Til We Meet Again (CC, Mature) - Chapter 84 - Completed - 09/01/2022

[keepsmiling7]

Lots of old history is raising it's ugly head.......
Why am I afraid there's a lot more to come???

[Parker1947]

Despite their lateness in getting home from the hospital the previous night, or in the dawn of the morning. Liz was way up way too early. Mostly because she had been restless. So was Mariah. Although Mariah had slept a little more peacefully than her mother but still it did not stop her from waking up. And because they were both up. It meant that they would make an agreement in which Mariah would come along, and Liz would drop her daughter off at the Crashdown so that she could meet up with her grandfather and get started on her next chapter.

All the while, they chose to let Lex asleep, but Liz knew there was an alarm set because of his session with Jaime. The mother in her knew someone should have been at home, but she had gotten a promise out of her daughter that she would go straight home once her meeting with her grandfather was over.

Because Liz had to show up at the hospital, and get some work done that could not be at home. And she did need to show up and check on some the experiments that were still on going in her absence. So, she had checked into her office, and the lab early, and had gotten some stuff done, and had been taking a small break and just getting ready to head back to her office when she ran into Max quite literally.

It was something that had happened before albeit not literally into the father of her daughter she thought but it was something that sometimes clueless and tired doctors or nurses not paying attention, and she had been one of them early on in her career when she was too young and had children at home so when she was not working, she was focused on the children. That was before she focused on research, and when she had to deal with more day to day with patients.

Although she still did on occasion, but only when they needed someone to take some of the load off their staff. “Sorry,” Liz was saying now as she got a look of how she gone splat on the floor, as she looked up from the floor and saw her files had also gone splat on the floor, as she quickly got up, and then leaned down to pick up her papers, “You do not need to be helping me. It’s fine.”

“I made the mess; I might as well help you” Max offered as they both collected the papers and handed them back to Liz. “I did not expect to see you here?”

“Working,” Liz said simply. “Trying to get stuff done,” she sighed. “How is River?”

“Ready for discharge,” Max murmured. “I am currently waiting for my son to get dressed, and the final papers to be processed,” he nodded. “It is almost like last night did not happen.”

“But it did,” Liz sighed. “Any fallout?”

“Only on our side of the family,” Max said with a smile. “Isabel decided to take Roxy in for last night, and if my sister has any say, she might be staying longer than Jessica would want,” or any of us he thought.

“Are you serious?” Liz asked. I know Isabel can be compassionate to some and is all about protection of who she loves but come on she thought. I do not know Roxy much after all, but anyone could tell me that she is a troublemaker who likes to create chaos she thought. She reminds me of someone we all knew. “That is… I do not know.”

“It is something that is for sure,” Max said softly.

“How does River feel about it?” Liz asked.

“He’s not thrilled, and neither am I,” Max sighed because he could only imagine how badly it would workout. But he knew his sister was trying, and therefore, I pray it works out he thought. Because I am not in any position to tell my sister what she can or cannot do with her home.

“I bet Isabel does not care?” Liz asked with a smile.

“Not in the least,” Max sighed but with a small smile, one that showed that he and Liz were at more ease with each other as they started to walk down the hall. Liz knows us. “I hope I am not keeping you from your work?”

“It will be there when I get back to the office,” Liz said softly as she checked her watch. “But I better get to it,” she muttered because she had a call she had to make. And yet she knew she and Max were in a unique situation. He is not just anyone. “Thank you though for your patience.”

“I always patient,” Max said softly.

“Yeah, you are,” Liz sighed as she walked through the door, and watched as Max walked back to gather his son. And she could not help but remember how different life was today compared to when they were in high school.

*

“Thank you, Grandpa,” Mariah was saying as she hugged her grandfather. As the tour had concluded and they had come to terms about her starting on Monday, and what was going to be expected of her. Mariah did not know if she wanted to be working. But the money was something she could not turn down, and who knows what she might do with it once she finished high school, if nothing else comes up to detour my path she thought. But still, it was progress, and a step forward, and that was something.

Walking out of the Crashdown. Jeff stood watching her go and spotted his wife coming towards him. “Our granddaughter looks like she’s gaining a little perspective?” he asked of his wife, who nodded. “It’s nice to see after the gloom of the last few months.”

“She seems to be doing better,” Nancy smiled. “Let us hope it continues once she works a few shifts here at the restaurant.”

“Let us hope,” Jeff prayed as outside of the restaurant Mariah zipped up her jacket because it was a little chilly that morning, as she was walking towards the bus stop because she had to get home and uphold her promise to be home to keep an eye on her brother, Jaime Valenti.

She trusted her brother, and she trusted Jaime, but she also knew her brother was even more moodier than he had ever been before, because of the events of the night before. Thankfully he had been asleep when she and her mother left the house, but still…

I need to get home, but she did not count on seeing a friend, leaning against the building that house the café, “Mac,” she said stopping when she saw her friend.

Although they had not spent a great deal of time their night of misadventure on New Year’s, after all I did go into a funk she thought.

“Hey,” Mariah asked. “I thought you were working?”

“I am taking a break,” Mac said as he was taking a fifteen-minute break. “Are you finished with the tour?” he asked as he had seen her going through the restaurant, although there was not much too it, but still, he had seen the pride on Jeff’s face as he shown his granddaughter the place that was his passion.

Would Mariah be the next generation, or will it be Lex?

Mac did not know.

“Heading home to spend time with my brother,” Mariah sighed. “I start Monday.”

“Cool,” Mac nodded. “I think I work Monday so I am sure we will be spending some time together,” he said softly as his mind was not in the days work, but in other matters. “Probably fair to head on home to spend time with your brother,” he conceded. “After all that happened yesterday.”

“It was definitely an eventful birthday that is for sure,” Mariah thought. A little bit of everything she thought. She did not think she could possibility have another one that would match it at least not anytime soon.

“I would keep an eye on him, okay?” Mac advised.

“Why?” Mariah asked, curious.

“Because the more he gets used to this town, the more he is going to have certain questions” Mac muttered.

“What do you mean?” Mariah asked.

“It happens to everyone,” Mac advised. “People start to see more than we would like them to have, and especially someone who is not like any of us but are around us in their daily lives.”

Mariah could only sigh because she knew Mac was telling the truth, and there is so much I do not know.

And Mac knew this, “You really do not get it,” Mac murmured. “Because you are so new to any of this,” Mac muttered because he knew Mariah was really a novice in all this. There is so much she does not know “You should that he was why whoknowwho took a tumble,” he said as asked he looked around the daylight crowds among the street that they were on, “So, a little warning from someone who has been on the battlelines all his life, I would be careful.”

“I will,” Mariah murmured. As she did not know how to respond, even if it spoke to something that was believable Well, that would make a lot of sense she thought. There was no way it could have really been anyone else “Why would he have done something like that?”

“You should ask himself yourself,” Mac offered. “We clammed up because of you know…”

“Yes, I do” Mariah nodded as it spoke to the authorities she thought. “I guess it’s a thank you than,” she murmured. “I appreciate it.”

“It was not about your brother, more like out of preservation you know, for the larger cause” Max asked. We have brought too much attention by authorities he cringed to think. Thankfully Grandpa is on our side. But there is only so much he could do.

I know Mariah nodded. “It is still a thank you.”

Mac nodded.

Knowing that Mac was trying to be helpful, she thought she would be the same for him. “And as a payback, I will give you some unsolicited advice” Mariah smiled. “You did not ask for it, but still, I will give it to you.”

“About what?”

“Jessica,” Mariah murmured.

“Stop where you are, because if you think you can give me advice on my love life,” Mac asked. “Then no thank you…”

“We had something at New Years,” Mariah muttered. New Year’s was craziness. “Whatever we had on New Year’s, we at least had something, and it gives me some rights compared to many other girls in this town,” she sighed. “Although I hear you are quite the ladies’ man?”

“Mariah,” Mac sighed.

“Just kidding,” Mariah sighed with a smile. “All I am going to say is I know you are not wanting to find love, or want anything serious, and you and Jessica are good friends. But if there is something there, then you would be a fool to not go to for it.”

“You do not know anything about me and Jessica,” Mac asked.

“You got me there, no, I do not” Mariah agreed. “But trying to hide is not the answer either. You do not want to be looking in the wrong places if there is someone right there in front of you, and you cannot know until…”

“Until I what?” Mac asked.

“That is up to you,” Mariah said with a smile because she knew Mac had to know what she was trying to say. “I see the chemistry between you. Sure, you might want to stay friends and if you do than that is fine, but you are not that stupid not to know that there is a very simple reason why Jessica got so mad at you for whatever that was with Roxy yesterday.”

“Roxy was a mistake, and I did not want it to happen” Mac muttered. A big mistake.

“I believe you,” Mariah sighed. “After all, we are all very capable of them.”

“I do not know what you are seeing in me and Jessica but there is nothing there, okay,” Mac asked. The last thing I need to do is mess things up he thought. “We are only friends, and she’s happy with Alan.”

“I am not sure if she is,” Mariah sighed.

“What do you mean?” Mac asked.

Ah, jealousy Mariah smiled. “Look, I have to get home and be the big sister my brother needs, but just believe me that trying to deny something is not going to give you any peace,” she sighed. “I see the bus, I got to run.”

“See you on Monday,” Mac muttered as he watched as Mariah ran towards the looming bus, as it stopped at the stop. Fortunately, she made it, and his break was over, and Mac went back inside to finish his shift.

While Roxy watched him go inside, but she just turned and walked off.

*

While back at the Anthony household. The tutoring session was over, and Lex and Jaime were talking. Lex had woken up not long after he heard the door shut and he found that there was a note saying that his mother had to get to work, and his sister had to meet up with his grandparents. And he grabbed some breakfast only for Jaime to show up, and they got to work, and now they were finished.

And there were not going to be any videogames on this day. “Are you okay, you were distracted during your session?” Jaime asked of her friend. “Is something happening?” she asked because she knew so much was happening, and Lex did not know most of it. Or any of it she thought.

“I am fine,” Lex said. “I am just a little tired,” he muttered. “I am just tired of this town,” he thought. This is all too much he thought. I miss my old life. And miss my father.

