It felt like an eternity only broken by Okay, I am taking you home Maria murmured as she dragged her husband away from it all because she was tired of this, we have to move on she thought. This does nothing to stay here and go around in circles. “Liz, we will talk,” she muttered as she glanced at her best friend who only nodded, but nothing was more said as she made sure that her husband Michael followed her. With the additional responsibility of taking JJ with them because it was getting late, and the last thing the ten-year-old needed was to deal with more fallout. Because he was already getting an earful. Maria overriding her husband on that vote too, because Michael was not in the mood to do Liz any favors, and they all knew this, but Maria won this as the boy walked off with Maria “I will return him to you in the morning,” was all Maria said as she said her goodbyes as Kyle standing guard to make sure the rogue alien hybrid followed the demands of his all too human wife. While Liz could not help but stand there and watch, as everything she had ever done to make sure she had a strong relationship with her daughter, go up in smoke. Maybe there was some way to stop this, she thought of the child she had taken with her when she left Max and went into that deal with the devil as Michael so subtly said while her son was looking like it was great entertainment.
Because he does not have a role in this drama except to be my son, and to be normal Liz said. At least someone is normal and did not have to be burdened by two decades before she thought. Claudia was not born yet, but her DNA ties her to all this.
And that DNA had always told her that she was different. And she had never known what it all meant, until she came back to this town and there was always going to be stuff she was in the dark about because she had not been back here and known what was going on, and there was only so much her mother would tell her, basically nothing she would think now as she stood and watched the very mother who had strived to raise her, and yet now seemed to be a different person than the woman she had known.
If you went by the venom in Lucy’s father’s voice. As if everything was coming to the surface. Years of history and baggage exploding all over the place and Claudia was unfortunately collateral damage. “Mom,” was all the eighteen-year-old could say as she tried to go with something easy, “What are you doing here?”
“You were not returning my calls,” was all Liz answered.
“Phone died,” Claudia muttered. “We were going to return to the motel but then we stopped because we heard Aunt Maria and Michael talking, and yelling at each other, and I could not help but stop and listen,” she muttered. Maybe I should have continued walking as common sense told her JJ was better off away from this, but maybe not in Michael Guerin’s house because she did not know what to think of her godmother’s husband.
Claudia’s mother could only sigh because this was the last thing she wanted for tonight, “Obviously you heard a lot?” Liz asked as she looked at her trusted friend in Kyle.
Someone who nodded. Even though he had already heard the news of the hour before…
Which is what Liz had suspected although she did not know the news had traveled all the way to Isabel, and therefore Kyle as she had heard the venom in Michael’s voice. It was not hard to miss. And it was something she had heard years before things started to settle down. Helped by the fact that their children were friends, and distances. That helps a lot, Liz knew. We did not have to reside in the same town anymore, she thought. With me, and the kids on the East Coast and Michael and Maria in the dead south she thought. We saw each other, but Maria and I did things and Michael stayed away.
And the girls spent time together, and whatever Michael truly felt for her could be hidden because they had not spent that much time together.
Now she heard the vibrating nature of what Michael was spewing, without knowing what happened, or the terms of that deal with the devil as he so kindly termed it. Yeah, it was a deal with the devil.
But if he had gone through what I went through. He would have taken the deal. But the deal of course would not have been offered to Michael, not likely she knew. He would have been in some cell, standing trial for crimes committed in his youth.
Or if they had not gone that route then a worse fate would have befallen him, she knew, because I only got out of it by the skin of my teeth.
None of them knew this, and she would hope their opinions of her actions would change if they really knew what she had gone through. Hell, she thought. Still, I made that deal even with what they did to me, she thought. She had sat with it a long time before she acceded to their wishes and made the deal.
But she had gotten a lot out of it, Liz thought. Max would be safe. Maria got the boy she loved, although sometimes Liz wondered why she had gotten through the battles to win Michael’s freedom when it did not matter to him.
Although Michael did not know everything.
None of them did Liz muttered as she glanced at her daughter, my baby girl and Kyle who did not know what to think. Except to suspect his former girlfriend was seriously overwhelmed and did not need this, but there is no going back.
We have to make peace with what came before she thought. Good luck Liz, she muttered. “I guess that explains why you did not return my call.”
“Sorry,” Claudia muttered as both were trying their best to ignore what was being said in the park. “JJ was hearing your fight with my father, and he needed reinforcements and so I took him out on the town, but neither of us thought it would be this long.”
