Always Tomorrow (CC, Mature) - A Reunion's Endgame - Chapter 45 - Completed - 09/30/2020
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RoswellFan68
- Obsessed Roswellian
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Re: Always Tomorrow (CC, Mature) - A Reunion's Endgame - Chapter 5 - 05/28/2020
I wonder what dirt Nicholas had on the family. It must of been big for Elizabeth to sacrificed herself for her family.
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Parker1947
- Obsessed Roswellian
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Always Tomorrow - Chapter 6 - 05/30/2020
“Christopher is sleeping,” Beth said in welcoming tones as she exchanged in a kiss with her husband as she had been downstairs with Eva in her arms when her husband walked through the doors as she they both found relief in him being home as Max was giving thanks for what he did have as he saw his wife and granddaughter and knew he was lucky when others didn’t have the same kind of fortune as he stepped back from the kiss and Beth could see as her husband did a glance around of their largely empty house as if expecting someone to pop out, and knowing he who he was hoping for, she sighed “Alexandra is at Graham’s, and Carrie is at work,” she smiled as Max as he took his granddaughter into his arms and sat down on the couch with the little girl who had hadn’t been able to sleep and wanted to be awake and causing trouble with her grandmother when she spotted her grandfather and her face lit up, and his too. Jake and Grace had not arrived yet to pick her up, and he took some solace in her small face. “She is so quiet and yet she knows how make her voice work” he murmured as he felt a tiny bit of peace as he glanced down at such innocence and swore that life wouldn’t be so dark when his little angel came of age.
“She’s precious, isn’t she?” Beth sighed as she glanced at her granddaughter and marveled at how life had worked these last years. Even in her dreams, she could never have imagined that she could have had this kind of life with such happiness with Max and their children and yet she hated how it was opposite for Michael and Maria, as she could only hope that the god’s were finally responding and allowing them what they truly wanted.
Their daughter back.
Speaking of daughters Max mused “You said Carrie is at work?” and asked as he glanced down at his granddaughter and checked his watch as he frowned at the notion of his daughter was still out there in the world. “At this time of night?” he asked. “Beth, it’s getting late?”
“Max, she a waitress and bartender at Cow Patties,” Beth laughed as she kissed her husband. “You know she works there when she’s in town, and they needed her to fill in tonight, so she took the shift since she’s going back to New York on Monday, and the money is useful” she assured her husband as she gave him another kiss, which he responded to. “Our daughter will be perfectly safe.”
“I just wish she weren’t out late. I know they are 20 now, but I don’t like it” Max thought of how easily things had gone wrong for Elizabeth and didn’t want that for his daughters “I like knowing they are here, and in their rooms… even if they aren’t alone,” he sighed and Beth laughed. “I know, I know, I am being a bit much?”
“Carrie has shown the ability to handle herself, her sister too” Beth assured her husband as she took Eva from Max and placed her in the playpen where she fell immediately to sleep. “As it is every night when she has to work, we both know that she’ll call when she is on the way home, which is the protocol and it has worked up until now” she assured her husband. “There is no reason to think the opposite tonight.”
“Unexpected things can happen?” Max sighed. “It did for Elizabeth,” he murmured. “I know the girls are all independent, and I do admire that streak in them, but I hate knowing the unknown is out there and any of them can fall into it at a moment’s notice. While I know Grace is married now and has Jake watching out, but Alexandra and Carrie…”
“I trust that Elizabeth has taught all the girls to be careful with their environments and to be cautious” Beth sighed as she hated knowing how what had happened to Elizabeth had changed the daily lives for all the kids, as it was never truly innocent after that day Elizabeth disappeared and the horror inflicted on the teenager, and it had forced all of them to be super careful because of what they didn’t know could be out there, and watching what happened to Elizabeth play out, none of them wanted a repeat of it and now to know for Michael and Maria, their nightmares were returning as they were forced to confront the past but she knew the twins were very responsible about who they trusted, and where they went, “Max, how bad is for Elizabeth?”
“It’s isn’t looking good,” Max admitted to his wife. “She admits she did it and it sounds like over the last seven years she’s had more time with Nicholas than away from which makes it hard to raise what he did to her in the first place unless I raise something like Stockholm Syndrome and there was not a lot of evidence that tied him to it besides the blood and even that disappeared by the time she started to recover, and the drugs made them declare her to be unreliable…or a liar…”
“She’s clean, right?” Beth asked as it had looked from the outside observer that Elizabeth did seem drug free.
“Now,” Max conceded as he hugged his wife. “It’s just going to be a complicated case…” he sighed. “Because there is so much we don’t know so I wish it was easier because I don’t want to fail any of them, and especially not Elizabeth because she has seen hell and come back, and I do not want to think that her future is a jail cell for killing a monster,” he sighed as the there was a knock on the door, and he walked to the front door. “I know I should value the justice system since I am a lawyer. But some deaths are meant to be, and to think Elizabeth might have to pay for a death I or any of us would have done in her place, I hate to think about it” he muttered as he saw that their visitor was his sister, “Hey, I didn’t see you at the station?”
“Once Amy came to help with the kids, we had to head home as there was a problem brewing at the house. But we solved it so I wanted to come by and get caught up because I couldn’t sleep and I was only keeping Kyle awake and that never works out well,” Isabel laughed as she walked in and smiled at Beth and then glanced back at her brother and saw the tension on his face and the worry in his eyes. “Max, how bad is it?” as she exchanged oohs and awed at little Eva who was sound asleep. “Where are Jake and Grace?”
“On the way,” Max nodded on alert and wary. “Are you sure everything is alright?”
“Oh, no,” Isabel laughed at the concern she had seen on her brother’s face. “It is nothing you have to worry about,” Isabel assured her brother.
“Jamie got himself in a jam and we had to make sure it got cleared up.” Isabel assured of her rascal of a son. “It’s now fine.”
“Max is a little overly defensive,” Beth conceded as she nodded at her sister-in-law. “I am trying to convince him that he doesn’t have to worry that Carrie is working at Cow Patties?”
“They are, what nearly 21 now Max, and they have shown quite the ability to protect themselves when they were younger so they are the least we should worry about…” Isabel said of her nieces and the memories of their escapades when they were younger. “Although I do realize that Elizabeth probably has gotten you a little jumpy?” she sighed as she thought of her own daughters who were out on their own. “Which is warranted as I know the feeling Max because Kyle and I both feel it regarding Kylie and Michelle, but they know how to protect themselves”
“It is not hard,” Max admits as the door opened and in walked Grace, Jake and then Maria… “You came?” he asked of his friend as he went and gave her the hug she needed as Maria looked like she was on her last legs, and ready for a collapse.
“Michael was still in with her, and I couldn’t sit there any longer…” Maria sighed as she thought of her daughter in so much danger. “I need time, and I needed information, so I came here” as she got emotional when she saw her granddaughter sleeping near them. “They are so peaceful when they are that age.”
“It will get easier with time,” Max said softly.
“Will it?” Maria asked. “If my daughter goes away to prison for murder” she wondered. “What’s going on Max, what do you know?”
“I can’t make any promises,” Max sighed as he hated to see the pain in Maria’s face. “I am going to try my best. She’s in a lot of trouble Maria and at the end of the day she did it, and it is going to be hard trying to convince a jury that she should get away with it”
“He was a monster Max,” Maria cried. “He hurt my baby, and in the process killed my family” she said with genuine emotion in her eyes as Jake shifted his away and focused on his own little girl and knew if someone out even tried to hurt Eva. “We have been a barely a family these last years as much as we have tried, and he did that with what he did to our daughter and it cost us Max, and it cost the kids, Belle especially and most of all Elizabeth.”
“I know,” Max sighed. “I am just saying we’re at the beginning, and there is stuff I can’t even imagine at this point, but I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep because I am going to try my hardest but sometimes the hardest of tries don’t work…”
“I wish it did,” Maria nodded as she sat down and focused on Eva.
“What do you want from me Max?” Jake asked as he hated how Nicholas was still playing with their family even from the ashes of hell. “Grandpa took me off the case because of how close I am too it.”
“Unfortunately, but given how this is for your grandfather, we can’t have any chance your involvement effects the case, so I need your help,” he nodded at his daughter who reached for her own daughter and picked up a now awake Eva who giggled when she saw her mother. Focusing back on the case. “It’s something Elizabeth said, and I need your help tomorrow if you can”
“What?” Jake asked as Maria interest perked at the mention of her daughter’s name.
“She says she was blackmailed,” Max sighed knowing how it was going to land with the family. “She says he has some kind of file on our deepest secrets, and he was prepared to use them if she didn’t agree to be with him,” he said as the paleness returned to Maria’s face and even to Jake and Grace. Isabel felt sickened as she listened. “He used drugs and our secrets to keep her attached to him.”
“Please no,” Maria whispered.
“You mean she did it to protect the family?” Isabel asked queasy.
“She says…” Max admitted. “She says she signed on the dotted line, which scares me what Nicholas got her to put her name to,” he sighed as Maria continued to stay mum but continued to get pale. “Anyways, you have seen the address where they picked her up, right?” he asked his son-in-law.
“Yeah it’s in the case file” Jake said. “I made a copy, before I was taken off the case, you probably shouldn’t tell Grandpa that…”
“Probably not” Max agreed. “Anyways, I need you go there and see if there is any chance this file is there or if it’s an imaginary threat he used to get Elizabeth to do his bidding” he sighed as he thought of the Sheriff’s department and other authorities who would have combed the place looking for evidence. “That is if it hasn’t already been found…”
“What kind of secrets?” Isabel asked.
“She didn’t say but if we’re talking about Nicholas than it could be anything or everything, we ever did wrong here on Earth” Max muttered as he knew they had a laundry list of crimes they were lucky to have gotten away with at the time as he turned to his eldest daughter. “What’s your schedule like with school and work?”
“Finals just finished, and I have two weeks off before my summer rotation starts at the hospital, why?” Grace asked as she still held Eva in her arms and was now glad to have the time off because she could not imagine having to go back to school or work with everything raining down on them. “Do you need me for something?”
“I need you to go with Jake tomorrow,” Max sighed. “We don’t know what there is to find, and given we’re dealing with someone who has his own abilities and is a fellow alien, well, Jake might need his own alien for backup. Could you do it, would you do this for me?”
“Sure, anything to help Elizabeth” Grace swore as Beth came back into the room after checking in on Christopher as she checked the clock on the wall and could see how tired her daughter and son-in-law were. “Why don’t the two of you stay here. Your old room is still available, and it’s late…” she asked of her daughter as Grace glanced at her husband who nodded. “It’s better than trying to drive at this hour?”
“If you’re okay with it?” Jake asked both Max and Beth.
“We would love it,” Max nodded. “After all we’re talking about the apartment over the garage,” he laughed because during that year in Las Cruces Max had put the house under some massive renovations to create more space if they ever moved back since he had no need to sell the house, or wish for that matter, so Grace got what she wished for, a room over the garage. Outside of the house, over the garage which suited Max at the end of the day because it wasn’t like he relished the idea of Grace and Jake spending time in her bedroom within house limits especially with two other impressionable teenagers in the house. It allowed Alexandra and Carrie to get their own rooms, and the house was spruced up and modernized with new office for both Max and Beth to work from home. It was a more inviting place when they returned, and because Grace lived at home until she got married… and the last few years with Jake in her little apartment over the garage, it made for a better situation all around, and now the room was empty and had last been used when Grace and Jake had visited while living in Boston.
Yet knowing Max and Beth had managed to find such happiness came at a cost, and he knew it as Jake and Grace accepted the offer and took Eva into the kitchen as Beth stayed out with Maria who was clearly falling apart “I am sorry…” she whispered as she felt for her friend as she and Maria had been able to come together over the years and form a close friendship, and while Beth wasn’t able to get all her memories back, she still felt comfortable and knew Maria was someone special, and they built something tight, and now she felt for her friend and the fear enveloped all of them especially since Jake and Grace brought them into even more of a tight family bond and with the inclusion of Eva.
“I should be happy. She’s back, yet…” Maria whispered as the mind was full of fear and was back at the Sheriff’s department where her daughter was stuck behind bars with no easy way out of her crisis.
“I know,” Beth nodded. “It’s evident that she’s still in so much pain, and to even think she took this all on to protect the family?”
“Why couldn’t she have come to us,” Maria muttered as she thought of the difficult months and even years after the kidnapping, and how she had watched her daughter spiral out of control and they stood there unable to help despite every effort. “She knew we would have helped?”
“Sometimes our children do not think rational, and they think they are helping when they are really only hurting themselves. She thought she was helping you guys. so that he didn’t come after the family” Beth suggested. “In her mind it was the only way to make it bearable.”
Maria nodded. “He had the advantage because he gave her drugs, and we just wanted to eliminate them from her life, and to help her…”
“It was her weakness,” Beth nodded as Max came out of the kitchen with Isabel. “She was so strong, and he terrorized her, and reduced her to shell of her former being as he got her under his spell” she sighed as Maria winced at the memories that were induced by the mere thought of Nicholas. “And it was probably the one thing that felt like it was normal, to protect the family, even if it meant going along with the devil”
“She’s in so much trouble,” Maria worried. “Nicholas did this to her, as even in death he has destroyed any chance of her to recover.”
“We’ll try to help her,” Max promised. “In her mind she was doing it because of you and her father, and her siblings, and the kids” he mused. “If agreeing to Nicholas’s sick plan kept us safe than to her, she was doing something for a greater cause in her view. It probably made her sleep better when she feared she was failing us and falling under the spell of what the drugs gave her, which was the ability to escape the pain Nicholas was causing, and for a time, some peace from what ailed her. She was willing to take the hits if the kids were safe, and most of all, you guys”
“God, the kids” Maria thought of Emily, Drew, and Mick.
“She’s not pregnant,” Max revealed to the startled group as Jake and Grace back in the room after putting their daughter to bed up in her old room that now was Alexandra’s. “She’s faking…”
“Are you kidding me?” Maria asked as Isabel could only shake her head.
“Dad, is that true?” Grace asked.
“She said she was, but then she wasn’t, and she’s been conning Nicholas until tonight when everything went down.”
“What was she thinking?” Maria wondered.
“It kept him off me,” Elizabeth muttered as she sat and watched her father assess her and see whether she was truly sober, and whether he was dealing with a full deck. She knew she had given him too much to doubt over the years. She felt like she was back to her confrontational posture she held right after the kidnapping as she was spiraling and finding no rock bottom to buffer her fall. Michael had been quiet for the longest time, and she was too. It was the first time they had seen each other fully conscious in nearly five years. She had revealed the baby was fake, and Michael was in disbelief. Michael flinched when he thought of Nicholas with his daughter and did not want to think about it and Elizabeth knew this, but it was part of the story, and something she would never be able to escape. “And it got me off the drugs?”
“And that was important to you because it was never before?” Michael asked as he did not know how to assess this new Elizabeth. It was all too sudden, and he was coming to terms with it as he watched his daughter. She seemed sober, but then she had been before, and those attempts of sobriety all ended in a split second.
“It was beginning to be too much, and I think I finally found my rock bottom” Elizabeth sighed. “Before you ask, there was no one incident. Just the whole deal, and I reached my limit” she muttered as she knew there were other reasons to stay sober, ones she wasn’t able to admit to. “With Nicholas thinking I was finally having his kid stopped him drugging my drinks if I didn’t take them willingly, which most of the time I did, because I was of course an addict and he just stayed away…” she said so matter of flatly that it stunned Michael to think his daughter had to go through that, or that anyone had to have experience such horrors which again made his own experiences pale in comparison. Meeting Maria he never imagined that sins of the father could repeat in his kids, and yet he was facing concrete proof that he had been living a fantasy despite the rude awakening of the last seven years.
“Until tonight?” Michael asked of the circumstances of what led to his daughter coming back into his life.
“Until tonight,” Elizabeth confirmed as she looked at her father through the bars. “But I probably should tell my lawyer about that…”
“You should…” Michael muttered as it all seemed to surreal.
“I never wanted you and Mom to know and now Uncle Max is probably blabbing to Mom as we speak. It’s humiliating to know I wasn’t strong enough to be a Guerin, and to repel the allure that was Nicholas,” Elizabeth murmured to the shock and dismay of her father. “I hate myself for being weak.”
“You shouldn’t say that Elizabeth because you will always be a Guerin. To your dying day, which has been too frequent these last years” he admitted. “But never doubt that you are our daughter. We loved you then, and we love you now.”
“You didn’t love me enough to stay Dad. You couldn’t look at me, and you moved out soon after I was home” Elizabeth accused her father. “It took me getting pregnant with Emily to get you back in the house” she sighed. “You didn’t love me know to stay and look at me, knowing what Nicholas did to me”
Jeez, Michael murmured. “It was never you sweet drop,” he said breaking down as he watched the conflict in his daughter. “It was me; I couldn’t stand to look at me and I knew your mother couldn’t stand to look at me when she knew what I cost our family?”
“It was me…” Elizabeth muttered.
“No, it wasn’t” Michael groaned and ached for his daughter. “Being who we are led you to be kidnapped that night, and we couldn’t find you and to know the horrors that was inflicted. I could not in good conscious look at myself and move forward especially with Nicholas on the loose. I needed to find him and get justice for you” he said quietly. “I admit we made mistakes, but it was nothing you did. You were the one we mutually loved in all this and I hate knowing it all went so bad,” he murmured. “If I could only have found Nicholas myself…”
“Don’t,” Elizabeth sighed not liking knowing how she lied to her parents before she disappeared She had never fessed up about Nicholas when she knew Nicholas was back and had her in his clutches and his web, and she didn’t tell anyone and therefore she let the evil continue and the abuse to take over her life and ruin any chance of recovery. “I knew he was back, and I didn’t speak up about it, so I am complicit in it and therefore I am not going to have a good defense in court because I did stay because he had a hold on me, and I couldn’t shake it until today.”
“Why?” Michael sighed as he glanced at his daughter. “He put you through hell, why keep his secret and let him play mind games with you…”
“I wanted to think I was over him, in the beginning but little by little he seduced me back in with the drugs he gave me. Growing up I always thought people who got hooked were idiots. I always thought I was stronger than that, because of my powers, and my gifts. But I found out I wasn’t, and that my gifts only take you so far, and if I had only used them a little wiser, I might have saved me a lot of pain, so I was the naïve one. Nicholas knew my weakness, and he knew my fears and fed them… and the drugs allowed me the peace and the ability for little while to escape and to know that he threatened you guys I knew I couldn’t take the chance, and I needed the ability to escape the insanity.”
“What are you talking about?” Michael asked in disbelief. “Are you saying he threatened you. What could he have had on us?”
“Secrets on all of us,” Elizabeth sighed, “And he was ready to use them… I knew he wasn’t bluffing, so he knew my biggest weaknesses and exploited them.”
“You have never been weak Elizabeth. You have just had to fight, and we need you to keep fighting and not to settle because anyone else would have been knocked down by now, and you are still standing…”
“Yes, I am still standing but, on the way, to prison for murder Dad. He might be dead, but I say he’s still winning” Elizabeth muttered and Michael was left with that as moments later Jim came in to say that he had to close the office up, and he thought of everything his daughter had to face as he went to pick up Maria at Max and Beth’s, as Elizabeth felt the coldness of the evening as she was alone in the prison cell as she could only pace and be restless, as she as unable to settle. At Max and Beth’s home, Michael and Maria could only hug as they both were filled with fear they weren’t able to talk about, as he took her hand and guided her to the car and they drove home as neither knew what to think or say, as they just wanted it to make sense, again.
While at the same time Max and Beth found comfort in each other and their family and Max was instantly put at ease when he saw his daughter walk through the front door, and he immediately hugged Carrie who sadly smiled because she knew what her father had to be thinking but neither wanted to talk about it. “Go to bed,” Max said softly. “But know that I love you and that will never change, okay?”
“I love you too Dad,” Carrie nodded as she walked downstairs as Max looked over at Beth, and took her hand as they walked up to their bedroom after making sure that the front door was locked and that their family was safely inside…
And the next morning he wanted to throw his paper at the wall when he glanced at the cover page and ensuing headlines that made everyone frustrated across the branch of families furious and at the same time sad.
The long-lost daughter of Maria Deluca Guerin has turned up having been arrested for murder. 23-year-old Elizabeth Guerin was kidnapped at the age of fifteen and for two weeks kept her family and country in a state of limbo of her whereabouts. When rescued, she was found to be barely to be alive and for the next two years her parents were forced to watch their daughter battle a heart-wrenching drug addiction begun by the kidnapping. Despite numerous interventions, the teenager was unable to successfully quit her addiction and shortly after her eighteenth birthday she disappeared, and for the last five years she wasn’t heard until she was arrested by authorities, stunning her family and friends who don’t know what to think about the newest developments.
Ms. Guerin is accused of killing the man her family believed responsible for her kidnapping in the first place but proof could never be proven for authorities to charge him, and he also fled the jurisdiction but yesterday, he was found shot to death by the woman who he had been living with him intimately in an apartment near her hometown. The landlady in the apartment building where the arrest happened made it clear the two were a couple, and there were children living with them until they were removed last year by the State of New Mexico. It all leaves a complicated and mixed message as the town tried to make sense of the history of the two, and whether he was responsible for her kidnapping at all. Added to it is word that Ms. Guerin, age 23 has confessed to the killing but that has not been confirmed by the Sheriff’s department who is already conflicted in this case because the Sheriff; James Valenti, Jr. is the grandfather of the accused, and one of his top deputies is also his grandson and the brother of Elizabeth. Making it even more complex as this newest twist hits the town.
When asked about any conflict of interests. The Roswell Sheriff’s department released a statement “We at the department are aware of how it looks and while the Sheriff remains on the case. Deputy Jake Guerin, who is the accused eldest brother, but has six years with the department and is decorated in his own right, well, he has been officially removed from the case, and he will no direct involvement in the investigation before it is handed to the lawyers and for the duration of the case, he was will on leave as he will he supporting his family, and as such, he won’t be having any direct ties to the case. While their grandfather, who is yes, the Sheriff; James Valenti, Jr, aims to keep matters involving the investigation into his granddaughter’s alleged crime above board and if such a development does arises, than he will allow an independent observer to be brought into supervise the case but at this moment, he along with rest of the department, along with the Guerin family are determined to see that the case is conducted in an impartial and fair manner because they are aware of the stakes involved in the case,” the statement says and goes on to add. “Also, while the Guerin family love their daughter, sister and granddaughter. They don’t intend to interfere in the case in any shape or form, as they plan to leave the investigation to the Department, and to that of the Sheriff because they trust the department, and will live with the results, wherever those results might end up to be”
Ms. Deluca Guerin was the novelist who popularized a series for young adults about a human girl and a male alien who fall in love, and the series spawned several books but after the kidnapping, she released one final book she had been working at the time of her daughter’s kidnapping, a year later than planned and then went on hiatus from writing. The final book sold the most of all the books, but no additional books have been released and it is rumored she has given up writing, and has retired but her publisher hasn’t confirmed that, and fans hope one day to enjoy another one of her books.
Jim did throw the newspaper across the room when he got into the station and saw the newspaper article, and then other articles under the juicy title of the tabloid variety as TROUBLED ADDICT SHOOTS LOVER TO DEATH IN A HAZE OF SEX and another one who outed Elizabeth’s fake pregnancy. CONFESSED MURDER SUSPECT FOUND TO BE FAKING PREGNANCY. It made him think they had a mole. Because too much information was known by the media. The fake pregnancy should not have been known to anyone but the family, and Elizabeth herself…
Jim swore and cursed at that thought…
“Deputy Jenkins get in here on the double” Jim demanded of his second in command deputy. Jake was his first, but he could not use him for this case.
“She’s precious, isn’t she?” Beth sighed as she glanced at her granddaughter and marveled at how life had worked these last years. Even in her dreams, she could never have imagined that she could have had this kind of life with such happiness with Max and their children and yet she hated how it was opposite for Michael and Maria, as she could only hope that the god’s were finally responding and allowing them what they truly wanted.
Their daughter back.
Speaking of daughters Max mused “You said Carrie is at work?” and asked as he glanced down at his granddaughter and checked his watch as he frowned at the notion of his daughter was still out there in the world. “At this time of night?” he asked. “Beth, it’s getting late?”
“Max, she a waitress and bartender at Cow Patties,” Beth laughed as she kissed her husband. “You know she works there when she’s in town, and they needed her to fill in tonight, so she took the shift since she’s going back to New York on Monday, and the money is useful” she assured her husband as she gave him another kiss, which he responded to. “Our daughter will be perfectly safe.”
“I just wish she weren’t out late. I know they are 20 now, but I don’t like it” Max thought of how easily things had gone wrong for Elizabeth and didn’t want that for his daughters “I like knowing they are here, and in their rooms… even if they aren’t alone,” he sighed and Beth laughed. “I know, I know, I am being a bit much?”
“Carrie has shown the ability to handle herself, her sister too” Beth assured her husband as she took Eva from Max and placed her in the playpen where she fell immediately to sleep. “As it is every night when she has to work, we both know that she’ll call when she is on the way home, which is the protocol and it has worked up until now” she assured her husband. “There is no reason to think the opposite tonight.”
