “I did love you.”

“Do you still love me?” Max asked even though he knew he did not want to know the answer. Why would I want to know the answer he muttered to himself? So, she could hurt me again. Stomp on my heart once more…

“Max,” Liz murmured in that soft voice that had always endeared her to him.

“Screw it,” Max said. “I don’t want to know the answer,” he muttered. “Because I am not going to stand here and have you lie to me anymore,” he muttered because he was not interested in hearing the words that would one day make them fall apart once more, love gets you nowhere he thought, and instead of heading for the door, which would be common sense as he knew he should be taking some distance from Liz until he could comprehend all that happened with Liz and his father he thought. I still have not thought of what I am going to do about my father’s betrayal. But he was too far gone for common sense because he pulled the love of his life into a life altering and passionate kiss.

And it was a kiss she found herself responding too…

Despite all common sense that told her to stop it.

So, instead of pushing away from… My god they would whisper as they found themselves tearing at each other and wanting to go to places they knew would bring the end of them and was wrong. But they were no longer eighteen or newlyweds. We are much older now both thought…

As they fell against the wall, and then each other…

[totallizfan]

Well that ended better then I thought it would.

[Parker1947]

Meanwhile,

As Max and Liz were discovering parts of themselves that they had been in denial about or just plain trying to move on from, Claudia was walking out of the Pizza Pan with her little brother after having a collection of spicy, and meaty pizza. And Claudia was even surprised. After a life that had been on the road, in New York and Boston and a stint in Arizona. Roswell pizza was not half bad, at least a restaurant we can go to they both thought of how the last year or had been take out and pick up orders than they ever had before then. She also knew that not everyone had adjusted to the change, and she knew their grandparents had not, and therefore that had been part of why they had shut up shop.

So, whatever the future was, she knew the Crashdown Café would have a lot of work to do to get back to the customer base who had moved on, if they stayed in Roswell at all. Because not everyone had because a small town was not a big city. Where you could just transplant yourself somewhere else or take a bus or the transit system to a new destination.

So, the Pizza Pan had given what they wanted from the dinner they shared together, and of course Claudia knew her little brother was thinking of whatever was going on back at the motel, “Cheer up, everything will be fine.”

“Everything is different,” the ten-year-old muttered.

“Of course, it is, but we will get used to it. It is the same way for me too. We might be experts on the moving part of it all, but it does not mean you will not get used to being in this town. Hopefully you will be back in school come September. And that life can start to go back to normal,” she muttered even though she knew those were simply just words because she suspected that life would never be completely the same again. Too much was different. And it was because they were in a new town.

“Will you,” JJ asked of his big sister. “Or will you head wherever Archie is?”

“I am here, now.” Claudia smiled as they walked towards the car. “I do not know the future, but I am here now, and that matters more than where I will be tomorrow,” she said softly as she looked up and saw Tripp across the street looking at her, and JJ.

“Who is that?” JJ asked, as he saw Tripp.

“The son of an old friend of Mom’s,” Claudia murmured. She knew she had been in her own mind the day before when she had met Tripp for the first time, but she remembered her, and she did not know what to think about him.

“Really?” JJ asked.

“You know the man who was at the apartment to look at it, to see what work can be done to it” Claudia murmured. “His name is Kyle Valenti, and he is an old friend of Mom’s,” she murmured and now because she had read her mother’s diary. She knew that Kyle was not any ordinary friend of her mother’s, but an ex she thought. Someone Mom left, to be with my birth father she thought. Weird. “It is his son, Tripp” she murmured. “I guess you can call Tripp and Lucy’s cousins, because their grandparents are married to each other.”

A blended family that is working out Claudia thought. I wonder what it is like to have a big family, she thought, because it had always been just her mother and her little brother once he came into the family. And while they saw their grandparents. Still, it was not the same.

“Cool,” the ten-year-old said because of course, he was only ten and he was not thinking of the complex dynamics that come from the interpersonal lives in this town and it was even simply this town…

It was an odd little group.

Claudia unfortunately, was already too up on it. And knew the players even if she did not know exactly what the backstory was all about as she looked across the street and smiled at someone she actually knew.

As Tripp, having seen them, came across the street.

“Tripp,” Claudia muttered. Making small talk. Because she did not know whether she could take her brother back to the motel because she had no idea what was going on between her mother and father, and whether they were now calm.