No kidding Liz thought as she knew she should be chagrined to know that her son had overheard some of her fighting with Max. Hopefully not all of it, but she suspected enough, but Claudia had gotten to her brother before it has escalated through the thin walls. “Thank you,” she muttered as Kyle was clearly amused at the discovery that Liz had been fighting it out with Max, which meant who knows what he would think.
Only Max and Liz would know what had happened next.
And we are both living it down she would mutter to herself. This is not much better she thought of coming here, and knowing what Michael had insinuated to her daughter, but fortunately Maria had gotten them out of dodge before Liz had to explain to the masses.
But she knew that day was coming, too soon.
So, she would rather talk about anything other than what could be out in the world and what Michael was thinking of her deal, without knowing any of the particulars of such a deal she thought. Of course, Michael would think badly of me, and not want to know before putting his dander up and thinking the worse.
Because I broke his brother’s heart.
Michael, Max, and Isabel were like siblings, and too close to think that Michael would not take what she and Max did personally, especially since I left Max in the lurch and taken Claudia she thought.
So, the fact Michael was so against her at the moment did not surprise her or hurt her. We always did have an antagonistic relationship she thought. Of course, there was some softening of the battle lines there for a time she acknowledged. But we were never close.
Except that he loved my best friend.
And I loved his…
And therefore, it had led to a group of unique and strange bedfellows. And we were never the same.
Or I was not Liz thought, once the shooting happened. “Kyle, thank you for trying to defend me, but you don’t need too…”
“Someone has too,” Kyle muttered. “I don’t know exactly what happened back then,” he sighed. No one does. “But I know you had to do what you had too…”
Liz nodded.
“So, you made this deal that Lucy’s father was citing, getting angrier every time he was thinking of it,” the teenager observed.
“Michael has no idea what it involved,” Liz murmured as she looked at Kyle. “No one does,” she sighed. “But I have done things in my life that I am not proud of, and it was not an easy time” she sighed. “But I did what I thought was best for all involved. Michael does not have to like what I did to your father, although what Max and I did in our relationship and the choices we made is really none of Michael’s business,” she muttered. “But I know that he is looking out for his friend, but still it was not like I liked what I had to do, but it needed to be done, because it was the only thing, I could do to make sure everyone safe at the end of the day,” she sighed as she looked at Kyle who were one of the normal ones in this drama. But he had the unique knowledge of what it was like to be saved by Max. Just like me, but he is nothing like me she murmured. Because he did not change.
But I did.
“So, you took this deal, and broke Dad’s heart and took me away from Dad?” Claudia asked as she was trying to put two and two together to get four, and the truth. Even though she did not know the warts of the deal “And you did not tell anyone you were doing it?”
“I told one person,” Liz sighed. “Your grandfather.”
“Grandpa Parker,” Claudia asked but Liz shook her head. “Whoa you didn’t, Dad’s father. Grandpa Evans,” she asked. Someone who I have only seen once “You asked my grandfather to lie to him?”
“I did not ask your grandfather to do anything of the kind. What Phillip did with the information was up to him, but all I wanted was for him to know, and I should not have told him, but I needed him to protect your father, his son. And the only way I could do it was to tell him some of it, about why I had to leave your father, and take you.”
“He probably kept it to himself, because you had told him too” Claudia muttered as she could not believe it. Mom might deny it, but the implication was enough Even though sure, she did not know the history of this little fraternity she was in, but she knew enough because of her mother’s journal to know the federal government was hunting them, and now she was finding out her mother had made a deal. And that maybe Michael had a right to be upset, because of who Michael was, and who her mother was not. And I am just like them and not like my mother? “I cannot believe you,” she said. “All this time, all these secrets you have been keeping from me. All you told me was that you had to leave my father, but that was not all of it, right, because he did not want to lose us, but you are the one who chose to leave.”
“Unfortunately,” Liz murmured as she looked at Kyle. I tended to run she thought. “I did what was best for you, and I had to protect your father and you which is why I kept you with me, because the last thing your father needed was to have to raise you, and I did not know what it would mean by taking the deal I did.” Because if Claudia had stayed here and been raised by her father and become the girl, she was meant to me, and was today. The government might have become wise and rescinded the deal and come after her family.
She could have stayed away.