“Unexpected things can happen?” Max sighed. “It did for Elizabeth,” he murmured. “I know the girls are all independent, and I do admire that streak in them, but I hate knowing the unknown is out there and any of them can fall into it at a moment’s notice. While I know Grace is married now and has Jake watching out, but Alexandra and Carrie…”
“I trust that Elizabeth has taught all the girls to be careful with their environments and to be cautious” Beth sighed as she hated knowing how what had happened to Elizabeth had changed the daily lives for all the kids, as it was never truly innocent after that day Elizabeth disappeared and the horror inflicted on the teenager, and it had forced all of them to be super careful because of what they didn’t know could be out there, and watching what happened to Elizabeth play out, none of them wanted a repeat of it and now to know for Michael and Maria, their nightmares were returning as they were forced to confront the past but she knew the twins were very responsible about who they trusted, and where they went, “Max, how bad is for Elizabeth?”
“It’s isn’t looking good,” Max admitted to his wife. “She admits she did it and it sounds like over the last seven years she’s had more time with Nicholas than away from which makes it hard to raise what he did to her in the first place unless I raise something like Stockholm Syndrome and there was not a lot of evidence that tied him to it besides the blood and even that disappeared by the time she started to recover, and the drugs made them declare her to be unreliable…or a liar…”
“She’s clean, right?” Beth asked as it had looked from the outside observer that Elizabeth did seem drug free.
“Now,” Max conceded as he hugged his wife. “It’s just going to be a complicated case…” he sighed. “Because there is so much we don’t know so I wish it was easier because I don’t want to fail any of them, and especially not Elizabeth because she has seen hell and come back, and I do not want to think that her future is a jail cell for killing a monster,” he sighed as the there was a knock on the door, and he walked to the front door. “I know I should value the justice system since I am a lawyer. But some deaths are meant to be, and to think Elizabeth might have to pay for a death I or any of us would have done in her place, I hate to think about it” he muttered as he saw that their visitor was his sister, “Hey, I didn’t see you at the station?”
“Once Amy came to help with the kids, we had to head home as there was a problem brewing at the house. But we solved it so I wanted to come by and get caught up because I couldn’t sleep and I was only keeping Kyle awake and that never works out well,” Isabel laughed as she walked in and smiled at Beth and then glanced back at her brother and saw the tension on his face and the worry in his eyes. “Max, how bad is it?” as she exchanged oohs and awed at little Eva who was sound asleep. “Where are Jake and Grace?”
“On the way,” Max nodded on alert and wary. “Are you sure everything is alright?”
“Oh, no,” Isabel laughed at the concern she had seen on her brother’s face. “It is nothing you have to worry about,” Isabel assured her brother.
“Jamie got himself in a jam and we had to make sure it got cleared up.” Isabel assured of her rascal of a son. “It’s now fine.”
“Max is a little overly defensive,” Beth conceded as she nodded at her sister-in-law. “I am trying to convince him that he doesn’t have to worry that Carrie is working at Cow Patties?”
“They are, what nearly 21 now Max, and they have shown quite the ability to protect themselves when they were younger so they are the least we should worry about…” Isabel said of her nieces and the memories of their escapades when they were younger. “Although I do realize that Elizabeth probably has gotten you a little jumpy?” she sighed as she thought of her own daughters who were out on their own. “Which is warranted as I know the feeling Max because Kyle and I both feel it regarding Kylie and Michelle, but they know how to protect themselves”
“It is not hard,” Max admits as the door opened and in walked Grace, Jake and then Maria… “You came?” he asked of his friend as he went and gave her the hug she needed as Maria looked like she was on her last legs, and ready for a collapse.
“Michael was still in with her, and I couldn’t sit there any longer…” Maria sighed as she thought of her daughter in so much danger. “I need time, and I needed information, so I came here” as she got emotional when she saw her granddaughter sleeping near them. “They are so peaceful when they are that age.”
“It will get easier with time,” Max said softly.
“Will it?” Maria asked. “If my daughter goes away to prison for murder” she wondered. “What’s going on Max, what do you know?”
“I can’t make any promises,” Max sighed as he hated to see the pain in Maria’s face. “I am going to try my best. She’s in a lot of trouble Maria and at the end of the day she did it, and it is going to be hard trying to convince a jury that she should get away with it”
“He was a monster Max,” Maria cried. “He hurt my baby, and in the process killed my family” she said with genuine emotion in her eyes as Jake shifted his away and focused on his own little girl and knew if someone out even tried to hurt Eva. “We have been a barely a family these last years as much as we have tried, and he did that with what he did to our daughter and it cost us Max, and it cost the kids, Belle especially and most of all Elizabeth.”
“I know,” Max sighed. “I am just saying we’re at the beginning, and there is stuff I can’t even imagine at this point, but I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep because I am going to try my hardest but sometimes the hardest of tries don’t work…”
“I wish it did,” Maria nodded as she sat down and focused on Eva.
“What do you want from me Max?” Jake asked as he hated how Nicholas was still playing with their family even from the ashes of hell. “Grandpa took me off the case because of how close I am too it.”
“Unfortunately, but given how this is for your grandfather, we can’t have any chance your involvement effects the case, so I need your help,” he nodded at his daughter who reached for her own daughter and picked up a now awake Eva who giggled when she saw her mother. Focusing back on the case. “It’s something Elizabeth said, and I need your help tomorrow if you can”
“What?” Jake asked as Maria interest perked at the mention of her daughter’s name.
“She says she was blackmailed,” Max sighed knowing how it was going to land with the family. “She says he has some kind of file on our deepest secrets, and he was prepared to use them if she didn’t agree to be with him,” he said as the paleness returned to Maria’s face and even to Jake and Grace. Isabel felt sickened as she listened. “He used drugs and our secrets to keep her attached to him.”
“Please no,” Maria whispered.
“You mean she did it to protect the family?” Isabel asked queasy.
“She says…” Max admitted. “She says she signed on the dotted line, which scares me what Nicholas got her to put her name to,” he sighed as Maria continued to stay mum but continued to get pale. “Anyways, you have seen the address where they picked her up, right?” he asked his son-in-law.
“Yeah it’s in the case file” Jake said. “I made a copy, before I was taken off the case, you probably shouldn’t tell Grandpa that…”
“Probably not” Max agreed. “Anyways, I need you go there and see if there is any chance this file is there or if it’s an imaginary threat he used to get Elizabeth to do his bidding” he sighed as he thought of the Sheriff’s department and other authorities who would have combed the place looking for evidence. “That is if it hasn’t already been found…”
“What kind of secrets?” Isabel asked.
“She didn’t say but if we’re talking about Nicholas than it could be anything or everything, we ever did wrong here on Earth” Max muttered as he knew they had a laundry list of crimes they were lucky to have gotten away with at the time as he turned to his eldest daughter. “What’s your schedule like with school and work?”
“Finals just finished, and I have two weeks off before my summer rotation starts at the hospital, why?” Grace asked as she still held Eva in her arms and was now glad to have the time off because she could not imagine having to go back to school or work with everything raining down on them. “Do you need me for something?”
“I need you to go with Jake tomorrow,” Max sighed. “We don’t know what there is to find, and given we’re dealing with someone who has his own abilities and is a fellow alien, well, Jake might need his own alien for backup. Could you do it, would you do this for me?”
“Sure, anything to help Elizabeth” Grace swore as Beth came back into the room after checking in on Christopher as she checked the clock on the wall and could see how tired her daughter and son-in-law were. “Why don’t the two of you stay here. Your old room is still available, and it’s late…” she asked of her daughter as Grace glanced at her husband who nodded. “It’s better than trying to drive at this hour?”
“If you’re okay with it?” Jake asked both Max and Beth.
“We would love it,” Max nodded. “After all we’re talking about the apartment over the garage,” he laughed because during that year in Las Cruces Max had put the house under some massive renovations to create more space if they ever moved back since he had no need to sell the house, or wish for that matter, so Grace got what she wished for, a room over the garage. Outside of the house, over the garage which suited Max at the end of the day because it wasn’t like he relished the idea of Grace and Jake spending time in her bedroom within house limits especially with two other impressionable teenagers in the house. It allowed Alexandra and Carrie to get their own rooms, and the house was spruced up and modernized with new office for both Max and Beth to work from home. It was a more inviting place when they returned, and because Grace lived at home until she got married… and the last few years with Jake in her little apartment over the garage, it made for a better situation all around, and now the room was empty and had last been used when Grace and Jake had visited while living in Boston.
Yet knowing Max and Beth had managed to find such happiness came at a cost, and he knew it as Jake and Grace accepted the offer and took Eva into the kitchen as Beth stayed out with Maria who was clearly falling apart “I am sorry…” she whispered as she felt for her friend as she and Maria had been able to come together over the years and form a close friendship, and while Beth wasn’t able to get all her memories back, she still felt comfortable and knew Maria was someone special, and they built something tight, and now she felt for her friend and the fear enveloped all of them especially since Jake and Grace brought them into even more of a tight family bond and with the inclusion of Eva.
“I should be happy. She’s back, yet…” Maria whispered as the mind was full of fear and was back at the Sheriff’s department where her daughter was stuck behind bars with no easy way out of her crisis.
“I know,” Beth nodded. “It’s evident that she’s still in so much pain, and to even think she took this all on to protect the family?”
“Why couldn’t she have come to us,” Maria muttered as she thought of the difficult months and even years after the kidnapping, and how she had watched her daughter spiral out of control and they stood there unable to help despite every effort. “She knew we would have helped?”
“Sometimes our children do not think rational, and they think they are helping when they are really only hurting themselves. She thought she was helping you guys. so that he didn’t come after the family” Beth suggested. “In her mind it was the only way to make it bearable.”
Maria nodded. “He had the advantage because he gave her drugs, and we just wanted to eliminate them from her life, and to help her…”
“It was her weakness,” Beth nodded as Max came out of the kitchen with Isabel. “She was so strong, and he terrorized her, and reduced her to shell of her former being as he got her under his spell” she sighed as Maria winced at the memories that were induced by the mere thought of Nicholas. “And it was probably the one thing that felt like it was normal, to protect the family, even if it meant going along with the devil”
“She’s in so much trouble,” Maria worried. “Nicholas did this to her, as even in death he has destroyed any chance of her to recover.”
“We’ll try to help her,” Max promised. “In her mind she was doing it because of you and her father, and her siblings, and the kids” he mused. “If agreeing to Nicholas’s sick plan kept us safe than to her, she was doing something for a greater cause in her view. It probably made her sleep better when she feared she was failing us and falling under the spell of what the drugs gave her, which was the ability to escape the pain Nicholas was causing, and for a time, some peace from what ailed her. She was willing to take the hits if the kids were safe, and most of all, you guys”
“God, the kids” Maria thought of Emily, Drew, and Mick.
“She’s not pregnant,” Max revealed to the startled group as Jake and Grace back in the room after putting their daughter to bed up in her old room that now was Alexandra’s. “She’s faking…”
“Are you kidding me?” Maria asked as Isabel could only shake her head.
“Dad, is that true?” Grace asked.
“She said she was, but then she wasn’t, and she’s been conning Nicholas until tonight when everything went down.”
“What was she thinking?” Maria wondered.
*
“It kept him off me,” Elizabeth muttered as she sat and watched her father assess her and see whether she was truly sober, and whether he was dealing with a full deck. She knew she had given him too much to doubt over the years. She felt like she was back to her confrontational posture she held right after the kidnapping as she was spiraling and finding no rock bottom to buffer her fall. Michael had been quiet for the longest time, and she was too. It was the first time they had seen each other fully conscious in nearly five years. She had revealed the baby was fake, and Michael was in disbelief. Michael flinched when he thought of Nicholas with his daughter and did not want to think about it and Elizabeth knew this, but it was part of the story, and something she would never be able to escape. “And it got me off the drugs?”
“And that was important to you because it was never before?” Michael asked as he did not know how to assess this new Elizabeth. It was all too sudden, and he was coming to terms with it as he watched his daughter. She seemed sober, but then she had been before, and those attempts of sobriety all ended in a split second.
“It was beginning to be too much, and I think I finally found my rock bottom” Elizabeth sighed. “Before you ask, there was no one incident. Just the whole deal, and I reached my limit” she muttered as she knew there were other reasons to stay sober, ones she wasn’t able to admit to. “With Nicholas thinking I was finally having his kid stopped him drugging my drinks if I didn’t take them willingly, which most of the time I did, because I was of course an addict and he just stayed away…” she said so matter of flatly that it stunned Michael to think his daughter had to go through that, or that anyone had to have experience such horrors which again made his own experiences pale in comparison. Meeting Maria he never imagined that sins of the father could repeat in his kids, and yet he was facing concrete proof that he had been living a fantasy despite the rude awakening of the last seven years.
“Until tonight?” Michael asked of the circumstances of what led to his daughter coming back into his life.
“Until tonight,” Elizabeth confirmed as she looked at her father through the bars. “But I probably should tell my lawyer about that…”
“You should…” Michael muttered as it all seemed to surreal.
“I never wanted you and Mom to know and now Uncle Max is probably blabbing to Mom as we speak. It’s humiliating to know I wasn’t strong enough to be a Guerin, and to repel the allure that was Nicholas,” Elizabeth murmured to the shock and dismay of her father. “I hate myself for being weak.”
“You shouldn’t say that Elizabeth because you will always be a Guerin. To your dying day, which has been too frequent these last years” he admitted. “But never doubt that you are our daughter. We loved you then, and we love you now.”
“You didn’t love me enough to stay Dad. You couldn’t look at me, and you moved out soon after I was home” Elizabeth accused her father. “It took me getting pregnant with Emily to get you back in the house” she sighed. “You didn’t love me know to stay and look at me, knowing what Nicholas did to me”
Jeez, Michael murmured. “It was never you sweet drop,” he said breaking down as he watched the conflict in his daughter. “It was me; I couldn’t stand to look at me and I knew your mother couldn’t stand to look at me when she knew what I cost our family?”
“It was me…” Elizabeth muttered.
“No, it wasn’t” Michael groaned and ached for his daughter. “Being who we are led you to be kidnapped that night, and we couldn’t find you and to know the horrors that was inflicted. I could not in good conscious look at myself and move forward especially with Nicholas on the loose. I needed to find him and get justice for you” he said quietly. “I admit we made mistakes, but it was nothing you did. You were the one we mutually loved in all this and I hate knowing it all went so bad,” he murmured. “If I could only have found Nicholas myself…”
“Don’t,” Elizabeth sighed not liking knowing how she lied to her parents before she disappeared She had never fessed up about Nicholas when she knew Nicholas was back and had her in his clutches and his web, and she didn’t tell anyone and therefore she let the evil continue and the abuse to take over her life and ruin any chance of recovery. “I knew he was back, and I didn’t speak up about it, so I am complicit in it and therefore I am not going to have a good defense in court because I did stay because he had a hold on me, and I couldn’t shake it until today.”
“Why?” Michael sighed as he glanced at his daughter. “He put you through hell, why keep his secret and let him play mind games with you…”
“I wanted to think I was over him, in the beginning but little by little he seduced me back in with the drugs he gave me. Growing up I always thought people who got hooked were idiots. I always thought I was stronger than that, because of my powers, and my gifts. But I found out I wasn’t, and that my gifts only take you so far, and if I had only used them a little wiser, I might have saved me a lot of pain, so I was the naïve one. Nicholas knew my weakness, and he knew my fears and fed them… and the drugs allowed me the peace and the ability for little while to escape and to know that he threatened you guys I knew I couldn’t take the chance, and I needed the ability to escape the insanity.”
“What are you talking about?” Michael asked in disbelief. “Are you saying he threatened you. What could he have had on us?”
“Secrets on all of us,” Elizabeth sighed, “And he was ready to use them… I knew he wasn’t bluffing, so he knew my biggest weaknesses and exploited them.”
“You have never been weak Elizabeth. You have just had to fight, and we need you to keep fighting and not to settle because anyone else would have been knocked down by now, and you are still standing…”
“Yes, I am still standing but, on the way, to prison for murder Dad. He might be dead, but I say he’s still winning” Elizabeth muttered and Michael was left with that as moments later Jim came in to say that he had to close the office up, and he thought of everything his daughter had to face as he went to pick up Maria at Max and Beth’s, as Elizabeth felt the coldness of the evening as she was alone in the prison cell as she could only pace and be restless, as she as unable to settle. At Max and Beth’s home, Michael and Maria could only hug as they both were filled with fear they weren’t able to talk about, as he took her hand and guided her to the car and they drove home as neither knew what to think or say, as they just wanted it to make sense, again.
*
While at the same time Max and Beth found comfort in each other and their family and Max was instantly put at ease when he saw his daughter walk through the front door, and he immediately hugged Carrie who sadly smiled because she knew what her father had to be thinking but neither wanted to talk about it. “Go to bed,” Max said softly. “But know that I love you and that will never change, okay?”
“I love you too Dad,” Carrie nodded as she walked downstairs as Max looked over at Beth, and took her hand as they walked up to their bedroom after making sure that the front door was locked and that their family was safely inside…
*
And the next morning he wanted to throw his paper at the wall when he glanced at the cover page and ensuing headlines that made everyone frustrated across the branch of families furious and at the same time sad.
NOVELIST DAUGHTER ARRESTED FOR MURDER
The long-lost daughter of Maria Deluca Guerin has turned up having been arrested for murder. 23-year-old Elizabeth Guerin was kidnapped at the age of fifteen and for two weeks kept her family and country in a state of limbo of her whereabouts. When rescued, she was found to be barely to be alive and for the next two years her parents were forced to watch their daughter battle a heart-wrenching drug addiction begun by the kidnapping. Despite numerous interventions, the teenager was unable to successfully quit her addiction and shortly after her eighteenth birthday she disappeared, and for the last five years she wasn’t heard until she was arrested by authorities, stunning her family and friends who don’t know what to think about the newest developments.
Ms. Guerin is accused of killing the man her family believed responsible for her kidnapping in the first place but proof could never be proven for authorities to charge him, and he also fled the jurisdiction but yesterday, he was found shot to death by the woman who he had been living with him intimately in an apartment near her hometown. The landlady in the apartment building where the arrest happened made it clear the two were a couple, and there were children living with them until they were removed last year by the State of New Mexico. It all leaves a complicated and mixed message as the town tried to make sense of the history of the two, and whether he was responsible for her kidnapping at all. Added to it is word that Ms. Guerin, age 23 has confessed to the killing but that has not been confirmed by the Sheriff’s department who is already conflicted in this case because the Sheriff; James Valenti, Jr. is the grandfather of the accused, and one of his top deputies is also his grandson and the brother of Elizabeth. Making it even more complex as this newest twist hits the town.
When asked about any conflict of interests. The Roswell Sheriff’s department released a statement “We at the department are aware of how it looks and while the Sheriff remains on the case. Deputy Jake Guerin, who is the accused eldest brother, but has six years with the department and is decorated in his own right, well, he has been officially removed from the case, and he will no direct involvement in the investigation before it is handed to the lawyers and for the duration of the case, he was will on leave as he will he supporting his family, and as such, he won’t be having any direct ties to the case. While their grandfather, who is yes, the Sheriff; James Valenti, Jr, aims to keep matters involving the investigation into his granddaughter’s alleged crime above board and if such a development does arises, than he will allow an independent observer to be brought into supervise the case but at this moment, he along with rest of the department, along with the Guerin family are determined to see that the case is conducted in an impartial and fair manner because they are aware of the stakes involved in the case,” the statement says and goes on to add. “Also, while the Guerin family love their daughter, sister and granddaughter. They don’t intend to interfere in the case in any shape or form, as they plan to leave the investigation to the Department, and to that of the Sheriff because they trust the department, and will live with the results, wherever those results might end up to be”
Ms. Deluca Guerin was the novelist who popularized a series for young adults about a human girl and a male alien who fall in love, and the series spawned several books but after the kidnapping, she released one final book she had been working at the time of her daughter’s kidnapping, a year later than planned and then went on hiatus from writing. The final book sold the most of all the books, but no additional books have been released and it is rumored she has given up writing, and has retired but her publisher hasn’t confirmed that, and fans hope one day to enjoy another one of her books.
Jim did throw the newspaper across the room when he got into the station and saw the newspaper article, and then other articles under the juicy title of the tabloid variety as TROUBLED ADDICT SHOOTS LOVER TO DEATH IN A HAZE OF SEX and another one who outed Elizabeth’s fake pregnancy. CONFESSED MURDER SUSPECT FOUND TO BE FAKING PREGNANCY. It made him think they had a mole. Because too much information was known by the media. The fake pregnancy should not have been known to anyone but the family, and Elizabeth herself…
Jim swore and cursed at that thought…
“Deputy Jenkins get in here on the double” Jim demanded of his second in command deputy. Jake was his first, but he could not use him for this case.
Last edited by Parker1947 on Sat May 30, 2020 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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saori_1902
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Parker1947
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Always Tomorrow - Chapter 7 - 06/01/2020
At the same time her story was hitting the front pages of their newspapers and on-line social media tabloids Elizabeth was muttering to herself as she was laying down on the hard bed in the prison. Why do they make these things so hard she muttered as she staring at the wall and counting the cracks in the ceiling? She found that while this place was nicer than some of the jail cells, she has seen in the last few years still nothing compares to a soft bed. She missed it as she tried not to think that she would be hauled into court in a few hours for murder, and she did not know what to think. The bastard is dead and still ruining my life. She did not care that it was cold in this place, she wanted it to be over. It is not very pleasant to be sober and in a jail cell she murmured because she knew when she was high or drunk, she would be dead to the world most of the time. She was now too aware of her surroundings. This time she was sober, and all alone.
She was feeling it for the first time. Once her grandfather had gone home to her grandmother after reaming her out for faking the pregnancy. She had good cause for that, or she felt like she did at the time. It got her sane for the last six months or so, and strong enough to defeat Nicholas but it also knew reckless because it allowed herself to be outed and she was amazed she had made it as long as she did before the rouse came apart. What did you think was going to happen Elizabeth when Nicholas knew there was not going to be a baby? she muttered herself. But then she knew death was the likely the end for her anyways, either by her hand which she had attempted multiple times before but if there had been a baby, and she had delivered it right into Nicholas’s slimy hands. Death was the only out she told herself until she found a new one to make Nicholas leave her life, unfortunately it allowed her very future not to be her hands. She had to pray. If only I had died, this would not be an issue she told herself.
But then she knew she was close to death when Nicholas found out and she fought back, and won so maybe she didn’t want to die and yet she knew it would solve a lot of her problems and save her family the pain they would be seeing from her now… She knew a few more minutes she might have not gotten another breath to be able to take, but somehow, she was able to knock him out, and then she reached for her gun and he was starting to come around when she started shooting. It was a bloody mess by the end. So, she fought back, and won. But this did not feel like winning, to be sitting in a cold jail cell thinking about the other road not taken.
“So the prodigal daughter comes, or should I say the prodigal sister comes back” said a tougher voice than she remembered as it got Elizabeth out of her musings and muttering as she whipped around and saw a tall young girl on the cusp of being a teenager. For a minute she did not know who it was, and then she was startled to realize it was her sister Belle. “Belle?” she asked with a sense of fear of what she had witnessed and had not grasped until right this instance.
“Yeah it’s me,” Belle gritted as she saw her sister laying down on the bed when she had snuck in through the doors. She had been up early, and out of the house leaving a note to her parents that she was going to a friend house. It had worked before, and she knew with her parents so distracted that it would work before but instead she took the bus to her grandfather’s office, and now she was facing her conscious sister for the first time in five years. “So, you’re back?”
“My god,” Elizabeth whispered as the knowledge of all the missed time flooded her brain. “You’re um…older… taller than I remember” Elizabeth asked startled with the knowledge that this was her baby sister, and she was now not so much a baby but a budding young girl and it scared her to know what the world would be like for her sister. She had missed out on so much in her baby sister’s life. It was very apparent to Elizabeth that Belle was a spitting image of their mother, and yet she was so tall, and it spooked her. “You’re what….”
“Twelve, thirteen in August” Belle confirmed as she didn’t know what to think as her sister got up from the bed, and paced around and she was startled to see the tattoos because now that the rouse was up Elizabeth had taken off the pregnancy pad and was just wearing her tank top under her jumpsuit with the jumpsuit tied around her waist. So, the tattoos were much more prevalent. And they made Belle gasped. There were more than she remembered, and ones that were scary to her, and to Elizabeth as well.
“I didn’t think you would know the reference?” Elizabeth muttering as she took stock of her little sister.
“Someone has to be the good sister since you vacated the position” Belle said with a gruff tone that was all their father. “I can’t make any waves, or screw up because who knows what I will be setting off if I did…”
“I am sorry about that,” Elizabeth admitted as she could tell her sister’s life hasn’t been ideal and a lot of sacrifices had been made and that she didn’t even know half of what had occurred over these five years.