They were anything by calm or quiet, but Claudia would not know this, and it was probably a wise decision to stay away. But it meant the eighteen-year-old had to figure out what to do next. And to keep her little brother amused.

“Claudia,” Tripp murmured. “Nice to see you. Is this your little brother,” he asked as he looked at the younger boy? “We did not meet yesterday but I heard of you.”

“Yes, it is,” Claudia muttered. “With your father tonight?”

“Nope, my mother has me, but she and my stepfather are busy with plans and so I was going to a movie. Do you want to join me?” Tripp asked as his wish to see a movie was vanishing with every moment.

“Sorry, I am keeping my brother company. Our mother is doing something, but I don’t think we should do that, at least not tonight” Claudia murmured as she had not realized Tripp was a product of a broken home. Two families, she thought. “I told her that we would stop off at Lucy’s place.”

“Oh, Lucy” Tripp smiled. “Oh, that sucks, but I understand.”

“We better get going,” Claudia smiled. “I was nice seeing you Tripp.”

“Nice seeing you too,” Tripp smiled as he watched Claudia walk off with her little brother, as he picked up his cellphone, and dialed his cousin. “Hey Luce…”

*

“You need to leave Claudia alone,” came Lucy as she walked up the sidewalk near her house. She had been at her grandparents for dinner, and her parents were still there, and they had given her permission to head home. She knew she did not need it. Because she was pretty independent. Even more so than her own mother had been at her age. Dad is a different story Lucy thought because she knew her father had been living on his own since he was even younger than she was now, although he described himself as an old soul and I believe him, she thought because she knew her family history.

Unlike her best friend.

Anyways, she had gotten the green light to head on to her new home. A place she was getting used too. She had lived all her life in Nashville so the smaller town feeling of Roswell was taking some getting used to because while she had come in the summers to visit her grandparents, still though Nashville was different. Bigger, and more alive because of the feel of music. And she had a lot more freedom because Mom was on the road, and she tended to stay at home because of school and because Mom wanted her to have a traditional school experience.

Until the pandemic hit, and everything changed, she muttered. Mom stopped singing live because she hated virtual preforming, and Dad had less of the work he did whenever it caught his fancy.

But before then, everything was a good time for Lucy and once the world stopped turning and changed everything around, she wanted a change, so she had cut off her long blonde hair, to the aghast of both of her parents, who liked her hair the way it was. She had even dyed it for a time, and that stunt really got Mom and Dad going but it was now back to its blonde glory, but the pixie cut was sticking for the moment. She knew it brought memories to both of her parents, but she liked it. She was unique.

She liked everything about herself. Even if it could cause problems but she was young and she thought she was invisible, even though she knew she really was not.

That is for when I get older, she thought. She knew she had a good life. With a mother and a father who loved each other and were eccentric in their own ways but they loved each other for their oddities and had loved each other they were younger than Lucy was now. She knew she was lucky, because not everyone was like her, and she did not have to look very far because she could see how Claudia lived her life.

Restless and always wandering, and not settling down and Lucy did not know if Claudia would stick around this town long term. Because her friend had always been about moving around and was not about sticking. But she hoped she did because Lucy could use a friend.

Someone who knew her quirks.

Because despite her summer trips here to town. She was still a new girl in town. She had a bundle of energy and nerve, but still, she was new. She only knew her cousin, Tripp, who she was trying to dissuade of starting anything with Claudia because she knew her friend was not going to stick around, and it would only lead to heartbreak for her cousin.

He did not need heartache given he came from such a family where it was constantly in his face because of his father’s misbegotten romances and later marriages. Uncle Kyle swore this was the last divorce. But Tripp does not even believe his father, she thought as she could not help at the melodrama coming out of Tripp’s family.

But then at the end of the day, Tripp was normal, and therefore, the last thing Lucy knew that her cousin needed was to get drawn into the circle even more than he was because of who he was related too, “She has a boyfriend,” she muttered into the phone because yes, she did know about Archie Holmes. And how taken he was with her friend, and the last thing Tripp needed was a girl who wanted another guy. And did not think of Roswell as a destination she wanted to be in, long term.

Especially not after his most recent breakup with his ex-girlfriend.

“It is your funeral if you go there,” Lucy warned her cousin. “If you want me to invite her to a movie, don’t use it as a way to get in there with her. Claudia has a boyfriend, but she also has a lot of family drama, and she does need more in terms of her relationship,” she said as she hung up as she saw a bus pull into the bus depot. Also, your dad once dated her mother she muttered but refrained from commenting on that quirk as she looked around and observed the relative bustle of the town that was now her home.

