Family Matters (CC, Mature) - Chapter 88 - Completed - 01/10/2024
Posted: Fri May 05, 2023 10:45 am
Title:Family Matters
Author: Parker1947
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They were created once upon a time by Jason Katims and those associated with the writing staff of Roswell and before them it was the esteem creator of the Roswell High series by Melinda Metz. A book that captured all our attentions for coming on 20 years and more… This story is based on the television show that started in 1999 and ended in 2002. I am just borrowing them for my own fun and imagination or creating new ones to go along with what we were given, in terms of storyline or characters.
Disclaimer#2: This story in yes, in the backdrop of the pandemic. But this story is fictional. And takes places as if it has all started to get better early on. Therefore, it is not trying to take sides or make any statements. Only how things were during the period of the story and trying to come out of it, told in a fictional way.
Rating: Mature (Angsty)
Category: CC
Characters: ALL
Synopsis: Post Graduation: It is now 2021. But back in 2002/2003, in the wake of graduation. Max and Liz are forced to go their separate ways after life on the road ended their marriage. Although life did go on for the both of them, in different ways. But one day nearly two decades later, in the wake of a devastating pandemic they will find out that everything has changed for them and for those new lives they may or may not have started in the interim…
Music Credits: Songs to be revealed during the course of the story are from Simply Red, Whitney Houston, Michael Bolton, Reba MacEntire, Gloria Estefan and finally Taylor Dane
Changes from the Show: Graduation of course happened. Everything happened for good and for bad. Max and Liz just had some bad luck happen to them and they made decisions that did them in. One more so than the other. So, can they rectify now they are older and hopefully wiser?
And a certain show subplot is changed up from the show. Because I am simply doing it my way. Therefore, it might not completely dovetails into facts of the show, but then we tend to forget mind-warping was in play. But I am doing my best to honor the show but angst things up and moving that story onto another character.
This is a story trying to be a picture of current day. Or it was when I began writing it. It’s a fictional post pandemic world assuming it had solved itself early on. Albeit with some lingering lasting effects. I had to set it in this time because of a certain character, so to make it relevant to the post graduation era. If I was being true to the correct ages of everyone, and how much time has passed. This will try to be what a post pandemic life would be in Roswell, and for the characters, and naturally, it has done certain damage to everyone, so they are trying to rebuild in its wake.
It is not trying to be gloomy. But it’s not an easy time or story. The characters are trying to move on.
The car pulled up in the back of the moving van. It had been tailing it for a hundred or so miles ever since they got on the same schedule. You would think they would be missing each other since they both oriented in different parts of the United States. But no, they were now stopping in front of a restaurant that was all boarded up. The establishment in question had been closed for a year because of the pandemic that had ravaged the globe, and the economy, and restaurants were one of the ones that were treated like second class citizens. For good reason since the health of its citizens was a rightful concern and should have been treated with importance. But for a business trying to survive. It was hell. So, after trying to ride out the first weeks, the owners eventually had put up the boards and relocated to Arizona for the past year. Fully intent on coming back when things died down, but that turned out not to happen because they began a new life in a retirement community and had not wanted to come back when life started to reopen. And so, a for sale sign had gone up.
In a battered and bruised town. There had been no takers.
And the sign was in the process of being taken down due to circumstance that had popped up when the owner’s only child spoke up, and now 18-year-old Claudia Evans got out of the car and looked at both the moving van and the restaurant that would be her new home. She was six weeks from graduation, and because of a senior year that one would not consider to be a traditional experience, she still was on schedule to graduate.
Although not in person.
Because of how the pandemic had decimated the educational systems, much like the tourist trade. So, all she could look forward to after spending her life striving…
For her high school diploma…
Would be for it to be delivered to her by mail.
In her newest locale.
One that she did not have any real choice over although she did, and she was okay with her mother’s latest change to their lifestyle. She had become an expert on change. But now she was the only one to arrive because her mother was still on the road with her 10-year-old little brother. How do I know this? The eighteen-year-old asked herself. Even though she had not seen her mother since Christmas when she had watched her mother and brother drive off.