“Are you?” Belle asked defensive as she stared at her sister. She had heard her parents come in after midnight, and neither saying a word except good night. They made sure to check on her and Emily, but there was sadness in their eyes and then she heard that morning from the internet that her sister had been accused of killing someone. She had to sneak out and come and see for herself.
The media was running wild with the news of Elizabeth and the fact the former kidnapping victim and daughter of renowned rumored retired writer Maria Deluca Guerin was suspected of murder after turning up having disappeared, and it has started to spin out of control to such an extent that headline and news coverage were extremely sensationalized as their parents were forced to confront that morning.
Colin who was a 2nd year student at Las Cruces and Liam who was in 1st year got run out of the dorms by the press over their sister’s return, and they were driving home. The mood at the house was very dark, and Belle exploited it with her side trip to the department, which had been caught onto by Emily who tattled to their parents unbeknownst to the sly twelve year old who got word from an old and trusty method that they used to keep tabs on their children.
“I never wanted any of this,” Elizabeth said softly. “I never wanted anyone of you to be hurt?”
“That’s a load of crap,” Belle spat. “All you have done for years now is put Mom and Dad through hell, and you’re still at it. I realize you were hurt, and you had a lot to deal with more than I could I understand but still I have had to live in the same house as them while you disappeared on us, and then you go and make us believe you were dead.”
“That was not my intention,” Elizabeth murmured defensively. “I never wanted what happened last year to happen…” she sighed although she knew her initial plan was to kill herself to get out of Nichola’s clutches, but she was all full of drugs at the time and wasn’t thinking clearly, and now she was If only she had died then they would have had a body to bury, and they could have moved on, but the last year only added to the torment and she felt sorry for it, because she had only wanted to protect her family which is why she allowed herself to get seduced into going along with Nicholas. It was not only the drugs. It was the fear of what the secrets would do to her family.
“Well it did,” Belle spat. “I had to deal with them on my own. Emily is too young, and it was all me once Jake got married and then Colin and Liam went off to university. Things have never been the same, and it that is because of you.”
“Wait, Jake is married?” Elizabeth asked confused.
“Yes,” Belle nodded. “Two years ago. He and Grace got married and then moved to Boston, but they are back now” she sighed. “Colin and Liam live in Las Cruces. So, it’s all on me because even Jake can’t help because he and Grace have a family of their own now yeah so it’s on me to be the older sister for Emily and to make sure the anger that shows up doesn’t make things worse…”
“Whoa,” Elizabeth asked as she thought Jake and Grace are married and have a kid. Colin and Liam gone, where did everyone go. I know life moves on with you Elizabeth, so you cannot be surprised they moved on. “They have a kid?”
“A little girl” Belle said softly. “The only good thing to happen besides actually having a kid graduate high school” she muttered at the satisfaction that her mother got to see Colin and Liam graduate from high school after botches with her two eldest who were once upon a time her greatest hopes. “But then Jake makes a good cop, so maybe he did find his dream job” Belle murmured even though knowing having Grandpa as town Sheriff had greased the wheels to give her brother the chance, but he came back from Boston, and it seemed like being a cop was his calling.
“I know you won’t believe me obviously, but I didn’t want anyone to be hurt. In fact, some of what I did was, so they didn’t get hurt” Elizabeth muttered as she thought of what she had to protect the family, and she knew she could never make up for what she lost and they had as a result.
“Well we did,” Belle muttered. “Why couldn’t you see what you were doing was hurting us…”
“I am sorry,” Elizabeth sighed as she was still startled to see Belle so grown up. She had wished she could have seen it. So much was more clarified to her now she was drug free and could see the carnage of her decisions and yet it also was more depressing because it was crystal clear now of what she had missed because of drugs and because of Nicholas. Yet seeing her baby sister so sure of herself and a budding teenager, it also scared the hell of her because of how bad she knew the world could be and how she once was this brave and tough teenage girl, and knew how that got stolen from her, and it made her worry for Belle.
Belle nodded as she glanced her older sister. “You know who we are, right?” Belle grunted. “Why couldn’t you have used your gifts to come home, and to breakout of wherever you were…”
“The drugs dimmed them,” Elizabeth said honestly. “I did once Belle and that burned me,” she said with a tortured sigh as she remembered her break during her abduction and how that backfired because it only intensified the abuse, and she was never the same because of it. If only I had been more strategic and planned better, maybe they would have unleashed everything on me, but they did, and that is my burden to bear she mused. “Later on, yeah, the drugs dimmed them, and I couldn’t bring the energy to try” she thought and that was the truth. Nicholas had worn her down, and eventually it just was easier to stay. “Staying away was never my first choice,” she lied because she did have a habit of leaving even when it had nothing to do with the bastard. “I wanted you, Mom and Dad and our brothers to be safe, and that is why I left because that was my way of protecting you guys” she murmured as she was flashing away to… to that last day…
“Get in the car, he wants to see you” came the man as she stormed out of her house. She was now 18 and been home a few weeks from the rehab facility her parents had forced her in, and she did get clean but of course once out… a package of drugs found her, and she overdosed because her system hadn’t been used to the drugs. She had barely survived, and then she came home and got into it with her parents over their demands that she seek help. She refused and stormed out.
“No, tell him I am out…” Elizabeth muttered. “I am tired of this.”
“He told me if you said no, to remind you of the deal and at this point you can’t really say no, can you… and plus, if you say no, I am supposed to deliver this to your parents that will open their eyes about their little girl, and send another to the FBI” he murmured as he passed the envelope to Elizabeth who went pale when she saw the pictures.
“Get in,” said the man again.
She got in and did not come home again as Nicholas decided it was time to take firm control of her, and to separate her from her life. She found out she was pregnant, a few weeks later and knew she could not go home again or so she thought.
“Elizabeth?” Belle asked. “Where are you?”
“Nowhere,” Elizabeth lied as she came back to reality as she stared at her little sister. Looking so grown up, and she knew the trouble she could get into as she grew up and especially because of the recent past, and what she knew.
“Felt like you were somewhere,” Belle murmured as she tried to grasp the different person her sister was now compared to the one, she knew before it all happened and even post kidnapping “Are you okay?”
“If you’re worried Belle, I am sober, so you don’t have to worry about me” Elizabeth sighed. “I don’t plan on slipping anytime soon.”
Belle was wary.
“How did you get here?” Elizabeth asked as it finally dawned on her that Belle was alone. “I don’t see Mom and Dad letting you out of their sight”
“They were getting Emily breakfast, and I left a note” Belle murmured as she knew her sister had a right to be concerned but she wanted to be here, and she knew her parents wouldn’t have wanted her to come. “They won’t care, as they are distracted because of you…” she muttered. “It’s a small town…”
Elizabeth at the flinched because those were the same words she had expressed once upon a time said too, and now she knew differently “You should be careful Belle because I am proof that you can’t trust that someone isn’t out there watching or getting ready to strike. Mom and Dad would not be able to handle it if something would happen to you after everything that has gone down with me, and Grace beforehand. You have every right to be as independent as you want, but know you need to be careful too. We can’t lose you,” she muttered.
“Elizabeth is right Belle; you shouldn’t be here” they heard from behind them as Belle groaned as she turned as they both saw their Uncle Max as Elizabeth was relieved someone had noticed and was there to protect her sister.
“I just wanted to see my sister” Belle said. “Mom and Dad won’t notice…”
“They did, and they got extremely nervous and called me but because I figured you want to come here, and I was right, but Elizabeth is right. You need to be extra careful with how you get around this town.”
“I do my own thing all the time,” Belle muttered as she knew she had long bucked the restraints on her. “It never bothered any of you before she came back to this town.”
“It bothered us as I know your parents have reminded you of that in the past. So, let me remind you that you are only turning thirteen and you’re not an adult yet, and even for adults’ things can turn very suddenly and we don’t want that happening to someone like you” Max murmured. “All I am asking is for you to think of your mother and father and be careful” Max asked. “That being said as your father is now waiting for you in your grandfather’s office, you should go find him because Elizabeth and I need to talk before we are expected to be in court…”
She could tell her sister was wary about leaving or facing their father, she knew it was a bit of both. She tried to reassure her skeptical sister. “I am not leaving Belle, because they aren’t letting me even if I wanted, and I am not anxious to leave anytime soon” Elizabeth said. “You’ll know where to find me if you want to talk” as they watched her sister leave the room as she contemplated at how grown up her sister was looking “She’s so grown up?”
“Yeah she is,” Max agreed as he knew that Elizabeth was realizing how much she had missed out on, for good and for bad. “You’ve missed a lot.”
“So, it seems. So, Jake and Grace are married?” Elizabeth asked as she thought back to the revelation that had come from her sister. “And they have a kid?”
“Yeah, a little girl, Eva Elizabeth. She just turned one,” Max said with a smile. “In fact, yesterday was her birthday.”
“Eva Elizabeth?” Elizabeth asked in stunned silence. “You mean…”
“Yeah, after you and her mother” Max confirmed as he knew what Elizabeth had to be thinking and knew that was part of why there was such a long engagement was that they were hoping that Elizabeth would come back, and be a part of their wedding but it wasn’t to be. “Grace misses you. She and Jake were always thinking of you, and even though you missed their special day, well, they wanted to share the name with their daughter…”
Elizabeth went silent for a moment at the one more special event she had missed and then she frowned, and Max caught it. “What?”
“I didn’t realize until when I saw Belle, but the bastard does deserve to be dead…” Elizabeth sighed as the realization came to her, as her mind was brought back to her little sister, as Max was confused. “For more reasons than what he did to me…”
“How so?” Max asked.
“He was tracking Belle” Elizabeth revealed as it was all coming to her and fear coursed through her body. “I didn’t know it at the time but one day, well, I caught on to the fact that he had pictures of other girls, and it was clear they were even younger than I was at the time of my kidnapping but because of time and distance I didn’t know what Belle looked like today so I never made the connection except now I can, and I remember that I found a picture of a girl, and she seemed so familiar but I couldn’t place her and because Belle’s grown up so much, and is so tall now. I now know that it was her. Max, that bastard was tracking her…” she murmured. “That monster. I knew he was getting tired of me, and getting fed up with me but I really thought he wouldn’t go there…” she sighed to the horror of Max. “Finally I hit my limit and we started to fight, and I somehow spilled that there was no baby, and when it dawned on him that I was telling the truth, well, he attacked me and was a few seconds from succeeding in finally killing me when I got the advantage and hit him over the head and then I started shooting…”
“Are you saying?” Max asked.
“Yeah,” Elizabeth muttered. “I am not saying he would have done anything, but he was pretty considerate during the pregnancy more so than any of the others. I thought it was because he knew it was his unlike the others, but there has been something about him recently and he was leaving me alone a hell of a lot more than he ever did. I knew something was up, but I didn’t know it was…”
“How many others?” Max asked.
“You know Drew, Mick… there was one miscarriage, three abortions including the one to start this mess” Elizabeth revealed to a horrified Max as he saw the extent of what Elizabeth had to go through and used. “He couldn’t get me pregnant during those two weeks I was held hostage, but he certainly tried afterwards and because he kept me drugged a lot of the time, birth control would have been rendered useless. So, I was getting the impression I was becoming too much work, and once the baby was born, he would dropped me off the side of a building or into the lake or something, and tried to have it declared a suicide … that if there had been a baby so he was very mad when he found out there was no baby.”
“Jesus Christ,” Max sighed.
“Yeah, so as I said in the beginning, I didn’t know how close we would have been to more of a fucked-up calamity if he was really following my sister. Look at her, she’s already much more attractive than I was at her age, so any guy is going to notice, and someone as fucked up as Nicholas….”
“Yeah,” Max said horrified.
“So, it turns out I saved my family even more heartache by killing that bastard so I might as well plead guilty and confess and take the punishment because there is no way that man should still be living.”
“You’re not pleading guilty!” Max said defiantly. “I don’t know how, but Nicholas is not screwing with this family any more than he already has…”
She was feeling it for the first time. Once her grandfather had gone home to her grandmother after reaming her out for faking the pregnancy. She had good cause for that, or she felt like she did at the time. It got her sane for the last six months or so, and strong enough to defeat Nicholas but it also knew reckless because it allowed herself to be outed and she was amazed she had made it as long as she did before the rouse came apart. What did you think was going to happen Elizabeth when Nicholas knew there was not going to be a baby? she muttered herself. But then she knew death was the likely the end for her anyways, either by her hand which she had attempted multiple times before but if there had been a baby, and she had delivered it right into Nicholas’s slimy hands. Death was the only out she told herself until she found a new one to make Nicholas leave her life, unfortunately it allowed her very future not to be her hands. She had to pray. If only I had died, this would not be an issue she told herself.
But then she knew she was close to death when Nicholas found out and she fought back, and won so maybe she didn’t want to die and yet she knew it would solve a lot of her problems and save her family the pain they would be seeing from her now… She knew a few more minutes she might have not gotten another breath to be able to take, but somehow, she was able to knock him out, and then she reached for her gun and he was starting to come around when she started shooting. It was a bloody mess by the end. So, she fought back, and won. But this did not feel like winning, to be sitting in a cold jail cell thinking about the other road not taken.
“So the prodigal daughter comes, or should I say the prodigal sister comes back” said a tougher voice than she remembered as it got Elizabeth out of her musings and muttering as she whipped around and saw a tall young girl on the cusp of being a teenager. For a minute she did not know who it was, and then she was startled to realize it was her sister Belle. “Belle?” she asked with a sense of fear of what she had witnessed and had not grasped until right this instance.
“Yeah it’s me,” Belle gritted as she saw her sister laying down on the bed when she had snuck in through the doors. She had been up early, and out of the house leaving a note to her parents that she was going to a friend house. It had worked before, and she knew with her parents so distracted that it would work before but instead she took the bus to her grandfather’s office, and now she was facing her conscious sister for the first time in five years. “So, you’re back?”
“My god,” Elizabeth whispered as the knowledge of all the missed time flooded her brain. “You’re um…older… taller than I remember” Elizabeth asked startled with the knowledge that this was her baby sister, and she was now not so much a baby but a budding young girl and it scared her to know what the world would be like for her sister. She had missed out on so much in her baby sister’s life. It was very apparent to Elizabeth that Belle was a spitting image of their mother, and yet she was so tall, and it spooked her. “You’re what….”
“Twelve, thirteen in August” Belle confirmed as she didn’t know what to think as her sister got up from the bed, and paced around and she was startled to see the tattoos because now that the rouse was up Elizabeth had taken off the pregnancy pad and was just wearing her tank top under her jumpsuit with the jumpsuit tied around her waist. So, the tattoos were much more prevalent. And they made Belle gasped. There were more than she remembered, and ones that were scary to her, and to Elizabeth as well.
“I didn’t think you would know the reference?” Elizabeth muttering as she took stock of her little sister.
“Someone has to be the good sister since you vacated the position” Belle said with a gruff tone that was all their father. “I can’t make any waves, or screw up because who knows what I will be setting off if I did…”
“I am sorry about that,” Elizabeth admitted as she could tell her sister’s life hasn’t been ideal and a lot of sacrifices had been made and that she didn’t even know half of what had occurred over these five years.
“Are you?” Belle asked defensive as she stared at her sister. She had heard her parents come in after midnight, and neither saying a word except good night. They made sure to check on her and Emily, but there was sadness in their eyes and then she heard that morning from the internet that her sister had been accused of killing someone. She had to sneak out and come and see for herself.
The media was running wild with the news of Elizabeth and the fact the former kidnapping victim and daughter of renowned rumored retired writer Maria Deluca Guerin was suspected of murder after turning up having disappeared, and it has started to spin out of control to such an extent that headline and news coverage were extremely sensationalized as their parents were forced to confront that morning.
Colin who was a 2nd year student at Las Cruces and Liam who was in 1st year got run out of the dorms by the press over their sister’s return, and they were driving home. The mood at the house was very dark, and Belle exploited it with her side trip to the department, which had been caught onto by Emily who tattled to their parents unbeknownst to the sly twelve year old who got word from an old and trusty method that they used to keep tabs on their children.
“I never wanted any of this,” Elizabeth said softly. “I never wanted anyone of you to be hurt?”
“That’s a load of crap,” Belle spat. “All you have done for years now is put Mom and Dad through hell, and you’re still at it. I realize you were hurt, and you had a lot to deal with more than I could I understand but still I have had to live in the same house as them while you disappeared on us, and then you go and make us believe you were dead.”
“That was not my intention,” Elizabeth murmured defensively. “I never wanted what happened last year to happen…” she sighed although she knew her initial plan was to kill herself to get out of Nichola’s clutches, but she was all full of drugs at the time and wasn’t thinking clearly, and now she was If only she had died then they would have had a body to bury, and they could have moved on, but the last year only added to the torment and she felt sorry for it, because she had only wanted to protect her family which is why she allowed herself to get seduced into going along with Nicholas. It was not only the drugs. It was the fear of what the secrets would do to her family.
“Well it did,” Belle spat. “I had to deal with them on my own. Emily is too young, and it was all me once Jake got married and then Colin and Liam went off to university. Things have never been the same, and it that is because of you.”
“Wait, Jake is married?” Elizabeth asked confused.
“Yes,” Belle nodded. “Two years ago. He and Grace got married and then moved to Boston, but they are back now” she sighed. “Colin and Liam live in Las Cruces. So, it’s all on me because even Jake can’t help because he and Grace have a family of their own now yeah so it’s on me to be the older sister for Emily and to make sure the anger that shows up doesn’t make things worse…”
“Whoa,” Elizabeth asked as she thought Jake and Grace are married and have a kid. Colin and Liam gone, where did everyone go. I know life moves on with you Elizabeth, so you cannot be surprised they moved on. “They have a kid?”
“A little girl” Belle said softly. “The only good thing to happen besides actually having a kid graduate high school” she muttered at the satisfaction that her mother got to see Colin and Liam graduate from high school after botches with her two eldest who were once upon a time her greatest hopes. “But then Jake makes a good cop, so maybe he did find his dream job” Belle murmured even though knowing having Grandpa as town Sheriff had greased the wheels to give her brother the chance, but he came back from Boston, and it seemed like being a cop was his calling.
“I know you won’t believe me obviously, but I didn’t want anyone to be hurt. In fact, some of what I did was, so they didn’t get hurt” Elizabeth muttered as she thought of what she had to protect the family, and she knew she could never make up for what she lost and they had as a result.
“Well we did,” Belle muttered. “Why couldn’t you see what you were doing was hurting us…”
“I am sorry,” Elizabeth sighed as she was still startled to see Belle so grown up. She had wished she could have seen it. So much was more clarified to her now she was drug free and could see the carnage of her decisions and yet it also was more depressing because it was crystal clear now of what she had missed because of drugs and because of Nicholas. Yet seeing her baby sister so sure of herself and a budding teenager, it also scared the hell of her because of how bad she knew the world could be and how she once was this brave and tough teenage girl, and knew how that got stolen from her, and it made her worry for Belle.
Belle nodded as she glanced her older sister. “You know who we are, right?” Belle grunted. “Why couldn’t you have used your gifts to come home, and to breakout of wherever you were…”
“The drugs dimmed them,” Elizabeth said honestly. “I did once Belle and that burned me,” she said with a tortured sigh as she remembered her break during her abduction and how that backfired because it only intensified the abuse, and she was never the same because of it. If only I had been more strategic and planned better, maybe they would have unleashed everything on me, but they did, and that is my burden to bear she mused. “Later on, yeah, the drugs dimmed them, and I couldn’t bring the energy to try” she thought and that was the truth. Nicholas had worn her down, and eventually it just was easier to stay. “Staying away was never my first choice,” she lied because she did have a habit of leaving even when it had nothing to do with the bastard. “I wanted you, Mom and Dad and our brothers to be safe, and that is why I left because that was my way of protecting you guys” she murmured as she was flashing away to… to that last day…
“Get in the car, he wants to see you” came the man as she stormed out of her house. She was now 18 and been home a few weeks from the rehab facility her parents had forced her in, and she did get clean but of course once out… a package of drugs found her, and she overdosed because her system hadn’t been used to the drugs. She had barely survived, and then she came home and got into it with her parents over their demands that she seek help. She refused and stormed out.
“No, tell him I am out…” Elizabeth muttered. “I am tired of this.”
“He told me if you said no, to remind you of the deal and at this point you can’t really say no, can you… and plus, if you say no, I am supposed to deliver this to your parents that will open their eyes about their little girl, and send another to the FBI” he murmured as he passed the envelope to Elizabeth who went pale when she saw the pictures.
“Get in,” said the man again.
She got in and did not come home again as Nicholas decided it was time to take firm control of her, and to separate her from her life. She found out she was pregnant, a few weeks later and knew she could not go home again or so she thought.
“Elizabeth?” Belle asked. “Where are you?”
“Nowhere,” Elizabeth lied as she came back to reality as she stared at her little sister. Looking so grown up, and she knew the trouble she could get into as she grew up and especially because of the recent past, and what she knew.
“Felt like you were somewhere,” Belle murmured as she tried to grasp the different person her sister was now compared to the one, she knew before it all happened and even post kidnapping “Are you okay?”
“If you’re worried Belle, I am sober, so you don’t have to worry about me” Elizabeth sighed. “I don’t plan on slipping anytime soon.”
Belle was wary.
“How did you get here?” Elizabeth asked as it finally dawned on her that Belle was alone. “I don’t see Mom and Dad letting you out of their sight”
“They were getting Emily breakfast, and I left a note” Belle murmured as she knew her sister had a right to be concerned but she wanted to be here, and she knew her parents wouldn’t have wanted her to come. “They won’t care, as they are distracted because of you…” she muttered. “It’s a small town…”
Elizabeth at the flinched because those were the same words she had expressed once upon a time said too, and now she knew differently “You should be careful Belle because I am proof that you can’t trust that someone isn’t out there watching or getting ready to strike. Mom and Dad would not be able to handle it if something would happen to you after everything that has gone down with me, and Grace beforehand. You have every right to be as independent as you want, but know you need to be careful too. We can’t lose you,” she muttered.
“Elizabeth is right Belle; you shouldn’t be here” they heard from behind them as Belle groaned as she turned as they both saw their Uncle Max as Elizabeth was relieved someone had noticed and was there to protect her sister.
“I just wanted to see my sister” Belle said. “Mom and Dad won’t notice…”
“They did, and they got extremely nervous and called me but because I figured you want to come here, and I was right, but Elizabeth is right. You need to be extra careful with how you get around this town.”
“I do my own thing all the time,” Belle muttered as she knew she had long bucked the restraints on her. “It never bothered any of you before she came back to this town.”
“It bothered us as I know your parents have reminded you of that in the past. So, let me remind you that you are only turning thirteen and you’re not an adult yet, and even for adults’ things can turn very suddenly and we don’t want that happening to someone like you” Max murmured. “All I am asking is for you to think of your mother and father and be careful” Max asked. “That being said as your father is now waiting for you in your grandfather’s office, you should go find him because Elizabeth and I need to talk before we are expected to be in court…”
She could tell her sister was wary about leaving or facing their father, she knew it was a bit of both. She tried to reassure her skeptical sister. “I am not leaving Belle, because they aren’t letting me even if I wanted, and I am not anxious to leave anytime soon” Elizabeth said. “You’ll know where to find me if you want to talk” as they watched her sister leave the room as she contemplated at how grown up her sister was looking “She’s so grown up?”
“Yeah she is,” Max agreed as he knew that Elizabeth was realizing how much she had missed out on, for good and for bad. “You’ve missed a lot.”
“So, it seems. So, Jake and Grace are married?” Elizabeth asked as she thought back to the revelation that had come from her sister. “And they have a kid?”
“Yeah, a little girl, Eva Elizabeth. She just turned one,” Max said with a smile. “In fact, yesterday was her birthday.”
“Eva Elizabeth?” Elizabeth asked in stunned silence. “You mean…”
“Yeah, after you and her mother” Max confirmed as he knew what Elizabeth had to be thinking and knew that was part of why there was such a long engagement was that they were hoping that Elizabeth would come back, and be a part of their wedding but it wasn’t to be. “Grace misses you. She and Jake were always thinking of you, and even though you missed their special day, well, they wanted to share the name with their daughter…”
Elizabeth went silent for a moment at the one more special event she had missed and then she frowned, and Max caught it. “What?”
“I didn’t realize until when I saw Belle, but the bastard does deserve to be dead…” Elizabeth sighed as the realization came to her, as her mind was brought back to her little sister, as Max was confused. “For more reasons than what he did to me…”
“How so?” Max asked.
“He was tracking Belle” Elizabeth revealed as it was all coming to her and fear coursed through her body. “I didn’t know it at the time but one day, well, I caught on to the fact that he had pictures of other girls, and it was clear they were even younger than I was at the time of my kidnapping but because of time and distance I didn’t know what Belle looked like today so I never made the connection except now I can, and I remember that I found a picture of a girl, and she seemed so familiar but I couldn’t place her and because Belle’s grown up so much, and is so tall now. I now know that it was her. Max, that bastard was tracking her…” she murmured. “That monster. I knew he was getting tired of me, and getting fed up with me but I really thought he wouldn’t go there…” she sighed to the horror of Max. “Finally I hit my limit and we started to fight, and I somehow spilled that there was no baby, and when it dawned on him that I was telling the truth, well, he attacked me and was a few seconds from succeeding in finally killing me when I got the advantage and hit him over the head and then I started shooting…”
“Are you saying?” Max asked.