“Are you?” Jaime asked. “I thought you liked it here?”

“How can I like it here,” Lex muttered. “All I have been in the hospital or here at the house?” he sighed. “

“But you are getting better, and you do not have to stay here at home” Jaime asked. “You can get out a bit now that you just have your crutches,” she sighed. “I thought you said your mother is making your sister work at the Crashdown. Yesterday showed that there is more out there than being here at the house.”

“Yesterday is why everything is a mess,” Lex muttered.

“Why?” Jaime asked.

“Because he is the one who decided to stop Roxy,” came a voice and they twisted and saw that it was his sister Mariah coming in from the kitchen,” as she it was quick ride on the bus to their neighborhood, and now she had walked in and found her brother talking with Jaime Valenti. “Which is something you did not tell us about…” she sighed.

“I didn’t see the need,” Lex sighed.

We so do not need my brother to sink into the sullen depression that I have been in these months Mariah thought. “Lex, we worry about you.”

“Which is a laugh given how much pain you have given to Mom and to our family these past few months,” Lex sighed. “So, forgive me, if I am feeling whatever I am feeling.”

“You have a right to feel whatever you want to feel,” Mariah thought. “No one is telling you what to feel,” he thought. “Just as no one could have told me.”

“Yeah, whatever” Lex sighed.

“Lex,” Mariah sighed.

“Don’t okay, I am fine” Lex muttered as he did not exactly want to be speaking about this to anyone. He only wanted to sink into his pity party, and dwell on the fact life was so different. “Where is Mom?”

“She left a note did she not?” Mariah asked. “She is at work.”

“Are we sure?” Lex asked. “One never can be sure these days.”

Jaime could only shake her head. Of course, she was used to be in a family that had a father who had moved on, in the wake of a divorce and sudden death of his ex-wife, and all the responsibility that had come with that, but Lex was new to be now in a single parent household. And having a mother being single, and a widow. And the fact his mother now had a past that was coming back into the framework of everything. “I better be going.”

“You do not have too,” Mariah said. As she did appreciate that Jaime was being a friend to her brother because of circumstances. Lex did not have many.

“I do,” Jaime sighed. “I will call sometime,” she said to Lex who only nodded as Jaime went to door that Mariah had only just come through.

“Are you okay?” Mariah asked.

“Should I not be asking that of you?” Lex asked.

“No, I am the older sibling” Mariah sighed. “Look Lex, I know life is confusing. It’s a hell a lot of confusing for me, so I cannot imagine how it will be for you and you have been able to deal with it a lot better than I would have imagined these past months, so it is only right that you will be starting to have issues.”

“Someone had to be the model child with your little depressive angst going on,” Lex muttered.

“I know, I am sorry about that” Mariah sighed.

“Are you?” Lex asked.

“Yes,” Mariah sighed. “Everything hit at once, and I hated it and it took me a long time to come to terms, and truthfully I am not even sure if I have come to terms with it,” she said with a degree of honestly. “But Mom is trying, and we should be trusting that life will work itself out.”

“I miss Dad,” Lex sighed because he knew his sister was right.

I hate feeling like I am feeling.

“So, do I” Mariah muttered. “It’s not going to be any easier than it was in the first days and months,” she sighed. “I have been stuck in the muck too much,” she sighed. “I know Dad would have wanted us to be happy.”

“Even if we are here in Roswell?” Lex asked. “I miss Chicago.”

“No, you do not,” Mariah said with a smile. “You barely were liking it when we were there, and it was Dad’s idea to move here anyways, and we might as well deal with it because Dad would have wanted us too…”

“Even if it means Mom gets closer to...” Lex asked, usure of how to say it.

“Yes, even that” Mariah sighed. “I miss Dad, and it sucks to have lost him. But Mom is not going to suddenly get remarried you know, because she is going to take it slow.”

“I hope so,” Lex sighed as he bristled at the thought of their mother remarrying. I am so not ready to think of that…

“So, do you want to talk about what you did to Roxy?” Mariah asked as she was trying to divert her brother from thinking of their mother, and her biological father. And knew should be the big sister and be concerned about the previous night actions.

“No,” Lex muttered. I certainly do not want to talk about that “Do you want to tell me why your new friends were suddenly glowing and shiny, all over the place. And why it did not even seem to surprise you?” he asked. “But then I guess, I should not because you do the same thing, right?” he asked of his big sister. Unraveling a secret that he had never been known to broach before, and Mariah’s mouth dropped open. “So, I am speaking the truth, huh?”

Mariah was speechless.

“So, are you going to tell me who you are?” Lex asked.

*

Mariah was only able to feel the shame from her brother’s words. She had long known she was different. She just never had been able to figure out what was wrong with her, or if anything was wrong with what she was feeling she thought. As she looked at the confusion on her brother’s face. And she knew that the confusion was warranted because Lex did not know what was going on. How can he? She could only ask now.

Mom knows she thought. It is a bizarre life I am living here, and my brother is in the dark about it. The same would have befallen my father too she muttered. If he had not died first, she told herself because he would not have known how to deal with me.

I am different.

So, she did not know how to respond to her brother, or how he would know what he was claiming to know. Because it was only in the last few months, she had been able to identify an answer to all that was baffling her and the transition was one of hard knocks, and she had not had an easy time of it. Most of it was of my own making she told herself. I could have just asked for help she told herself. But it would have meant seeking answers from places she was not ready to journey too, and to ask people she was not ready to accept. “I do not know what you are talking about,” she said as she glanced at her little brother.

Only thirteen, and so different from her. She had been the first born, and been with her parents through the tough times, not that I remember most of them she thought. But she had been so happy to have a little brother when he was born. It is never easy to be the only one, but she knew early on that she and her brother were different from each other. She did not know how to understand or identify why, until she did, and until she knew why. She always put it down to their nearly three years age difference, and that she was a girl, and he was a boy.

So, there was always going to be differences.

But it was more fundamental that that, but it did not stop them from being close. Still, it was not like they could talk about it, because it was obvious that her brother was excelling in areas that she did not want to enter herself, namely sports. And he and their father had a bond that was different than the one she had with him. I was his little girl.

Sorry Daddy that I am not now she thought.

“Mariah?” Lex asked of his sister. As he could see her zoning out. Something she had not known to do in the past. And most of the time he had not thought anything different.

Now he did. “Where are you?”

Hearing her brother, she came back to reality. “I am here,” she muttered.

“Are you?” Lex asked as he saw his sister come back to him but still, he had to wonder if she was truly there for him. “But if you really are here with then you will know what I am talking about because I am beginning to think there is a whole lot I do not know?”

“Is it not always the way it always is?” Mariah wondered.

“Yeah, and I am beginning to understand why Mom kept this town such a secret from the both of us, and even Dad,” Lex thought. Although he might have known more than I ever gave him credit for knowing he thought. But that is something I actually do not know for sure as he was a kid, so he did not know what his father would have known before his death.

“I am only me,” Mariah murmured. “We can only be who we are at the end of the day.”

Lex nodded. “I know you are, and that is who I love, but last night…” he whispered. “That glowy stuff in the park. You did not act like you were surprised. Sure, you looked like a little deer in the headlights like you knew what was happening, and at the same time you knew it should not have been happening,” he wondered of his older sister. Someone who he used to idolize because she was so brave, and knew how the world worked, and could show him stuff, but there was acknowledgment that he had had to dig deep with inside himself, and never truly wanted to acknowledge that there was stuff he was seeing and maybe should not have been seeing at the same time. “This town is weird.”

“Yes, it is” Mariah agreed. “There is a reason Mom kept us away,” she sighed that she knew she should be trying to divert her brother’s suspicions because she now knew Mac was onto something with his suspicions What should I do?

“I would have thought that it would have simply been about him you know,” Lex asked, knowing how complicated their family was today. “She did not want to see him, so she stayed home most of the time, and if she came, it was only a quick trip to see Aunt Maria and our grandparents,” he muttered.

“Yes, that would have been a worthy excuse,” Mariah thought one that was never given to us for obvious reasons.

“But it more, is it not?” Lex asked. “This town is bewitched or something?”

“Or something,” Mariah muttered automatically. She might not know everything like the others did about this town, but she knew it was all because of something most of the world would not have recognized. “Look Lex…”

“Tell me what it is, okay?” Lex asked. “I wish you would not look at me as if I am crazy.”

“You are not crazy, and I am not looking at you as if you were…” Mariah sighed. “But it is not my place to be telling you what is going on, okay. Because I am only beginning to learn that it is all so much bigger than me, or what I could possibility understand,” she murmured as she continued. “And to be honest with you, I barely understand it myself, and maybe it not my place to be telling you anything, or to be confirming anything.”

Lex was not sure if it was some dodge or something. Obviously, something is up he thought. Why can I not know and yet he could probably trace it to this town that he did not know very well or at all. “There is something about this town?” Lex asked.

“Yes,” Mariah murmured as even though she now knew far more than her brother, still she knew it was about this town. Or some people in it.

“How can any of this be true,” Lex asked of suspicions that he had long harbored without even dwelling into it. “I meant I grew up in the same house for the last few years I could see that you were acting differently, and you were able to do things, stuff I could not do.”

“Well, that goes for anyone because there are certainly things you were not able to do that, I was able to do,” Mariah murmured of the pretty mundane stuff she had not been able to do, nor did she probably want to be able to do if she could not have because she had never been into sports, or anything like that. Because she always flew on the sidelines, and she did not care to join anything even if she knew it might help her university applications one day.

She kept her mind into the academic field and in that she knew she gravitated to being like her, and she proud of it and knew her mother was proud of it too. She was smart. She knew how to get good grades when she wanted too. Which made the last few months all the more hard to watch.

She always thought she came by her smarts naturally because of who she was.

Her mother’s daughter. And even her father’s daughter.

Because of her grandparents Parker who was the first ones to tell her how her mother had excelled in school, and she could not have gone to Ivy League named Harvard University although she ended at Northwestern, and certainly she had seen it in those posters still up in her mother’s childhood bedroom.

It had been one of surprises when she had first see them, because it had shown a different side of her mother than the one who she had had taken that would lead her to meeting her father, but now Mariah had to think that her smarts came from a different connotation all together, did it come from my biological father as well because of who we are so, as a result she was questioning a lot but now had to answer to one person she did not think she had too.