After they broke the rules to come see her grandparents. Retirement communities of all kinds had been hit hard, and Jeff and Nancy Parker were no exception. But they were one of the lucky ones, but it had become a close call. And their daughter and grandchildren wanted to visit them for the holidays. So, they’d driven out to near Phoenix. And by the end of the holidays, their granddaughter had stayed behind because when you go to school on-line. You could do your studies almost anywhere.
And especially in a gated retirement community that provided stellar wi-fi. Claudia did not regret her decision because she knew at the time her grandparents had needed her to be there, to give them support as they coped with the last of some nasty health issues, and then when the time came for a decision to be made about the family restaurant that resided in Roswell, New Mexico.
A place Claudia did not know even though she had been told that she had been born here before admitting that she really had not, she had been born elsewhere. But her mother had packed her up and moved to first New York, then Boston, and in between anywhere she could get away from her father.
Or more like the memories of her father. Because of course he has not been present in my life
Along the way, her little brother had come into their lives, and it had been the three of them ever since until of course Claudia moved into a senior’s retirement community for five months which had been its own challenges because it meant she was away from her mother and brother, and also her social network…
Her friends.
But then her friends were numerous, and they were scattered to wherever they could find jobs despite still having classes to attend most days of the week, or whenever they chose to show up. Claudia was more studious than that that because when there is not much else you can do in Arizona when a global pandemic decides to ravage every facet of life…
And upend the life as you know it.
So, now months later, Claudia stood there and looked at the challenge she would have to undertake as her mother had decided to reopen the Crashdown even though she had not had any restaurant experience since she was a waitress as a teenager. And that career had ended in a lot of dramatic action as she graduated from high school and in the end, had moved on from this town and went and became a premiere scientist.
But the last year had burnt her out.
Seriously.
So, now she wanted a new challenge.
Or it had been because of her young son whose name was JJ Parker. Given the name in honor of her father, the child’s grandfather, Jeffrey James, though he currently liked to simply call himself JJ. Why the siblings had different last names was a long story. And not one she was in the mood to share at this minute. There will be time. Still little JJ was now 10 and had not taken to the pandemic well, and unlike his big sister, he had not meshed with on-line learning. For a high energy boy. Computer learning was not his mode of learning. So, he needed a stable environment, and after some brushes with his attitude. Claudia’s mother decided to make this move.
And now here I am, Claudia thought. I gave up a summer in the mountains she murmured. As she went to the door and pulled the board off the door and opened the long-locked door in such a way that no one would suspect something was off and tore down the “for sale” sign.
She tried to get some movement out of the moving crew, but they would not listen to her, so they had to wait until her mother arrived. Which could be anytime as she checked see if she got cell service, which she did. She texted her mother and little brother to say she had arrived. Once that was done. She chose to walk through the abandoned building and saw the dust and the dirt. Assessing it like someone who had experience. Which she did not, but she was capable of a lot she knew. Fortunately, it did not seem like it would be a nightmare to clean up, even after fourteen months of inactivity.
But because of it being closed for business. It was going to need some freshening up if they were going to open his place and operate it. She could see the challenge, but oddly she was game for it. She felt like this was the right call.
For some reason because she did not know the place.
Still, she took to looking around and seeing the funny alien paint Funny Gramps she thought. But it fed the family and town until it did not.
She did not know if her mother would want to change the paint, or the theme because of how on the nose it was to their life.
She thought it was cool. Then what did it matter. Only that it spoke to her origins.
Not that dear old Mom wants to acknowledge that in me Claudia thought. Which is why the last five months had been a blessing to be away from each other.
Again, a long story as she heard movement in the back. Knowing it was not the movers. After all, they did not want to take orders from an eighteen-year-old. Still, she felt it was her duty to check, and she walked into the backroom.
A room that had not obviously been changed in eighteen years. It felt dated. But how would she know how it looked because she had never had any conscious memory of being here. The paint looks so yesteryear. As she had noted the green and orange alien mosaic paint in the front, and boy it was a little much for someone who had not experienced it.