“Yeah,” Elizabeth muttered. “I am not saying he would have done anything, but he was pretty considerate during the pregnancy more so than any of the others. I thought it was because he knew it was his unlike the others, but there has been something about him recently and he was leaving me alone a hell of a lot more than he ever did. I knew something was up, but I didn’t know it was…”
“How many others?” Max asked.
“You know Drew, Mick… there was one miscarriage, three abortions including the one to start this mess” Elizabeth revealed to a horrified Max as he saw the extent of what Elizabeth had to go through and used. “He couldn’t get me pregnant during those two weeks I was held hostage, but he certainly tried afterwards and because he kept me drugged a lot of the time, birth control would have been rendered useless. So, I was getting the impression I was becoming too much work, and once the baby was born, he would dropped me off the side of a building or into the lake or something, and tried to have it declared a suicide … that if there had been a baby so he was very mad when he found out there was no baby.”
“Jesus Christ,” Max sighed.
“Yeah, so as I said in the beginning, I didn’t know how close we would have been to more of a fucked-up calamity if he was really following my sister. Look at her, she’s already much more attractive than I was at her age, so any guy is going to notice, and someone as fucked up as Nicholas….”
“Yeah,” Max said horrified.
“So, it turns out I saved my family even more heartache by killing that bastard so I might as well plead guilty and confess and take the punishment because there is no way that man should still be living.”
“You’re not pleading guilty!” Max said defiantly. “I don’t know how, but Nicholas is not screwing with this family any more than he already has…”
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RoswellFan68
- Obsessed Roswellian
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Re: Always Tomorrow (CC, Mature) - A Reunion's Endgame - Chapter 7 - 06/01/2020
At least Elizabeth was able to protect Belle. Hopefully she will be able to heal with the help of her family.
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Parker1947
- Obsessed Roswellian
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Always Tomorrow - Chapter 8 - 06/04/2020
“Not guilty your honor” Elizabeth said a few hours later in the courtroom. It was full of spectators and her family was sitting behind her. She sat down next Max, and watched as the court started its proceedings, and to hear the charges she was facing. So, she was asked to stand and tell the court what she was pleading, and when she said Not Guilty there was a murmur around the court in the crowd because of the assumption that she would plead guilty since she had loudly admitted it.
“Very well,” the judge nodded as the prosecutor looked annoyed. “Bail.”
“Before the prosecutor make any comments to the contrary. All my client would like to tell the court is that she recognizes that these charges are extremely serious and she’s taking them just as seriously and would like the court recognize the fact, she is not fighting the charges in any manner other than taking her case to court, which is her right as a citizen of their country. She recognized that while the charges are serious, and should be taken to account, she does have a mother and father who are indeed part of the community and who would love for her to stay with them as we see this case to whatever conclusion it ends up at. She also has two minor children who are in the custody of her parents, and whom she would love to be reunited with and for them to get to know her… All she wants is a chance? And that being the case, her parents are willing to pay any necessary bail amount. All they want is for their daughter home with them, and they will make sure she makes it to court, and of course she has siblings who want to get to know their sister again.” Max said turning to see Michael and Maria with hope on their faces. Belle sat with them having refused to go to home until she knew one way or another what would happen to her sister after being reamed for skipping out of the house.
“Prosecution?” the judge asked. “Is bail warranted?”
“No, your honor” the prosecutor announced to the court. “The defendant is charged with a gruesome crime your honor. It was not just one shot, but it was a very bloody crime scene and she admitted her guilt at the scene and in sight of numerous witnesses. The fact she now she’s saying not guilty doesn’t change the fact that she a troubled young woman who should be deemed a flight risk as she’s disappeared several times, and just last year disappeared from the hospital who was trying to give her help. As for the fact she has two minor children. Those children were taken away from her as she was deemed neglectful and she was facing serious charges that she ran out on, and so no, we don’t think she needs to be near the children especially with these charges on the books, and without a resolution. So, we respectfully ask for no bail to be awarded in this case.”
“Very well,” the judge nodded. “Mr. Evans?”
Ms. Guerin respects your decision your honor. But some backstory of the events leading up to this crime should be noted. The man who was murdered is not some saint but the man that stood accused of her kidnapping at the age of 15. For two weeks he brutalized her and caused her tremendous harm, but also got her addicted to drugs and once rescued, she found it difficult to come to terms with what was done to her, and she has had many hard years. The victim then proceeded to bribe her and threaten her until he fully had her under his control, and only yesterday did she find the strength to break free from the abuse she had suffered at his hands. She did not want her children exposed to the harm anymore, and she did not fight their removal. Now, she wants to get to know them again,” Max said the murmurs of the crowd as Michael and Maria’s faces went pale. Belle cringed as Grace held her hand, and she squeezed.
“Your honor, there is no proof the victim was the man who kidnapped Ms. Guerin…” the prosecutor declared to the outrage on Michael and Maria’s faces as Beth tried to keep them from speaking their minds. Isabel also was wanting to say something, but Kyle kept her in check, as she held her husband’s hand with a firm grip.
“Your honor, there was blood evidence collected on the day of Ms. Guerins’ recovery that directly ties the victim to the scene of the crime,” Max murmured as he squeezed his pale and shaky client and flashes of the torture came to her mind. “There is also testimony from those who stood accused with him that ties him further to the events of her captivity.”
“Your honor, as much it terribly unfortunate what Ms. Guerin suffered when she was fifteen years old, but it is the not the matter we are here today to discuss. The victim as anyone can check on wasn’t taken to trial, and therefore was not convicted…” the prosecutor said as she got up from her seat. “So, for Mr. Evans to declare it as a certainty is wrong of him and a blatant attempt to poison a potential jury pool?”
“The victim wasn’t taken to court because he fled our jurisdiction, but he was able to draw Ms. Guerin into his web and it took her a long time for her to break free, but she is free now and wants to see her family again. So, she is not going to be fleeing the jurisdiction, and she wants to be here for her family and her children.”
“So, she says now but what happens tomorrow? She has already fled her family before and there is evidence to say she would in this case, so we ask no bail, and what the defense isn’t telling you there is evidence to tell us a very different story of Ms. Guerin’s association with the victim. She was not with him because any bribes or threats, but she was there willingly and of her own power and she could have left and taken her children at any time. She chose to stay…”
“Your honor, where is this proof?” Max asked as Elizabeth who was now standing was becoming paler and shakier by the moment as if she knew what was coming.
“We would like to submit as exhibit #1, an application and accompanying license that contains the name of both the defendant and the victim. It was filed with the state, and signed off, and therefore it’s very legal and it shows that Ms. Guerin was married to the victim for the last six years and was married to him at when she took a gun and shot him to death,” she revealed in a bombshell that shook the courtroom to rubble. Gasps were elicited in the crowd as Michael and Maria were shocked, and Maria looking faint. But none more so that Elizabeth as this was the last thing she wanted to be revealed as she started to shake, and before Max was able to object at the characteristic of his client’s actions, Elizabeth grew faint and fell to floor to cries from her family.
“Enough, clear the courtroom now…” the judge gaveled as Michael and Jake wanted to rush to Elizabeth’s side, as Max was quick to her side. “Bailiff, please take the defendant to the chambers and give her some water when she wakes up”
The bailiff picked up an unconscious Elizabeth and carried her through the backdoors. “Okay, everyone out. Only immediate family of the accused will be allowed to remain in this courtroom for the remainder of these proceedings” the judge gaveled as moments later only Maria, Michael, Isabel, Kyle, Beth, Jake, Grace, Belle stayed in the courtroom along with the lawyers.
“Okay, enough of this sideshow. We are here you two to decide on bail and not try the case. You both will have that opportunity in the future when we come to trial. So, the plea stands, and bail is denied.”
“Your honor, I would like to say something?” Max asked as he stood.
“What?” the judge asked.
“How do we know this application and license is accurate and is not a forgery” Max asked as he glanced at the paperwork and frowned at the dates. “The defendant would have been sixteen when this ceremony took place. She was not legally allowed to get married without her parent’s permission in the State of New Mexico and I can promise you that her parents would not have given her permission to marry the victim, then or at any time until she could legally make the decision which is 18 in this state.”
“The marriage took place in the State of Texas and is signed off by a judge which is the state law, and which makes it legal” the prosecutor defended.
“Still, she would have been 16 and under our state’s consent law… any contact between her and someone who is over the age of 18 makes it a crime and we know for a fact the victim is her parent’s age despite his youthful looks” he said as Jake and Grace were pale because of their only reminders of the state law but in their case it was a lot more tame and not an appalling abuse of a child. “And in the case of taking a minor over state lines to marry against the wishes of the family or even the knowledge given she was in the custody of her parents at the time, even more of a crime your honor.”
“The license was signed off by a judge, and therefore it makes it legal” the prosecutor declared.
“Judge Ramos was disbarred two years ago,” Max declared. “Come on, how can you say this is legal. We’re taking about someone who kidnapped her, abused her to the point of life-threatening drug addiction and further separated her from her family and friends and took her across state lines for the purposes of marrying her while she was under the legal age of consent in our State. That is the definition of abuse?”
“Still his decisions stand,” the prosecutor batted back.
“Enough, this is not the matter for today’s case. I am deciding on bail. I have decided that she will be staying in custody until a date to be decided later, or the court reaches the preliminary hearing. “You have a chance to appeal my decision, but you know in this case that she’s a flight risk given her previous disappearances.”
“Your honor…” Max asked.
“WHAT is it now!” the judge asked.
“Given this newest evidence and even though I think it’s fake and not real and shouldn’t count but we respect your decision and I would respectfully ask you to order a 30 day psych evaluation for my client as we seek a doctor’s opinion on her mental state, so we can go forth with the case?”
“A minute ago, he was arguing for her to go home to her family and kids” the prosecutor demanded.
“I am looking out for my client and the prosecutor herself stipulates to what happened to my client when she was fifteen years old, and we would like the opportunity to show how it might have influenced her decisions over the last number of years. If she stands competent, then the prosecutor should welcome a doctor’s verdict on the matter,” Max asked. “You saw it yourself my client is fragile, and I want to make sure my client is given the right counsel and we take the right approach for the trial upcoming which we’re not trying to prevent.”
“You are looking out for your client, so I will grant your request and I remand her to the psychiatry ward at Roswell Memorial for up to 30 days to decide on her mental competency and whether she should stand trial, and at which time we will meet back here and evaluate the findings and if she is found competent then we will decide on a date for the preliminary trial,” the judge declared as she gaveled the close of the day’s matter and got up from her chair and departed the room.
Then all hell broke loose. Max needed to go and check on his client, but he could tell how the newest information had badly shaken his family and he also shared the same level of horror but knew he had to get some answers from his client. “I know, I know… But I have to check on Elizabeth” he murmured to his family members.
“Marriage, my god” Maria muttered. “That sick bastard.”
“I am going in, and then I’ll see to the details of the transfer to the hospital and I’ll let you know…” Max said before vanishing into the chambers.
“That sick bastard,” Jake muttered.
“He wanted his hold on her to be permanent,” Grace asked. “If she tried to run, he would have a way to get her back because as her husband he has more clout than even Michael and Maria would once she reached 18…”
“How this legal. She was sixteen?” Grace muttered. “He was what nearly forty?”
“It’s not, I don’t care if it’s legal in Texas. It is not in my books” Isabel muttered as Michael and Maria looked like they had been hit by a sledgehammer. “Come on, why don’t we go get something to drink while we wait.”
“I can’t drink, not now” Maria murmured as Belle stood in the back and watched. She tended to find out more when they didn’t think she was listening as she was starting to understand how badly her sister was treated and how someone did have it out for her family, and she was beginning to understand that she might need to be more cautious about how she conducted her life as she grew up.
Inside the chambers, Elizabeth was coming around and drinking some water as the judge went elsewhere, and now Max was walking into the room. Sighing, he noticed she was alone and still pale. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask,” Elizabeth said quietly.
“Smart answer, which I something I don’t need” Max sighed. “Look I need to know everything and getting blindsided in court is not going to help you at the end of the day. So, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was stupid. I was never stupid before Nicholas and the drugs. I always thought I was pretty smart, and then I fell hard, and I let myself get blackmailed so I could get the drugs that made me feel at peace and so I would forget the nightmare that he put me through. I let him use me so that you guys were safe, and then after all this time I find out he never really stopped, and was just waiting in wait for his next target, likely my little sister because he never stopped wanting revenge against Dad.”
“You know that was never going to happen” Max sighed.
“He got me, didn’t he?” Elizabeth muttered. “And to make it even worse he got me in plain sight of my father, who was standing guard, when he thought he was protecting me,” she murmured because she knew that sat at the heart of her father’s guilt. The heartbreaking knowledge that Michael thought he was protecting his daughter, only to find out that he allowed it to happen because he was respecting his daughter’s privacy. “So, don’t tell me he wouldn’t have been able to get to Belle if he really wanted to get at her?”
“We are more guarded now Elizabeth because of what happened to you. When you went missing, we had trackers put on all the phones, and they are still there and on Belle’s watch and now her phone. So, we always know. And even then, there are discreet bodyguards on Belle. We know she is an inviting target, and Emily too which why she has one on her watch. We are always watching. That is why I knew where to find Belle earlier because we get the reports. We don’t always like what we find, but we still get them” Max muttered of all his children and especially those who were adults and had active social lives. “She gives the impression of immense freedom but still there is a leash attached to her independence.”
“Please don’t make me worry about Emily,” Elizabeth said of her first born.
“She’s safe, all of them are safe,” Max assured Elizabeth. “We don’t know who is out there, and we’re not taking any chances after we got it so wrong…”
“I am sorry I didn’t tell you about Nicholas. He did not tell me what the papers I signed, but he threatened me with the secrets of the group and the pictures of me and was embarrassed, but then later, he forced me to go through with it. Once I had Emily, he got more aggressive and he claimed he would go after Emily, kidnap her, and give her away and I would never know where, so I had no choice.”
Max nodded.
“I am sorry,” Elizabeth sighed. “They denied me bail, right?”
“Right,” Max sighed. “But I got you remanded to Roswell Memorial for a 30-day psych evaluation to see where we should take the trial.”
“What,” Elizabeth squeaked. “I am not crazy…”
“That is debatable right now,” Max argued. “Given all the abuse you suffered, it’s only natural that you would be, and I am not judging you but it will allow you time in the privacy of a hospital room instead of jail cell and I’ll work on invalidating your marriage…”
“He’s dead, why does it matter?”
“Because it opens you up to lawsuits as his wife, if he’s hurt anyone else and they come out of the woodwork because you will be considered his next of kin if your marriage stays on the record,” Max muttered as Elizabeth went pale. “My own opinion of your marriage is that it was a crime and it is not legal, whether it was signed off on or not. You weren’t legally allowed to marry someone without your parent’s permission, and the consent law comes in and it’s rape whether it’s consensual or not,”
“I agreed to it,” Elizabeth insisted.
“The consent is 17, and the wedding happened before your birthday and therefore it is most definitely a crime, but that is for another day and I’ll work on your transfer. I don’t think less of you because of this, and neither will anyone else.”
“They will…” Elizabeth insisted as she didn’t relish seeing her parents and seeing their judgement in their eyes and knew Max wasn’t her parents, and hadn’t seen what her parents had seen or experienced when she knew Nicholas had changed her…
“They won’t care so why don’t you relax, and I’ll be back in a few minutes” Max murmured as he walked out of the room, which left Elizabeth to think and wait for her transport and she fell deep into her mind as she worried about what would happen next and she was brought back to reality as she heard a faint voice saying her name as it cut through “Elizabeth” came a voice she hadn’t heard in nearly seven years as she was forced out of her bubble, as she turned and was startled to see her past staring at her, and someone who once got away. “Finn?”
“Oh my god,” Finn asked as he saw his ex-girlfriend for the first time in nearly seven years. “What are you doing in here?”
“You didn’t hear, fainted in the courtroom” Elizabeth muttered as she forced her eyes to focus on her ex. “Big commotion,” she signed. “I don’t get it, what are you doing here?”
“I am clerking for the judge,” Finn smiled. “I am going to law school and clerking for the judge this semester and during the summer. “I don’t get it, why would you be dressed like that, and in Judge Woods chambers,” he asked of his ex in prison clothing.
“She’s my judge, I guess. I got myself arrested,” Elizabeth muttered.
“What did you do?” Finn asked as it was a surreal experience as they may have dated for a short time, but she made an impact on him.
“Killed someone,” Elizabeth muttered as Finn’s eyes went wild. “Anyways life is a little unbelievable,” she admitted and she saw normal in Finn’s eyes and she wished she could have that kind of normal again but knew it made her feel better to know she hadn’t screwed up Finn’s life, and that he was working on a future for himself. “It’s good to see you. I am glad I didn’t screw you up too much with what happened between us, and then afterwards…”
“We were teenagers,” Finn said softly as he tried to wrap around the idea of his ex being arrested.
“I stopped being a teenager when I got myself kidnapped,” Elizabeth muttered as the door opened. “Yeah I know,” he said softly as they both saw the door open and Max pop into the room, whose eyes went wide with recognition.
“Transport is waiting,” Max said as he eyes lifted at the sight of Finn. “Finn is that you?” Max asked as it had been years since he had seen the guy and it was strange to see him now with Elizabeth given so much that had gone down since the kids were in high school.
“Yeah, are you Elizabeth’s attorney?” Finn asked.
Max nodded a yes, “I’ll see you later” he murmured to Elizabeth as the guards followed Max into the room and put the handcuffs and the chains back on and Elizabeth stood annoyed but knew it was necessary, as she was led out My powers are out to lunch guys, this isn’t that necessary. “Maybe some other time Finn,” she smiled as she disappeared from the room. As it left Finn to watch her leave as he turned to face the eldest lawyer in the room. “Where are they taking her?”
“Roswell Memorial, mandatory evaluation” Max murmured as he did not like it, but it was better than a jail cell.
“She’s not crazy,” Finn asked.
“You don’t know her today Finn,” Max advised. “She’s in a lot of trouble, and she’s suffered a lot of abuse and to save her, this might be the best step forward” he muttered as left the chambers and tracked down the lead prosecutor.
At the same time, Jake and Grace arrived at the apartment where his sister had been arrested and saw the police tape, as Grace used her powers for them to get into the apartment without leaving a trail as they walked into the apartment and stopped at the sight of all the blood Oh god they both said to themselves. They hadn’t been able to get there that morning before court because Eva had come down with a slight fever, and both wanted to spend time with her before turning her over to her great grandparents Parkers who would be looking after her so now they were at the apartment surveying the mess.
“Damn,” Grace admitted as she saw the bloody carpet, with a piece cut out. “It was really bloody.”
“I saw the crime scene pictures, yeah, the prosecutor was right. She did not stop with the first shot. She kept shooting,” Jake muttered as he looked around and saw it was a mess, and he was nervous about what they would find.
“Let’s find the file, if it exists” Grace comments as she noticed the safe. “Goody maybe it won’t be that hard after all. It looks almost exactly like my old one that I had in my bedroom growing up and after I moved out, I taught Alexandra and Carrie how to use it” she sighed as she had a look of it. “Uh oh, it’s a doozy.”
“Do you think you can get in?” Jake asked.
“It seems like it’s alien protected, which should be complicated, but I can maybe do it,” Grace commented. “I am an alien after all,” she murmured as assessed the safe. “Geez, Nicholas was sloppy if this was all the protection, he gave the safe. I put more on mine and I was a teenager… and not abducting and abusing teenage girls” she muttered and saw the queasy look on her husband’s face. “Sorry… I am nervous”
“Why don’t I go in the bedroom, and you can see if you can…” Jake murmured as he continued to observe the apartment. It was trashed, obviously the police had taken a lot and he just prayed they found what they needed.
Grace began while Jake went into one of the bedrooms and winced when he saw handcuffs attached to the bed, and knew instantly this was the room the bastard had kept his sister in, as he walked in and knew it was bad, as moments later his wife joined him and started cursing when she saw the crib and the cradle, and the handcuffs, and he saw a trash can full of broken ones.
“I am sorry,” Grace muttered as she saw the angst on her husband’s face. “This has got to be rough for you to see…”
“It was worse for her to be here, and to live like this” Jake murmured as she saw the trash can. “This barbaric” he muttered as he wanted to kick it but restrained himself as he knew he had to be an adult in this situation.
“Jake, we never know what happens behind closed doors” Grace murmured. “Every household is different and accept different things as you have seen in your job on the force,” Grace said as she shook her head at his angst. “I know you want to curse me…”
“You think she wanted this?” Jake asked as they looked around the room. “I refuse to believe that…”
“Hell, no do I think she wanted this, but we can’t judge on this alone. Nicholas is a bastard and should be dead” Grace said as she saw the debris and the imprint of pain and angst in the room. “I don’t like it either, because I hate this for Elizabeth and hate how this is going to hurt her…”
“How can this hurt her?” Jake asked.
“You know how,” Grace sighed as she brought up the files she held. “We should go before someone becomes wise. I got the files, or what I think might be the files, so we can have a look when we get home.”
“How were the files?”
“Bad and icky,” Grace muttered as they walked back into the other room and looked around as they took some quick pictures, and then they quickly shut the door behind him as Grace locked the door with her powers, and they got away from the crime scene despite wanting to burn the place to the ground as they didn’t know they had been spotted.
“You should know that Guerin’s brother and his wife, Grace Evans were just in the apartment, and it seems they found a computer that they took with them, yeah, I doubt it will be turned over to his grandfather. Do you want me to send the tip along to the authorities? I thought so because it seems to me it was the same one you told me to plant earlier…” muttered the voice into their phone as they spotted Jake and Grace get into the elevator as she walked out of the empty apartment, she had been told to stay in. “What do you want me to do next. Do you want me to follow them…?” she asked. “Okay, I will stay here then”
“Very well,” the judge nodded as the prosecutor looked annoyed. “Bail.”
“Before the prosecutor make any comments to the contrary. All my client would like to tell the court is that she recognizes that these charges are extremely serious and she’s taking them just as seriously and would like the court recognize the fact, she is not fighting the charges in any manner other than taking her case to court, which is her right as a citizen of their country. She recognized that while the charges are serious, and should be taken to account, she does have a mother and father who are indeed part of the community and who would love for her to stay with them as we see this case to whatever conclusion it ends up at. She also has two minor children who are in the custody of her parents, and whom she would love to be reunited with and for them to get to know her… All she wants is a chance? And that being the case, her parents are willing to pay any necessary bail amount. All they want is for their daughter home with them, and they will make sure she makes it to court, and of course she has siblings who want to get to know their sister again.” Max said turning to see Michael and Maria with hope on their faces. Belle sat with them having refused to go to home until she knew one way or another what would happen to her sister after being reamed for skipping out of the house.
“Prosecution?” the judge asked. “Is bail warranted?”
“No, your honor” the prosecutor announced to the court. “The defendant is charged with a gruesome crime your honor. It was not just one shot, but it was a very bloody crime scene and she admitted her guilt at the scene and in sight of numerous witnesses. The fact she now she’s saying not guilty doesn’t change the fact that she a troubled young woman who should be deemed a flight risk as she’s disappeared several times, and just last year disappeared from the hospital who was trying to give her help. As for the fact she has two minor children. Those children were taken away from her as she was deemed neglectful and she was facing serious charges that she ran out on, and so no, we don’t think she needs to be near the children especially with these charges on the books, and without a resolution. So, we respectfully ask for no bail to be awarded in this case.”
“Very well,” the judge nodded. “Mr. Evans?”
Ms. Guerin respects your decision your honor. But some backstory of the events leading up to this crime should be noted. The man who was murdered is not some saint but the man that stood accused of her kidnapping at the age of 15. For two weeks he brutalized her and caused her tremendous harm, but also got her addicted to drugs and once rescued, she found it difficult to come to terms with what was done to her, and she has had many hard years. The victim then proceeded to bribe her and threaten her until he fully had her under his control, and only yesterday did she find the strength to break free from the abuse she had suffered at his hands. She did not want her children exposed to the harm anymore, and she did not fight their removal. Now, she wants to get to know them again,” Max said the murmurs of the crowd as Michael and Maria’s faces went pale. Belle cringed as Grace held her hand, and she squeezed.
“Your honor, there is no proof the victim was the man who kidnapped Ms. Guerin…” the prosecutor declared to the outrage on Michael and Maria’s faces as Beth tried to keep them from speaking their minds. Isabel also was wanting to say something, but Kyle kept her in check, as she held her husband’s hand with a firm grip.
“Your honor, there was blood evidence collected on the day of Ms. Guerins’ recovery that directly ties the victim to the scene of the crime,” Max murmured as he squeezed his pale and shaky client and flashes of the torture came to her mind. “There is also testimony from those who stood accused with him that ties him further to the events of her captivity.”