…her younger brother.

“I know that okay,” Lex muttered. “I get that there is more I do not know, and you probably do not know because we are to this town, but it feels like you do know, and you are keeping from me. Telling me that it’s larger than even you do not do me any good, okay,” she muttered.

Yeah, it doesn’t, does it Mariah thought as all this dodging was not helping matters eithers, she told herself.

“So, are you going to tell me what is going on?” Lex asked.

Am I? Mariah wondered.

She did not know.

“You might as well tell him” a voice from behind them would say as they both twisted around and saw that it was their mother who was now home. Silence filled the house. As three Anthony’s could only look at each other.

And wonder what was overheard, and what it all meant…

[keepsmiling7]

Lex, I think you are about to hear about everything......good, bad and ugly!

[Parker1947]

Liz had indeed heard a lot of it, as it would seem she found that she was unable to concentrate on her work at the lab. And she was not willing to link it to her encounter with Max, because it must be something else, right? and yet she felt restless, and itching to leave the lab, and once it became clear what she had left to accomplish could be done from her home office, she chose to close up her office for the day and come home with the hope that her home office could give her a break, and she could seek some distance from it all.

Which was to be a pipe dream, right she now would learn and tell herself as she walked into her house and heard as her thirteen year little boy who was not so little anymore talking to his older, and it was obvious from the tone of the conversation that her son was suspicious and was trying to find out more, so that he did not have to be considered crazy anymore.

Or to be thinking what he currently was…

Although no one could claim my son is crazy she thought. Because she knew what it was like to live in a house with people who knew a lot more than other members of the house. That was her all those years ago she thought, but it was also her back in the beginning when the shooting had opened a pandora’s box with what it would dredge up from the bottom of ocean of secrets and when she had to keep what she knew from her own mother and father. To such an extent that they still did not know what she knew, or her daughter would know. “You two have been doing a lot of talking I hear,” she asked as she looked around. “No, Jaime?”

“She left,” Lex muttered.

“So, I see” Liz murmured. “So, what is going on here,” she thought. Do I even want to know so she landed on a safer topic? “So, can I ask, how did your session go this morning?”

“It went as it always has gone,” Lex muttered. “Fine,” he sighed. “It is not a good replacement for the real thing you know.”

“I am glad,” Liz sighed as she wanted to ignore his comment about missing school. Because she did wish her son had a different life than the one, he had known in recent moment. As she now was wondering if all the isolation was catching up to her son. Because for so much of their time here, Lex had been a good kid.

The one who was taking this brutal stretch with ease, or relative ease she thought. I so do not need a rebellious phase now.

She did know her son missed school. Mostly the social aspect more than the education because she knew her daughter was a better student overall. But Lex held his own which is why he was able to move ahead a grade, and certainly the last few months had been hard on her son, and she knew she felt it would not serve him well to go back to school for only a matter of a few weeks and given he would be starting at West Roswell come September. “Honey,” she sighed as she focused on her son.

“It is alright Mom,” Lex muttered.

Liz nodded. “I wish things could be different for you, but hopefully you will be able to gain a new experience in these weeks, that will help you when you start high school in the fall,” she sighed. As if that will make a difference.

Lex nodded and Mariah knew it could not be easy for her brother, and she wished things were different. “I better go upstairs, I promised I would call Talia,” she said as she moved to walk away from this situation and leave it to her mother to deal with any fallout with the hope that she somehow navigated out of having to explain her true nature to her brother.

“Wait,” Lex muttered as he knew when his older sister was dodging and getting away from answering his questions. “We were not finished.”

“I thought we were,” Mariah muttered.

“Well, I do not think we are…” Lex sighed. “I hope you both know that I hate being lied to.”

“No one is lying to you,” Mariah murmured. We are just not telling you everything she thought to herself as she looked over at her mother. And Liz sighed as she thought back to how it was hell to have to live in the house when people knew more than you did, although thankfully her parents were still blissfully ignorant on the true factors of their life, but she, had lived three years of her life and the duration of her marriage keeping a secret.

Now they were minus one person in the house, and Mariah knew a lot more than she did before, she still does not know everything she thought. Although she did not know everything Max had told their daughter about his beginnings, past and now her present. “Honey,” she sighed as she saw how her son winced at her saying that word once again. “There is so much that is bigger than just your sister.”

“You know,” Lex asked. That is just perfect. Everyone knows but me “I figured it was Mariah, but now it is you too, and you will not tell me what is going on,” he sighed. “All I want to know why Mariah is different, and it’s more than now knowing that we have different fathers.”

It is not much different both women would think now. Everything to do with how Mariah was today was because of who her biological father was…

“Yes, I know” Liz murmured and was unsure of whether they should be telling her son. There was only a small fraternity. She knew Kyle and Jim had come in, and by luck of knowing Isabel and Kyle loving her, and having Jessica and Isabel in the same house, she knew that was the only reason Jaime was in the know, but still there were today only a select few who did not know. Namely my parents she thought, “So, how can we lump my son in with my parents when he lived in this house, and probably has seen a lot more than he probably should have seen as he has grown up.

“This sucks,” Lex muttered. “It is this town is it not?” he asked as he glanced over at his mother and sister. “Why did we even come here if you were going to tell me what is going on?” he demanded as he refused to stand there and be lied to once more, as he twisted around on his crutches, and started to walk away.

Liz could allow her son to walk away and be in the dark, but flashes came to her of how it had been for the original Alex. Alexander Whitman, she thought. I almost lost him because I could not be honest with him.

“Sure, maybe if I had let him walk away than a lot could have avoided, she thought to herself now, as she knew that was one of her burdens, next to listening to the future version of Max she thought. Was telling Alex. Knowing him to come into this crazy story when we lost him too soon after that she thought.

But she could not have let him walk away from this life. “Tell him Mom, because it is not my secret to tell, or my place,” Mariah said softly. “I know I am in this craziness, but we cannot keep him in the dark. Which is why I told him about Dad in the first place,” she thought of her paternity, which was something she still did not have a handle on, and she did not know if she ever would. “Tell...”

“Tell me, what?” Lex asked as he twisted around and glanced at his mother and his older sister. “Is this why Mariah can do all that stuff, I am not supposed to be seeing?” he asked. “It exactly what I saw in the park last night,” he muttered as he stood against his crutches. “Glowy lights, and supernatural strength, and Mariah did not seem all that shocked. Sure, she seemed to go in a trance, but this was something else entirely,” he asked of his mother and sister, and from the lack of expression on his mother and sister’s faces, well, he knew he had hit paydirt. “I mean I never saw the glowy stuff come out of you,” he said of his sister. “But I saw it come out of you” he said of his mother.

Oh shit, Liz thought as she looked over at her daughter, who only shook her head for some reason she did not know. “Honey.”

“Liz had always known her son was very observant. Even when I kept it pretty dormant and did so little she thought. She should have realized he would have seen more than he should have and to know that was not what she was asking for out of her son. “You probably should not have seen whatever you did, see?”

"Not shit,” Lex muttered.

“Language please,” Liz sighed.

“Are you Mom seriously going to be play language police with me when you clearly have been keeping a secret from me, and maybe once upon a time from Mariah?” Lex muttered as he was imagining it all. “But it not my sister than you certainly from me, and likely from my father too. And for about a minute there, I thought it might have been fact you slept with another man that was not Dad, and that man is Mariah’s father, but it is more is not?” he asked as Liz and her daughter were looking as if they had never experienced this before, which would to be at the other end of a rant that was coming from her son, which was indeed true, because it had not happened before, and therefore it was not that easy to be listening to it now. Where is the easy-going kid that held me up? Liz could not help but think.

Karma is a bitch Mariah thought.

Oh, yeah Liz muttered as if she had almost the same thought as her daughter. “Fine, there is a lot you do not know,” she muttered as she focused on her son and when it was becoming clear that she might get some cursing out of her son once again. “You better think before you say what you are going to say next,” she warned of her son. “You have a bit of a grace period but only a little because you are right that you do not know what you do not know, nor do you know the whole story but your sister did not know it either so you should not think that you are someone special but you are right that she does know more than you do, and I am sorry for that, but we are not lying when we say that it is not our or even my story tell you,” she sighed. It all so much larger, and not really my story as she continued. “At that same time, my life is not being impacted by what you do not know,” she sighed even though it was she would think even though she did like to think about the fact she had moved away.

Therefore, she had been given an out from the last sixteen year. So, there was so much she did not know, and did not need to know…

Right.

Mariah was a different story Liz insisted to herself.

She has to know.

All the warts, and the flaws in the story unfortunately.

“Whatever,” Lex muttered.

“No whatevers young man,” Liz murmured as she was trying to erupt with her son because she knew how complicated this time was... “But it is clear you need to know,” she sighed because she hated the fear that was coursing through her that there was a potential there if they did not tell her son, just like Alex she thought. “Alex would have walked away, and he could have, but I cannot lose my son if to keep him happy, is to tell him at least something… “Although your life is not about any of this. Although unfortunately, your sister is yes, a different matter,” she muttered. As she looked over at her daughter, who by now knew of her new burdens in her life as she put her focus back on her son. “Whatever you were to know does not directly impact you.”

“Except I do live in the same house as you and Mariah, and obviously I do not know everything…” or anything for that matter.

“You do not need to know everything. One day your sister might know, but you do know what is means to be in the dark. And I hate that for you, which is why I am even entertaining your foul mood,” Liz muttered.

“Well, thanks” Lex muttered.

“Alexander Mitchell Anthony,” Liz muttered.

Uh oh both kids thought now as they both knew that Lex had finally stepped into it. Because Lex barely uttered Lex’s full name especially since the kids had gone his own way and dreamt up his new name. A name that both his parents agreed to honor because they wanted their son to be true to himself.

Even if it was only about his name.

“Sorry,” Lex said instantly and this time he meant it.

And Liz felt for both of her kids. “And I wish this was all easier. I wish this could have been a town I could have brought you back too and been proud to show you off too, so that you could see your grandparents and to know the town that I was raised in,” she sighed. Maybe I should have come back and brought the kids she thought. Even if meant revisiting my past? She thought. And seeing Max.