Grandpa had gone all out…
Opening the door, or she pushed the creakiness of the door and walked into the back, and she stopped because she was stunned to see someone from her past standing in the doorway with boxes all over the places.
A shadow of a man stood there, and it was obvious from the stunned glances on both of their faces, that they would know each other.
Both were stunned silent.
Which stretched on for an eternity it seemed.
Finally, the silence broke, and he was first to speak as if the resemblance were instantaneous, which it was, which to Claudia, she did not know how it could be.
“Claudia,” the man uttered.
Perfect the teenage muttered out loud “Hello Dad,” came the eighteen-year-old who looked at the man she knew was her father, because he had no role in her life. But now they stood at least two meters from each other. Socially distancing is great thing for once she told herself. Funny one Claudia.
“What are you doing here?” came the stunned man, a shadow of his former self.
“Mom did not tell you. We are relocating back here…”
The words “relocating” were slow to sink in, and slow to come out of his mouth as he repeated them as the man looked at the girl who was more like a woman now and in total command much like her mother he thought. And so, unlike himself as they were staring at each other because he did not know this day was going to happen even though it had been a duty of his to keep an eye on this place thanks to personal deal he had made with its owners before they shut it down because life and business became too much.
Too much was something I could relate to…
Because that was his life.
For as long as Claudia had been alive. Ever since her mother woke up one morning and could not take the life she had anymore, because I forced it on her he thought and divorced him and walked out of his life.
Taking their daughter with her…
And now he watched the same daughter he shared with the love of his life and wondered how life had come to this place.
And he wanted to thank God because he was seeing his baby girl for the first time in eighteen years.
“Claudia,” Max Evans asked as he did not even know how Claudia would know him because it was not like Liz wanted him apart of their life. Because it was a deal they had made in the divorce. She would take his secrets, and crimes to the grave. And he would give up custody.
It was ruthless and not a side he would have expected to see in her.
But the one he would expect because it was not the life she had expected although she had accepted his ring when they were planning on running for their lives or a showdown with a shadow government agency determined to make you extinct or whatever came first. Fortunately, they got out of town just in time.
But it was not the life for two kids in love. Especially when a baby came too quickly.
On the road and forced to make do with life in any way possible to make money. It finally became too much for Liz, and she took their daughter and disappeared from his life before he could find them.
As a result. She had relocated all over the country. And he had never known where they were.
And faced with the destruction of the life he was leading. Max had come back here and settled into a life that he had not seen coming. Especially in the last year as he watched over the Crashdown and remembered when he would come into this establishment and sit in a booth and see the love of his life whirling around the restaurant in all her glory. As the beloved only daughter of the owners.
And their extremely rocky courtship once their eyes opened to each other which would lead to a lot of drama, and the ultimate demise of their relationship.
But with a lasting memory.
Their daughter.
Claudia Diane Evans
This was not what he was thinking when he was doing his usual walk around the premises, and he heard commotion inside. Talking to Jeff the day before, his former father-in-law, did not give him the heads up of what to expect.
The fact he was on speaking terms with his former in-laws was a miracle. Given how rocky the days were before he and Liz had vanished from its shores. But coming back after the divorce had given him time to win back their support of his in-laws, even if they were now his former ones.
But Jeff had been kind to him. After all, Jeff had not known how to explain what his daughter had done or why she had not come here, and instead chose to vanish from their lives as well as Max’s. And therefore, in the past year, Max had shown the kindness back to his former in-laws and he had kept guard on the beloved establishment even though he knew from the sign on the front that it was due to be sold.
But he had not be warned of any changes to that fact.
So, this was a shock. To come and check on the premises, only to find his only child staring at him. And now he was being told that she would be relocating back to this town.
Their town.
Once upon a time.
“How do you know it is me?” Max stammered as he tried to figure out how to handle this change to his life. “You, are, what?” he asked as he did not know how this was happening when he was unprepared to handle it.
