“It’s nothing,” Maria said as she walked upstairs but knew the tabasco was out of the bottle as her husband followed steps behind her, “I have to get ready for work,” she said as she went to their room, but Michael continued to follow, and she tried to stall him as she turned back. “Come on honey, hey, check on the kids.”
“No,” Michael said as he shut the door behind him as he entered the room. “What did you mean by that rant?”
“Look Space boy, I love Max, I really do. He helped me immensely when we were younger, but I don’t like this situation. I don’t like how he hurt my friend.”
“Your friend is a strong and independent woman, and she made just as many decisions as he did about their relationship. Yes, Max screwed up. Liz did too. We all did, but come on Maria, it’s a bit hard to lay it on Maxwell shoulders for what went down.”
“She’s here, he’s not.”
“Yes, he is. But Liz is just as responsible for that as much as he was for walking away.”
“He married someone else,” Maria said bitterly. “Liz has been here on the road dealing with his children and he goes off and marries someone else and lives a bliss free life while she deals with all the responsibilities of our life in Roswell, and the consequences it had.”
“That’s not fair Maria,” Michael said. “To hear Liz say it, well, she made the decision for him to stay away. He could have been here for her and the twins, but she didn’t want him to be and neither of them could have imagined Evan showing up on our doorstep after all that is why Max left in the first place. To find his son, and make sure he was safe. None of us could imagine that, and certainly not them.”
“I know, okay, I know, but…” Maria said as her face crumbled as she was forced to accept the reality of the situation even if she rebelled every inch against it. “Liz is overwhelmed and it’s all on her.”
“Maybe one of these days that will change,” Michael asked.
“Yeah maybe,” Maria sighed.
“Why do I sense you know something more about that,” Michael asked as he took a close look on the emotion on his wife’s face, “What do you know?”
“I know nothing,” Maria tried.
“Maria,” Michael asked quietly. “You’re way too stirred up about this for you not to know something.”
“OK Michael… fine, you got it out of me, Max and Isabel are headed this way. I don’t know anything about it. Kyle is the one who has the in with Isabel, but I do know that she told him that Max sold his place in New York, and they are headed this way and they should be here within days.”
“Are you serious?” Michael asked, in shock. Max and Isabel are coming back?
“Yes,” Maria admitted. “And I just hate how this is going to string Liz up all over again because she doesn’t need this level of turmoil,” she sighed as she paced the room. “I hate it.”
“Maybe it’s time for all of this to be over. If Max and Isabel do come back, then maybe we’re closer to get some semblance of finality to this drama?”
“Only if it’s indeed the end,” Maria sighed. “Liz can’t handle anymore angst.”
It was nearly noon by the time that Max and Isabel got in their car and started driving. Isabel slept in late and then Max got a call from his real estate agent who said they had an offer. And he had to decide whether he wanted to take it with a closing date immediately, which he did. And he spent the morning signing papers and faxing them back to be official, and then it was time to be on the road after an early lunch. “What are you doing with the money?”
“I have something special in mind,” Max said cryptically as he wondered if this road was almost over. “I am not ready to discuss it yet as it’s only something I am playing around in my head for the moment and haven’t put to action yet.”
“Okay,” Isabel said as they drove “Where are you putting the money?”
“That is worked out as well,” Max said as he knew he was taking a chance, but he was ready to take it and move on into the future, and he didn’t care what anyone thought of it. He was ready to grab what he wanted, and what was right for him.
“Tell me sometime, okay?” Isabel asked.
“I will,” Max smiled.
Phillip Evans Law Offices
“What’s going on?” Phillip asked as his wife came rushing into the office. He was just about to close for the day. His days were numbered at the firm, as he was talking about retiring and he had a few last clients he was going deal with before closing the doors, and he was only in the office that morning when he saw his wife come in. “Diane, why are you flush?”
“The bank called,” Diane said.
“Why?”
“You asked them to call if anyone touched Max or Isabel’s accounts, right?” Diane asked her husband, and Phillip didn’t know what had gotten his wife so excited. It had been eight years of no news about their kids, and they had sort of found themselves getting used to the status quo of their lives without their son and daughter.
“Yes, I did,” Phillip nodded as he remembered in the days after his children had disappeared in the mayhem of the Graduation disaster with the FBI. Max and Isabel got lost in the mayhem, and he and Diane hadn’t been able to find them and then Liz was scooped up by the Unit, and he had helped Jeff get his daughter released only for her to leave town the next day, leaving a note saying she was meeting Max to go and get married and they wouldn’t be coming back out of protection for their families. “I asked them to call us.”