But Claudia was a new version of the original generation that had come to this planet.
“You cost me my father?” Claudia asked.
“Your father agreed that you needed to come with me,” Liz murmured.
“Because he did not know all of it,” Claudia asked, would he have done if he had known she wondered. “You made a deal with his enemy?” she murmured. “The one person who wanted to stop him,” she asked as she thought of the journal entries. “You never told me about it, but I read enough of it in your journal.”
“I never should have let you read my journal,” Liz muttered. “And your father had more than one enemy,” he said as he looked at Kyle who sighed because he knew well what had happened in those original three years, and how much it had changed all of them.
“Why not, so you could withhold the truth from me?” Claudia asked ignoring that there was more… “No wonder Dad is angry at you, and Michael too…” she muttered. “You played god with everyone’s lives, and you forced everyone to live by your decisions.”
“Everyone survived,” Liz murmured.
“You played with everyone’s free will,” she muttered. It is our right. “You did the same with that Future Max bit,” she muttered as she though of what she read in the journal. Stuff she did not want to believe, but now she was suspecting that it was not particularly farfetched. “You changed everyone’s worlds, and nothing was ever the same again.”
“We managed there for a minute or two,” Liz said softly as she hated reminding the downside of the Future Max time in her life, I changed everything and set everything on a new course she thought.
“And then you changed everything,” Claudia muttered as she looked around and she knew she was tired of this, all of this. “I should have gone to Colorado to be with Archie …” she muttered even though she did not know if that would be any better. But it was better than being here and getting an unfiltered look at her mother, warts, and all. “This is too much, I am out of here,” she muttered and as if she expected her mother to speak. “Don’t follow me. Leave me alone,” she said. “You have already done enough, haven’t you” she sighed in a defiance only an eighteen-year-old who was too independent for her own good could muster as she stormed off.
And it only left Liz and Kyle alone in her dust.
“She hates me,” Liz reflected.
“She does not hate you, she is just disappointed” Kyle allowed. Many of us are the same he thought even though he did not say it aloud. Liz could tell what Kyle was thinking, everyone else in this drama of us thinks the same. “As a father of a teenage boy who is not much younger than your daughter. Their moods come and go,” he reflected. “She’s gotten a terrible shock tonight, with the finding out that her mother is not a saint.”
“I never made myself out to be a saint,” Liz murmured. I am definitely not a saint. “Claudia knows how things have been for us…”
I have never been a saint, not in this life, or any of those other ones too she could not help but think as Kyle nodded. “I know want you want to say.”
“No, you don’t” Kyle muttered.
“I am not a saint,” Liz sighed. “Far from it. But all I know is I made the right decision for myself at the time, and I would do it again.”
“Would you?” Kyle asked.
“Yes,” Liz muttered. “You might not understand it, but I was not only saving Max with that deal. But I was saving Isabel and Michael although sometimes I wonder if I should have done it because I know how much Maria loved him, despite his difficult ways. We never saw each other the same way back then, and still I would want never to have wanted the government to get to them, and therefore I made that deal. And I am forever living with the results of that deal,” she thought. “My daughter did not know her father, although really, even if I had not left Max in the manner I did. My daughter still was unlikely to have her father today.”
“Why is that?” Kyle asked.
“Because they knew everything,” Liz sighed. “I would have cost everyone everything if I had not taken the deal,” she muttered. “Michael’s life has been golden all these years and it would have been much worse if I had not made that deal,” she thought.
“What is the hell is up with you,” Maria muttered as she and Michael walked into their house. The house was quiet. No lights were on, but they knew that Lucy was at home. Because they checked the first moment the surveillance system on the way home, and there were no disturbances, but there were plenty of disturbances between them. Because the air was thick. You could almost cut it with a knife. Therefore, Maria hoped her daughter was sleeping peacefully because it was not very peaceful between her and Michael at the moment as she had glared at him the whole way home, and it had been a long drive even though they lived nearby. “But before you tell me what got up your ass, JJ let me escort you the best spare room in this house,” she said of her godson. A boy she had not seen that often in his short life, but an arrival that had settled her friend and her daughter and given them a new purpose. “It is not that dressed up yet because we only just moved in, but it has a made bed and it can do for tonight.”