“18 years old,” came Claudia as it was just as stunning to her for her to be facing her father. Then man she never experienced before because her mother had asked her father to stay away from her, and he had abided by that request. “And about that other thing. Mom did show me pictures you know,” she said as she had clarified it to herself. Not that mom wanted to talk about you, so, instead she kept it to pictures, and the informal this is your father. “And so did Grandma and Grandpa.” After all, they were kinder than their own daughter about their granddaughter’s birth father Claudia now muttered. I will never understand you, Mom.
Mom has made some crazy decisions Claudia sighed.
“Right,” Max muttered as he was trying to compute this bombshell, as suddenly there was commotion out front, and it brought back to the realities of their life. And how this was not the place that should be their first meeting after a life spent apart. But it forced Claudia back to the reality that she knew would have her mother coming back into it, anytime now.
“Hey, Claude, where are you?” came a high-pitched female as she raced into the old restaurant. “Hey, this place is so cool” came the pixie blonde. Echoing another time in the man’s life. As he witnessed his best friend’s daughter as she stormed into their present. With the blonde pixie haircut, she echoed the beginning of an incredible journey for Max and for the blonde’s parents.
“In here,” called Claudia as she had not been expecting her friend to show up.
Barging into their private moment. Although both parties welcomed the diversion as Lucy Guerin came rushing into the room. “Hey, this place is far out,” came Lucy as she stopped in front the man staring at her. “Oh, I did not know you had company. Hello Max,” she said deferentially towards her father’s best friend.
Claudia would not know Lucy knew her father.
“Hello Lucy,” came Max “I also did not expect to see you,” said the man still in shock of seeing his daughter for the first time in eighteen years.
Still Claudia welcomed the diversion because this was not what she had been expecting to happen after setting out on her own from her grandparent’s home near Phoenix and drove here to meet up with her mother and little brother.
Now she was facing her birth father.
Needing the break, she turned to her friend “When did you get in?” she asked her best friend. Eight months was their age difference, so Lucy still had another year to go in high school before she finished. Maybe she will have a more traditional senior year that I was denied thought Claudia. Not that she was willing to deter graduation for a stereotypical senior year of parties, making out with her boyfriend, and then finally prom. Nah, I am more willing to get on with life.
The last year had given her a wake-up call into this cruel world.
And life changes, and it is what you make of it, and she did make it in different ways.
“Last night,” came Lucy as it still stunned her to see her father’s best friend standing in the belly of the Crashdown. “Staying with Grandma and Grandpa, while Mom and Dad are moving into the new place. They did not need me to get in the way,” she said softly as she may have lived elsewhere but she was someone who knew every inch of Roswell because of summers here in Roswell with her grandparents.
Claudia was not really listening, and Max knew this, and knew he had to be going and said as much “I guess I better go,” he said simply. “It’s a real pleasure to finally see you Claudia,” he murmured as he did not know how to handle this how do you handle seeing your daughter for the first time since she was a baby “And Lucy, I will be seeing you and your parents later?” as the pixie blonde nodded.
“Good-bye Dad,” came a shell-shocked Claudia as she was still processing the whole encounter and Lucy’s jaw dropped as if she was finally let in on some deep secret.
As Max nodded and walked through the shell of the old restaurant, and walked out into the sunshine, and stopped short when he saw someone from his past.
Standing talking to some gentlemen in front of what was clearly marked as a moving van, as it looked like it was to deliver the family belongings into the building.
She is still radiant he thought as he almost wanted to walk away so that she did not know he was here, but it was Liz he thought, and he could not walk away. She can walk away from me he muttered But I could never walk away from her. So, he came back to the reality and said the one-word he did not think he ever would again, “Liz,” came his voice when he finally found it and used it and time stopped when the brunette turned around and went pale at the sight of man who she had walked away from.
The love of her life.
And her ex-husband.
“Max,” Liz Parker formerly Evans said as a small young boy stood next to the car, using his phone to amuse himself while his mother debated strategy and the change in his mother’s voice made him look up at the man he had only seen in pictures.
Still, that did not stop him from butting in…
“Mom,” came the boy and Max was reminded once again that Liz had moved on from him.