“Well they called, and said that Max’s account was accessed today,” Diane said carefully. “They said a considerable sum of money was deposited into it from a real estate agency in New York.”
“Really,” Phillip asked as he reached for his phone and Diane sat down on the chair by his desk. “Hello, this is Phillip Evans, can you tell me if there has been any action on two accounts. One belonging to Max Evans or Isabel Evans,” he asked. “You called my wife earlier, and I just wanted to confirm. “No, I know you can’t discuss the details of the accounts. I am a lawyer, and I was only wanting to confirm that it’s indeed true”
Diane was in bated breath as she watched her husband on the phone. “Yes, thank you very much” he said as he hung up, and turned to his wife. “It’s true. Isabel’s account hasn’t been touched since they left town. But Max’s account had a large amount deposited in from New York earlier today.”
“What do you think it means?” Diane asked.
“We need to call Jim,” Phillip said. “Better yet, why don’t we go find him. I was about to close for the day, and we can get lunch afterwards.”
“Is it possible we might find out something,” Diane asked.
“You never know,” Phillip smiled as Diane waited while he powered down his office, and walked out with him as he closed and locked the office. “It’s been eight years.”
“Eight years,” Jim Valenti asked in the apartment above the Crashdown. Once he had received the call from Phillip, he commenced the group of grieving families to discuss recent developments. “There hasn’t been any movement in that account since they left town?” he asked as it had been a long time since the whole group had gotten together because after it was evident that their kids weren’t coming back. Phillip and Diane had gravitated away from the group as they wished to come to terms with the loss on their own.
“No,” Phillip shook his head. “I check occasionally, and until today when Diane came to my office about the call at home we hadn’t seen movement.”
“And no action in Isabel’s account?” Jim asked.
“Nope,” Phillip sighed. “I asked when I called the bank. They were able to confirm that only Max’s account was activated today with the new funds.”
“Have you thought to ask Jesse?” Amy asked Phillip and Diane. “If he’s heard from Isabel, if she has touched their joint account.”
“They are divorced,” Diane commented. “Jesse went to court and was granted the divorce after he relocated to Boston, and it was obvious Isabel wasn’t coming back, although she did receive the petition and chose not to contest it. I believe he remarried last year.”
“But their joint account stayed untouched right?” Jim asked. “Because it needed Isabel’s consent to close it, and the court wouldn’t rule on it and Jesse seemed fine with it because he had opened a new account and any funds went into that one once he relocated.”
“That is true,” Phillip sighed. “Although I suspect if Max didn’t touch his account, then Isabel didn’t touch her joint account with Jesse because of the legalities involved.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to ask Jesse,” Jim asked. “The bank would call him, right?’
“Most likely,” Phillip admitted.
“I am sorry guys,” Amy said. “I know this has awoken everything for you and the hope that comes with any new development.”
“It doesn’t feel like it’s been eight years,” Diane sighed. “I just seemed like yesterday. I miss my children.”
“Phillip and Diane,” Jim sighed as he knew they would have to discuss the newest information that the rest of them were in the know of and Phillip and Diane were in the dark regarding. “We didn’t want to give you false hope or worry you but in the recent days there has been some new developments.”
“How so?” Phillip asked.
“We found out that Tess Harding didn’t die eight years ago. She was alive and well until a couple of days ago!”
“WHAT” Diane asked, outraged and her husband was close behind in his disgust. “You said she was dead. That is why the kids were forced to make plans to flee, before the mayhem at their graduation ceremony.”
“The kids believed it, I believed it” Jim admitted. “It was the natural assumption when Liz drove Tess to the army base, and then moments later it exploded. We thought she sacrificed herself for her son. But it turns out for some reason, she didn’t die because she was found dead in Texas a couple of days ago.”
“My god,” Diane asked. “That means what?”
“You knew that the baby Max and Tess had was put up for adoption in the days prior to their departure from town, right?” Jim asked the group.
“Yes, I arranged it” Phillip admitted as he remembered those days and how his son after months of distance from his family, created by him and his wife but also Max’s conduct, he came back home to seek help with the baby but ultimately, he decided the child needed a safer home and that at eighteen years old, he wouldn’t be able to provide that especially once he learned the baby was human. “Diane and I took him to his new family.”
“You knew the new family turned up a victim of a car crash a few weeks later, and the baby was missing.”
“Are you serious?” Diane asked. “Phillip, did you know?”