For the next year at least. Because unlike Claudia, graduation was still a year off for her….

Tourists coming to marvel at our town she thought. A town that had changed a lot since my parents were young.

And even more so in the last year and a bit Lucy thought, as she was planning on heading home when she stopped, and smiled, when she saw a familiar face come off the bus from Santa Fe. Whoa, I did not think she would be back for another week or so.

As Lucy rushed over to the bus, “Hey, stranger?”

As she spotted, Mikyla Evans Anderson. The talk dark hair beauty was standing as she collected her bags from under the bus. Anderson in name only, she thought. Because she was never formally adopted by her stepfather, but she had been treated as if she had been his daughter and given his name when her mother and Neil got married. Kyla Anderson was returning to town a week early, yes, and her mother did not know it because of the phone tag she had been playing, as she spotted a familiar face. Someone she did not expect to see. “Lucy, what are you doing here?” she asked as obviously she had not been told of recent developments, and how Lucy was now a resident of their fair town along with her parents. “I did not expect to see you?”

“You did not hear the news?” Lucy asked. “Amazing given our little fraternity,” she said with a smile. Word moves with freaky frequency “We moved back here to Roswell, my folks and me I mean” Lucy smiled. “I only got in a few days ago.”

“Wow,” Mikyla smiled as she spotted the town, she had left several months, but returning to find it in a different shape then she last had seen it. Much more alive, she thought. “I thought your folks were dead set against coming back to town?” she asked because she had thought that was the talk when she was last home, at Christmas time, right before she left for Europe.

“I guess things change,” Lucy smiled when she knew the real reason why her parents had returned to this town, it was not that they wanted too but it was because of me she thought. Me and my future. “You were not expected back for a week or so, so what happened and why did your mother not pick you up?” she wondered as she and Mikyla started walking, with Isabel’s eldest daughter. “She knew that Kyla would have gotten a ride if anyone knew of her return.

“Long story,” the tall brunette murmured. Looking so different than her modelesque mother. Even nearing forty, Isabel Evans was still striking and blonde. Even if she had spent most of the last two decades as a wife and mother. Her daughter was just like her, except for looks because Mikyla looked like her biological father. Although her mother had spent some time as a brunette, but the blond hair returned as soon as the gang went on the run and needed some distance from how they looked back in Roswell. But Isabel Evans was largely known by her blonde hair, so her daughter was very different. With dark hair. Because of her biological father. Formally known to the family as a sperm donor and currently that story was the worst kept secret within the family, we kept our alien heritage tighter than my paternity she thought. Everyone knows she thought But Mom and Kyle want to stay within their denial.

Or Mom does Kyla thought now.

Kyla was not going to complain. Because she knew she had a good life. So, she was not missing out on anything. Not yet at least she mused. She knew Kyle and his family, and therefore she had always been a part of their family in different ways. Just not as an official member because that had been the deal that her mother had made with Kyle, and neither knew what to say to change things.

To go back on the deal, and Kyle probably does not want the child support Kyla mused but she knew that was not why neither adult was looking to go back on the deal that had long been in play.

Mikyla did not know if she wanted things to change. And she had spent the four plus months that she had been gone thinking of that, and she still had not come to an answer as she exchanged emails and zoom calls with Tripp back in Roswell.

And they both knew the truth, but neither was willing to rock the boat.

Yet.

That might still come.

But it was nothing dramatic why she was back early. Just this damn pandemic she thought. Just when you thought it was wrapping up, well, it still has us by its neck.

At least not in Europe. It was still debatable back here she thought. Everyone wants to get on with life.

Fatigue was setting in.

“Kyla,” Lucy asked as they walked.

“It’s nothing. Things were starting to get too serious again, and they shut things down earlier than expected, and it was all a rush to get us on planes, those who had to travel that is,” she said of the friends she had made who did not need to fly.

“That does suck,” Lucy murmured.

“I was coming home next week anyways,” Kyla smiled. “It was just a lost week that is all, but I did try calling the house from the airport, on both sides of the planet, but Mom was not home, and I was tired of leaving messages, so I took the bus back here, and it is not like I am not used to travelling by now.”

I am an old pro, she thought. And after four months of it, Kyla was looking forward to settling back into her small-town life.