Author: Parker1947
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They were created once upon a time by Jason Katims and those associated with the writing staff of Roswell and before them it was the esteem creator of the Roswell High series by Melinda Metz. A book that captured all our attentions for coming on 20 years and more… This story is based on the television show that started in 1999 and ended in 2002. I am just borrowing them for my own fun and imagination or creating new ones to go along with what we were given, in terms of storyline or characters.
Disclaimer#2: This story in yes, in the backdrop of the pandemic. But this story is fictional. And takes places as if it has all started to get better early on. Therefore, it is not trying to take sides or make any statements. Only how things were during the period of the story and trying to come out of it, told in a fictional way.
Rating: Mature (Angsty)
Category: CC
Characters: ALL
Synopsis: Post Graduation: It is now 2021. But back in 2002/2003, in the wake of graduation. Max and Liz are forced to go their separate ways after life on the road ended their marriage. Although life did go on for the both of them, in different ways. But one day nearly two decades later, in the wake of a devastating pandemic they will find out that everything has changed for them and for those new lives they may or may not have started in the interim…
Music Credits: Songs to be revealed during the course of the story are from Simply Red, Whitney Houston, Michael Bolton, Reba MacEntire, Gloria Estefan and finally Taylor Dane
Changes from the Show: Graduation of course happened. Everything happened for good and for bad. Max and Liz just had some bad luck happen to them and they made decisions that did them in. One more so than the other. So, can they rectify now they are older and hopefully wiser?
And a certain show subplot is changed up from the show. Because I am simply doing it my way. Therefore, it might not completely dovetails into facts of the show, but then we tend to forget mind-warping was in play. But I am doing my best to honor the show but angst things up and moving that story onto another character.
This is a story trying to be a picture of current day. Or it was when I began writing it. It’s a fictional post pandemic world assuming it had solved itself early on. Albeit with some lingering lasting effects. I had to set it in this time because of a certain character, so to make it relevant to the post graduation era. If I was being true to the correct ages of everyone, and how much time has passed. This will try to be what a post pandemic life would be in Roswell, and for the characters, and naturally, it has done certain damage to everyone, so they are trying to rebuild in its wake.
It is not trying to be gloomy. But it’s not an easy time or story. The characters are trying to move on.
But the past haunts… and it can be messy…
And it hurts…with plenty of secrets along the way…
And it hurts…with plenty of secrets along the way…
*****
May 2021
The car pulled up in the back of the moving van. It had been tailing it for a hundred or so miles ever since they got on the same schedule. You would think they would be missing each other since they both oriented in different parts of the United States. But no, they were now stopping in front of a restaurant that was all boarded up. The establishment in question had been closed for a year because of the pandemic that had ravaged the globe, and the economy, and restaurants were one of the ones that were treated like second class citizens. For good reason since the health of its citizens was a rightful concern and should have been treated with importance. But for a business trying to survive. It was hell. So, after trying to ride out the first weeks, the owners eventually had put up the boards and relocated to Arizona for the past year. Fully intent on coming back when things died down, but that turned out not to happen because they began a new life in a retirement community and had not wanted to come back when life started to reopen. And so, a for sale sign had gone up.
In a battered and bruised town. There had been no takers.
And the sign was in the process of being taken down due to circumstance that had popped up when the owner’s only child spoke up, and now 18-year-old Claudia Evans got out of the car and looked at both the moving van and the restaurant that would be her new home. She was six weeks from graduation, and because of a senior year that one would not consider to be a traditional experience, she still was on schedule to graduate.
Although not in person.
Because of how the pandemic had decimated the educational systems, much like the tourist trade. So, all she could look forward to after spending her life striving…
For her high school diploma…
Would be for it to be delivered to her by mail.
In her newest locale.
One that she did not have any real choice over although she did, and she was okay with her mother’s latest change to their lifestyle. She had become an expert on change. But now she was the only one to arrive because her mother was still on the road with her 10-year-old little brother. How do I know this? The eighteen-year-old asked herself. Even though she had not seen her mother since Christmas when she had watched her mother and brother drive off.