“Why could you not bring us back here?” Lex asked.

“Because I had moved on,” Liz said softly. “A lot went down back when I was growing up here. I love your grandparents, you both know I did, and do, but this town had a lot memories, both good and bad, and I could come back here and deal with it, and it was always easier to leave you back at home with your father because that meant I could come back for short stays, and it never had to be anything than what it was, and fortunately your grandparents health has so far cooperated.”

Both Mariah and Lex nodded

“We would have liked to have known this town,” Mariah admitted.

“I know you would have, and I am sorry you could not have, but you are here now, and you have that chance.”

“But without Dad,” Lex muttered.

Unfortunately. ‘I miss him too,” Liz sighed as she saw the grief on both of her children’s faces. And I mean it. I miss you, Brady.

“Do you?” Lex asked.

Lex,” Mariah said softly. “You might not want to ask that,” the older sister muttered. “You do not want to get another reprimand?”

“I have seen you spending time with that man” Lex said, not sure whether he could utter the man’s name now that he knew it.

Max Evans.

“That does not mean I still do not love your father, both of you kids’ father,” Liz said softly as she glanced at both of her kids.

Whom were both getting older by the day and far more grown up than they even had been in December?

“I love your father and no matter what happens in the future, your father will always be in my heart.” Liz murmured. “He will always be someone special to me,” she thought. He gave me a chance to start over.

Lex nodded and Liz was not convinced her son believed her.

“Max…” Lex muttered.

“Max is Max,” Liz said softly. ‘Even if you take away what we know now in relation to your sister. Max will always be someone who is my past. We had an extremely intense relationship, and a part of him will always be part of who I am today, whether we do anything more with whatever we felt once upon a time,” she sighed. “Max Evans is the reason I am the person I am today…”

“Really,” Lex asked.

“Yes,” Liz murmured. “Your father played a very big part of who I am today, but I would not have been able to be with your father or even to have met him if not for Max Evans therefore, I will always be grateful for him, and his impact on me, even if our relationship did not end up working out.”

“Why did you not work out?” Lex asked.

The answer to that was complicated, and something both mother and daughter knew by now, and Lex was in the dark.

So many reasons Liz thought as to why we did not work out “It’s complicated, but all you have to know is that Mariah’s biological father and I tried it once when we were both your sister’s age, or if not younger, and we did not work out, for many reasons that if I could go back in time, well, I would, and I would change some of my decisions, but I will never regret that I met and fell in love with your father, but it does not change the very real fact that I would not be here if not for Mariah’s father.

“You would not even be alive,” Mariah muttered. “Max saved your life.”

‘Yes, he did” Liz said very softly.

What, excuse me Lex muttered to himself as his dwindling interest in this conversation perked with those spoken by his sister, that cannot be true, can it? “Seriously,” Lex asked his mother.

“Seriously,” Liz nodded. “Max Evans is the reason I am alive today,” she said softly. ‘I would have died at the age of fifteen when a bullet tore into me, and it would have taken my life if not for the fact Max played hero that day, and jumped into the fire to save me, and with that moment. It changed our lives in an instant.”

[keepsmiling7]

Okay, Lex what do you think of that revelation?

[Parker1947]

Meanwhile, elsewhere….

Roxy was roaming around town limits. She was still wearing Jessica’s old sweatshirt, and she did not wear it in the same way that his friend wore it Mackenzie Guerin was thinking as he got off shift and was taking a break via the park. You would think they would know better than deal with the park, once more but nope Mac was taking a break even though he could have been anywhere other than this one place, when he could have easily taken the bus home for a quick snack but his parents still did not care for the fact that he had not told them of the previous night activities himself, rather they had to find out via his voice mail message. I did not really think about it at the time he admitted to himself. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

At least I did not get grounded this time or have any additional time put on his remaining time from his previous offenses.

But then he had an hour to spare before showing up at the station to deal with his other sentence he thought. Although time had allowed him to see the greater cause to help out at the station. Now that he had been moved from data entry and doing more substantial duties.

And it was a job that did not have Jessica at it anymore as she gotten a weekend job at her mother’s boutique, and she was dealing with homework, and Alan during the week. It is not like she has to pay back for crimes she did or raps she had taken for someone else. So, yeah, Jessica has a lot more freedom than I do.

As he saw Roxy, and saw the sweatshirt, and saw how Roxy had filled it out in comparison to his friend who definitely knows how to fill out something simple as old sweatshirt he thought. Roxy is no winner in that regard he thought. Why did I even go there in the first place is one of life’s damn mysteries he thought in a life full of them already. “I do not think Jessica would be really happy to know you are wearing her sweatshirt,” he muttered to the multicolored vixen. It is such a shame that top has to be on someone else.

“Well Blondie did not have much of a choice,” Roxy sighed. “As it was her mother who gave it to me,” she sighed.

“How is that possible, is Isabel running a charity or something?” Mac asked as he could not think of any scenario where clothing was willingly given up to someone everyone knew Jessica did not like, and who already had such a record with the clan. “Here, I thought she ran a first-class boutique?”

“Well Blondie did not get much of a choice either in that matter because I was forced to spend the night there last night,” Roxy muttered.

What on earth? Mac thought and said as much out loud. Are you kidding me he asked? That makes no sense as he was wondering if this drama was spiraling out of control. “Jessica cannot be happy?” he thought as he immediately zeroed in on one of the complications of the new arrangement.

“Nope,” Roxy smiled. “And it made my day.”

That is on brand he would think. “What do you have against Jessica?” Mac asked as he could not help but acknowledge how Roxy had it out for Jessica, and it had been something that had been going on for months now. He did not know why it started, or where it came from “She has got nothing to do with you most days,” he muttered or at all, until recently. “Which she is fine with because she hates you.”

“And I hate her too,” Roxy muttered with a smile. “So, it is no loss to me whether that perky do gooder likes me or not, but it was her mother who offered me a bed last night,” she sighed. “I could not have said no, and give up the offer, could I?”

“Yes, you could have” Mac muttered.

“If you think I could have then you do not know her mother,” Roxy muttered. Not if the Sheriff was brought in.

“Yes, I do, but you do not” Mac muttered.

“Anyways, it happened,” Roxy muttered. “Do you want to do something,” she asked as she slinked herself up towards Mac.

“Hell no,” Mac muttered.

“Pity,” Roxy murmured. “Seems like we have company,” she said. “Hello roomie,” the vixen muttered. “Were we giving you a show?” she asked as Mac had not seen Jessica come near the two of them and twisted and saw his friend with anger in her eyes.

And once more, he did not know what that would mean.

*

Indeed, Jessica did have anger in her eyes. But it was not about Mac this time, mostly she thought. Mac can have who he wants she muttered to herself. I have Alan she told herself as she was back in the good graces of her relationship as she had been nearby with Alan enjoying their outing together, and then she met up with a friend for some window shopping but it was time to head home, and pick up some clothes because she had found a place to lay low until her mother got over her need to have Roxy in their home, so she was planning on picking a milkshake at the Crashdown when she took a detour through the park, and saw out of the corner of her eyes Mac and the one she did not want to see, Roxy.

Perfect she told herself as she told herself that she did not care if Mac wanted to screw up his life by associating with Roxy, I am over it.

Was she though?

Still, she was trying to raise above it although it was hard to when the girl that she hated most in the world was wearing her sweatshirt, and talking to her friend, almost like she wants me life she thought not I am seriously thinking she does she told herself. Roxy does not want to be tied down by people who support her.

You do not know me Roxy was thinking at the same time as if she knew what Jessica was thinking, as she did not know why she was spending time messing with the blonde. It is not like I want Mac, she thought.

He’s not my type, she told herself once again.

On Jessica’s side of things, she tried to be the bigger person and she did not want to engage. She wanted to be that kind of person, so she simply tried to walk away, and walk past the twosome, and ignore the situation at hand. Because she had places to be and had to meet up with her friend who was having her sleep over.

“Chicken,” Roxy muttered.

“Leave it alone,” Roxy,” Mac muttered. Knowing how much his friend was trying not to engage because this was the last thing they needed was for a repeat of the events of the previous night, so he could see how his friend was trying.

“Hell, I will” Roxy muttered.

Rise about it, Jessica she was telling herself. All the while Jessica was valiantly trying to be the bigger person, do not engage she was reminding herself.

“You like to walk away, don’t you?” Roxy taunted.

“Roxy,” Mac warned.

“No, this is fun. Blondie, what do you think?” Roxy asked of Jessica.

Do not engage Jessica was trying to repeat as a mantra, but it was not working. “I knew you liked to walk away,” she called out at the teenager.

Mac knew that any effort to be the bigger person was for naught as Jessica turned around on. Roxy, “What is your problem?” Jessica asked, twisting on and turning her attention back on Roxy and Mac wanted to slink away, and head over to his other job. “What do you have against me?” Jessica was asking.

As Mac stayed, to keep the peace. Although that was not going to be easy.

“You want to know my problem?” Roxy asked. “It’s you…”

“What about me?” Jessica asked.

“You have it all, do you not. The perfect mother, and a stepfather who loves you and even a sister who might not be blood to you, but even so, you have the perfect little family, and it is sickening."

“No one is forcing you to be there in my house,” Jessica muttered as she had no comeback because she knew she was lucky. Lucky that her mother had found someone in Kyle, and that they were able to make it work. Because it could have turned out very different, although fortunately her mother had always been ambitious, but still, it could have been a different life once her biological father had passed away.

“Your mother is.?” Roxy muttered.

“Sure, although, you have a mind of your own,” Jessica sighed. “If you did not have the life I have, that sucks for you, but it not my fault so you need to stop taking it out on me,” she muttered. “I am out of here,” she said with small curses under her breath as she quickly walked away.

Even if it meant leaving Mac alone with Roxy.

Not that Mac was looking to screw it all up once more, and once his friend was out of their eyesight, he turned to face the vixen. “Can I ask, what is your goal here?” he asked as he was sensing that Roxy did care about him, which is good because I do not care about her either he thought. “Was it necessary to annoy Jessica like that,” he asked. “Her mother was kind enough to give you a bed to sleep in last night, and you seem like your mission is rain on all that?”