“Oh,” Lucy sighed. I wish I could travel someday. But Mom wants me to go to university she thought. Dad is noncommittal about it, but she knows he wants her to have a better life than he had when he was having to fend for himself all the time…

“Your face dipped, what is going on back here?” Kyla asked. Drama, I could use some drama. After months of being a bubble with other teenagers and the same old same old love crap, she thought. So, something new was welcoming. “What is going on?”

“Your mother probably has been busy,” Lucy smiled. “With your grandfather but then of course your uncle’s daughter, Claudia and her mother are now in town, and therefore, things are seesawing wildly,” she murmured. “Each day, it’s something new. So, your mother is probably trying to keep your uncle sane.”

Oh, okay, wow Kyla murmured that was not something she was expecting to here, even though she had always known about her mysterious and unseen cousin Claudia Diane Evans, named after a Parker family member, and Kyla’s now deceased grandmother. But she had never met her cousin. And knew her uncle had not seen her since she was a baby. Which is kind of rough because she could not imagine knowing your kid.

At least Kyle knows where I am Mikyla thought.

“Yeah, it’s insane” Lucy smiled. “So, you came back at the right time,” she murmured as they reached the street the Evans-Andersons lived on. “How was Europe?” she said with a smile. “Tell me all the gossip?”

“To be honest, it was too much of a bubble existence” Kyla murmured. Not that I am not used to back here but being over there but stuck is different she murmured. “But the experience was fun when we got to get out there. It was not always in the classroom.”

“Maybe I can travel next year after graduation,” Lucy muttered. “Assuming Mom lets me…”

Kyla smiled. Because she still had two more years before her own graduation and getting away had given her the chance to appreciate that the future was out there for her to grab. You cannot always stay in Roswell she murmured. She knew her mother had been restrained by staying in their hometown most of their life, except for a drama filled year that her mother had mostly been silent about.

Kyla knew there was a lot there she did not know.

We are an unusual bunch and that was why she was happy to be home. Most of the kids she had been with had used the bubble experience that had housed them and the restrictive nature of it to have a four-month Spring Break party at night. Whenever the teachers were not around. Of course, she was not a prude, so sometimes she would partake. But she did like her hometown, and she missed it. And therefore, she was happy to be home. But she knew the experience would be good when she graduated and got out of this town.

Because she had plans.

And the last four months had only reenforced it. But she hoped her mother would be happy by the time she did leave for university or whatever else her future would show it to be. Because she knew her mother had not gotten the chance to explore life outside of Roswell except for a brief year in her life.

Because being who we are, kept her in town.

But Kyla was a generation removed, and a lot less was expected of her, and she hoped she got a chance to get out there on her own.

She and Lucy were.

But it had been only her because she had been the only branded teenager in their little community because her younger sisters were normal, and Tripp was the normal as well, so it had been only her, but now she was home and found out her world was quite different. There were others who were like her.

“I am glad you are back here,” Kyla smiled. “Maybe we will be in some of the same classes next year.”

“Maybe,” Lucy smiled. “Although I am not looking forward to it,” she sighed because the last thing she wanted to think about was school. She had a summer away from that place because her classes were over in Nashville, because the year had closed off early, unlike Claudia who had a little more to do, but then she had graduation coming she thought.

More would be expected from Claudia.

Lucy and Kyla had a grace period.

Such a grace period was on the girls’ mind as they walked up the sidewalk and landed outside Kyla’s family home. Kyla saw someone’s car in the driveway, next to her mother’s car. She might have been gone for four months but she knew the family car. She also knew her sisters were away on vacation.

A vacation she had been expected to be on if not for the exchange, because she had zoomed with her sisters before returning. Before I knew I was coming home she thought. She thought she knew whose car it was, but she had been away for four months.

I am using that excuse to ignore the possibilities that exist.

Lucy meanwhile was not up on the cars among their family fraternity, so she would not know. “I’ll leave you here. I better get home, because if Mom and Dad get home before me, then there will be hell to pay” she said with a smile.

“Good to see you,” Kyla smiled.

“You came home at the right time because it going to get exciting around here,” Lucy smiled as she walked away, and Kyla looked at her family home, and was thrilled to be home as she walked up pathway, pulling her rolling suitcase, and she checked the door, and it was locked, interesting she muttered to no one in particular.

Only herself, as she felt around for her keys, only to realize she had been out of the country for months, and they were not easy to access, as she realized they were in her backpack. So, she used a time-tested ability only me and certain other people have in their back pocket she thought as she used her ability to open the door, as she went to it.