After they broke the rules to come see her grandparents. Retirement communities of all kinds had been hit hard, and Jeff and Nancy Parker were no exception. But they were one of the lucky ones, but it had become a close call. And their daughter and grandchildren wanted to visit them for the holidays. So, they’d driven out to near Phoenix. And by the end of the holidays, their granddaughter had stayed behind because when you go to school on-line. You could do your studies almost anywhere.
And especially in a gated retirement community that provided stellar wi-fi. Claudia did not regret her decision because she knew at the time her grandparents had needed her to be there, to give them support as they coped with the last of some nasty health issues, and then when the time came for a decision to be made about the family restaurant that resided in Roswell, New Mexico.
A place Claudia did not know even though she had been told that she had been born here before admitting that she really had not, she had been born elsewhere. But her mother had packed her up and moved to first New York, then Boston, and in between anywhere she could get away from her father.
Or more like the memories of her father. Because of course he has not been present in my life
Along the way, her little brother had come into their lives, and it had been the three of them ever since until of course Claudia moved into a senior’s retirement community for five months which had been its own challenges because it meant she was away from her mother and brother, and also her social network…
Her friends.
But then her friends were numerous, and they were scattered to wherever they could find jobs despite still having classes to attend most days of the week, or whenever they chose to show up. Claudia was more studious than that that because when there is not much else you can do in Arizona when a global pandemic decides to ravage every facet of life…
And upend the life as you know it.
So, now months later, Claudia stood there and looked at the challenge she would have to undertake as her mother had decided to reopen the Crashdown even though she had not had any restaurant experience since she was a waitress as a teenager. And that career had ended in a lot of dramatic action as she graduated from high school and in the end, had moved on from this town and went and became a premiere scientist.
But the last year had burnt her out.
Seriously.
So, now she wanted a new challenge.
Or it had been because of her young son whose name was JJ Parker. Given the name in honor of her father, the child’s grandfather, Jeffrey James, though he currently liked to simply call himself JJ. Why the siblings had different last names was a long story. And not one she was in the mood to share at this minute. There will be time. Still little JJ was now 10 and had not taken to the pandemic well, and unlike his big sister, he had not meshed with on-line learning. For a high energy boy. Computer learning was not his mode of learning. So, he needed a stable environment, and after some brushes with his attitude. Claudia’s mother decided to make this move.
And now here I am, Claudia thought. I gave up a summer in the mountains she murmured. As she went to the door and pulled the board off the door and opened the long-locked door in such a way that no one would suspect something was off and tore down the “for sale” sign.
She tried to get some movement out of the moving crew, but they would not listen to her, so they had to wait until her mother arrived. Which could be anytime as she checked see if she got cell service, which she did. She texted her mother and little brother to say she had arrived. Once that was done. She chose to walk through the abandoned building and saw the dust and the dirt. Assessing it like someone who had experience. Which she did not, but she was capable of a lot she knew. Fortunately, it did not seem like it would be a nightmare to clean up, even after fourteen months of inactivity.
But because of it being closed for business. It was going to need some freshening up if they were going to open his place and operate it. She could see the challenge, but oddly she was game for it. She felt like this was the right call.
For some reason because she did not know the place.
Still, she took to looking around and seeing the funny alien paint Funny Gramps she thought. But it fed the family and town until it did not.
She did not know if her mother would want to change the paint, or the theme because of how on the nose it was to their life.
She thought it was cool. Then what did it matter. Only that it spoke to her origins.
Not that dear old Mom wants to acknowledge that in me Claudia thought. Which is why the last five months had been a blessing to be away from each other.
Again, a long story as she heard movement in the back. Knowing it was not the movers. After all, they did not want to take orders from an eighteen-year-old. Still, she felt it was her duty to check, and she walked into the backroom.
A room that had not obviously been changed in eighteen years. It felt dated. But how would she know how it looked because she had never had any conscious memory of being here. The paint looks so yesteryear. As she had noted the green and orange alien mosaic paint in the front, and boy it was a little much for someone who had not experienced it.