“Of course, it is,” Roxy smiled. “It is fun.”

“I get that,” Mac asked. Even though it not in the least “We all enjoy a good time, but I cannot see the play in this,” he asked. “What is the goal?”

‘What makes you think there is one?” Roxy asked.

“Because that is how you work?” Mac sighed.

“Just like your little girlfriend does not know me, well, the same can be said about you. You do not know me,” Roxy murmured.

Jessica is not my girlfriend he muttered. I am not looking for any permanence “I am not looking to know you,” he sighed. “Life around here is madness,” he sighed. “And that is all because of you.”

It has been all about me. “You want to know my goal?” Roxy asked.

“Yes,” Mac muttered.

“Maybe it is to have fun, because the world could use some fun” Roxy sighed.

“Nah, I do not think that is what it is,” Mac muttered because he could help but think there was more.

“Fine, then, maybe it is to push you and Blondie together,” Roxy murmured with a laugh, and for once Mac’s jaw dropped open.

That is ludicrous, right?

*

Mac did not think that was it, but Roxy just started laughing at what she just told him and walked away leaving Mac in his stupor. Which was exactly what Roxy was hoping for, but he checked his watch and found that he just enough to get to his second job, before his grandfather called him for being late, and as a result slipped into the office as Jim glanced up at the clock.

“I am here on time,” Mac muttered.

“Yes, you are.” Jim said as he walked into the office and closed the door behind him, and Mac got down to his assigned duties.

And tried to forget that Roxy had others had ripped off the lid off the box and those thoughts of Jessica were coming to his mind, in ways that were not simply about friendship.

*

Jessica was not caring about all that, as she had more on his mind as she heard the door of her bedroom open up, “Are you going to be alright?” Kyle was asking as he walked into his stepdaughter’s bedroom. It did not matter if the wedding had not happened yet, because she is my daughter he thought. As it was not been long since Jessica had come home all amped up because of what she had witnessed with Roxy and Mac, and she had exploded on her mother for giving Roxy something of hers without her permission. Isabel countered to her daughter that it was she Jessica who had walked out before she could have asked her daughter, and said that Roxy had needed clothing, because she could not have stayed in what she had been wearing much longer, because it had blood on it, and Jessica cursed she did not need anything more of mine she thought. She already had Mac she murmured to herself.

She did not care if Mac was not interested in Roxy or not, as she only responded to her mother, that Roxy is quite capable of finding her own clothing and bluntly told her mother that if her mother was planning on having Roxy stay in within this house than she was staying with her friend Linda, and she did not give her mother time to agree because she had gone upstairs and slammed the door of her bedroom.

And it was not long before Kyle had come upstairs.

“Where is Mom?” Jessica muttered, on guard. Because it was not often that Kyle had actually come to check on her, because he usually let her mother deal with her, if there were any disturbances in the house. Kyle tended to deal with Jaime’s eruptions. So, this was a rarity. And she did not know how to handle it. “What do you want?”

“She went to take something to your grandmother,” Kyle murmured as he knew Isabel wanted to take the chance to cool off so that she did not do anything to aggravate the situation. So, when Diane had called asking if her daughter had a particular dish, therefore, Isabel took the chance to return it, “I only wanted to make sure you are okay,” Kyle asked as he looked at his stepdaughter. All grown up, even though she was only fifteen he thought. Such the perfect combination of her mother and Jesse he thought. Although the blonde hair was very Isabel he thought. “I know you and Roxy do not get along with each other.”

“That is an understatement,” Jessica muttered. “She hates me, which is fine with me because I hate her just as much.”

“That might be so, and I certainly know that Roxy has done some rotten things, but she needs a home, and your mother wants to give one to her until she can figure out what to do,” Kyle murmured.

“She already has it all figured out, and she’s only playing us” Jessica muttered “Or more like she has been playing Mom.”

“You mother knows exactly what Roxy is like,” Kyle answered. “She has no illusions to the games that Roxy is known to play, but she also knows how it is to be without a home, or to have a home that is unstable,” he murmured. “She saw that very personally in her own youth with Mac’s father, Michael, and she does not want someone else to be like that…”

“It’s not Michael. It’s Roxy,” Jessica muttered.

“True, but there are those out there who might resort to things they should not have done because of their homelife,” Kyle muttered.

“If you are trying to excuse Roxy?” Jessica muttered. “After what she did to both Mac and to River, I do not want to hear it.”

“No, I am not going too, because she has to live with what she has done but I knew someone who is very much like Roxy, but she had a rough life, and unfortunately that life got to her before those who wanted to help her was able to get through to her…”

“Whom?” Jessica asked, intrigued.

“Tess Harding,” Kyle muttered.

“Oh,” Jessica murmured. “River’s mother?”

“Yes,” Kyle nodded.

I thought you were burned by her Jessica thought. She had heard stories. But she still did not know everything that went down back then and knew River’s biological mother was a very blurry line to deal with in the family. No one had a good word to say about her. Even those who had housed her.

Which was Kyle and his father. Because of events that had gone down, and the older generation had not been open about it with the younger bunch, and only a few truly knew what really had gone down. “I thought you did not like her.”

“That is not true,” Kyle muttered. There was a time where I liked her very much but the fact, she used me as an unwittingly accomplice in Alex’s death, changed things he thought. “She was a friend once, and I thought she was someone who needed help, and she was good shoulder for me. Time would change that…”

“And you expect me to believe Roxy’s motives are pure, and we can help her by allowing her to stay in this house?” Jessica asked. “That we can save her from being Tess in our little story?”

“No, because Tess and Roxy are two very different people with two different life stories. We were not able to save Tess from herself, and from how she was raised, and with Roxy, she obviously is troubled, and there is no defense for what she has done so far in her life, but if she believes she has support than we might be able to guide her towards a better future, so she does not turn out to be like Tess or her mother…”

“We do not know her mother,” Jessica muttered.

“No, we do not, and maybe because your mother is her biological mother’s duplicate,” Kyle murmured what a bizarre world to even be uttering that kind of word. And Jessica could only shake her own head at the thought of duplicates, and aliens. It so much, my life she thought as Kyle continued to try to get the teenager see her mother’s view of the situation. “It makes your mother even more worried about Roxy, because this is not even about Tess, it is about how Roxy’s biological mother, Lonnie did not have the same support system backing her up, and your mother and uncle were the lucky ones because they were found by your grandparents, and taken into their home, and loved even when they eventually would find out the truth, and now we have a chance to help Roxy try to be a better person.”

“What if Roxy does not want to be a better person?” Jessica asked. “Because you would think common sense has to be in this too you know. You would think Lonnie and even Tess would have known what was right and what was wrong, and same with Tess, especially given how she was living with you and Grandpa during some of that time, so she should have known to not resort to certain tricks to get her way. Eventually we do have to go with what is instilled in us,” she murmured. “We cannot blame it all on our DNA, because we do have to take responsibility sometime you know for the decisions we make.”

“Yes, we do” Kyle murmured. “But we also know this is a very complicated situation. “Which is why your mother does want to try. It might not work out, and if it does not than she will know that she tried her best, and we both think it is the right thing to do.”

“You love my mother, so you will always agree with what she wants” Jessica muttered. As one of the defining traitors of her unofficial stepfather was that he loved her mother, and was in it for the long-haul, no questions asked.

“Not always,” Kyle smiled. There are always limits he thought. Albeit rarely seen in this case. You do not have to like it Jessica, because no is asking you to like her, or to suddenly become her friend.”

“Good, because I do not like her nor do I trust her,” Jessica muttered. “Not after what she did to Mac, and even to River.”

Sensing there was more to all this because his stepdaughter was seeming to upset about some small offenses, which were bad, but the guys were moving on. Jessica was more upset than any of them. “As you said, you do not have too,” Kyle said encouraging. “But is it more?” he asked. “You seem upset about something else.”

“No, it is all on Roxy, and how she is playing Mom as a fool” Jessica muttered.

“Is it Alan?” Kyle asked. As he knew that Jessica was somewhat serious about her boyfriend, as much as you can be at fifteen in a whole different life than we were in, but he suspected it was more, sensing something “Was it about Mac?” Kyle asked.

“Why would you say that?” Jessica muttered.

“You seem awfully upset about it,” Kyle asked. “You have been in a foul mood for days now…”

“Why would it be about Mac because it was also River…” Jessica muttered. “Roxy did not seem to care that they were not into it, and of course River is seeing someone else, and it did not seem to stop her.”

“I know,” Kyle sighed but knew he was not going to get anywhere by questioning her anymore, but it was sure a little interesting. “Are you still planning to stay the night at Linda’s?”

“Of course, because if Roxy is going to be here, then I am out of here,” Jessica muttered.

Kyle nodded, and turned saw Jaime standing in the doorway, and she was smiling so Kyle decided to let his daughter deal with it, because there were some things that were not going to be told to an adult.

Oblivious to all this Jessica finished putting her clothes in her bag and turned around and saw Jaime. Sighing, she did not like the smile on her stepsister’s face “What is it?”

“I have to tell you that even when an adult can see what is going on, then you know that the rouse has to be up” Jaime commented.

“What do you mean?” Jessica murmured.

“Lex told me what he suspected of you and Mac,” Jaime murmured, and it did not shock me in the least she thought. “Although it was not something that was terribly shocking you know because I have suspected it for while so maybe it is time you tell the truth to yourself.”

“About what?” Jessica asked, even though she knew. “There is nothing between Mac and me,” Jessica muttered.

“Give it up,” Jaime smiled. “It has been obvious for a while as I have said,” she said. “You are a friend, but then there is what the two of you are…”

“What am I?” Jessica asked.

“The only reason you are so angry at Roxy is because she went there first with Mac, and you are jealous that he might still want her…” Jaime murmured.

“And that is crazy.” Jessica muttered.

“Is it?” Jaime asked.

Was it?

[keepsmiling7]

Jessica and Mac........that was bound to happen??