“Your honor, as much it terribly unfortunate what Ms. Guerin suffered when she was fifteen years old, but it is the not the matter we are here today to discuss. The victim as anyone can check on wasn’t taken to trial, and therefore was not convicted…” the prosecutor said as she got up from her seat. “So, for Mr. Evans to declare it as a certainty is wrong of him and a blatant attempt to poison a potential jury pool?”
“The victim wasn’t taken to court because he fled our jurisdiction, but he was able to draw Ms. Guerin into his web and it took her a long time for her to break free, but she is free now and wants to see her family again. So, she is not going to be fleeing the jurisdiction, and she wants to be here for her family and her children.”
“So, she says now but what happens tomorrow? She has already fled her family before and there is evidence to say she would in this case, so we ask no bail, and what the defense isn’t telling you there is evidence to tell us a very different story of Ms. Guerin’s association with the victim. She was not with him because any bribes or threats, but she was there willingly and of her own power and she could have left and taken her children at any time. She chose to stay…”
“Your honor, where is this proof?” Max asked as Elizabeth who was now standing was becoming paler and shakier by the moment as if she knew what was coming.
“We would like to submit as exhibit #1, an application and accompanying license that contains the name of both the defendant and the victim. It was filed with the state, and signed off, and therefore it’s very legal and it shows that Ms. Guerin was married to the victim for the last six years and was married to him at when she took a gun and shot him to death,” she revealed in a bombshell that shook the courtroom to rubble. Gasps were elicited in the crowd as Michael and Maria were shocked, and Maria looking faint. But none more so that Elizabeth as this was the last thing she wanted to be revealed as she started to shake, and before Max was able to object at the characteristic of his client’s actions, Elizabeth grew faint and fell to floor to cries from her family.
“Enough, clear the courtroom now…” the judge gaveled as Michael and Jake wanted to rush to Elizabeth’s side, as Max was quick to her side. “Bailiff, please take the defendant to the chambers and give her some water when she wakes up”
The bailiff picked up an unconscious Elizabeth and carried her through the backdoors. “Okay, everyone out. Only immediate family of the accused will be allowed to remain in this courtroom for the remainder of these proceedings” the judge gaveled as moments later only Maria, Michael, Isabel, Kyle, Beth, Jake, Grace, Belle stayed in the courtroom along with the lawyers.
“Okay, enough of this sideshow. We are here you two to decide on bail and not try the case. You both will have that opportunity in the future when we come to trial. So, the plea stands, and bail is denied.”
“Your honor, I would like to say something?” Max asked as he stood.
“What?” the judge asked.
“How do we know this application and license is accurate and is not a forgery” Max asked as he glanced at the paperwork and frowned at the dates. “The defendant would have been sixteen when this ceremony took place. She was not legally allowed to get married without her parent’s permission in the State of New Mexico and I can promise you that her parents would not have given her permission to marry the victim, then or at any time until she could legally make the decision which is 18 in this state.”
“The marriage took place in the State of Texas and is signed off by a judge which is the state law, and which makes it legal” the prosecutor defended.
“Still, she would have been 16 and under our state’s consent law… any contact between her and someone who is over the age of 18 makes it a crime and we know for a fact the victim is her parent’s age despite his youthful looks” he said as Jake and Grace were pale because of their only reminders of the state law but in their case it was a lot more tame and not an appalling abuse of a child. “And in the case of taking a minor over state lines to marry against the wishes of the family or even the knowledge given she was in the custody of her parents at the time, even more of a crime your honor.”
“The license was signed off by a judge, and therefore it makes it legal” the prosecutor declared.
“Judge Ramos was disbarred two years ago,” Max declared. “Come on, how can you say this is legal. We’re taking about someone who kidnapped her, abused her to the point of life-threatening drug addiction and further separated her from her family and friends and took her across state lines for the purposes of marrying her while she was under the legal age of consent in our State. That is the definition of abuse?”
“Still his decisions stand,” the prosecutor batted back.
“Enough, this is not the matter for today’s case. I am deciding on bail. I have decided that she will be staying in custody until a date to be decided later, or the court reaches the preliminary hearing. “You have a chance to appeal my decision, but you know in this case that she’s a flight risk given her previous disappearances.”
“Your honor…” Max asked.
“WHAT is it now!” the judge asked.
“Given this newest evidence and even though I think it’s fake and not real and shouldn’t count but we respect your decision and I would respectfully ask you to order a 30 day psych evaluation for my client as we seek a doctor’s opinion on her mental state, so we can go forth with the case?”
“A minute ago, he was arguing for her to go home to her family and kids” the prosecutor demanded.
“I am looking out for my client and the prosecutor herself stipulates to what happened to my client when she was fifteen years old, and we would like the opportunity to show how it might have influenced her decisions over the last number of years. If she stands competent, then the prosecutor should welcome a doctor’s verdict on the matter,” Max asked. “You saw it yourself my client is fragile, and I want to make sure my client is given the right counsel and we take the right approach for the trial upcoming which we’re not trying to prevent.”
“You are looking out for your client, so I will grant your request and I remand her to the psychiatry ward at Roswell Memorial for up to 30 days to decide on her mental competency and whether she should stand trial, and at which time we will meet back here and evaluate the findings and if she is found competent then we will decide on a date for the preliminary trial,” the judge declared as she gaveled the close of the day’s matter and got up from her chair and departed the room.
Then all hell broke loose. Max needed to go and check on his client, but he could tell how the newest information had badly shaken his family and he also shared the same level of horror but knew he had to get some answers from his client. “I know, I know… But I have to check on Elizabeth” he murmured to his family members.
“Marriage, my god” Maria muttered. “That sick bastard.”
“I am going in, and then I’ll see to the details of the transfer to the hospital and I’ll let you know…” Max said before vanishing into the chambers.
“That sick bastard,” Jake muttered.
“He wanted his hold on her to be permanent,” Grace asked. “If she tried to run, he would have a way to get her back because as her husband he has more clout than even Michael and Maria would once she reached 18…”
“How this legal. She was sixteen?” Grace muttered. “He was what nearly forty?”
“It’s not, I don’t care if it’s legal in Texas. It is not in my books” Isabel muttered as Michael and Maria looked like they had been hit by a sledgehammer. “Come on, why don’t we go get something to drink while we wait.”
“I can’t drink, not now” Maria murmured as Belle stood in the back and watched. She tended to find out more when they didn’t think she was listening as she was starting to understand how badly her sister was treated and how someone did have it out for her family, and she was beginning to understand that she might need to be more cautious about how she conducted her life as she grew up.
*
Inside the chambers, Elizabeth was coming around and drinking some water as the judge went elsewhere, and now Max was walking into the room. Sighing, he noticed she was alone and still pale. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask,” Elizabeth said quietly.
“Smart answer, which I something I don’t need” Max sighed. “Look I need to know everything and getting blindsided in court is not going to help you at the end of the day. So, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was stupid. I was never stupid before Nicholas and the drugs. I always thought I was pretty smart, and then I fell hard, and I let myself get blackmailed so I could get the drugs that made me feel at peace and so I would forget the nightmare that he put me through. I let him use me so that you guys were safe, and then after all this time I find out he never really stopped, and was just waiting in wait for his next target, likely my little sister because he never stopped wanting revenge against Dad.”
“You know that was never going to happen” Max sighed.
“He got me, didn’t he?” Elizabeth muttered. “And to make it even worse he got me in plain sight of my father, who was standing guard, when he thought he was protecting me,” she murmured because she knew that sat at the heart of her father’s guilt. The heartbreaking knowledge that Michael thought he was protecting his daughter, only to find out that he allowed it to happen because he was respecting his daughter’s privacy. “So, don’t tell me he wouldn’t have been able to get to Belle if he really wanted to get at her?”
“We are more guarded now Elizabeth because of what happened to you. When you went missing, we had trackers put on all the phones, and they are still there and on Belle’s watch and now her phone. So, we always know. And even then, there are discreet bodyguards on Belle. We know she is an inviting target, and Emily too which why she has one on her watch. We are always watching. That is why I knew where to find Belle earlier because we get the reports. We don’t always like what we find, but we still get them” Max muttered of all his children and especially those who were adults and had active social lives. “She gives the impression of immense freedom but still there is a leash attached to her independence.”
“Please don’t make me worry about Emily,” Elizabeth said of her first born.
“She’s safe, all of them are safe,” Max assured Elizabeth. “We don’t know who is out there, and we’re not taking any chances after we got it so wrong…”
“I am sorry I didn’t tell you about Nicholas. He did not tell me what the papers I signed, but he threatened me with the secrets of the group and the pictures of me and was embarrassed, but then later, he forced me to go through with it. Once I had Emily, he got more aggressive and he claimed he would go after Emily, kidnap her, and give her away and I would never know where, so I had no choice.”
Max nodded.
“I am sorry,” Elizabeth sighed. “They denied me bail, right?”
“Right,” Max sighed. “But I got you remanded to Roswell Memorial for a 30-day psych evaluation to see where we should take the trial.”
“What,” Elizabeth squeaked. “I am not crazy…”
“That is debatable right now,” Max argued. “Given all the abuse you suffered, it’s only natural that you would be, and I am not judging you but it will allow you time in the privacy of a hospital room instead of jail cell and I’ll work on invalidating your marriage…”
“He’s dead, why does it matter?”
“Because it opens you up to lawsuits as his wife, if he’s hurt anyone else and they come out of the woodwork because you will be considered his next of kin if your marriage stays on the record,” Max muttered as Elizabeth went pale. “My own opinion of your marriage is that it was a crime and it is not legal, whether it was signed off on or not. You weren’t legally allowed to marry someone without your parent’s permission, and the consent law comes in and it’s rape whether it’s consensual or not,”
“I agreed to it,” Elizabeth insisted.
“The consent is 17, and the wedding happened before your birthday and therefore it is most definitely a crime, but that is for another day and I’ll work on your transfer. I don’t think less of you because of this, and neither will anyone else.”
“They will…” Elizabeth insisted as she didn’t relish seeing her parents and seeing their judgement in their eyes and knew Max wasn’t her parents, and hadn’t seen what her parents had seen or experienced when she knew Nicholas had changed her…
“They won’t care so why don’t you relax, and I’ll be back in a few minutes” Max murmured as he walked out of the room, which left Elizabeth to think and wait for her transport and she fell deep into her mind as she worried about what would happen next and she was brought back to reality as she heard a faint voice saying her name as it cut through “Elizabeth” came a voice she hadn’t heard in nearly seven years as she was forced out of her bubble, as she turned and was startled to see her past staring at her, and someone who once got away. “Finn?”
“Oh my god,” Finn asked as he saw his ex-girlfriend for the first time in nearly seven years. “What are you doing in here?”
“You didn’t hear, fainted in the courtroom” Elizabeth muttered as she forced her eyes to focus on her ex. “Big commotion,” she signed. “I don’t get it, what are you doing here?”
“I am clerking for the judge,” Finn smiled. “I am going to law school and clerking for the judge this semester and during the summer. “I don’t get it, why would you be dressed like that, and in Judge Woods chambers,” he asked of his ex in prison clothing.
“She’s my judge, I guess. I got myself arrested,” Elizabeth muttered.
“What did you do?” Finn asked as it was a surreal experience as they may have dated for a short time, but she made an impact on him.
“Killed someone,” Elizabeth muttered as Finn’s eyes went wild. “Anyways life is a little unbelievable,” she admitted and she saw normal in Finn’s eyes and she wished she could have that kind of normal again but knew it made her feel better to know she hadn’t screwed up Finn’s life, and that he was working on a future for himself. “It’s good to see you. I am glad I didn’t screw you up too much with what happened between us, and then afterwards…”
“We were teenagers,” Finn said softly as he tried to wrap around the idea of his ex being arrested.
“I stopped being a teenager when I got myself kidnapped,” Elizabeth muttered as the door opened. “Yeah I know,” he said softly as they both saw the door open and Max pop into the room, whose eyes went wide with recognition.
“Transport is waiting,” Max said as he eyes lifted at the sight of Finn. “Finn is that you?” Max asked as it had been years since he had seen the guy and it was strange to see him now with Elizabeth given so much that had gone down since the kids were in high school.
“Yeah, are you Elizabeth’s attorney?” Finn asked.
Max nodded a yes, “I’ll see you later” he murmured to Elizabeth as the guards followed Max into the room and put the handcuffs and the chains back on and Elizabeth stood annoyed but knew it was necessary, as she was led out My powers are out to lunch guys, this isn’t that necessary. “Maybe some other time Finn,” she smiled as she disappeared from the room. As it left Finn to watch her leave as he turned to face the eldest lawyer in the room. “Where are they taking her?”
“Roswell Memorial, mandatory evaluation” Max murmured as he did not like it, but it was better than a jail cell.
“She’s not crazy,” Finn asked.
“You don’t know her today Finn,” Max advised. “She’s in a lot of trouble, and she’s suffered a lot of abuse and to save her, this might be the best step forward” he muttered as left the chambers and tracked down the lead prosecutor.
*
At the same time, Jake and Grace arrived at the apartment where his sister had been arrested and saw the police tape, as Grace used her powers for them to get into the apartment without leaving a trail as they walked into the apartment and stopped at the sight of all the blood Oh god they both said to themselves. They hadn’t been able to get there that morning before court because Eva had come down with a slight fever, and both wanted to spend time with her before turning her over to her great grandparents Parkers who would be looking after her so now they were at the apartment surveying the mess.
“Damn,” Grace admitted as she saw the bloody carpet, with a piece cut out. “It was really bloody.”
“I saw the crime scene pictures, yeah, the prosecutor was right. She did not stop with the first shot. She kept shooting,” Jake muttered as he looked around and saw it was a mess, and he was nervous about what they would find.
“Let’s find the file, if it exists” Grace comments as she noticed the safe. “Goody maybe it won’t be that hard after all. It looks almost exactly like my old one that I had in my bedroom growing up and after I moved out, I taught Alexandra and Carrie how to use it” she sighed as she had a look of it. “Uh oh, it’s a doozy.”
“Do you think you can get in?” Jake asked.
“It seems like it’s alien protected, which should be complicated, but I can maybe do it,” Grace commented. “I am an alien after all,” she murmured as assessed the safe. “Geez, Nicholas was sloppy if this was all the protection, he gave the safe. I put more on mine and I was a teenager… and not abducting and abusing teenage girls” she muttered and saw the queasy look on her husband’s face. “Sorry… I am nervous”
“Why don’t I go in the bedroom, and you can see if you can…” Jake murmured as he continued to observe the apartment. It was trashed, obviously the police had taken a lot and he just prayed they found what they needed.
Grace began while Jake went into one of the bedrooms and winced when he saw handcuffs attached to the bed, and knew instantly this was the room the bastard had kept his sister in, as he walked in and knew it was bad, as moments later his wife joined him and started cursing when she saw the crib and the cradle, and the handcuffs, and he saw a trash can full of broken ones.
“I am sorry,” Grace muttered as she saw the angst on her husband’s face. “This has got to be rough for you to see…”
“It was worse for her to be here, and to live like this” Jake murmured as she saw the trash can. “This barbaric” he muttered as he wanted to kick it but restrained himself as he knew he had to be an adult in this situation.
“Jake, we never know what happens behind closed doors” Grace murmured. “Every household is different and accept different things as you have seen in your job on the force,” Grace said as she shook her head at his angst. “I know you want to curse me…”
“You think she wanted this?” Jake asked as they looked around the room. “I refuse to believe that…”
“Hell, no do I think she wanted this, but we can’t judge on this alone. Nicholas is a bastard and should be dead” Grace said as she saw the debris and the imprint of pain and angst in the room. “I don’t like it either, because I hate this for Elizabeth and hate how this is going to hurt her…”
“How can this hurt her?” Jake asked.
“You know how,” Grace sighed as she brought up the files she held. “We should go before someone becomes wise. I got the files, or what I think might be the files, so we can have a look when we get home.”
“How were the files?”
“Bad and icky,” Grace muttered as they walked back into the other room and looked around as they took some quick pictures, and then they quickly shut the door behind him as Grace locked the door with her powers, and they got away from the crime scene despite wanting to burn the place to the ground as they didn’t know they had been spotted.
*
“You should know that Guerin’s brother and his wife, Grace Evans were just in the apartment, and it seems they found a computer that they took with them, yeah, I doubt it will be turned over to his grandfather. Do you want me to send the tip along to the authorities? I thought so because it seems to me it was the same one you told me to plant earlier…” muttered the voice into their phone as they spotted Jake and Grace get into the elevator as she walked out of the empty apartment, she had been told to stay in. “What do you want me to do next. Do you want me to follow them…?” she asked. “Okay, I will stay here then”
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RoswellFan68
- Obsessed Roswellian
- Posts: 543
- Joined: Sun Nov 05, 2017 9:52 am
- Location: Charleston, WV
Re: Always Tomorrow (CC, Mature) - A Reunion's Endgame - Chapter 8 - 06/04/2020
Wow. Nicholas made Elizabeth marry him.
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Parker1947
- Obsessed Roswellian
- Posts: 642
- Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:34 pm
Always Tomorrow - Chapter 9 - 06/06/2020
“Come on, you can’t think that the license was legitimate” Max asked as he sat in the prosecutor’s office as they continued to battle over Elizabeth’s case as he was trying to get a sense of what he had to work with in terms of the prosecutor, and so far, the meeting had been anything but positive. “Lisa, you have to see she’s a victim in all this, and the one who is now dead is the villain?”
“Max, look, I know you are personally close to her family and so this has got to be rough for you to deal with on a personal level but I have to look at this with my professional side, and there is nothing to warrant overturning the marriage certificate as there is evidence she was there willingly as it has her name and her signature, and they have been verified as authentic. She could have left at any time?” Lead prosecutor Lisa Redstone muttered because she hated the case, but it was her case and she needed to make sure it came to a result that played for the office in the media. Whether he liked or hated the victim was besides the point. He was dead, and she had someone to try to convict on the death.
“That is ridiculous, and I am surprised to hear you subscribe to that myth when you have a fifteen year old who is tortured and left with lifelong scars, and then she’s seduced by the man who did it to her…by use of drugs and whatever else he had on her to the point of that she couldn’t leave if he forces her to be tied to him in ways that would humiliate her if it got out, into the public or simply in the eyes of her family. She was only sixteen, and she couldn’t have consented to something like marriage, due to her age.”
“It was signed off by a judge Max,” the prosecutor protested. “It was her signature on the license application, and it has been verified to be legitimate. So, it’s not some forgery”
“Who was disbarred,” Max demanded as he couldn’t believe the prosecutor was blind to the reality “For Christ sake Lisa, none of this looks on the up and up” he muttered. “This is too unbelievable”
“None of the allegations that got him removed from the bench has anything to do with anything unethical in his actual decisions or paperwork, so they all are being upheld,” Lisa sighed. “You simply will have to face it that she was there willingly…” she muttered as she felt for Max and knew this had to be eating at him, but still she had to go forth with it.
“The hell she was,” Max muttered as from her side of the case the prosecutor could tell Max was being pushed to the limits by this, and it’s not like personally she believed the victim was a decent guy or a wonderful human being but she had a dead body, and a bloody scene and someone who was seen at the crime scene with fingerprints all over the crime scene, and initially confessing and boasting that she was glad he was dead. “Then try to get the marriage annulled but until you do, still it will be part of the record and will almost certainly be used in her trial”
“He kidnapped her…” Max tried. “Lisa, for heaven’s sake she was kidnapped and tortured. You have the case notes as well as I do?”
“There is no proof,” the prosecutor answered back. “Yes, someone kidnapped your client and I do believe something hideous did happen to her, but it’s not proven that individual was this man. As much as it might comfort you or her family, to have someone to blame. We just can’t prove it.”
“There is blood evidence,” Max fought back. “And you think having someone to blame is a comfort? Bull. He vanished after the crime. We had him in custody, but we let him slip away when we have concrete evidence that ties him to it. It is not someone else out there, it was him and then he got her back into his web and her family lost the last seven years because of that man. Most of all. She lost seven years of her life because of that man. We should have gotten justice, and we didn’t and now he has found a way to hurt the family from the grave, and this time he might truly destroy them”
“You know as well as I do that blood evidence wasn’t examined because it disappeared within days of the recovery of Ms. Guerin” the prosecutor managed.
“Which doesn’t strike you as odd? The only suspect disappears and then the evidence that ties him to the scene also happens to disappear,” Max asked. “Of course, we also have witness testimony…”
“Of individuals who actually did commit the horrors to Elizabeth and whom are in jail for life because of their active participation in those events” the prosecutor answered. “We have nothing that ties him to what happened to her, Ms. Guerin was in a drugged state at the time and her memory was unreliable because she admitted to hallucinations and severe drug reliance. She was so mixed up that she couldn’t give a reliable description of the mastermind when she came to…”
“She was very reliable,” Max muttered as he knew how much they had not trusted his client’s word once she had recovered enough to make a statement. “She gave you a realistic description. But you did not do anything with it,” he gritted. “By allowing him to slip away, you allowed her to slip back into his grip” he said. “Fine, let us drop this but I will bring up the marriage stuff when we get to evidence if the case gets to trial. Let us talk about today. If my client will agree to a deal. What would you be willing to accept?”
“I can’t take anything without a significant time in prison” the prosecutor sighed as she did not like the insinuation that her office did not do anything with the sketch but dropped it. “She’s charged with Manslaughter and 2nd degree Murder, and the investigation isn’t over yet and therefore the charges might get upgraded.”
“Yes, I know,” Max said annoyed.
“It was a very violent crime Max,” the prosecutor muttered.
“She was fighting for her life,” Max said not mentioning that Nicholas was already on the ground when she started shooting…
“So, she says, but there is evidence her story might not be so solid” the prosecutor revealed. “So, she’s lucky I am willing to go with manslaughter and murder 2 at this point. If she is convicted, she’s looking at least 15 years on the murder charge?”
“She was protecting herself…”
“It would be wise to talk to your client and see what she’s willing to take. I can go 10 with possible parole after 5 with good behavior. Your client is only 23 and therefore she could still have a life when she’s released?”
“After the accused will have taken nearly 20 years of her life if she’s in jail the full term, yeah right?” Max muttered. “And if she’s out on the lower end of the sentence, still the bastard will have taken more than a decade from her life and she will have very little chance of making a life for herself and her kids won’t even know her…”
“She took someone’s life and it was very bloody, and it wasn’t one shot or even two it was a hell of a lot more. She wasn’t protecting herself by shooting him 10 times,” Lisa murmured. “And I am aware of her record which is a mile long. A long list or priors including a suspicious death that occurred during her imprisonment”
“They ruled self-defense and they didn’t charge her,” Max murmured as he knew they were lucky the authorities had ruled against charges for the death of one of Elizabeth’s captors. But he knew it made it now tricky that she was involved in another death…
“She ran out on serious charges last year?” Lisa murmured.
“Which are irrelevant to today’s matter” Max muttered. “None of that adds up to spending the critical part of her life in jail for a crime that happened because she was defending herself”
“It’s not shoplifting Max,” Lisa protested. “She took a life, and it is the second such offence, so to the public and the media it will look suspicious if I let her go so you should talk to you client. The office will be made mincemeat if we allow her off with a lenient sentence. So, make her see that she’s looking at serious time in prison if we can’t come to a deal and she will definitely lose out on being a part of her children’s lives…”
“I don’t think the media will have your head because the victim is not a saint and is more like the devil and if we go court, then the public will see what he did to my client,” Max murmured. “They won’t be crying out of the lack of justice” he sighed. “But fine, I’ll talk to my client” was all Max was willing to say but he knew they had to figure something out to prevent Elizabeth from spending up to 15 years in prison or longer.
“I know your client has had a troubled history since her abduction and we both know that the abduction is linked to her troubles and I am sorry about that, but I have a case to prosecute and I can’t be seen going to lightly on a murder and with this being the second death she has been involved in. I just can’t…”
Max knew the prosecution was in a tight spot and he didn’t envy them which made his side a tough to be on because he didn’t know how he could get his client out of this injustice as he didn’t know if Michael or Michael could make it if she did get sent to jail for a crime they already feel guilty about how they exposing their daughter to a life and to conditions that led to Nicholas to strike. Max could only nod as he left the office, praying for a sign.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Carrie Evans exclaimed as they sat at Cow Patties as she waited to begin her shift and was meeting up with her sisters as Jake had gone to spend time with Eva before they went to the hospital to see Elizabeth, and Grace needed time out with her sisters, and to relax a little. “He’s a monster”
“It’s hell,” Grace acknowledged as she looked down at her iced tea as she did not want anything stronger despite the urge. Because it had been sickening to be in that apartment, and she had put up a convincing cover in front of Jake but knew how it had gotten to them both, and to know that Elizabeth had to endure all that, as she looked down at the files in front of her. She wanted to keep them in her position, as she read them and grew faint at what Nicholas had over them and was using to keep Elizabeth in line.