Grandpa had gone all out…
Opening the door, or she pushed the creakiness of the door and walked into the back, and she stopped because she was stunned to see someone from her past standing in the doorway with boxes all over the places.
A shadow of a man stood there, and it was obvious from the stunned glances on both of their faces, that they would know each other.
Both were stunned silent.
Which stretched on for an eternity it seemed.
Finally, the silence broke, and he was first to speak as if the resemblance were instantaneous, which it was, which to Claudia, she did not know how it could be.
“Claudia,” the man uttered.
Perfect the teenage muttered out loud “Hello Dad,” came the eighteen-year-old who looked at the man she knew was her father, because he had no role in her life. But now they stood at least two meters from each other. Socially distancing is great thing for once she told herself. Funny one Claudia.
“What are you doing here?” came the stunned man, a shadow of his former self.
“Mom did not tell you. We are relocating back here…”
*
The words “relocating” were slow to sink in, and slow to come out of his mouth as he repeated them as the man looked at the girl who was more like a woman now and in total command much like her mother he thought. And so, unlike himself as they were staring at each other because he did not know this day was going to happen even though it had been a duty of his to keep an eye on this place thanks to personal deal he had made with its owners before they shut it down because life and business became too much.
Too much was something I could relate to…
Because that was his life.
For as long as Claudia had been alive. Ever since her mother woke up one morning and could not take the life she had anymore, because I forced it on her he thought and divorced him and walked out of his life.
Taking their daughter with her…
And now he watched the same daughter he shared with the love of his life and wondered how life had come to this place.
And he wanted to thank God because he was seeing his baby girl for the first time in eighteen years.
“Claudia,” Max Evans asked as he did not even know how Claudia would know him because it was not like Liz wanted him apart of their life. Because it was a deal they had made in the divorce. She would take his secrets, and crimes to the grave. And he would give up custody.
It was ruthless and not a side he would have expected to see in her.
But the one he would expect because it was not the life she had expected although she had accepted his ring when they were planning on running for their lives or a showdown with a shadow government agency determined to make you extinct or whatever came first. Fortunately, they got out of town just in time.
But it was not the life for two kids in love. Especially when a baby came too quickly.
On the road and forced to make do with life in any way possible to make money. It finally became too much for Liz, and she took their daughter and disappeared from his life before he could find them.
As a result. She had relocated all over the country. And he had never known where they were.
And faced with the destruction of the life he was leading. Max had come back here and settled into a life that he had not seen coming. Especially in the last year as he watched over the Crashdown and remembered when he would come into this establishment and sit in a booth and see the love of his life whirling around the restaurant in all her glory. As the beloved only daughter of the owners.
And their extremely rocky courtship once their eyes opened to each other which would lead to a lot of drama, and the ultimate demise of their relationship.
But with a lasting memory.
Their daughter.
Claudia Diane Evans
This was not what he was thinking when he was doing his usual walk around the premises, and he heard commotion inside. Talking to Jeff the day before, his former father-in-law, did not give him the heads up of what to expect.
The fact he was on speaking terms with his former in-laws was a miracle. Given how rocky the days were before he and Liz had vanished from its shores. But coming back after the divorce had given him time to win back their support of his in-laws, even if they were now his former ones.
But Jeff had been kind to him. After all, Jeff had not known how to explain what his daughter had done or why she had not come here, and instead chose to vanish from their lives as well as Max’s. And therefore, in the past year, Max had shown the kindness back to his former in-laws and he had kept guard on the beloved establishment even though he knew from the sign on the front that it was due to be sold.
But he had not be warned of any changes to that fact.
So, this was a shock. To come and check on the premises, only to find his only child staring at him. And now he was being told that she would be relocating back to this town.
Their town.
Once upon a time.
“How do you know it is me?” Max stammered as he tried to figure out how to handle this change to his life. “You, are, what?” he asked as he did not know how this was happening when he was unprepared to handle it.