[Parker1947]

“I miss Dad,” was something ringing in her head when Liz wished she could be dealing with normal teenagers’ issues such as their love lives was something she was dealing with as she closed the door after having a heart-to-heart talk with her son. A conversation that was long and depressing with themes she was tired of having to repeat, and wished she could have just skipped them over, and early on, Mariah had indeed removed herself from the conversation as she had gone back into her bedroom and called Talia, and now she would hear her brother’s door open, and close and therefore she came outside. “How was it?” Mariah wondered as she looked at her mother.

Someone who was truly drained.

Mariah hated that for her mother and knew a large percent of it came from her own self, and it was not only her brother making her mother dwell on the past.

“He was not ready for it?” Liz murmured Would anyone really be.

“How can he be?” Mariah asked. “Heck I was not ready for it when I first heard from you, and then when River bombarded me with even more of it, so, it is not that hard to ask why anyone who is so normal could deal with finding out that aliens are real?” she asked. Or that his sister is one of them.

Half of one Mariah reminded herself. I still have Mom’s side in me.

“I have no idea,” Liz sighed as she immediately was taken back to when she first stumbled onto the discovery that would change her life. She was forever changed back then, but even then, she could not handle it. She did not believe it. Initially at least. Although she would investigate it, and would even as Max, and needed convincing that it was true. I had to see it all in person to believe it she thought. “You also were older when you found out. You were not thirteen and just survived a near fatal car accident that took the life of your father.”

I found out in the backdrop of it all she murmured, and I still lost my father she thought but knew her mother was right, Lex is too young to really understand yet “He crumbled when he saw me and saw how different I am,” Mariah murmured as they both thought back…

“Stop it, I cannot handle it” Lex whispered as he stood and stared at his big sister. The one he had grown up loving and idolizing and the knowledge that she was different from him. “This is all your fault?” he said turning and yelling at his mother, “How could you do this to us. You bring us to this town. Why could we not have stayed in Chicago?”

“We had no idea this was going to happen” Liz managed meagerly but knew that was all faulty because she knew the risk was high coming back to this town. She could have said no to her husband and told him to find another job, which would have happened anywhere. Anyone would have wanted her husband to work for them if he was truly unhappy and did not want their daughter near her boyfriend of the time. “Honey.”

“No, it’s this town that screwed this family up, and took Dad from us” Lex said running into his room. Mariah did not follow but Liz did, as seeing Lex bristle at her was something that made her flinch, even though she knew that her brother still loved her, but still, it was hard to be rejected.

Now her mother was coming out of the bedroom. “It was probably wise I was not in there, right?” Mariah asked. “He hates me.”

“No, he loves you, and hates how not knowing, and how I kept this from you, and the fact your father is not here to deal with it at the same time. He’s probably dealing with some PTSD because of the accident.”

“He has been seemingly fine,” Mariah murmured. Probably a bit too fine if you ask me.

“He felt the need to be fine,” Liz said. “Because of you…”

“Because I was falling apart,” Mariah murmured.

“Yes,” Liz sighed.

“And now I am beginning to feel more normal, and he goes and has a breakdown because I am not normal.”

“You are perfectly normal sweetheart because nothing changes who you are Mariah. You are still perfect, and fully human,” Liz said softly because she remembered her own struggle once upon a time with feeling different. When she was starting to exhibit, she had gone through her own hellish experience.

“It’s all about degrees,” Mariah sighed. “As I said, I beginning to understand it even if I do not know if I fully understand it or whether I can handle it going forward, but at least I do not feel like a fraud anymore, but still, I hate seeing how Lex was looking at me, because it was like I was a freak, like I am too different,” she muttered. I am used to feeling it about myself, but I do not need someone I love looking at me like that…

“Fortunately, he is only thirteen, eventually he will come to understand it” Liz murmured. “It might just take a bit of time?”

Mariah nodded.

Liz knew that they were both a tad impatient, and wanted everything to be alright now and not days or months from now, and she knew she was likely going to need to act to help her son “Although I am beginning to see that I might have to make some decisions in the short-term to control how your brother deals with it, so we do not repeat some of the patterns of the last few months.”

Uh oh, she thought. “What does that mean? Mariah asked.

“I do not know, because it is something I am only starting to think of, although some decisions will have to be made pretty fast to stem anything from exploding,” Liz said softly as she checked her watch. “But in the meantime, I need to go out and do some errands. Can you handle being here at the house?” she asked. “I do not think you should be going anywhere; Lex should not be left alone right now.”

"I am fine with it,” Mariah murmured. “But is my brother okay with it?”

“He will have to be, and he might not be so happy to come out of his bedroom for the moment,” Liz said. “If there is any trouble, you can call me, okay?”

“Okay,” Mariah nodded. “Where are you going?”

“To talk to some friends,” was all Liz said.

Mariah nodded as her mother went for the door, and was gone in no time flat, while her daughter went to her brother’s bedroom door. “Do you want to talk?”

“Hell no,” came the response.

“I am here if you want to talk,” Sighing, Mariah only returned to her own bedroom, and closed the door.

*

“I feel like I am waiting for something to happen,” Maria muttered as she sat in the backyard of her home. Mac was still at work. Michael was off somewhere, she did not know and did not want to know because that meant she might have to worry, and she did not want to worry. She felt useless these days, because the drama was being dealt with elsewhere, and she was not a player, not that I want to be a player she thought as she entertained Isabel who had come calling after stopping at her mothers.

Isabel did not want to head home and deal with a sullen daughter, assuming my daughter is still there she thought. “You are free to take the drama because I am tired of it,” she sighed. Even if everything is relatively tame.

“You are the one who asked Roxy to stay the night and will be allowing her to stay longer if that is what she wants” Maria pointed out. “Jessica was always going to be pissed off because those girls do not have the easiest of relationships. To be fair, no one has the easiest of relationships with that girl she muttered as she thought of Roxy Turner.

“I had to do it; you know” Isabel murmured as she did not regret it Jessica will come around. “She could not go back to her foster family.”

“According to her,” Maria murmured.

“Yes, according to her, and I understand that we have to take her word with a degree of suspicion but still, I believe that she would not be willingly out there on her own if she had any home to be in, because not everyone is as fortunate as Max and me,” Isabel allowed.

“Don’t I know it,” Maria murmured. “Look I know, look at Michael’s life?”

“Right,” Isabel murmured. “So, if we can help Roxy?”

Sighing Mariah knew about the greater cause, but it did not make it any easier “We might help her in the end,” Maria muttered. “And that is a worthy goal, but she has already been capable of a lot of mayhem, and it would seem that we are rewarding that behavior and okaying it when it was those in our family that have been the ones most impacted and hurt by it,” including my own son she thought. So, she did not know how to respond by this latest mission of Isabel’s. Because she knew that while she did not always approve of how her son was conducting his love life. So many girls, so little time or care and commitment she thought. Although Mac is only fifteen. No one could be his father who only had eyes for me,” Maria muttered to herself. Okay with a minor temptation with Courtney, still, but you never could deny he wanted me.

“We do not have to take it for granted, when we can be armed by knowing what she is capable of,” Isabel murmured.

Knowing her friend was pretty set in her ways. Maria prayed it had an ending they could live with.

“Let us hope you know what you are doing?” Maria advised, as there was a bursting open of the side gate, and in walked a very good friend. “You too?”

“Where is the alcohol?” came Liz demanding some instant relief.

“Michael is making a run to the store,” Maria quipped.

“Unlikely,” Isabel muttered as she was slightly surprised to see Liz showing up. “I thought you were working today?”

“I was, until my family decided to go into meltdown,” Liz murmured. “Therefore, I had to deal with it, and work has slid into the background,” she muttered as she needed something to make sense.

Oh god she thought. “What could have happened now?” Maria asked as she felt for her friend. Seeing her best friend. Maria did not know why she was wishing for drama, when her friend had so much in her life, to such an extent that she and Michael could just sit here blissfully with a son only in the depths of very human drama, because her best friend’s life had not been very lucky these last few months.

“My son is finding more about everything, and it is not sitting well with him,” Liz murmured. “I just got my daughter back, out of her funk, although she could reenter it at any time, and now I have to deal with a son who is starting to act too much like a sullen teenager that he,” she sighed. “What am I going to do?”

“Feel exactly like me, in terms of having to deal with a growing boy who thinks he knows too much,” Maria muttered.

“Except my problem is that my son does not know enough, and what he does know, is stuff he does not particularly like” Liz muttered. “It’s too much for him, and it is too much for me to do alone. I wish Brady was here with me.”

“I know you do,” Mariah sighed at the unfathomable that had happened, and how unlucky her friend had been as she handed her friend a bottle of beer, which Liz gladly took and took a deep swig of the substance.

“Fortunately, the girls have been better” Isabel muttered although not much she thought given what she was dealing with regarding Jessica. “Although my daughter is being moody is unpredictable.”

“You know why,” Maria said pointedly at her other friend as Liz simply thought that being moody and unpredictable was common for a teenage girl given that she had just gone through three hellish months. “You earned this one.”

I know I know Isabel muttered. “Although I suspect it is something more. She hates Roxy, but she knows down deep what I am doing is best for the peace of her little clan, sure, she might not like it, but she knows it better to know what Roxy is up too than dealing with someone who is out there and unpredictable, but still, Jessica does seem distracted, but it is not only Roxy, it is something more.

“What could it be?” Liz asked, curious about problems that existed in someone else’s problem.

“I have no idea,” Isabel muttered. “And I am almost scared to find out.”

“It’s probably something simple,” Maria murmured. Obviously just as unaware of her friend to the travails of their children, and their love lives. Which most of the time, they were quite fine with being in the dark, but…

I hope so Isabel told herself, but she was not sure.

*

River was sleeping. The discharge from the hospital had been normal, and Max had brought his son home, and forced his son to lie down, and after some arguing which was relatively tame compared to their history, River had grudgingly gone into his bedroom, swearing that he would not fall asleep but Max had checked not ten minutes later and found his son sleeping, and knew River had not gotten much sleep in the hospital once he had woken up. So, the sleep was needed, and Max was now making himself useful and puttering around the house, doing many things he had let slide, knowing he had done very little carpentry since he built this place, but he felt the need to do something and not think about how confusing his life was, and he did not want to be thinking of Liz.