Opening the door, she walked in, “Mom, I am home” she called out in the house. “I saw the car, so I know you are home.”

“Mikyla, what are you doing home” came a stunned voice as she Kyla was quite sure she had walked in on a moment.

A moment between her biological parents.

Yeah, this is too funny she murmured to herself.

*

It was indeed funny. Unless you were the other two within the room. Who now would have to deal with the fact that their mutual child was walking in on something that they had obviously shared together. Because this would be a surprise to them because she would have been the last person that they had been expecting. Mikyla they both thought, and it took a few minutes for Isabel and Kyle to adjust to the fact that the last person they were expecting to show her face had in fact showed up while at the same time, Kyla was finding it very amusing, Really, she was thinking to herself. “I thought I left this scene back when I left European soil,” she muttered out loud. “I mean Mom,” she said softly, really?

Isabel just stood stunned, because this had not been how the night had been expected to go because she was so used to being home alone. She was expecting to do errands that had gone by the wayside over the past few days because of a lack of urgency because it had only been her, and she had been dealing with the fallout in the family home with her father and brother, and dealing with her, had not been a priority.

And just when she began to deal with around the house. Kyle surprised her, and they had settled into talking, and prepared to watch a movie together. Simple pleasures she thought. Something we have done more and more since Neil died.

And she had become a widow. She was not used to being alone. Not since high school when sure I dated, but I did not have a relationship that consumed me like my brother did. Or Michael, she thought. Which is probably why I did run into something with Jesse at the first chance I had she thought. Once I was out of high school and in the real world.

And then forced it into a commitment before it’s time she thought. I should have followed Mom’s advice, she thought.

Not that she dd not think her mother had been overbearing and making all the decisions, and wished she could have supported her, but time would tell her that maybe I should have waited. But then we would not have been having that April wedding, she thought. In the end, time would show that life would be very uncertain by then, she thought.

And as she smiled as she allowed Kyle into the house earlier that evening…

And they had simply begun to talk, and she found herself telling Kyle as she often did, her gripes about her family. Kyle had been naturally shocked by what his friend would have to say, “Are you serious?” Kyle could not help but say earlier in the evening. Before Mikyla rudely interrupted by doing nothing except come home.

Unexpectantly.

“I am serious,” Isabel sighed of what she had heard the day before when she had simply driven her brother home, only to walk in on a life changing conversation that their father had been having with Kyle’s father. “I am surprised your father has not said anything?”

“Dad by the virtue of being town Sheriff naturally keeps his confidences to himself,” Kyle said softly. “I am not in the department, nor do I want to be,” he said with a laugh. Knowing that it was something, his father had to get used to the fact that he had no love for the job that had been his father’s passion, or even his grandfathers. Even though the belief in aliens drove him from the job he thought. And knowing how things were full circle now for his son and grandson is downright eerie. But we believe, sure, but we also don’t think it’s the end of the world. “So, I am sure there is a lot my father knows of our goings on that he has not divulged to me,” he said with a smile.

And it got Isabel smiling too.

Kyle knew that were far too many other problems in this world to think that aliens make for all that is wrong with this planet he thought as he contemplated what Isabel had just told him, and he was thinking it jived with what he knew already. Because it never made sense given how much he knew his former girlfriend loved Max that she would leave the marriage so easily, although there is nothing easy in the alien chaos.

On a normal day.

And there have rarely been normal days. You have to deal with it and learn from it, Kyle thought as he thought of the situation. “It makes a lot of sense,” Kyle was saying. “I mean we never understood why they broke up. Because it was clear Max was as blindsided as we were,” he muttered. But we were not in that marriage, so we do not know what happened behind closed doors. “Max did not know what hit him, except for what she told him, about why, and therefore, something had to have happened. And given so much had already happened, you would think they were tested, and would have been able to withstand it.

“Max wanted to believe it was having the baby, that it became too much” Isabel sighed. After all, having had a baby herself, she knew that you are filled with a lot of emotions after the birth, and not all the feelings were rational as you were coming down from the many hormones coursing through your body. “But yeah, obviously something happened, but I would never have imagined any of this…” she thought. “Any of it,” she repeated. “And especially not my dad’s part in it?”

“That is indeed different,” Kyle murmured as he was trying to comprehend it because the Phillip Evans that he knew was not the kind of person who would want to keep secrets from his kids, especially once he knew what was going on. Because there was a time where of course his kids were keeping secrets from them.