“No,” Phillip shook his head as he tried to figure it all out, and what it all meant. He didn’t recall hearing about any accident involving the new adoptive family of his grandson. “Jim, what are you saying?”
“It was within hours or maybe days of mayhem at the graduation ceremony. The kids had a plan to leave. But it all went by the wayside because Max learned of the accident. As you know Jeff, Nancy, Phillip and Diane. Max and Liz were engaged, they got engaged just days before graduation and were planning on going off together, and getting married. But in the ensuing drama of Graduation and the FBI sweeping up Liz, she and Max got separated. Max was with Isabel. Maria and Michael were together elsewhere, and Liz somehow got snatched up. We eventually got her released with the help of you Jeff and Nancy, and Phillip’s legal expertise. Still, they had plans to meet up and leave together… But then…”
“What?” Nancy asked.
“Max heard about the accident, I forgot how. But he did. And he feared that Tess had lied about how special the little boy was so Liz encouraged him to go off in search for the baby. Isabel would go with him. While Liz, Maria and Michael and Kyle in the hysteria of the town reaction to the events of the ceremony. They went off together…”
“So, Liz lied when she said she and Max were eloping?”
“In a manner of speaking. Their plans got foiled and I do know as of three years ago when the Special Unit got dismantled, they hadn’t come together.”
“How does Tess work into this?” Amy asked.
“I truly don’t know. We did believe she was dead. But as you Amy, Jeff know I recently got a call from the police department in Austin, and they said they found Tess’s body and I was listed as next of kin. As Amy knows, to be honest, I haven’t seen her body. But the department wants me to come and pick her up. And I do plan to do that, this coming weekend. Amy and I plan to make what we can and have a weekend of it.”
“And now we have movement in Max’s bank account?” Diane asked. “What does all this mean?”
“I have no clue,” Jeff admitted, and Jim concurred. “But it’s damn interesting.”
“The real estate agency was listed in New York you said?” Amy asked. “And Tess was found in Texas. So obviously Max and Isabel, if they are still together, they were in New York. But what does Texas mean?”
“I wish I knew,” Jim sighed.
Maybe we are closer to finding our kids?” Nancy asked hopefully.
“Max is coming back?” Michael asked hours later as he cornered Kyle in the kitchen of the family house, as the plates were cleared from dinner and the kids were all doing homework and Maria was doing prep for the next day school plan while Liz was cornered off in her office, doing some accounting work and trying to ignore the rush of memories she kept having of Max, and trying to use work as a diversion. Michael didn’t have anything to do, so he cornered Kyle to ask the essential question. “Well?”
“So, Maria spilled?” Kyle asked.
“She didn’t mean to,” Michael assured his friend. “But she let it go in the wake of a rant about the whole damn situation we face ourselves in.”
“Yeah, I have been at the end of those rants when she feels ready to let out steam.” Kyle sighed. “Sorry you had to experience it.”
“This one was unusual in its intensity, and it’s all fueled I am sure because of the news about Max. Is it true. Are they coming this way?”
“As far as I know,” Kyle said. “I haven’t talked to Isabel in a few days, ever since they started their trek. But that was the intention. Once Max’s wife died, at Tess’s hands we find out, he sold their place and is on the road… this way.”
“Does he know… you know.” Michael asked.
“About Evan. Or most importantly… the twins?” Kyle asked. “No, we kind of got prevented from having that discussion involving the twins. She does know about Evan.”
“How?” Michael asked.
“Phone issues,” Kyle said honestly. “I truly don’t know what’s going to happen once he hits town. This has many ways it can go…”
“Liz doesn’t know. If I didn’t know until this morning than Liz doesn’t know, right?”
“Nope, and she’s going to have my head once she does know.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell her,” Michael said as he remembered their conversation from that morning and he knew his wife was right that Liz was an emotional time bomb and if she knew Max was coming their way, there was no way of knowing what she might do. Even if they needed this endless drama to end, and as he knew Liz regretted keeping Max away…but still, it might be one step too far.
“You really think we should keep her in the dark, and let him come here and surprise her?”
“Yes,” Michael said. “She should know to prepare the kids, but still, you never know what you might do if you know you have visitor coming that you have a history with and it provokes a lot of positivity and negativity in you. Maybe she needs the element of surprise.”
“Wow, I didn’t think I would hear that from you?” Kyle whistled. “I’ll think about it.”
“Do that,” Michael said. “I have to check in with work,” he said as he left the room as Kyle was forced to make some decisions.
“What am I going to do?” Kyle asked himself.