And how much she still made his life worth living. When he had so many other responsibilities to be thinking of a girl who had taken his heart at fifteen, or if he was honest with himself, much earlier, when he first had come to their world, and come onto that playground and seen her playing with Maria at recess.

Unsure of much in the new land he was in, after spending so many months and even years coming to terms with how changed he was, learning a brand-new language and getting used to his new family. Walking onto the school yard, and seeing the brunette beauty, who even at age 9 made him pay attention, and he did not take his eyes off for her for many years, until finally she gave him the time of day.

And even then, she would have to watch her walk away, and now she was back, and back in the front of her mind, as if she ever truly left. So, he needed something to keep his mind of the woman who had changed everything for him when there was a knock on the door, and he went unsure of who it was.

Hoping it might be Liz because she had paid a visit so many times over the last weeks, always surprising him.

But no, it was Sierra. “Sierra,” Max asked. Although it was not surprising because he knew how much she cared about his son and how much his son was beginning to feel for Sierra right back. “What are you doing here?”

“I was hoping to check on how River was doing?”

“He’s sleeping,” Max murmured.

“Oh, then maybe I should come back” Sierra asked. As she had not had much of a history with River’s father and did not know what to expect. She knew she had taken a risk in coming here and especially given how different her relationship was with her own father, and she knew things had not been that good between River and his father, either, until recently, and how they also had their run ins over time?

Although peace seems to have won out, for now…

“No, stay,” Max said.

Sierra was not sure what to say. Given recent developments. “I know what you might think of me?” she asked as she looked at River’s father and was unsure of what to expect.

“I do not think of anything,” Max murmured. “I cannot judge you at all,” he sighed. Given what kind of person I have been all these years. “I believe you care for my son, and I know my son cares about you” he sighed unsure how close the two were, and if their feelings were anything more than simple high school relationship, or would it lead to anything more serious. He almost wished that his son could have something normal, and not deal with a complicated romance especially since he knew how intense one can be, but he was never going to be able to judge given how bad of a relationship he once had with his son. “I would never.”

Sierra nodded. “I can see you care for your son.”

“Yes, I do” Max murmured. “I may have shown it pretty poorly over these years, but I always wanted it to be better for him, and for him to have a chance. And I am glad you are there for you…”

“You are trying, that is at least half of it,” Sierra muttered. “Not every parent cares enough to try…”

“No, they do not” Max agreed.

“Do you think I should give my father the time of day?” Sierra asked, bluntly, and she did not know how she was saying this because nothing indicated that she wanted a relationship with her father given how much he wanted from her, that she was not prepared to give him. “Now that you know the extenuating circumstances to our lives, I figure you would have an opinion on it?”

“That is up to you,” Max muttered. I can never be the person to give advice about fathers. “I can never give someone advice like that…”

“You stayed. Whatever the type of relationship you had with your son,” Sierra murmured. “You stayed, you wanted him. River told me that you had a choice, and you were thinking of giving him up, but you changed your mind. Sure, it might have been because of who we are, but you tried, but my father was different. He walked away the first chance he could, and now he only wants something from be because I have something that he wants,” she sighed. “How can I let him in?”

“Then don’t,” Max sighed. “Or set boundaries. Yes, I was planning to give my son up, because I was young, and I did not think I could be a father to him. And I probably proved that but yes, I did keep him, for my own selfish reasons because of fears of who he was, and unsure I could put him out there in the world, knowing the potential,” Max murmured. “Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if I had chosen differently, but I did not and I wish I could have done things differently, and yes, I stayed, and I was there, but everyone has a different relationship with their parents. I cannot tell you what to do, because you have to know what you want to do, and only you can tell yourself. You know what kind of man your father is, or maybe you do not, and he is different than what you remember him to be?”

Sierra nodded this is all too complicated. “Maybe, I should go, and come back.”

“No, you can go in and sit with him if you want,” Max said softly. “I am going to go for a walk, and I need to clear my head. I like you Sierra,” he said softly. “You might have come to this town under mischievous circumstances, but you told us the truth, and nothing you did, did us wrong, in fact, you have been a world of good for my son. As you know, I have not always been the person he could look up too, and while I want that to change, still, he needs people to support him, because he could use your support, because he did not always have it from those people, he would have wanted to support him.”

“I care for him too,” Sierra murmured.

“I am glad,” Max said. “You always have to start somewhere,” he murmured as he went to the door. “Tell my son if he wakes up where I am going.”

“Where are you going?” Sierra asked.

“Who knows,” Max smiled and vanished.

While Sierra sighed and twisted and saw River watching him. “How long have you been watching?” she asked, “or listening?”

“Long enough,” River murmured as he woke up to the sound of voices. Because the house was small enough, you know when there were people around or sounds, and he had woken up immediately to sound of Sierra’s voice. “Did you have a nice talk with my father,” he asked as he had heard the bulk of the conversation. And heard the sincerity in his father’s words, and he was finding her did not have a lot of resentment of what was past for them, because at least he had his father in his life.

He could have done a hell of a better job but at least he stayed he thought. And I did not have a bad life he muttered. I had my family, and who knows what it could have been…

“He’s a good man,” Sierra smiled.

“He might have been a crappy father,” River said realistically. “But yes, he genuine and he is trying, and I give him a lot of credit.”

Sierra nodded; trying is an important part of it. “How are you feeling?”

“Better now that you are here.”

Sierra smiled, and soon forgot about her daddy issues because of how much she did care about River, and it made her flutter to see him.

As they walked back into River’s bedroom, to just talk.

Yeah right.

*

Meanwhile,

Mac was walking aimlessly near the train tracks. He did not know why he was here. He had come here to check on something for his grandfather, who sensed it was better to get him out of the office and check on tips, because he knew how to handle himself, and given his frame of mind had made him argumentative, well, he did not want to be behind the desk and so his grandfather decided to have him to check out reports of a party that was developing by the tracks.

Or so he was told, and he had come down, and if it was any other day. He might have joined the party that was happening, but he knew he was on his grandfather’s time, and if he had done anything, he might have to deal with his parents, and he already had too many infractions piling up with his parents, and one day they might come down much harder than they already had come down, hence the grounding.

So, he was taking note of the circumstances, and he could not help but note when he spotted Alan with one of Roxy’s friends, yeah this was not going to be pretty and so he texted Jessica anonymously to come without even saying it was him, yeah, I know I should not, but she needs to know for sure what is going on with Alan and Lena he thought. And if she knew it was coming from me, she might not come.

It was a time in their friendship that had not happened to them before, and it was unnerving because they were always on the same side, and now Jessica was miffed at him.

So, he needed all the rationalizations to get Jessica to deal with this he muttered to himself. The party was pretty non-threatening, at this point. Roxy is not even here But, he took some pictures, and made some notes, and waited, and then he spotted Jessica arriving…

Obviously answering his text. So, yeah, this should be interesting he muttered.

And immediately, he spotted the yelling.

*

Jessica had been walking out of a movie with Linda when she got a text, that suspiciously was coming from someone who knew her, but did not have a name to it, but she did not think anything of it. While Linda went home after eliciting a promise that Jessica would see her there, and to be safe. Yeah, I can handle myself Jessica told herself.

She was walking down by the tracks, checking her messages on her phone, and looking to see if there was anything from Alan. After all, he had plans with his family because his older who was now married, and had a baby who was coming to visit, and so they had cancelled their plans even before things had escalated at home.

Anyways, checking to see if he was responding to her most recent text, she looked up and stared in shock to see Alan with someone who was not his sister or his niece, but someone else entirely. Lena Pitts, she thought. As she spotted Alan kissing Lena. Shit she thought. That asshole. As she thought of Lena, the name speaks to her she thought.

The idiot Jessica muttered, and she stalked up to her boyfriend, and slapped Alan, and they got into a major fight, “You could have told me that you wanted to be with someone else.”

“She’s nothing to me,” came Alan. “I want you, but you have been distracted.”

“So, the fact you were kissing someone else is my fault?” Jessica asked. “You are really something,” she muttered without the energy to really stay and fight over what she had witnessed, and what it would mean, so she as she stalked off. As she was not wanting to stick around to see what her boyfriend would say, ex-boyfriend she thought. I am not sticking with someone who moves on because I am having a few bad days she thought.

It is not my fault he kissed someone else or had maybe done more she thought as she shook her head to try to ignore what he might have done, and she wanted to yell, I hate men. She thought. First Mac and Roxy she thought.

Now Alan had disappointed her, why she thought, as she looked up, and saw someone she knew watching the gathering, and her in particular, and she knew instantly who had sent her the message, and she stalked over to her so called friend.

“You set that up, did you not?” Jessica asked as she watched Mac’s face got pale like. “You wanted me to see that?”

[keepsmiling7]

Max continues to reflect on his job as River's father.
I would like to know who really feels they did a perfect job parenting??

[Parker1947]

I am sorry Mac muttered and he meant it. He saw the anger on Jessica’s face and knew it well because it had recently been directed at him as well, and it was not always a pretty sight. I am sorry he repeated. “I was not expecting that you know, because Grandpa was having me checking out some reports down here, and I spotted Alan, and knew you should know, that was happening, and I knew you would not probably believe me if I were to tell you, so, I knew you probably should want to see for yourself.”

“Why would Grandpa have you here,” Jessica asked as she fixated on something that did not make her heart hurt so much, as she thought of the fact Jim Valenti was as much as her grandfather as he was Mac’s, although only in name only she thought. There is no blood involved or legal ties, but Jim had been in their grandmother’s life from before they were born, and so it was naturally a relationship they wanted with the town Sheriff.

“You knew I was still working at the station,” Mac muttered.

“Sure, but I doubt Grandpa would be having you as some very junior level deputy. Should one of his deputy’s be working on tips?”

“He wanted me to see whether it led to anything,” Mac muttered. “My mind was not in the paperwork he had me on, so he felt this was safer,” he sighed.

“Yeah, real safe.” Jessica muttered.

“It is,” Mac muttered. Given what I am capable of. “Look, I know things are not the greatest between the two of us, but I hope you know I never wanted you to be hurt, which is why I thought you should know what was going on, so you did not allow him to lead you on, or for you to think anything…”

“Men,” Jessica muttered even if we are only fifteen, and they are boys really, and boys will screw up she thought. “I hate all of you.”