Most of the crimes would not be able to be prosecuted due to time limits but they would able to muddy the waters, and especially for Jim who was Sheriff or their father, who was a respected attorney. To know that Nicholas knew their secrets, which was not surprising she supposed but to use them and Elizabeth being so weak after her imprisonment, it was only natural for her to fall back under his spell…
“Marrying her when she was 16, that is downright criminal?” Alexandra muttered.
“Brazen,” Grace acknowledged and had plenty of anger at the system who seemed to have an issue with her and Jake despite it only being two years but they don’t bat an eye that Nicholas was able to abuse Elizabeth to such a degree, and not to have any questions about it. “He found a way to get at us once again…”
“At least he’s dead,” Carrie muttered as she checked her watch and knew it was almost time for her shift. “Are we supposed to feel sorry that he’s gone when he did something like this?”
“Yeah, there will be no tears. So, we need to figure out how to get her out of this mess,” Grace sighed as Carrie got up to go on duty and with the knowledge of what was lost when Nicholas struck their clan. “You know to careful, right, as I know you’re running a double?”
“I am always careful,” Carrie muttered to her older sister. “That is the one thing this all been good for, making sure of who we can trust?”
“Yeah,” Grace sighed as Carrie walked to punched in and started working behind the bar. “The secret files were vomiting inducing,” she thought as she turned her attention on her other sister. “There is a computer that we’re unable to get into yet.”
“Oh god,” Alexandra murmured at the thought “What do you think he had on it?” she asked as she took a sip of her drink.
“I don’t want to think about it,” Grace muttered. “Knowing what Nicholas used against Jake and me when we were younger.”
“That man was sick…” Alexandra muttered as both knew that she and Carrie had been guided by what had happened to Elizabeth and to Grace and Jake, and as a result, well, they had been very careful growing up once they came to Roswell and started high school at West Roswell High. They all knew that their mother and Max had wanted to stay in Las Cruces, but Grace wanted to do senior year and graduate with her friends, and so they moved back to Roswell, and crafted something new back in their parent’s hometown. But being back, it had forced everyone to be on guard, and to witness in real time Elizabeth spiraling before finally disappearing. To the kids growing up in her shadow, it had been a wakeup call for all of them that life was not innocent anymore and to be wary of what life wanted from them.
But then she and Carrie got to be with their father and sister and their mother found her soulmate and be happy, and yet everyone knew they saw a different story within the Guerin family. “Should we be worried?”
“For Elizabeth, yes” Grace sighed as she thought of her friend. “But Dad will help her…”
“I almost wish I wasn’t going to Washington” Alexandra sighed. “I would have liked to help out…”
“I actually think you and Carrie being away will allow us to focus because we won’t have to worry…” Grace sighed. “Not that we really have to worry with Nicholas gone, and I know Washington is your dream summer.”
“Yeah it is,” Alexandra smiled. “The internship is a dream come true, and I got lucky when I got picked.”
“Then Harvard will be calling again?”
“Do you miss it?” Alexandra asked her sister. She knew how her sister had been so excited to be accepted into the medical school, but she left after a year and come back to Roswell because the rumors that had existed back in high school for Jake had made their way to the police force in Boston and while they were willing to give him a job, still, it wasn’t the type of job he wanted and he knew they would be looking at him funny despite the allegations having no merit.
“We’re happy here,” Grace smiled. “Eva gets to see Mom and Dad and our grandparents often, and it does help Maria and Michael to see her, so it was something we needed to do, and it’s quite evident that Jake is much happier at the department here…” she said honestly. “I don’t have any regrets Alex. It is far better to be here because I cannot imagine being in Boston while everything is falling apart here at home. So, I know I have made the right decision.”
“We miss you in Boston…”
“You are too busy to miss me,” Grace laughed at all the activities Alexandra had scheduled when she was back at school, and was grateful that both Alexandra and Carrie who was going to Duke was happy and healthy because she knew how it could so far to the other side. “I just wish Elizabeth can find some peace?”
“Dad will help her…” Alexandra said confident that their father could help.
“I hope so…” Grace sighed as they watched Carrie as flirted with the some of the guys at the bar. “She’s having too much fun” she commented of their sister.
“She’s still hurting from that breakup with Justin,” Alexandra commented. “She insists that she’s done with guys.”
“I doubt that will last” Grace murmured as she knew Carrie always bounced between guys and had since she was a teenager and started to date, while Alexandra seemed to find the right guy for her soon after starting school in Roswell and they have stayed happily in love ever since, despite her being in Boston and he at Las Cruces.
“Who knows, Carrie has always been different” Alexandra commented as it was one more difference among the twin sisters as she had a steady boyfriend in Graham, who she had met in high school and Carrie was single these days “She did seem to love Justin, and he seemed different from any other guy she was interested in before, so I think it’s hurting her for it to be over”
Elizabeth was getting used to life in the hospital. It was a good deal different than being in a prison cell she mused, but still there was a level of discomfort knowing that she could easily be back in a jail cell and it was only a matter of time. She was told she had the ability to roam around the floor of the ward, but she was not allowed off the psych ward and she had an ankle monitor to make sure she stayed still. Still the bed was more comfortable, and she would like that.
She was told she would be meeting with the therapist who would making the report to the court the following day, and she knew she had to take this serious because no one had to tell her that she was looking at serious years in prison if she was found guilty.
She remembered the confused look on Finn’s face as she was led away. Sighing, she wished so much of her life had been different. She remembered laughing at how Grace and her brother seemed destined for the life they were apparently now living and saying that she wanted to play around and not settle down.
Now she wished she could. Playing around is not what it is cracked up to and she missed the comfort she found with Finn during that brief time they had together before it went all haywire. After she got better, and had been released from the hospital, well, she had tried to get back to the comfort with him, but it was too different, and she felt like a different person. Truthfully, she was, and she knew it. It was not only the tattoos, and in that regard, Finn was truly patient, but she knew that she was not that person anymore. “I wish I could help you?” she could remember hearing Finn to tell her as her mind replayed those days seven years ago, as it was apparent, she was starting to fade in her recovery. The dreams were starting, as she heard Nicholas taunts and they were keeping her awake and despite Finn being her shoulder, she couldn’t lean on him to tell him the truth about Nicholas because Nicholas was more than simply a monster, when he was an alien and had the capacity to do so much more than the average psychopath. “Goodbye Finn” she remembered herself one day, as she and Finn had been out to a movie, but her head started to hurt, and she simply smiled, and Finn knew Elizabeth wasn’t herself but nodded and watched her go inside the house. Walking past her concerned parents who could see her starting to pull away, and it only escalated their own issues within their marriage. Walking into her room, she opened the safe, and took out the box and she saw the answer to trying to dull the ache inside her as she took the first pill was popped to escape the pain and nightmares that would flash into her mind and she escalated downhill until she was fully hooked and in Nicholas’s web.
To get the drugs and to escape the loneliness she felt, and the pain that came from the torment and the fear that she was not the girl she thought and now she regretted so much of her conduct. She was amazed Finn even wanted to talk to her after the number she had done on him and those few times they had hooked up, and he tried to get through to her as he could tell she was always stoned and drugged on other substances, but she wasn’t having it. So, finally they both ended it and she covered the numbness with more drugs, and more sex until she found out that she was pregnant with Emily and she did not know at the time who the father was…
Giving Emily to her parents seemed to be the ideal solution. Given who knows if the baby would be special like she was, but seeing Emily every day and knowing how much she had screwed up her daughter’s life and her own, and unable to get the help her parents wanted so desperately for her, she found her way back to the drugs and Nicholas came back and took back control over her and it went all to hell… as she looked down at an email that came through her phone, and she frowned once again and responded with a quick response. “You forced me to stay. You created the conditions that led to this. So, sorry if what I did messes with your plans. So, get me out of here or leave me alone.”
“So, what is the deal. What do they want?” Elizabeth murmured as she looked around at the sound of the door opening and she quickly moved her phone out of sight of her lawyer as Max walked into her hospital room. “This place is a lot roomier than I am used to but it’s a little unreal to be here”
“How are you doing?” Max wondered as he had seen her quick to move the phone out of his sight and he wondered what that was about…
“You know getting used to being free or at least not in the hell that I was with Nicholas anymore, well, it’s taking some getting used to. So, what did they say?” Elizabeth asked knowing Max was going to be seeking out the prosecutor and knew any potential deal was going to sting.
“They won’t waive the marriage certificate as evidence. So, I will work on it in court and find out more details about the judge,” Max muttered. “You only signed the paperwork, right. You never met this judge?”
“Nope,” Elizabeth shook her head. “Nicholas did it all and before I knew I was saying the vows he forced on me under his threats to go after Emily, so in my drugged-out state, since he didn’t want me to be at all sober because I might spill something he didn’t want me too. It was only later did I wake up to what I had done…”
“Okay, I will work on it and if need one, I’ll file for an annulment on your behalf…”
“You can do that?” Elizabeth as her eyes perked up at the thought of not being defined by the marriage.
“You meet many of the conditions, namely being underage and fraud and it will eliminate it from being official and therefore you won’t ever be considered married to Nicholas,” Max said to a rare smile from Elizabeth.
“But they can say I was married to him,” Elizabeth asked.
“I can say it was annulled,” Max nodded.
“Six years too late,” Elizabeth muttered. “Maybe I should just take the consequences of that stupid mistake.”
“You shouldn’t have to, and we want to show that it was another way Nicholas exercising control over you and forcing you to be with him…”
“That prosecutor doesn’t agree,” Elizabeth asked as if she knew what Max was going to say. “What is she offering?”
“10 years with possible parole after 5 for good behavior,” Max admitted, and Elizabeth went pale at the notion of a decade in prison as she winced. “Right now, you’re charged with manslaughter and Murder 2, and that could be upgraded if they find anything to say it was premeditated or planned”
“It wasn’t,” Elizabeth said quietly. “It was pure spur of the moment. If I had not killed him, then I would be dead today. I had to shoot him?”
“You did but your story to me at least is that he was on the ground… after you hit him over the head, and therefore the immediate danger had passed when you started shooting” Max murmured softly, and Elizabeth’s eyes went wild. “I know your probably snapped and, in that moment, you felt you had no choice?”
“I didn’t,” Elizabeth whispered. “I would be dead Max. I had to shoot him…”
“They are going to say that you could have run, that you should have tried to run if you felt your life was threatened. They found the door was locked, and the authorities had to burst it open inside the apartment to get to you. You started firing instead of running…”
“Max, I was never going to get out of that apartment alive and you know it. You even know it better than I do because there was no running. He always locked me in, and I had a bodyguard if I was allowed out of that apartment. He liked the sex kinky because it could keep me in handcuffs or tied up and I could not run, and I knew it. The drugs dimmed my powers and as I said to Belle, the lack of use made it so I only could do simple things or if I could then the lack of use made me a loose target and unreliable, and the knowledge how I screwed up during my imprisonment made me wary of trying again, so, yeah, the drugs dimmed them so he had more power than I ever could muster up in my defense Max.” Elizabeth said quietly with pain filling her eyes and Max couldn’t help but feel queasy listening to the extent of how bad it was for her… “If I tried to run and if he woke up and in a split second, he could have then he would have struck me dead in my spot. So, I was locked in, and there was no escaping that apartment. I had to shoot him Max. Nicholas was waking up and I knew I had to do it otherwise I would be dead.”
Silence descended on the room as Max did not know what to say as tears came to Elizabeth’s eyes. “I had to shoot him,” she repeated and then as the silence again came over the room, they heard audible gasps from the doorway, and they both whipped around and saw a very pale Jake, and Grace and a crying Maria.
“Mom,” Elizabeth said for the first time as she really got to see her mother. Jake and Grace very quietly as Maria rushed in and hugged her daughter as Elizabeth truly started to cry for the first time in this whole mess as she hugged her mother and glanced at her brother and best friend who were emotional. “I am so sorry about this” she said repeatedly faintly.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about honey. As it is not your fault that you went through hell,” Maria cried as she continued to hug her daughter as for the first time seven years she felt like she might be getting her daughter back despite the cruelty of the situation as they both hung on to each other for dear life, afraid of what would come next…
“Max, look, I know you are personally close to her family and so this has got to be rough for you to deal with on a personal level but I have to look at this with my professional side, and there is nothing to warrant overturning the marriage certificate as there is evidence she was there willingly as it has her name and her signature, and they have been verified as authentic. She could have left at any time?” Lead prosecutor Lisa Redstone muttered because she hated the case, but it was her case and she needed to make sure it came to a result that played for the office in the media. Whether he liked or hated the victim was besides the point. He was dead, and she had someone to try to convict on the death.
“That is ridiculous, and I am surprised to hear you subscribe to that myth when you have a fifteen year old who is tortured and left with lifelong scars, and then she’s seduced by the man who did it to her…by use of drugs and whatever else he had on her to the point of that she couldn’t leave if he forces her to be tied to him in ways that would humiliate her if it got out, into the public or simply in the eyes of her family. She was only sixteen, and she couldn’t have consented to something like marriage, due to her age.”
“It was signed off by a judge Max,” the prosecutor protested. “It was her signature on the license application, and it has been verified to be legitimate. So, it’s not some forgery”
“Who was disbarred,” Max demanded as he couldn’t believe the prosecutor was blind to the reality “For Christ sake Lisa, none of this looks on the up and up” he muttered. “This is too unbelievable”
“None of the allegations that got him removed from the bench has anything to do with anything unethical in his actual decisions or paperwork, so they all are being upheld,” Lisa sighed. “You simply will have to face it that she was there willingly…” she muttered as she felt for Max and knew this had to be eating at him, but still she had to go forth with it.
“The hell she was,” Max muttered as from her side of the case the prosecutor could tell Max was being pushed to the limits by this, and it’s not like personally she believed the victim was a decent guy or a wonderful human being but she had a dead body, and a bloody scene and someone who was seen at the crime scene with fingerprints all over the crime scene, and initially confessing and boasting that she was glad he was dead. “Then try to get the marriage annulled but until you do, still it will be part of the record and will almost certainly be used in her trial”
“He kidnapped her…” Max tried. “Lisa, for heaven’s sake she was kidnapped and tortured. You have the case notes as well as I do?”
“There is no proof,” the prosecutor answered back. “Yes, someone kidnapped your client and I do believe something hideous did happen to her, but it’s not proven that individual was this man. As much as it might comfort you or her family, to have someone to blame. We just can’t prove it.”
“There is blood evidence,” Max fought back. “And you think having someone to blame is a comfort? Bull. He vanished after the crime. We had him in custody, but we let him slip away when we have concrete evidence that ties him to it. It is not someone else out there, it was him and then he got her back into his web and her family lost the last seven years because of that man. Most of all. She lost seven years of her life because of that man. We should have gotten justice, and we didn’t and now he has found a way to hurt the family from the grave, and this time he might truly destroy them”
“You know as well as I do that blood evidence wasn’t examined because it disappeared within days of the recovery of Ms. Guerin” the prosecutor managed.
“Which doesn’t strike you as odd? The only suspect disappears and then the evidence that ties him to the scene also happens to disappear,” Max asked. “Of course, we also have witness testimony…”
“Of individuals who actually did commit the horrors to Elizabeth and whom are in jail for life because of their active participation in those events” the prosecutor answered. “We have nothing that ties him to what happened to her, Ms. Guerin was in a drugged state at the time and her memory was unreliable because she admitted to hallucinations and severe drug reliance. She was so mixed up that she couldn’t give a reliable description of the mastermind when she came to…”
“She was very reliable,” Max muttered as he knew how much they had not trusted his client’s word once she had recovered enough to make a statement. “She gave you a realistic description. But you did not do anything with it,” he gritted. “By allowing him to slip away, you allowed her to slip back into his grip” he said. “Fine, let us drop this but I will bring up the marriage stuff when we get to evidence if the case gets to trial. Let us talk about today. If my client will agree to a deal. What would you be willing to accept?”
“I can’t take anything without a significant time in prison” the prosecutor sighed as she did not like the insinuation that her office did not do anything with the sketch but dropped it. “She’s charged with Manslaughter and 2nd degree Murder, and the investigation isn’t over yet and therefore the charges might get upgraded.”
“Yes, I know,” Max said annoyed.
“It was a very violent crime Max,” the prosecutor muttered.
“She was fighting for her life,” Max said not mentioning that Nicholas was already on the ground when she started shooting…
“So, she says, but there is evidence her story might not be so solid” the prosecutor revealed. “So, she’s lucky I am willing to go with manslaughter and murder 2 at this point. If she is convicted, she’s looking at least 15 years on the murder charge?”
“She was protecting herself…”
“It would be wise to talk to your client and see what she’s willing to take. I can go 10 with possible parole after 5 with good behavior. Your client is only 23 and therefore she could still have a life when she’s released?”
“After the accused will have taken nearly 20 years of her life if she’s in jail the full term, yeah right?” Max muttered. “And if she’s out on the lower end of the sentence, still the bastard will have taken more than a decade from her life and she will have very little chance of making a life for herself and her kids won’t even know her…”
“She took someone’s life and it was very bloody, and it wasn’t one shot or even two it was a hell of a lot more. She wasn’t protecting herself by shooting him 10 times,” Lisa murmured. “And I am aware of her record which is a mile long. A long list or priors including a suspicious death that occurred during her imprisonment”
“They ruled self-defense and they didn’t charge her,” Max murmured as he knew they were lucky the authorities had ruled against charges for the death of one of Elizabeth’s captors. But he knew it made it now tricky that she was involved in another death…
“She ran out on serious charges last year?” Lisa murmured.
“Which are irrelevant to today’s matter” Max muttered. “None of that adds up to spending the critical part of her life in jail for a crime that happened because she was defending herself”
“It’s not shoplifting Max,” Lisa protested. “She took a life, and it is the second such offence, so to the public and the media it will look suspicious if I let her go so you should talk to you client. The office will be made mincemeat if we allow her off with a lenient sentence. So, make her see that she’s looking at serious time in prison if we can’t come to a deal and she will definitely lose out on being a part of her children’s lives…”
“I don’t think the media will have your head because the victim is not a saint and is more like the devil and if we go court, then the public will see what he did to my client,” Max murmured. “They won’t be crying out of the lack of justice” he sighed. “But fine, I’ll talk to my client” was all Max was willing to say but he knew they had to figure something out to prevent Elizabeth from spending up to 15 years in prison or longer.
“I know your client has had a troubled history since her abduction and we both know that the abduction is linked to her troubles and I am sorry about that, but I have a case to prosecute and I can’t be seen going to lightly on a murder and with this being the second death she has been involved in. I just can’t…”
Max knew the prosecution was in a tight spot and he didn’t envy them which made his side a tough to be on because he didn’t know how he could get his client out of this injustice as he didn’t know if Michael or Michael could make it if she did get sent to jail for a crime they already feel guilty about how they exposing their daughter to a life and to conditions that led to Nicholas to strike. Max could only nod as he left the office, praying for a sign.
*
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Carrie Evans exclaimed as they sat at Cow Patties as she waited to begin her shift and was meeting up with her sisters as Jake had gone to spend time with Eva before they went to the hospital to see Elizabeth, and Grace needed time out with her sisters, and to relax a little. “He’s a monster”
“It’s hell,” Grace acknowledged as she looked down at her iced tea as she did not want anything stronger despite the urge. Because it had been sickening to be in that apartment, and she had put up a convincing cover in front of Jake but knew how it had gotten to them both, and to know that Elizabeth had to endure all that, as she looked down at the files in front of her. She wanted to keep them in her position, as she read them and grew faint at what Nicholas had over them and was using to keep Elizabeth in line.
Most of the crimes would not be able to be prosecuted due to time limits but they would able to muddy the waters, and especially for Jim who was Sheriff or their father, who was a respected attorney. To know that Nicholas knew their secrets, which was not surprising she supposed but to use them and Elizabeth being so weak after her imprisonment, it was only natural for her to fall back under his spell…
“Marrying her when she was 16, that is downright criminal?” Alexandra muttered.
“Brazen,” Grace acknowledged and had plenty of anger at the system who seemed to have an issue with her and Jake despite it only being two years but they don’t bat an eye that Nicholas was able to abuse Elizabeth to such a degree, and not to have any questions about it. “He found a way to get at us once again…”
“At least he’s dead,” Carrie muttered as she checked her watch and knew it was almost time for her shift. “Are we supposed to feel sorry that he’s gone when he did something like this?”
“Yeah, there will be no tears. So, we need to figure out how to get her out of this mess,” Grace sighed as Carrie got up to go on duty and with the knowledge of what was lost when Nicholas struck their clan. “You know to careful, right, as I know you’re running a double?”
“I am always careful,” Carrie muttered to her older sister. “That is the one thing this all been good for, making sure of who we can trust?”
“Yeah,” Grace sighed as Carrie walked to punched in and started working behind the bar. “The secret files were vomiting inducing,” she thought as she turned her attention on her other sister. “There is a computer that we’re unable to get into yet.”
“Oh god,” Alexandra murmured at the thought “What do you think he had on it?” she asked as she took a sip of her drink.
“I don’t want to think about it,” Grace muttered. “Knowing what Nicholas used against Jake and me when we were younger.”
“That man was sick…” Alexandra muttered as both knew that she and Carrie had been guided by what had happened to Elizabeth and to Grace and Jake, and as a result, well, they had been very careful growing up once they came to Roswell and started high school at West Roswell High. They all knew that their mother and Max had wanted to stay in Las Cruces, but Grace wanted to do senior year and graduate with her friends, and so they moved back to Roswell, and crafted something new back in their parent’s hometown. But being back, it had forced everyone to be on guard, and to witness in real time Elizabeth spiraling before finally disappearing. To the kids growing up in her shadow, it had been a wakeup call for all of them that life was not innocent anymore and to be wary of what life wanted from them.
But then she and Carrie got to be with their father and sister and their mother found her soulmate and be happy, and yet everyone knew they saw a different story within the Guerin family. “Should we be worried?”
“For Elizabeth, yes” Grace sighed as she thought of her friend. “But Dad will help her…”
“I almost wish I wasn’t going to Washington” Alexandra sighed. “I would have liked to help out…”
“I actually think you and Carrie being away will allow us to focus because we won’t have to worry…” Grace sighed. “Not that we really have to worry with Nicholas gone, and I know Washington is your dream summer.”
“Yeah it is,” Alexandra smiled. “The internship is a dream come true, and I got lucky when I got picked.”
“Then Harvard will be calling again?”
“Do you miss it?” Alexandra asked her sister. She knew how her sister had been so excited to be accepted into the medical school, but she left after a year and come back to Roswell because the rumors that had existed back in high school for Jake had made their way to the police force in Boston and while they were willing to give him a job, still, it wasn’t the type of job he wanted and he knew they would be looking at him funny despite the allegations having no merit.
“We’re happy here,” Grace smiled. “Eva gets to see Mom and Dad and our grandparents often, and it does help Maria and Michael to see her, so it was something we needed to do, and it’s quite evident that Jake is much happier at the department here…” she said honestly. “I don’t have any regrets Alex. It is far better to be here because I cannot imagine being in Boston while everything is falling apart here at home. So, I know I have made the right decision.”
“We miss you in Boston…”
“You are too busy to miss me,” Grace laughed at all the activities Alexandra had scheduled when she was back at school, and was grateful that both Alexandra and Carrie who was going to Duke was happy and healthy because she knew how it could so far to the other side. “I just wish Elizabeth can find some peace?”
“Dad will help her…” Alexandra said confident that their father could help.
“I hope so…” Grace sighed as they watched Carrie as flirted with the some of the guys at the bar. “She’s having too much fun” she commented of their sister.
“She’s still hurting from that breakup with Justin,” Alexandra commented. “She insists that she’s done with guys.”
“I doubt that will last” Grace murmured as she knew Carrie always bounced between guys and had since she was a teenager and started to date, while Alexandra seemed to find the right guy for her soon after starting school in Roswell and they have stayed happily in love ever since, despite her being in Boston and he at Las Cruces.
“Who knows, Carrie has always been different” Alexandra commented as it was one more difference among the twin sisters as she had a steady boyfriend in Graham, who she had met in high school and Carrie was single these days “She did seem to love Justin, and he seemed different from any other guy she was interested in before, so I think it’s hurting her for it to be over”
*
Elizabeth was getting used to life in the hospital. It was a good deal different than being in a prison cell she mused, but still there was a level of discomfort knowing that she could easily be back in a jail cell and it was only a matter of time. She was told she had the ability to roam around the floor of the ward, but she was not allowed off the psych ward and she had an ankle monitor to make sure she stayed still. Still the bed was more comfortable, and she would like that.
She was told she would be meeting with the therapist who would making the report to the court the following day, and she knew she had to take this serious because no one had to tell her that she was looking at serious years in prison if she was found guilty.
She remembered the confused look on Finn’s face as she was led away. Sighing, she wished so much of her life had been different. She remembered laughing at how Grace and her brother seemed destined for the life they were apparently now living and saying that she wanted to play around and not settle down.