It had tested the family and taken a lot of adjustment for Max and Isabel to trust their parents in the aftermath. Of course, it helped that they would have distance from each other, and both Isabel and Max would come home dejected.

Dejected and single.

But Kyle never would think that Phillip would have known what was going on with Liz, and not told his son. “I am sorry,” he murmured because he knew how close Isabel was to her family, and in particular her father and brother since the loss of her mother. It had pulled the family together, despite at times Phillip not showing it. But at the core of it was that Evans family had stuck together. And he knew how much Isabel needed to feel like she could trust the safety of the family.

Even if it was only her, Max, and Phillip.

Because so much in her early lives was unstable and constantly moving around.

“It is not about me, it’s about my brother” Isabel muttered. “And it is about how I keep our family together.”

“It is a little about you too,” Kyle said softly because he knew his friend was a consummate pleaser despite her gruff exterior. Isabel wants her family to be settled and happy. “You love your brother,” he muttered.

“Yes, I do,” Isabel agreed. “I want him to be happy,” she sighed. “And I know he has not been since everything went south with Liz, and I never knew why she would up and leave him. We saw them on their wedding day, in that small white church. Because only my brother would find a way to get married in a church when we were fleeing for our lives, she muttered. But a year later, it was all over. “Max never had a good understanding of it, and it changed him. Coming home. Spending time with Dad and Mom, he was like a different person,” she muttered. “All because of what Liz did to him.”

As I did not sometimes like that person that had come home Isabel muttered to herself as he wanted to blame it all on Liz because she was back here, and she knew it had taken awhile for her brother to get back onto an even keel with life after having so much taken from him. All because of Liz Parker she muttered to herself.

Kyle knew how much Isabel had an unsettled relationship with her former sister-in-law. Because they mostly had run in different corners and had different priorities. But they had one person in common, Kyle would think now. “We both know that your brother and Liz loved each other,” Kyle sighed as a frown came over his friend’s face. “And probably still do,” he added. “Because Isabel,” he said softly as he got a look of derision from the woman he was smitten for, “It would be foolish to think they do not still love each other very deeply,” as he wondered if he would ever have that kind of love. I let three marriages go down the drain because I did not have it in my own life, he thought. The one I do want is not even looking at me he thought.

Which is why Isabel, and I are better off as friend, he would tell himself now.

I might be pining for her, but to do anything about it, well, it would kill our friendship. And it was the most important relationship I have Kyle would mutter of the bond he shared with Isabel because it was something that was very rare, and lasting. Everything else has been known to fail. And I am not about to screw it up he muttered to himself.

“If she loved my brother than she has a funny way of showing it, because she broke his heart,” Isabel muttered.

“But we now know there was a reason for it all along,” Kyle sighed. “So, can’t you see how much it tore her to do what she did?” he asked. “Because it could not have been easy?”

“All know is that she knew that she did not have to do it,” Isabel muttered. “She could have come to us, and told us what was going on?”

Yes, she could have…. Kyle conceded. But that would have opened up another nightmare he thought. One that none of us would have wanted to even contemplate. “Even if she should have, still, she ultimately sacrificed herself for you Isabel. Yes, you, Max, and Michael” Kyle muttered. “Aren’t you a little grateful for that?” he asked. “Can’t you see what the alternative would have been like?”

“Why should I be grateful?” Isabel muttered because she was not ready to give her former sister-in-law the benefit of the doubt even if part of her was indeed grateful that she had these years to live a life she could dream of back in high school. With the chance to become a mother, and to find Neil because the alternative would have been a lot worse, so, yeah, it would have been a million times worse she thought to herself because she remembered what her brother had gone through in the White Room. And one of the reasons, why they in the end did not even turn Tess over, even though I wanted to because she killed Alex she muttered as she pulled back her thoughts away from that painful memory to the situation at hand as she thought off all the hurt done to her brother. “All I know is Liz hurt Max to do it.”

“You might not be able to see it, but it has never been easy to be the humans in your story you know,” Kyle muttered as he got up from the couch and knew the movie they were going to be watching was now on the backburner. “A hornet’s nest was broken that day in the Crashdown,” he muttered. A pandora’s box with every little secret that came from 1947, and even before. “I was not there but I know because I was on the sidelines and having to watch how Liz was changed in an instant. Everything that was how we thought it was, well it, was changed and it never was able to change back.”