“18 years old,” came Claudia as it was just as stunning to her for her to be facing her father. Then man she never experienced before because her mother had asked her father to stay away from her, and he had abided by that request. “And about that other thing. Mom did show me pictures you know,” she said as she had clarified it to herself. Not that mom wanted to talk about you, so, instead she kept it to pictures, and the informal this is your father. “And so did Grandma and Grandpa.” After all, they were kinder than their own daughter about their granddaughter’s birth father Claudia now muttered. I will never understand you, Mom.
Mom has made some crazy decisions Claudia sighed.
“Right,” Max muttered as he was trying to compute this bombshell, as suddenly there was commotion out front, and it brought back to the realities of their life. And how this was not the place that should be their first meeting after a life spent apart. But it forced Claudia back to the reality that she knew would have her mother coming back into it, anytime now.
“Hey, Claude, where are you?” came a high-pitched female as she raced into the old restaurant. “Hey, this place is so cool” came the pixie blonde. Echoing another time in the man’s life. As he witnessed his best friend’s daughter as she stormed into their present. With the blonde pixie haircut, she echoed the beginning of an incredible journey for Max and for the blonde’s parents.
“In here,” called Claudia as she had not been expecting her friend to show up.
Barging into their private moment. Although both parties welcomed the diversion as Lucy Guerin came rushing into the room. “Hey, this place is far out,” came Lucy as she stopped in front the man staring at her. “Oh, I did not know you had company. Hello Max,” she said deferentially towards her father’s best friend.
Claudia would not know Lucy knew her father.
“Hello Lucy,” came Max “I also did not expect to see you,” said the man still in shock of seeing his daughter for the first time in eighteen years.
Still Claudia welcomed the diversion because this was not what she had been expecting to happen after setting out on her own from her grandparent’s home near Phoenix and drove here to meet up with her mother and little brother.
Now she was facing her birth father.
Needing the break, she turned to her friend “When did you get in?” she asked her best friend. Eight months was their age difference, so Lucy still had another year to go in high school before she finished. Maybe she will have a more traditional senior year that I was denied thought Claudia. Not that she was willing to deter graduation for a stereotypical senior year of parties, making out with her boyfriend, and then finally prom. Nah, I am more willing to get on with life.
The last year had given her a wake-up call into this cruel world.
And life changes, and it is what you make of it, and she did make it in different ways.
“Last night,” came Lucy as it still stunned her to see her father’s best friend standing in the belly of the Crashdown. “Staying with Grandma and Grandpa, while Mom and Dad are moving into the new place. They did not need me to get in the way,” she said softly as she may have lived elsewhere but she was someone who knew every inch of Roswell because of summers here in Roswell with her grandparents.
Claudia was not really listening, and Max knew this, and knew he had to be going and said as much “I guess I better go,” he said simply. “It’s a real pleasure to finally see you Claudia,” he murmured as he did not know how to handle this how do you handle seeing your daughter for the first time since she was a baby “And Lucy, I will be seeing you and your parents later?” as the pixie blonde nodded.
“Good-bye Dad,” came a shell-shocked Claudia as she was still processing the whole encounter and Lucy’s jaw dropped as if she was finally let in on some deep secret.
As Max nodded and walked through the shell of the old restaurant, and walked out into the sunshine, and stopped short when he saw someone from his past.
Standing talking to some gentlemen in front of what was clearly marked as a moving van, as it looked like it was to deliver the family belongings into the building.
She is still radiant he thought as he almost wanted to walk away so that she did not know he was here, but it was Liz he thought, and he could not walk away. She can walk away from me he muttered But I could never walk away from her. So, he came back to the reality and said the one-word he did not think he ever would again, “Liz,” came his voice when he finally found it and used it and time stopped when the brunette turned around and went pale at the sight of man who she had walked away from.
The love of her life.
And her ex-husband.
“Max,” Liz Parker formerly Evans said as a small young boy stood next to the car, using his phone to amuse himself while his mother debated strategy and the change in his mother’s voice made him look up at the man he had only seen in pictures.
Still, that did not stop him from butting in…
“Mom,” came the boy and Max was reminded once again that Liz had moved on from him.