Now she wished she could. Playing around is not what it is cracked up to and she missed the comfort she found with Finn during that brief time they had together before it went all haywire. After she got better, and had been released from the hospital, well, she had tried to get back to the comfort with him, but it was too different, and she felt like a different person. Truthfully, she was, and she knew it. It was not only the tattoos, and in that regard, Finn was truly patient, but she knew that she was not that person anymore. “I wish I could help you?” she could remember hearing Finn to tell her as her mind replayed those days seven years ago, as it was apparent, she was starting to fade in her recovery. The dreams were starting, as she heard Nicholas taunts and they were keeping her awake and despite Finn being her shoulder, she couldn’t lean on him to tell him the truth about Nicholas because Nicholas was more than simply a monster, when he was an alien and had the capacity to do so much more than the average psychopath. “Goodbye Finn” she remembered herself one day, as she and Finn had been out to a movie, but her head started to hurt, and she simply smiled, and Finn knew Elizabeth wasn’t herself but nodded and watched her go inside the house. Walking past her concerned parents who could see her starting to pull away, and it only escalated their own issues within their marriage. Walking into her room, she opened the safe, and took out the box and she saw the answer to trying to dull the ache inside her as she took the first pill was popped to escape the pain and nightmares that would flash into her mind and she escalated downhill until she was fully hooked and in Nicholas’s web.
To get the drugs and to escape the loneliness she felt, and the pain that came from the torment and the fear that she was not the girl she thought and now she regretted so much of her conduct. She was amazed Finn even wanted to talk to her after the number she had done on him and those few times they had hooked up, and he tried to get through to her as he could tell she was always stoned and drugged on other substances, but she wasn’t having it. So, finally they both ended it and she covered the numbness with more drugs, and more sex until she found out that she was pregnant with Emily and she did not know at the time who the father was…
Giving Emily to her parents seemed to be the ideal solution. Given who knows if the baby would be special like she was, but seeing Emily every day and knowing how much she had screwed up her daughter’s life and her own, and unable to get the help her parents wanted so desperately for her, she found her way back to the drugs and Nicholas came back and took back control over her and it went all to hell… as she looked down at an email that came through her phone, and she frowned once again and responded with a quick response. “You forced me to stay. You created the conditions that led to this. So, sorry if what I did messes with your plans. So, get me out of here or leave me alone.”
“So, what is the deal. What do they want?” Elizabeth murmured as she looked around at the sound of the door opening and she quickly moved her phone out of sight of her lawyer as Max walked into her hospital room. “This place is a lot roomier than I am used to but it’s a little unreal to be here”
“How are you doing?” Max wondered as he had seen her quick to move the phone out of his sight and he wondered what that was about…
“You know getting used to being free or at least not in the hell that I was with Nicholas anymore, well, it’s taking some getting used to. So, what did they say?” Elizabeth asked knowing Max was going to be seeking out the prosecutor and knew any potential deal was going to sting.
“They won’t waive the marriage certificate as evidence. So, I will work on it in court and find out more details about the judge,” Max muttered. “You only signed the paperwork, right. You never met this judge?”
“Nope,” Elizabeth shook her head. “Nicholas did it all and before I knew I was saying the vows he forced on me under his threats to go after Emily, so in my drugged-out state, since he didn’t want me to be at all sober because I might spill something he didn’t want me too. It was only later did I wake up to what I had done…”
“Okay, I will work on it and if need one, I’ll file for an annulment on your behalf…”
“You can do that?” Elizabeth as her eyes perked up at the thought of not being defined by the marriage.
“You meet many of the conditions, namely being underage and fraud and it will eliminate it from being official and therefore you won’t ever be considered married to Nicholas,” Max said to a rare smile from Elizabeth.
“But they can say I was married to him,” Elizabeth asked.
“I can say it was annulled,” Max nodded.
“Six years too late,” Elizabeth muttered. “Maybe I should just take the consequences of that stupid mistake.”
“You shouldn’t have to, and we want to show that it was another way Nicholas exercising control over you and forcing you to be with him…”
“That prosecutor doesn’t agree,” Elizabeth asked as if she knew what Max was going to say. “What is she offering?”
“10 years with possible parole after 5 for good behavior,” Max admitted, and Elizabeth went pale at the notion of a decade in prison as she winced. “Right now, you’re charged with manslaughter and Murder 2, and that could be upgraded if they find anything to say it was premeditated or planned”
“It wasn’t,” Elizabeth said quietly. “It was pure spur of the moment. If I had not killed him, then I would be dead today. I had to shoot him?”
“You did but your story to me at least is that he was on the ground… after you hit him over the head, and therefore the immediate danger had passed when you started shooting” Max murmured softly, and Elizabeth’s eyes went wild. “I know your probably snapped and, in that moment, you felt you had no choice?”
“I didn’t,” Elizabeth whispered. “I would be dead Max. I had to shoot him…”
“They are going to say that you could have run, that you should have tried to run if you felt your life was threatened. They found the door was locked, and the authorities had to burst it open inside the apartment to get to you. You started firing instead of running…”
“Max, I was never going to get out of that apartment alive and you know it. You even know it better than I do because there was no running. He always locked me in, and I had a bodyguard if I was allowed out of that apartment. He liked the sex kinky because it could keep me in handcuffs or tied up and I could not run, and I knew it. The drugs dimmed my powers and as I said to Belle, the lack of use made it so I only could do simple things or if I could then the lack of use made me a loose target and unreliable, and the knowledge how I screwed up during my imprisonment made me wary of trying again, so, yeah, the drugs dimmed them so he had more power than I ever could muster up in my defense Max.” Elizabeth said quietly with pain filling her eyes and Max couldn’t help but feel queasy listening to the extent of how bad it was for her… “If I tried to run and if he woke up and in a split second, he could have then he would have struck me dead in my spot. So, I was locked in, and there was no escaping that apartment. I had to shoot him Max. Nicholas was waking up and I knew I had to do it otherwise I would be dead.”
Silence descended on the room as Max did not know what to say as tears came to Elizabeth’s eyes. “I had to shoot him,” she repeated and then as the silence again came over the room, they heard audible gasps from the doorway, and they both whipped around and saw a very pale Jake, and Grace and a crying Maria.
“Mom,” Elizabeth said for the first time as she really got to see her mother. Jake and Grace very quietly as Maria rushed in and hugged her daughter as Elizabeth truly started to cry for the first time in this whole mess as she hugged her mother and glanced at her brother and best friend who were emotional. “I am so sorry about this” she said repeatedly faintly.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about honey. As it is not your fault that you went through hell,” Maria cried as she continued to hug her daughter as for the first time seven years she felt like she might be getting her daughter back despite the cruelty of the situation as they both hung on to each other for dear life, afraid of what would come next…
-
keepsmiling7
- Roswell Fanatic
- Posts: 2649
- Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 9:34 pm
Re: Always Tomorrow (CC, Mature) - A Reunion's Endgame - Chapter 9 - 06/06/2020
It appears that Max is having a difficult time with Elizabeth's case.
No proof.......blood evidence disappeared...??
Poor Elizabeth was trapped by Nicholas.......
And now what lies ahead in her future?
No proof.......blood evidence disappeared...??
Poor Elizabeth was trapped by Nicholas.......
And now what lies ahead in her future?
-
Parker1947
- Obsessed Roswellian
- Posts: 642
- Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:34 pm
Always Tomorrow - Chapter 10 - 06/08/2020
“So, we’re truly family now?” Elizabeth said quietly a few minutes later as she stopped being hugged by her mother and she had a chance to hug her brother and then Grace. “That seems right,” she murmured as Max stood back and watched and diverted the tough talk for the moment as he knew that Elizabeth needed to see her family and to know she wasn’t defined by the horrors she had experienced, and the fact they couldn’t have helped her. He could only wish he could have helped her, but Nicholas was too much of a bastard, and thankfully he was dead, but he just prayed he did not take Elizabeth down with him. “Belle told me!”
“I wished she would have told us where she was, and we didn’t have to find out by other methods” Maria muttered.
“She was worried about you and Dad,” Elizabeth commented. “She’s mad at me for screwing up our family,” she muttered and saw her mother’s reaction.
“You didn’t screw up anything Elizabeth,” Maria murmured. “We screwed you up and your brothers and sisters when we didn’t properly protect you guys from our past, and we took our eyes of the ball too much and we left the enemy walk right in the front door” she sighed as she watched Max who nodded as none of them could imagine that the enemy had been Nicholas and what he could have been capable until he struck and then there was no coming back from the carnage…
“To Belle I am why the family is where it is,” Elizabeth muttered as she thought of her baby sister, and how much time had gone by and what she had missed. “She’s so big…”
“Yeah, she is” Maria nodded. “She’s going to be a headache…”
“That’s for sure,” Jake muttered as he knew firsthand how their sister was already given their parents a hard time, and she was not even a teenager officially until August. Belle had seen too much and experienced too much to be a simple child, and he hated that for her. He wished she could have had their childhood, and not the complicated mess of the last seven years.
“We wanted you at the wedding,” Grace said quietly, and Elizabeth nodded as she hated to have missed it. “We were thinking of you the whole time.”
“I wish I could have been there,” Elizabeth muttered as she cursed Nicholas some more If I had gotten rid of him a whole lot sooner, she mused to herself. But then she knew she had not been sober back then and who knows if she had come back to her family if she was still high and stoned all the time.
“What were you talking about when we arrived?” Maria asked. “Is there a deal?”
“Nothing formally offered but a possible tentative one which is 10 years with good behavior, out in 5” Max said softly and knew how that would land on Maria.
“Hell no,” Maria swore, and Jake and Grace were as indignant at the mere thought of a decade in prison.
“Mom,” Elizabeth tried.
“She’s not going to jail for 10 years for a death that should have happened 7 years ago if myself or Michael had gotten a hold on him” Maria swore as Elizabeth shook her head and watched Max. Jake and Grace pale at the mere thought of such a sentence but Max also knew that it might be the easiest sentence they could get unless for some reason he could convince the prosecution to come up with another one, that wasn’t so terrifying as she sighed as he glanced at Elizabeth who nodded, because Elizabeth knew what she was facing.
“She’s risking way worse if they find somehow to upgrade her charges, or if they don’t and she’s convicted on the most serious of the charges, which is murder 2. She is looking at least 15 years and since this is the second death that she was part of it, the judge is unlikely to be lenient Maria. As much as it pains me to say?”
“Why would they upgrade the charge?” Grace asked.
“If they find evidence of planning or premeditation” Jake said worried for his sister because he had seen too much of it his job. “If they don’t believe it was spur of the moment?”
“It was,” Elizabeth promised.
“I believe you, but the prosecutor already doubts your version of what went down, and she doesn’t know half the stuff I do” Max muttered. “They already have questions and they are going to find holes?”
“What holes?” Elizabeth asked.
“You said it yourself that you thought he was getting tired of you and was looking at another angle” Max asked deliberately not mentioning the possibility that Belle was one of the targets when she got older and Elizabeth winced. “That isn’t very spur of the moment because they will say it jealousy?”
“The last thing I was jealous of Nicholas or wanted him to pay attention to me” Elizabeth muttered. “If he was tired of me, all the better for me except he would have likely killed me and was probably planning on it” she murmured to the revulsion in her brother, mother, and Grace. “I just don’t like the idea he was looking for other targets?”
“You said you were pregnant, but you got rid of it without Nicholas knowing about it, but you just said he kept you locked up” Max asked.
“As I said I was allowed out on occasion, and especially when he was off doing whatever crap he did, and could whenever I was pregnant loosened the restrictions because he wanted the baby to born healthy, but even then they didn’t completely end” Elizabeth explained. “I still had to have a bodyguard escort me nearly everywhere, or whenever I was allowed out on my own… he had someone follow me unless I found a way to circumvent it”
“Then how did you get the abortion?” Max asked. “Without word getting back to Nicholas?”
“I waited until Nicholas did one of his disappearances and I did what I did best, and I seduced the bodyguard and tied him up enough to get of the apartment and have the procedure, and then made sure he was gone so to protect him from Nicholas’s wrath, I explained he disappeared and left me in the lurch” Elizabeth muttered. “I was fully recovered by the time Nicholas returned, and the con was on, and he continued to believe the baby was real until the big showdown.”
“But it sounds like you had the ability to get free, so why stay?” Max asked.
“He had me tied up at night, which is how he liked the sex” Elizabeth said the horror of her mother, who looked away. Jake did too as Grace took his hand. “I was able to bust out of them in the morning, but still most of his guys were loyal to him. I was able to weaken one or two of them, but that was never going to be constant thing, so I got lucky that once… still Nicholas kept me under lock and key, and I didn’t have the ability to get out unless I had an escort and if I was on my own then I was always fearful that Nicholas would find me. Those neighbors in the paper lied when they said I was coming and going, and I was an intimate partner of Nicholas. I was, but come on, you would really think Nicholas would let the neighbors see me, given his treatment of me and the scars he was inflicting on me, and especially when I had the kids with me, so I don’t know how they could have seen me given we always kept to the apartment and barely saw anyone that was in the building.”
“It’s probably people wanting to comment without really knowing the full story. They want to believe they should have known and could have helped when behind closed doors existed a life that was too good at fooling the outside world ,” Max murmured as he seen too much of his in his work “Unless they saw something and didn’t talk?”
“Nicholas wouldn’t have been that stupid,” Elizabeth commented.
“Anyways, you said you were drug free for some six months, why not let your powers get stronger and use them to get free?” Max asked. “Until then I know he had a hold on you with the drugs and the blackmail, but why stay when the drugs stopped…”
“He would have found me,” Elizabeth murmured “He found me in that hospital and forced me out,” she murmured. “He has spies, and he would have used his position as my husband to force me to go anywhere and I couldn’t come back here because I feared if I did, he would use the material he had on you guys. So, there was nowhere to be safe, unless he was dead”
“Which gets us incredibly lucky that you’re only charged with Murder 2 and Manslaughter. If they figure out the only way out of there is to kill him, they will think you planned to kill him. Being off drugs for the last six months allowed you the clarity to see your only way out which would have been by killing him especially word of the blackmail which we were able to get to before the cops found a way into that safe. So, we know what he had on you...”
Elizabeth turned into a ghost.
“We don’t blame you,” Jake sighed as he thought of the pictures they had seen and the blackmail material which detailed all the crimes the family could have gone down for but didn’t for one reason or the fact they got lucky having Jim on their side. “What he did to you was a crime, and it was illegal…”
Elizabeth remained silent as she heard Jake’s words, but she knew they were all talk and no sincerity. “I couldn’t do it to the family… those pictures, and to know how much I had hurt you all…”
“We failed you Elizabeth,” Maria cried. “We should have protected you… We let you down, and it is not your fault that Nicholas got to you. We should have never put ourselves into the situation where we could have let Nicholas get to you, or anyone for that matter… and especially not to give him the opportunity to use you to get to us…”
“I should have told you Nicholas was back” Elizabeth whispered.
“You were hurting, and we wanted to help you, but we only drove you away” Maria whispered as she grabbed her daughter’s hands and paled when she saw the scarred arms. “We failed you. We were your parents, and we should have protected you…”
Tears came down Elizabeth’s face as she looked at Max and whispered. “I never planned on killing him, honest. It was pure spur of the moment because he was going to kill me, I told you that. He was moments away from succeeding” Elizabeth murmured quietly. “It was either start shooting, or I would be dead, for good this time.”
“But he was on the floor when you fired the first shot and never stopped.”
“It never occurred me to kill him until I had the gun in my hand, and I snapped. I saw only one way out. I told you that he was starting to wake up, and if he did then he would have zapped me dead. I didn’t have a choice…”
Max sighed.
“I promise you Uncle Max, it never occurred me to kill him,” Elizabeth murmured. “In the back of my mind I probably thought he would win on that score, which he is because I was immediately arrested and looking at years in prison. It would be a victory to be dead, which it is.”
“He’s not going to win….”
“Given he is dead, and I am here, then it is obvious guys that he has won” Elizabeth murmured as the pain in the memories filled her heart as the despair returned to her face “That is why I planned to kill myself. I never planned to kill him, only myself” she blurted to the horror of her family as the words seeped out. “That was my way out. If I were dead then Nicholas would believe he won, and he wouldn’t have come after my family because he would have scored the biggest victory by forcing me to kill myself” she cried. “And he would be only opening himself up for trouble if he showed up here. You guys would have him dead in no time flat, so I was counting on…”
“Oh no,” Maria whispered in pure anguish as she remembered the fear, they all had when she disappeared, and they found the note and informed the family, and to know it was truly attempted suicide escape. “Please no…”
“It wasn’t my first suicide attempt,” Elizabeth admitted as she showed her scarred arms to much flinching “but it never worked because Nicholas always found a way to step in, and then finally I thought I had it figured out. I planned it, and I thought I had a way to make it work this time. I waited until Nicholas disappeared on one of his missions or whatever the crap he does when he is not ruining my life. Then I phoned the tip into Child Welfare so they would take the boys away…”
“Oh my god,” Grace breathed.
“I had to get them to safety. I could not keep them in that apartment a moment longer and especially if I succeeded in killed myself. Mom, I hoped they would contact you and Dad, and you would take the boys, so they could be close to you guys and Emily,” Elizabeth sighed to the horror of her mother. “I knew you guys would take care of them or I hoped you would. So, I made myself look unfit but that that place made it easy to look totally unstable and unable to care for two growing boys. So, they removed the children, and then I drugged one of the guards, so I got out. I was high as you can be, and I made sure I got arrested by coming onto a beyond obvious undercover cop. I got thrown into jail, and I thought if they thought I was some crazy addict prostitute that they would not care if I die. Then after wedging a piece of metal off the bed, I slit my wrists. I nearly succeeded in killing myself if they had not found me and got me to the hospital in time. When I came to, I knew they had called Dad. I was barely conscious, and later I came too, and I knew I was too lucid for them to hold me, and they would eventually return me to jail. I knew Nicholas would find me, but I didn’t count on him having a spy in the that hospital and he got notified and just when I thought I could kill myself with a noose I made myself, he showed up and drugged me and made me disappear. So, there, my intention was never to kill Nicholas. It was to kill myself. I failed big time and my punishment was to live without my kids and try to find another way but this time he was not leaving me alone. Then I found out I was pregnant, and I knew I could not let Nicholas win after taking so much, and so that started the countdown of the last six months.”
“Hell,” Jake said as he watched his kid sister fall apart in his arms as he stared helplessly at his mother and wife.
“It never occurred to me to kill him until I snapped and started shooting,” Elizabeth muttered as she tried to compose herself and tried to pick herself up. “Truly guys, I snapped and started shooting and with that first shot, it was like liberation took over, so I kept going until there was no more bullets in the gun and then they burst the door open and grabbed me…”
Max sighed as he observed the pain and the hurt on his goddaughter’s face and the horror that was seeping into Maria’s soul at the thought of how close they had come to losing Elizabeth without a chance to make it right, as he knew this was going to get very messy…
“Oh, it’s you,” Michael said as he opened the door and found his long-time friend Isabel. “I was expecting my wife, and it’s making me worry” he muttered as he hadn’t been able to reach his wife as Maria had gone silent and hadn’t sent him word of where she had gone off to, and now it made him think of so many things.
“That’s a nice greeting,” Isabel sighed and allowed the dismissive tone to roll of her back. “Where’s Maria?”
“I have no idea,” Michael murmured as they walked into the house “She was upset about what happened in court, and when we got home. She said she was going for a walk, and she has not returned home. It’s getting me to worry…”
“I am sure she is fine,” Isabel insisted. “She needs to blow off some steam. It was a very emotional time in court” she sighed. “To find out what you guys found out, so she needs some time to get her head together and it beats coming back to the house and taking it out on you or the kids, so she needs time”
“I know, which is why I hate this…” Michael said as he thought of the newest attack on their family. “Little by little we were starting to make up ground and then this comes back to the forefront to knock us down. To see Elizabeth in so much trouble and to know she was in so much danger, and we did not know where she was and we could have helped her, if only we had known.”
“She wouldn’t have allowed you too,” Isabel sighed. “She was thinking she was protecting us, and she felt like she needed to do this on her own.”
“Blackmail. Nicholas had all our secrets and was threatening to turn them over” Michael sighed. “Would he have, I don’t know because we could have exposed him and the statute of limitation on most of them had run out. The authorities would never be able to put up a compelling case, but Max is right. The burden we have put on our kids to keep our secrets?”
“You mean about who we are?” Isabel asked. “And not just about our laundry list of crimes…”
Michael nodded. “I thought because the families knew that it would be simpler because that was half the battle in hiding from your parents, or Maria’s mother and Liz’s parents but I can’t help but think that hiding it from the public at large has caused more of a burden on the newer generations because they have to be even more careful than we ever did, and they have to be protective when they shouldn’t have to because so many times it could gotten out there into society, and today with social media and video files that can catch onto things we don’t even think about… Our kids have had to grow up faster than we did. It was much simpler to hide who we were back in our day?”
“We just had different hurdles,” Isabel sighed. “It wasn’t any easier, but it was different level…” she allowed. “It only seems simpler because of what Elizabeth has had to deal with, and cope with and what all of them have to deal with on any given day.”
“Well I want those days back,” Michael grumbled. “It has to be better than what we have dealt with over the last seven years. Not knowing whether we would be called on to bury our daughter and the last five when she had vanished. Why could not our enemies leave us alone. We didn’t want to hurt them, we just wanted to be left alone”
Because they envied that we found happy lives here on Earth. We were forced off Antar, and they wanted our new world to be not better than the one had there and from all we know. All our lives are immeasurably better for getting off Antar and find who we wanted to love, and not forced to mate with due to social convictions of our planet. We all got who we loved, and they couldn’t handle it and so they went about destroying it”
“We took our eyes off the threats” Michael sighed. “Or worse of all, we were focused on the wrong places, like us and not our kids.”
“It’s not like Elizabeth wanted your help in the aftermath. She was falling apart, and she wasn’t taking anyone’s help” Isabel asked. “She was in pain, and we did see that she was crying out, but she wasn’t allowing us to be there for her, and she was turning away those of us who were trying to be there for her, and she felt like she had to do it all on her own.”
“Because of Nicholas,” Michael said with murderous glare in his eyes.
“And because of the pain, and the trauma and she was dealing with in the aftermath and she couldn’t come to us because we wanted her to get better be the old Elizabeth and because of who she was, she felt like she should be magically better but she wasn’t, as she felt like she wasn’t the girl she once was, and could never be, and she felt the drugs were a better solution so she slipped away from us. But Michael she is back now, and so maybe we can help her today. We failed her in the past, but today is a new day.”
“Is it because she’s facing the rest of her life in prison,” Michael sighed. “She will miss out on her kids, and our lives and we’ll have to visit her behind cement walls” he murmured as he did not relish the future and what it meant for his oldest daughter. “Nicholas is going to win again isn’t he. He’s dead, and yet he’s celebrating and not rotting six feet under like he should be,” he said with hatred in his eyes as he wished he had done something to prevent this nightmare.
“That night Michael, we didn’t know” Isabel sighed as she remembered back to that day just as much as Michael did as she carried much of the guilt of what they couldn’t prevent as before their eyes, Elizabeth was taken “How were we to know this was his plan…?”
“We should have known because we had enough warning that he was going after our kids” Michael muttered as he wanted to punch someone as he remembered back and knew that how they were warned with the attacks on Grace. “Liz was the warmup, and we failed to see the warning signs before we fell into their trap.”
“Grandpa,” said a small voice and Michael and Isabel twisted around to see little Drew looking at them. She could only laugh and the littlest of them being able to sneak into a room without a fuss and overhear conversation they should not have been exposed to.
“Yes Drew?” Michael asked annoyed but the sight of the little face did allow his blood pressure to come down a few notches but still was annoyed because he had asked Belle to keep an eye on her nephew, and of course the kid was now downstairs. “What’s wrong?”
“I heard Aunt Belle talking on the phone. Is it true Mommy is back!” Drew Jacob asked his grandfather and Michael silently cursed as he did not want to have to deal with the boys finding out until he knew more about Elizabeth’s status because it would not help anyone.
“What did you hear?” Isabel asked the pint size little boy and she could not help but notice how Drew was looking more and more like Michael, but she found he had a quality that led to his mystery father whoever he was.
“I heard her talking about Mommy,” Drew asked.
“It’s a long story,” Michael muttered. “What did you hear?”
“Is Mommy okay?” Drew asked wary of the diversion his grandfather was giving him as he was evident already how smart the little boy was as his face turned into a pint size frown. “That bad man didn’t hurt her, right?” he asked scared and it twisted Isabel’s stomach to know that Drew had seen too much during his time with Elizabeth and Nicholas.
“What bad man?” Michael asked as he knelt in front of his eldest grandson and asked for the first-time what Drew knew about Nicholas. Until now, they had kept the subject unasked, because it would have brought too much they did not want to know and now both he and Isabel wondered what Drew had seen.
“The bad man who made Mommy, me and Mick live with him” Drew asked. “I don’t like him, he hurt Mommy, and made her cry” Drew said sadly as he still remembered his mother crying when she said good-bye to him and little Mick.
Jesus Isabel muttered as Michael went dangerous in his glare at his friend as he tried keep his glance from the boy.