“If this is about my brother being the one Liz wanted instead of you?” Isabel sighed. And she knew she had stepped into it, from the look on her friend’s face. Because she knew enough to know it was not. Even though it was something that had been always in the background of their friendship, the fact that he had been one Liz had been dating in those days before her brother ran into the fire to save the girl that he loved.

“Of course not, and you know that” Kyle muttered as he was a little annoyed that she would bring that up. And he showed with it. As if it means something, when it does not. “Liz and I are better off as friends, but it took a lot of time for me to get to that point but still we were the human ones in your life story, and your brother changed everything when he…”

“Saved Liz’s life” Isabel muttered. “And later on, yours.” she sighed because she knew too well how Kyle had not gotten unscathed through those years, and it was a miracle that he still wanted to be friends with them.

Kyle sighed. “Yes, he did save my life, and I am grateful to still be alive despite how I have treated my life these years. Still, I know how easy it could have been to be wiped out. And if it were, I would never have gotten the chance to be where I am in my life, to own my own business or to even know my son. But that does not change the fact that by being the humans’ ones, we had to keep a big secret. To keep you guys alive, and out of the government’s hands. And as a result, Liz had to dodge bullets, and jump off bridges, and in the end, run from all she knew because she was saved that day, and because in the end, she had fallen for your brother.”

“We did not know what Max was getting into in the aftermath.” Isabel sighed. Even though she knew that she and Michael had been the ones who had been upset and even wary because Max changed everything in a big way, by saving Liz, and then telling her their secret, and by doing so, then they knew they were going to be in unchartered territory and it was only asking for trouble, but her brother was in love with Liz.

And pining away, and he was never going to be stopped.

Until Liz stopped them.

And even then, Max still loved the woman who had hurt him so badly.

“I know,” Kyle sighed because he did know that he, Maria, and Liz were not the only ones who were flying by the seat of their pants. Everything was new, and changes were happening out of the blue, and they did not always make sense. Kyle also knew he did not blame Isabel because she, Max and Michael did not know what they were getting into, but it was hard not knowing what was going to happen. And having the weight of the secret on their shoulders.

Once I came into the story he thought because for so long he did not know, and it had been Alex along for the ride, but everything I did, and I almost died as a result, and it took a lot for me to come to terms with it. “I am not blaming you, because I know it was not easy for you,” he sighed. “Any of you,” he allowed. “Life was never the same. And it was all the more intense for Liz because she was having to deal with everything, and eventually she was having to leave everything she knew, after making so many sacrifices. Sacrifices that changed her from where she was in her world. All because of who she knew, and that she wanted to protect your brother. Which is why she did, what she did.”

“How do you know?” Isabel muttered. “Did Liz tell you any of it?”

“Of course not, I was just as much in the dark as you were,” Kyle muttered. “I resent you thinking she would.”

“It not out of the realm of possibility to think she might have confided in you or Deluca,” Isabel muttered.

“Then you would have known because Maria would never have kept it from Michael,” Kyle sighed and Isabel winced because she knew if Maria knew, then she would never have kept it from Michael. “You know that as well as I do that neither of us talked to Liz for much of those initial years, so, no, I did not know,” he muttered, and Isabel nodded. “And I did not know now until you were the one who told me,” Kyle sighed. “But I do know for a fact how much it had to have changed her,” he sighed. “Because I know how much those years changed me, but what I went through is peanuts to what she went through because what she did go through was her own version of hell. All because she loved your brother. And while in the end, I was the same person I always was but with a different belief system, but Liz was different. She did not even ask for any of it to happen. She might have grown to love your brother, and she loves him to this day. But when your brother saved her life, he brought a host of changes into her life. And not all of them were easy to deal with,” Kyle muttered, alluding to the abilities Liz would ultimately have.

And would have to deal with…

To this day.

“Max did not know any of that would have happened,” Isabel murmured because she knew as well as anyone that there was no real rhyme or reason to any of it. And especially not to the damn question as to why did Liz change in the first place when Kyle or everyone else in our little drama did not?

But Max and Liz always were unexplainable. Isabel knew that all too well…

Because she had been a witness to it all.

Even if she never really had approved of them, it was not like she could vote on who her brother fell in love with. If Max could not tell me that Jesse was likely a bad idea although he did try, she murmured. Then I could not tell him that falling for someone like Liz was only a recipe for disaster, she thought.