“Hey, do not lump me in with Alan,” Mac asked in defense of himself. “I never claimed to be anyone other than who I am.”

“That is right, you have not” Jessica muttered. “But you are all the same. You and Roxy. Alan and Lena. You are all disappointing to me, because you only want one thing, and you will go with anyone who will give that to you?”

‘Hey, that is not fair” Mac muttered. Fair, but still unfair. “I did not want Roxy and you know it, and it’s not my fault if Alan went to the first person…”

“Because I would not give him…” Jessica asked. And you went there with Roxy, way before any of this latest drama.

“Of course not,” Mac muttered. As he felt uncomfortable, about talking about sex with his friend. Especially in light of theories people had of him and Jessica. We are only friends, but come on, I do not want to be talking about this with Jessica. I would rather talk it with River… “You do not have to do anything you do not want to do.”

“Hell, right I don’t,” Jessica muttered. “You men are all the same.”

“Stop it okay, we are all not the same,” Mac sighed. “Stop lumping us together.”

“I will think whatever I want, and you cannot stop me,” Jessica muttered. She was becoming disillusioned with the opposite sex, and she hated feeling this distracted, and this mad, because she thought she had a good life. And then everything got screwed up, “This is all your fault,” she muttered.

“Alan kissing someone else is my fault, huh?” Mac asked, slightly amused and slightly annoyed at the same time. “Where did you get that one?”

“You distracted me,” Jessica muttered. “If I was not so distracted by our family drama than I would have given my whole energy to Alan, and he would not have done this…”

“It is not my fault,” Mac murmured. “If he could not stay faithful,” he muttered. “Whatever you are is not on me, it is entirely on you,” he sighed. “If it were me, then I would take the blame, but it is not me, so stop blaming me…”

“You are an idiot,” Jessica muttered.

“Okay, that is enough” Mac muttered as he glared at his long-time friend. “I do not know what is gotten into these last few days but it would not even be my fault if I had wanted Roxy to do what she ultimately did, which I did not by the way, and you know that as much as I do, because she is the one pushed on me, against my will, and if I ever did anything with her in the past than it completely my prerogative, and you do not have a right to be upset, because we are not together, and as a result, you do not own me, because I am my own person, and we are what we are, we are friends,” he sighed. “Nothing more.”

“If you want someone like Roxy,” Jessica muttered. “Then go ahead.”

“Grow up,” Mac muttered. “Why the hell are you acting like this?”

“I am not acting like anything,” Jessica muttered even though she knew she was, and she hated how emotional she was, and she did not know what it was stemming from because she was always different than this, and she hated feeling so over the cliff in terms of everything. I am better than this she told herself.

Was she?

Mackenzie could not understand it I have never seen Jessica so upset and he did not know why she was, was it because of Alan or something more, and she was masking it all. “Why are you pissed about me and Roxy?” Mac asked. We were over a long time ago “I mean you are upset about nothing, in relation to Roxy and me, but you barely stayed to fight when Alan is the one who cheated on you,” Mac asked. “It makes no sense.”

“I can do whatever I want and feel whatever I want,” Jessica muttered. And I am plenty upset about Alan she thought. But I am not talking to Alan.

“Seriously Jess,” Mac asked. “What is going on with you?”

“Nothing,” Jessica muttered.

“There is something,” Mac asked. “Is it Alan?” he sighed as he was trying to figure it out as she was trying to ignore the obvious.

“Why the hell would it be Alan?” Jessica wondered. “I told you it is nothing, and I mean that it is nothing,” she said, lying, because she did not want to have to admit any of the truth that might be at the heart of it. She was not ready to change anything, and she was upset about Alan, but she did not want to deal with it, I need to figure out how mad I want to be she thought.

Or what I stand to accept.

She did not want to admit that she was more upset about Mac and Roxy, he is right, I do not have any right she thought.

Yet, I am mad.

I am in hell she thought. “Look, I need to get back to Linda’s.”

“Why are you not going home?” Mac asked, mystified once more about Jessica. It was something that had never been in their relationship before, angst he thought.

“What do you think?” Jessica muttered. “Roxy…”

“What about Roxy?” Mac asked. Not my most favorite subject given she is still hung up on it.

“She stayed at my house last night, and as long as she’s there, well, I am not going to be going home” Jessica muttered. “So, I have to get back to Linda’s because she will be wondering where I am because she of course does not know what we know, and how capable I am of being out there in the night, alone.”

I think Roxy said something like that Mac thought. But she did not say anything about staying longer than last night Mac thought. “Is that not a bit extreme, staying away from home because of a girl?”

“I hate her, and I will not be in the same house as her,” Jessica muttered. “You might like her, but I do not have too, and I am not going to watch her fool my mother into thinking she needs help,” she sighed as she turned and saw the little party continuing by the tracks. “Why do not you go and party it up?” she sighed. “That is where you belong,” she sighed as she turned once more and started to walk off.

“Wait,” Mac muttered.

“Wait, what” Jessica muttered. As she was finally deciding to move on, and to get back to Linda’s place, and to forget about this own upsetting evening. She looked forward to spending it with someone who did not know how complicated her life was, and she wanted to forget, and to not be stressed out.

But she tripped, and her purse went flying, Shit she said as a curse inwardly and out loud as well. “Let me help you,” Mac asked. As he did not get why Jessica was so weirded out lately, because it made no sense to him because that was not how they were, because with River, they had been the three musketeers, and now everything was changing, and he did not know why it had to be like that.

You do not see River changing now that he has Sierra he thought. Of course, that relationship is a whole different story he muttered to himself.

After all, I still do not think Sierra is telling us everything. I can buy complicated daddy issues because that makes it a match in heaven with River given his own on that front Mac thought. As he moved his mind back to the complex situation at hand. “Can I help you with that,” he said as Jessica had already gotten enough of it already collected.

“I have it,” Jessica muttered.

Mac sighed, as he wished things were still carefree. “You missed something,” he said as he leaned down and picked up her locket that had been in her purse for some reason Mac did not know he thought. “What was that doing in your purse?”

“I was going to get it fixed, but I forgot” Jessica said as she thought of the locket that Mac opened, and saw…

“Oh,” he said. “You might want that…”

“Thank you,” Jessica muttered and took the locket from her friend and opened and saw the picture of both of her parents, Isabel, and Jesse. “I do not wear it much,” of the piece of jewelry that her mother had given to her on her thirteenth birthday, she said as he leaned downed and picked up her dropped phone, and handed it to her, and when they did, his time, there was an exchange of electricity in their touch, and they were quick to exchange the phone and step back from each other.

“I have got to go,” Jessica said immediately, and a tad too quickly for her taste, but she said those words and was planning on getting out of dodge, away from this situation which was turning out to be too explosive for her to handle.

“Wait, Jessie, wait” Mac said softly. As he called her by her nickname, a name she was going by less frequently as the days were going and she was morphing into a different and older girl, Jessica did not want to think about the future, not yet, but she was growing up, whether she wanted to be or not.

“I cannot stay around here,” Jessica muttered. “Linda is waiting for me,” she sighed as she needed to get out of here.

“About…” Mac asked, unsure of what to say.

“About what?” Jessica asked.

“I do not know,” Mac muttered because he was smart enough any referencing of what they had just shared might change things, as if it had not already changed things, and neither knew how to deal with it.

“I thought so,” Jessica muttered. “Later,” she sighed as she walked away.

Leaving Mac to wonder what had just happened.

What on earth has happened here…

*

Mac’s mother was totally oblivious to the changing nature of her only child’s life. All she knew was she was left with her best friend once Isabel decided to get on home, and now it was just the women sharing a drink and wondering what on earth had they had gotten into when at fifteen they had both fallen in love with two aliens from another world. Not that my life is better off she thought. I do have a life I could only have only dreamt of back when I was a teenager she muttered. When she wanted out of this town.

Or at least to have a life that had not been one of hard knocks like her mothers. She wanted to find her dreams.

She found Michael instead. Sure, she had thought maybe music was her ticket out of here because who wanted the complicated nature of loving an alien. But she surprised by what she was willing to set herself up for, and she did not have a lot of regrets.

I have a husband and a son who challenges me Maria muttered to herself. She knew Mac was a decent kid and all his screw ups were of the normal variety, which was something she wanted, I just wished he would settle down a little, and find something to want just as much as I wanted his father at his age she thought.

I have it easy she thought.

When she looked at her best friend’s life, and how complicated it was. “What are you going to do about Lex?”

Maria did not what should be done because Lex was normal. Which any mother would want. But the rest of his family was abnormal in ways that makes him stand out, and now that he was starting to know, it was going to be hell of a transition. I am the normal one in my family, but I have known about this life since even before I knew it, she thought. So, she did not envy her friend. “He’s only thirteen, we were older when we knew.”

“I have no idea,” Liz sighed as she sat there and drank another beer and wondered how she was going to handle it. “So much has changed for him,” she sighed. “I do not know how he is going to be able to handle it.”

“And it does not help that you are spending time with Max,” Maria asked.

“Maria,” Liz sighed.

“What?” Maria asked with a smile. “I am just stating the obvious. You have been spending a lot of time with your ex, and the kids have noticed” she sighed. “It’s a hell of a thing for Lex to deal with, and I would never want that to be.”

‘You are lucky,” Liz sighed. “You have Michael.”

“Yes, I do” Maria smiled. “And I have my son who is as special as he was the day he was born. I have never had to wonder, and now that Mariah knows what she knows, it’s hell to know about all this, and to believe.”

‘I do not know if he believes,” Liz sighed.

“Belief is a whole different kettle of fish,” Maria smiled. “You just need to let him have time to deal with it, in a different way than the time your daughter needed in accepting her new status in life. Your son will deal with it in his own way, but it will take time.”

Liz nodded. “I might just need to deal with it head on and take a break from all this. So, Lex can take a chance to breathe?”

“So, what are you thinking?”

“I do not know,” Liz muttered. But she indeed was beginning to know, she thought. The only question was, could she, do it?

Even if it was only a short-term solution.

Maria nodded.