“Your Mom is doing okay, okay Drew” Isabel assured the little boy. “We know she misses you and your brother.”
Drew nodded.
“Can you tell us what you saw?” Isabel asked tenderly of the little boy as Michael squirmed.
“Mommy hurt, that bad man who make her scream and she always had bruises and scratches, and bleeding sometimes but she tried to keep that from me, but I noticed” Drew murmured as Michael paled and wanted to curse but he couldn’t because it would be mean revealing too much to the little boy and Isabel knew Michael was falling apart.
“Go Michael, try to calm yourself okay. I’ll stay here with Drew” Isabel encouraged his friend as she could see the anger rising in her friend and Michael knew it so he nodded and stormed off into the kitchen and she heard the backdoor slam shut which meant he was going to out to let some steam out in the back yard “Your Grandpa is upset,” he assured the boy. “We just need to give some time. Drew about your mommy, you were too small?” Isabel asked of the boy.
“But I knew,” Drew muttered as he remembered all. “Mommy is okay, right? Grandpa and Grandma are upset, and Belle is even, and I just know it’s Mommy.”
“I promise you your Mommy is going to be fine. Your grandparents will make sure of it,” Isabel assured the boy. “Drew, can you tell me, was that bad man your Daddy?”
“No,” Drew shook his head with great force. “Mommy told me that we had to live with that man because of a mistake she made…” he said softly, and Isabel wanted to curse out loud, but restrained herself. “She said my Daddy is a nice man, who she wished she hadn’t been mean to him and that things could be different.”
Hmmm. Isabel murmured to herself.
“Did Mommy go to see your friend?” Drew asked as Isabel frowned when she heard those words.
“What do you mean Drew?” Isabel asked.
“Mommy, when she said good-bye to me and Mick when that lady came to take us. She said we would be happy, and that maybe she’ll see us one day, but she had to go a pretty place and meet up with Grandma’s friend, and that she loved us and never to forget her”
“Did she give you a name?” Isabel asked confused as she did not know who Elizabeth could have told Drew of.
“His name was Alex….” Drew said as he knew he said something bad when Isabel’s face dropped, and then there was loud sound of a glass breaking and she looked up and saw Belle’s wild eyes, and tears coming down her face.
“Did I say something?” Drew asked Isabel and then her aunt Belle.
“No, how about you go and get yourself a glass and your aunt a new glass. I need to talk to Belle for a minute, okay Drew” Isabel asked as the little boy nodded and left through the kitchen door as she eyed her niece with a stern look. “Don’t ever tell that boy what your sister was actually referring to, okay. You are to let him think it was a nice place, and he would have seen his mother again?”
Belle silently nodded as tears continued to come to her eyes. “She wanted to die, didn’t she?” she asked. “She was planning on dying?” she muttered as she was forced to reconcile the fact her sister was planning on killing herself.
Isabel did not answer and went looking for Michael as Belle started to cry as the door opened and her brother Liam came in the house and dropped his bag on the floor. Confused, he looked at his younger sister. “Oh god, now, what?”
“Nothing,” Belle said as she worked to wipe the tears away because at least some good was coming from this disaster that her family was making a beeline back to the family home, and she did not feel so alone anymore. “Nothing at all…” she said and hugged her big brother and tried to forget how they had almost lost their older sister without knowing it, or that their fears had almost come true.
“What is this about?” Liam asked as he was confused by the sudden hug as Belle had for months turned into a sullen teen before even turning thirteen and it was not in her nature to be happy to see him.
“Nothing just wanted to hug you” Belle smiled as she successfully wiped away the last tear as she looked around expecting to see her other brother.
“So, where is Colin?”
“Where else…” Liam laughed as they walked into the kitchen.
“Right,” Belle laughed out loud. “Oh boy, Mom and Dad are going to love that…” she said as they started to talk, and she soon was focused on friendly family drama than the darker parts of their family.
“I wished she would have told us where she was, and we didn’t have to find out by other methods” Maria muttered.
“She was worried about you and Dad,” Elizabeth commented. “She’s mad at me for screwing up our family,” she muttered and saw her mother’s reaction.
“You didn’t screw up anything Elizabeth,” Maria murmured. “We screwed you up and your brothers and sisters when we didn’t properly protect you guys from our past, and we took our eyes of the ball too much and we left the enemy walk right in the front door” she sighed as she watched Max who nodded as none of them could imagine that the enemy had been Nicholas and what he could have been capable until he struck and then there was no coming back from the carnage…
“To Belle I am why the family is where it is,” Elizabeth muttered as she thought of her baby sister, and how much time had gone by and what she had missed. “She’s so big…”
“Yeah, she is” Maria nodded. “She’s going to be a headache…”
“That’s for sure,” Jake muttered as he knew firsthand how their sister was already given their parents a hard time, and she was not even a teenager officially until August. Belle had seen too much and experienced too much to be a simple child, and he hated that for her. He wished she could have had their childhood, and not the complicated mess of the last seven years.
“We wanted you at the wedding,” Grace said quietly, and Elizabeth nodded as she hated to have missed it. “We were thinking of you the whole time.”
“I wish I could have been there,” Elizabeth muttered as she cursed Nicholas some more If I had gotten rid of him a whole lot sooner, she mused to herself. But then she knew she had not been sober back then and who knows if she had come back to her family if she was still high and stoned all the time.
“What were you talking about when we arrived?” Maria asked. “Is there a deal?”
“Nothing formally offered but a possible tentative one which is 10 years with good behavior, out in 5” Max said softly and knew how that would land on Maria.
“Hell no,” Maria swore, and Jake and Grace were as indignant at the mere thought of a decade in prison.
“Mom,” Elizabeth tried.
“She’s not going to jail for 10 years for a death that should have happened 7 years ago if myself or Michael had gotten a hold on him” Maria swore as Elizabeth shook her head and watched Max. Jake and Grace pale at the mere thought of such a sentence but Max also knew that it might be the easiest sentence they could get unless for some reason he could convince the prosecution to come up with another one, that wasn’t so terrifying as she sighed as he glanced at Elizabeth who nodded, because Elizabeth knew what she was facing.
“She’s risking way worse if they find somehow to upgrade her charges, or if they don’t and she’s convicted on the most serious of the charges, which is murder 2. She is looking at least 15 years and since this is the second death that she was part of it, the judge is unlikely to be lenient Maria. As much as it pains me to say?”
“Why would they upgrade the charge?” Grace asked.
“If they find evidence of planning or premeditation” Jake said worried for his sister because he had seen too much of it his job. “If they don’t believe it was spur of the moment?”
“It was,” Elizabeth promised.
“I believe you, but the prosecutor already doubts your version of what went down, and she doesn’t know half the stuff I do” Max muttered. “They already have questions and they are going to find holes?”
“What holes?” Elizabeth asked.
“You said it yourself that you thought he was getting tired of you and was looking at another angle” Max asked deliberately not mentioning the possibility that Belle was one of the targets when she got older and Elizabeth winced. “That isn’t very spur of the moment because they will say it jealousy?”
“The last thing I was jealous of Nicholas or wanted him to pay attention to me” Elizabeth muttered. “If he was tired of me, all the better for me except he would have likely killed me and was probably planning on it” she murmured to the revulsion in her brother, mother, and Grace. “I just don’t like the idea he was looking for other targets?”
“You said you were pregnant, but you got rid of it without Nicholas knowing about it, but you just said he kept you locked up” Max asked.
“As I said I was allowed out on occasion, and especially when he was off doing whatever crap he did, and could whenever I was pregnant loosened the restrictions because he wanted the baby to born healthy, but even then they didn’t completely end” Elizabeth explained. “I still had to have a bodyguard escort me nearly everywhere, or whenever I was allowed out on my own… he had someone follow me unless I found a way to circumvent it”
“Then how did you get the abortion?” Max asked. “Without word getting back to Nicholas?”
“I waited until Nicholas did one of his disappearances and I did what I did best, and I seduced the bodyguard and tied him up enough to get of the apartment and have the procedure, and then made sure he was gone so to protect him from Nicholas’s wrath, I explained he disappeared and left me in the lurch” Elizabeth muttered. “I was fully recovered by the time Nicholas returned, and the con was on, and he continued to believe the baby was real until the big showdown.”
“But it sounds like you had the ability to get free, so why stay?” Max asked.
“He had me tied up at night, which is how he liked the sex” Elizabeth said the horror of her mother, who looked away. Jake did too as Grace took his hand. “I was able to bust out of them in the morning, but still most of his guys were loyal to him. I was able to weaken one or two of them, but that was never going to be constant thing, so I got lucky that once… still Nicholas kept me under lock and key, and I didn’t have the ability to get out unless I had an escort and if I was on my own then I was always fearful that Nicholas would find me. Those neighbors in the paper lied when they said I was coming and going, and I was an intimate partner of Nicholas. I was, but come on, you would really think Nicholas would let the neighbors see me, given his treatment of me and the scars he was inflicting on me, and especially when I had the kids with me, so I don’t know how they could have seen me given we always kept to the apartment and barely saw anyone that was in the building.”
“It’s probably people wanting to comment without really knowing the full story. They want to believe they should have known and could have helped when behind closed doors existed a life that was too good at fooling the outside world ,” Max murmured as he seen too much of his in his work “Unless they saw something and didn’t talk?”
“Nicholas wouldn’t have been that stupid,” Elizabeth commented.
“Anyways, you said you were drug free for some six months, why not let your powers get stronger and use them to get free?” Max asked. “Until then I know he had a hold on you with the drugs and the blackmail, but why stay when the drugs stopped…”
“He would have found me,” Elizabeth murmured “He found me in that hospital and forced me out,” she murmured. “He has spies, and he would have used his position as my husband to force me to go anywhere and I couldn’t come back here because I feared if I did, he would use the material he had on you guys. So, there was nowhere to be safe, unless he was dead”
“Which gets us incredibly lucky that you’re only charged with Murder 2 and Manslaughter. If they figure out the only way out of there is to kill him, they will think you planned to kill him. Being off drugs for the last six months allowed you the clarity to see your only way out which would have been by killing him especially word of the blackmail which we were able to get to before the cops found a way into that safe. So, we know what he had on you...”
Elizabeth turned into a ghost.
“We don’t blame you,” Jake sighed as he thought of the pictures they had seen and the blackmail material which detailed all the crimes the family could have gone down for but didn’t for one reason or the fact they got lucky having Jim on their side. “What he did to you was a crime, and it was illegal…”
Elizabeth remained silent as she heard Jake’s words, but she knew they were all talk and no sincerity. “I couldn’t do it to the family… those pictures, and to know how much I had hurt you all…”
“We failed you Elizabeth,” Maria cried. “We should have protected you… We let you down, and it is not your fault that Nicholas got to you. We should have never put ourselves into the situation where we could have let Nicholas get to you, or anyone for that matter… and especially not to give him the opportunity to use you to get to us…”
“I should have told you Nicholas was back” Elizabeth whispered.
“You were hurting, and we wanted to help you, but we only drove you away” Maria whispered as she grabbed her daughter’s hands and paled when she saw the scarred arms. “We failed you. We were your parents, and we should have protected you…”
Tears came down Elizabeth’s face as she looked at Max and whispered. “I never planned on killing him, honest. It was pure spur of the moment because he was going to kill me, I told you that. He was moments away from succeeding” Elizabeth murmured quietly. “It was either start shooting, or I would be dead, for good this time.”
“But he was on the floor when you fired the first shot and never stopped.”
“It never occurred me to kill him until I had the gun in my hand, and I snapped. I saw only one way out. I told you that he was starting to wake up, and if he did then he would have zapped me dead. I didn’t have a choice…”
Max sighed.
“I promise you Uncle Max, it never occurred me to kill him,” Elizabeth murmured. “In the back of my mind I probably thought he would win on that score, which he is because I was immediately arrested and looking at years in prison. It would be a victory to be dead, which it is.”
“He’s not going to win….”
“Given he is dead, and I am here, then it is obvious guys that he has won” Elizabeth murmured as the pain in the memories filled her heart as the despair returned to her face “That is why I planned to kill myself. I never planned to kill him, only myself” she blurted to the horror of her family as the words seeped out. “That was my way out. If I were dead then Nicholas would believe he won, and he wouldn’t have come after my family because he would have scored the biggest victory by forcing me to kill myself” she cried. “And he would be only opening himself up for trouble if he showed up here. You guys would have him dead in no time flat, so I was counting on…”
“Oh no,” Maria whispered in pure anguish as she remembered the fear, they all had when she disappeared, and they found the note and informed the family, and to know it was truly attempted suicide escape. “Please no…”
“It wasn’t my first suicide attempt,” Elizabeth admitted as she showed her scarred arms to much flinching “but it never worked because Nicholas always found a way to step in, and then finally I thought I had it figured out. I planned it, and I thought I had a way to make it work this time. I waited until Nicholas disappeared on one of his missions or whatever the crap he does when he is not ruining my life. Then I phoned the tip into Child Welfare so they would take the boys away…”
“Oh my god,” Grace breathed.
“I had to get them to safety. I could not keep them in that apartment a moment longer and especially if I succeeded in killed myself. Mom, I hoped they would contact you and Dad, and you would take the boys, so they could be close to you guys and Emily,” Elizabeth sighed to the horror of her mother. “I knew you guys would take care of them or I hoped you would. So, I made myself look unfit but that that place made it easy to look totally unstable and unable to care for two growing boys. So, they removed the children, and then I drugged one of the guards, so I got out. I was high as you can be, and I made sure I got arrested by coming onto a beyond obvious undercover cop. I got thrown into jail, and I thought if they thought I was some crazy addict prostitute that they would not care if I die. Then after wedging a piece of metal off the bed, I slit my wrists. I nearly succeeded in killing myself if they had not found me and got me to the hospital in time. When I came to, I knew they had called Dad. I was barely conscious, and later I came too, and I knew I was too lucid for them to hold me, and they would eventually return me to jail. I knew Nicholas would find me, but I didn’t count on him having a spy in the that hospital and he got notified and just when I thought I could kill myself with a noose I made myself, he showed up and drugged me and made me disappear. So, there, my intention was never to kill Nicholas. It was to kill myself. I failed big time and my punishment was to live without my kids and try to find another way but this time he was not leaving me alone. Then I found out I was pregnant, and I knew I could not let Nicholas win after taking so much, and so that started the countdown of the last six months.”
“Hell,” Jake said as he watched his kid sister fall apart in his arms as he stared helplessly at his mother and wife.
“It never occurred to me to kill him until I snapped and started shooting,” Elizabeth muttered as she tried to compose herself and tried to pick herself up. “Truly guys, I snapped and started shooting and with that first shot, it was like liberation took over, so I kept going until there was no more bullets in the gun and then they burst the door open and grabbed me…”
Max sighed as he observed the pain and the hurt on his goddaughter’s face and the horror that was seeping into Maria’s soul at the thought of how close they had come to losing Elizabeth without a chance to make it right, as he knew this was going to get very messy…
*
“Oh, it’s you,” Michael said as he opened the door and found his long-time friend Isabel. “I was expecting my wife, and it’s making me worry” he muttered as he hadn’t been able to reach his wife as Maria had gone silent and hadn’t sent him word of where she had gone off to, and now it made him think of so many things.
“That’s a nice greeting,” Isabel sighed and allowed the dismissive tone to roll of her back. “Where’s Maria?”
“I have no idea,” Michael murmured as they walked into the house “She was upset about what happened in court, and when we got home. She said she was going for a walk, and she has not returned home. It’s getting me to worry…”
“I am sure she is fine,” Isabel insisted. “She needs to blow off some steam. It was a very emotional time in court” she sighed. “To find out what you guys found out, so she needs some time to get her head together and it beats coming back to the house and taking it out on you or the kids, so she needs time”
“I know, which is why I hate this…” Michael said as he thought of the newest attack on their family. “Little by little we were starting to make up ground and then this comes back to the forefront to knock us down. To see Elizabeth in so much trouble and to know she was in so much danger, and we did not know where she was and we could have helped her, if only we had known.”
“She wouldn’t have allowed you too,” Isabel sighed. “She was thinking she was protecting us, and she felt like she needed to do this on her own.”
“Blackmail. Nicholas had all our secrets and was threatening to turn them over” Michael sighed. “Would he have, I don’t know because we could have exposed him and the statute of limitation on most of them had run out. The authorities would never be able to put up a compelling case, but Max is right. The burden we have put on our kids to keep our secrets?”
“You mean about who we are?” Isabel asked. “And not just about our laundry list of crimes…”
Michael nodded. “I thought because the families knew that it would be simpler because that was half the battle in hiding from your parents, or Maria’s mother and Liz’s parents but I can’t help but think that hiding it from the public at large has caused more of a burden on the newer generations because they have to be even more careful than we ever did, and they have to be protective when they shouldn’t have to because so many times it could gotten out there into society, and today with social media and video files that can catch onto things we don’t even think about… Our kids have had to grow up faster than we did. It was much simpler to hide who we were back in our day?”
“We just had different hurdles,” Isabel sighed. “It wasn’t any easier, but it was different level…” she allowed. “It only seems simpler because of what Elizabeth has had to deal with, and cope with and what all of them have to deal with on any given day.”
“Well I want those days back,” Michael grumbled. “It has to be better than what we have dealt with over the last seven years. Not knowing whether we would be called on to bury our daughter and the last five when she had vanished. Why could not our enemies leave us alone. We didn’t want to hurt them, we just wanted to be left alone”
Because they envied that we found happy lives here on Earth. We were forced off Antar, and they wanted our new world to be not better than the one had there and from all we know. All our lives are immeasurably better for getting off Antar and find who we wanted to love, and not forced to mate with due to social convictions of our planet. We all got who we loved, and they couldn’t handle it and so they went about destroying it”
“We took our eyes off the threats” Michael sighed. “Or worse of all, we were focused on the wrong places, like us and not our kids.”
“It’s not like Elizabeth wanted your help in the aftermath. She was falling apart, and she wasn’t taking anyone’s help” Isabel asked. “She was in pain, and we did see that she was crying out, but she wasn’t allowing us to be there for her, and she was turning away those of us who were trying to be there for her, and she felt like she had to do it all on her own.”
“Because of Nicholas,” Michael said with murderous glare in his eyes.
“And because of the pain, and the trauma and she was dealing with in the aftermath and she couldn’t come to us because we wanted her to get better be the old Elizabeth and because of who she was, she felt like she should be magically better but she wasn’t, as she felt like she wasn’t the girl she once was, and could never be, and she felt the drugs were a better solution so she slipped away from us. But Michael she is back now, and so maybe we can help her today. We failed her in the past, but today is a new day.”
“Is it because she’s facing the rest of her life in prison,” Michael sighed. “She will miss out on her kids, and our lives and we’ll have to visit her behind cement walls” he murmured as he did not relish the future and what it meant for his oldest daughter. “Nicholas is going to win again isn’t he. He’s dead, and yet he’s celebrating and not rotting six feet under like he should be,” he said with hatred in his eyes as he wished he had done something to prevent this nightmare.
“That night Michael, we didn’t know” Isabel sighed as she remembered back to that day just as much as Michael did as she carried much of the guilt of what they couldn’t prevent as before their eyes, Elizabeth was taken “How were we to know this was his plan…?”
“We should have known because we had enough warning that he was going after our kids” Michael muttered as he wanted to punch someone as he remembered back and knew that how they were warned with the attacks on Grace. “Liz was the warmup, and we failed to see the warning signs before we fell into their trap.”
“Grandpa,” said a small voice and Michael and Isabel twisted around to see little Drew looking at them. She could only laugh and the littlest of them being able to sneak into a room without a fuss and overhear conversation they should not have been exposed to.
“Yes Drew?” Michael asked annoyed but the sight of the little face did allow his blood pressure to come down a few notches but still was annoyed because he had asked Belle to keep an eye on her nephew, and of course the kid was now downstairs. “What’s wrong?”
“I heard Aunt Belle talking on the phone. Is it true Mommy is back!” Drew Jacob asked his grandfather and Michael silently cursed as he did not want to have to deal with the boys finding out until he knew more about Elizabeth’s status because it would not help anyone.
“What did you hear?” Isabel asked the pint size little boy and she could not help but notice how Drew was looking more and more like Michael, but she found he had a quality that led to his mystery father whoever he was.
“I heard her talking about Mommy,” Drew asked.
“It’s a long story,” Michael muttered. “What did you hear?”
“Is Mommy okay?” Drew asked wary of the diversion his grandfather was giving him as he was evident already how smart the little boy was as his face turned into a pint size frown. “That bad man didn’t hurt her, right?” he asked scared and it twisted Isabel’s stomach to know that Drew had seen too much during his time with Elizabeth and Nicholas.
“What bad man?” Michael asked as he knelt in front of his eldest grandson and asked for the first-time what Drew knew about Nicholas. Until now, they had kept the subject unasked, because it would have brought too much they did not want to know and now both he and Isabel wondered what Drew had seen.
“The bad man who made Mommy, me and Mick live with him” Drew asked. “I don’t like him, he hurt Mommy, and made her cry” Drew said sadly as he still remembered his mother crying when she said good-bye to him and little Mick.
Jesus Isabel muttered as Michael went dangerous in his glare at his friend as he tried keep his glance from the boy.
“Your Mom is doing okay, okay Drew” Isabel assured the little boy. “We know she misses you and your brother.”
Drew nodded.
“Can you tell us what you saw?” Isabel asked tenderly of the little boy as Michael squirmed.
“Mommy hurt, that bad man who make her scream and she always had bruises and scratches, and bleeding sometimes but she tried to keep that from me, but I noticed” Drew murmured as Michael paled and wanted to curse but he couldn’t because it would be mean revealing too much to the little boy and Isabel knew Michael was falling apart.
“Go Michael, try to calm yourself okay. I’ll stay here with Drew” Isabel encouraged his friend as she could see the anger rising in her friend and Michael knew it so he nodded and stormed off into the kitchen and she heard the backdoor slam shut which meant he was going to out to let some steam out in the back yard “Your Grandpa is upset,” he assured the boy. “We just need to give some time. Drew about your mommy, you were too small?” Isabel asked of the boy.
“But I knew,” Drew muttered as he remembered all. “Mommy is okay, right? Grandpa and Grandma are upset, and Belle is even, and I just know it’s Mommy.”
“I promise you your Mommy is going to be fine. Your grandparents will make sure of it,” Isabel assured the boy. “Drew, can you tell me, was that bad man your Daddy?”
“No,” Drew shook his head with great force. “Mommy told me that we had to live with that man because of a mistake she made…” he said softly, and Isabel wanted to curse out loud, but restrained herself. “She said my Daddy is a nice man, who she wished she hadn’t been mean to him and that things could be different.”
Hmmm. Isabel murmured to herself.
“Did Mommy go to see your friend?” Drew asked as Isabel frowned when she heard those words.
“What do you mean Drew?” Isabel asked.
“Mommy, when she said good-bye to me and Mick when that lady came to take us. She said we would be happy, and that maybe she’ll see us one day, but she had to go a pretty place and meet up with Grandma’s friend, and that she loved us and never to forget her”
“Did she give you a name?” Isabel asked confused as she did not know who Elizabeth could have told Drew of.
“His name was Alex….” Drew said as he knew he said something bad when Isabel’s face dropped, and then there was loud sound of a glass breaking and she looked up and saw Belle’s wild eyes, and tears coming down her face.
“Did I say something?” Drew asked Isabel and then her aunt Belle.
“No, how about you go and get yourself a glass and your aunt a new glass. I need to talk to Belle for a minute, okay Drew” Isabel asked as the little boy nodded and left through the kitchen door as she eyed her niece with a stern look. “Don’t ever tell that boy what your sister was actually referring to, okay. You are to let him think it was a nice place, and he would have seen his mother again?”
Belle silently nodded as tears continued to come to her eyes. “She wanted to die, didn’t she?” she asked. “She was planning on dying?” she muttered as she was forced to reconcile the fact her sister was planning on killing herself.
Isabel did not answer and went looking for Michael as Belle started to cry as the door opened and her brother Liam came in the house and dropped his bag on the floor. Confused, he looked at his younger sister. “Oh god, now, what?”
“Nothing,” Belle said as she worked to wipe the tears away because at least some good was coming from this disaster that her family was making a beeline back to the family home, and she did not feel so alone anymore. “Nothing at all…” she said and hugged her big brother and tried to forget how they had almost lost their older sister without knowing it, or that their fears had almost come true.
“What is this about?” Liam asked as he was confused by the sudden hug as Belle had for months turned into a sullen teen before even turning thirteen and it was not in her nature to be happy to see him.
“Nothing just wanted to hug you” Belle smiled as she successfully wiped away the last tear as she looked around expecting to see her other brother.
“So, where is Colin?”
“Where else…” Liam laughed as they walked into the kitchen.
“Right,” Belle laughed out loud. “Oh boy, Mom and Dad are going to love that…” she said as they started to talk, and she soon was focused on friendly family drama than the darker parts of their family.
Last edited by Parker1947 on Sun Dec 27, 2020 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.