Eventually Liz was going to have enough of it all Isabel muttered although she would have to admit to herself, that was not the situation they had now as they would find out, but it was what she had been operating under all these years.

“Then give her some credit, because it takes a lot of guts to do what she did” Kyle said. “To give up love for the greater good.”

“She could have just told him…” Isabel muttered right back.

“That would have defeated everything,” Kyle muttered. “You know as well as I do that those goons were out for your guys, and what Liz ended up doing was protecting you guys, and in the end, sometimes we do have to hurt the ones we love,” he muttered.

“Whatever,” Isabel murmured. As she knew she was sounding like a teenager, a disgruntled teenager, she thought, because she should be happy to be alive, and to be able to be a mother to her kids. But she hated to know how much her brother was hurt if only Liz had only come to Max, then he would have done everything… to be with his wife and daughter.

“Isabel,” Kyle muttered as he could sense what his friend was thinking. “You cannot possibly think that it would have been the best thing for those two to have gone up against the government. When there was a lot of ammunition that could have been spewed at them, and your brother by virtue of who he was, and even if they got away, then they would not have been able to go home again. In fact, they still might have been on the run.

“I know, I know” Isabel muttered because she did know if Max had gotten his way. There was no telling what was going to happen, I might not even have a brother today. “But still my brother lost the chance to be with his daughter, or to even know where she was living. She did not just walk out on my brother; she also took his daughter with her.”

“Yeah, she did” Kyle muttered because he would have to concede that and knew that was painful part of it all. “I think we can both agree that we wished things could have been different for both of them. And I would imagine that if Liz were to look back, then she might have done it a different way if she could have managed it.”

Isabel hated this no-win situation. Because it was an impossible position. But still she admired that Kyle was sticking up for a friend, even if she had many of the opposite views, “You are a great friend,” Isabel sighed as she thought of the situation because she knew not everyone could still be friends with their ex’s, and Kyle and Liz’s friendship had come after not the prettiest of times once they end of their relationship. Yet both were able to come to terms and be better friends than if they had been boyfriend and girlfriend, and Isabel knew that even though she had not been in Kyle’s orbit at the time. Because all he was to her was the annoying son of the town Sheriff, who for too many months was our enemy, and we never knew if we could trust them, she thought. But in the end were grateful for their help. While on the other hand, she and Jesse had ended things mutually, but we were not able to keep their friendship intact in the end. Because we rushed to something too fast, and we did not have the foundation.

“You are a great sister,” Kyle smiled, and Isabel also smiled. “I know it is hell for you right now. Not only to deal with what it all means for your brother but also to deal with what your father knew and his failure to be upfront to your brother about what he did know,” he sighed because he hated to see Isabel upset, and she was upset. I don’t know what I would think if my father knew something about one of my wives and did not tell me, he thought because he knew his father probably had many issues any of the wives, he, his son, had, He generally tried to hold his tongue. But to know your father kept pivotal information? Kyle thought. I cannot imagine it. “Do you think your mother knew?”

“I hope not,” Isabel sighed. “But I do not know for sure. But I also know how much mom hated what they did to us back when my brother was in high school, with the invasion into our privacy.” she muttered. “Dad convinced her to do it, and she did it, although neither of them knew what they would be undercovering, but this, this is so different.”

“I know it is Is,” Kyle sighed. “I am sorry.”

“I just hope she did not,” Isabel murmured. “Although I am glad, she is not here to see the potential destruction of our family.”

“You guys will get through it,” Kyle muttered. “It will not be easy, but it will eventually solve itself,” he said with mutter, hopefully he thought.

“Thank you, Kyle,” Isabel smiled,

“For what?” Kyle asked.

“For coming over. I did not know that I needed it,” she said as she gave Kyle a giant hug, and both felt the bristles of something coming from both of them but wanted to ignore it because this is a bad time for it, she thought.

And he thought.

“I needed it too,” Kyle smiled. “So, that movie?”

“Um,” Isabel murmured as they parted and looked into each other eyes, and they were almost tempted to lean in for a kiss or something, but both were trying to talk themselves out of it, when they heard the door open….

“Mom,” came a surprised look of their daughter.

“Mikyla,” Isabel murmured as they stopped any thought of a kiss and looked stunned.

[totallizfan]

Feelings...emotions.....pasts...futures...resentments....loves....questions...answers..doubts....hopefully resolutions eventually.