“It had to be better than what I had at the Crashdown, and it’s not a motel” JJ murmured as he had sensed the undercurrents of his godparents during the whole ride home, and now they were, and he knew his Aunt Maria wanted him out of the way. Which is why she brought me home with them even though he suspected her husband had an outburst or two to go before he started to settle down, because I have seen those kinds of outbursts and they are never good he thought as he lived in a house with a single mother and an older sister who was constantly trying to prove herself.
“Glad we are able to serve you,” Maria smile. And for once it was a smile that brought warmth to the house even though she felt nothing but ice for the love of her life. “I will show you, and Michael you take the time to cool off.”
“Whatever,” Michael muttered as his wife disappeared with the boy that Liz had brought into her home and gestured because the boy had been calling out for a real home and for once Michael remembered being grateful, but that feeling was short-lived and now was over, because of the current but also the past.
Michael did not know why it got him so upset, but the government makes it raw he thought. It is a button that gets pushed when I think of how close they came to getting us or more like Max and Isabel he thought back to that day when he had disrupted the graduation, he had not been apart of because he had not graduated because senior year got off track, and it never got back on track he would think because he had to work to keep a roof over his head. And be the guy Maria deserved even if they had spent a large part of senior year broke up.
Because it suddenly got too real once he had picked Earth and Maria, should not a girl like being the one picked, and a boy staying for her he thought. And he knew Maria did, but still it was a test to them, but still he had roared into that graduation and saved the day and known they had gotten out of town with the skin of their teeth.
And Liz makes a deal with that government agent who wanted to exterminate us he thought as he remembered what Max had been put through under Fisher’s regime, which him to take actions that still haunt him, and he only wished my own daughter does not have to go down the same path he thought.
Lucy did not know the warts of her parent’s courtship, and her father’s past. Neither of her parents felt the need to give their daughter a wakeup call. Lucy only knew that things had not been good back then, and they got lucky. And been fortunate to set up a new life in Tennessee, and she should be careful because who knows who is out there, he thought We have enemies, and enemies who we know about but whose whereabouts are unknown.
He did not want the newest generation to open up the path, and therefore any thought of the government that set us all running gets to me he thought and knew there had to be some good reason why Liz would have had to make that deal, but still it was a deal she should not have made he muttered even though he did not know everything, and how he should be very glad that she had made because he would have had a different life.
And would not have had Maria and Lucy in it, and Lucy like Claudia might have had a different future.
And not the existence she did.
Still, the concept still got to him.
So, yes, he knew it was scab that was easy to come off.
As, upstairs, Maria was showing JJ the spare room. “I know it’s a lot of confusion for you right now,” she murmured more so than Claudia she thought as she showed JJ where the bathroom was and gave the boy an old t-shirt of Michaels for him to wear. “One day, it will become clearer,” she said, and she prayed she was not giving the boy some falsehood given how out of control things had been and it was only a few days into this new adventure there cannot be more to this can there?
She knew not to make any bets on it.
“Thank you, Aunt Maria,” JJ asked of his godmother. Even if they were not close because of the circumstance of his life prior to these days. Someone he knew to be close to his mother, and they were like siblings even though they had not seen much of each other over the last couple of years, because of that dame pandemic he muttered but he knew his mother made this choice to come here not only because I needed a more stable life he murmured because he knew it was well known that he was the reason his mother came back here.
Although, there were other reasons for it and JJ could not know the real nitty gritty of it. “But something tells me that we should be not making any promises,” he wisely said.
Oh, JJ Maria thought of the boy who had seen too much and experienced too much in his short life, “Let us hope that we are both wrong on that score.”
“Hey, what is going on?” came a sleepy Lucy as she opened the door, as she had woken up to the noise out in the hallway. “JJ, what are you doing here?” she asked with surprise at the young boy’s arrival.”
“JJ is spending the night with us,” was all Maria would say.
“Is Claudia here too?” Lucy asked as her eyes perked because it was a surprise to think that the boy would only be here, and not either his mother or sister. “Aunt Liz?”
“Nope, just me” JJ muttered. “Mom and Claudia are having it out.”
Whoa Lucy murmured. Am I still sleeping?
Am I in some intense dream?
“Go to bed Lucy, we can talk about it in the morning” Maria murmured although she did not know what the state of things would be in the morning, but Lucy begrudgingly turned and walked back into her new bedroom and closed the door, as JJ finished getting ready for bed and turned in.
While Maria walked downstairs and had her own battle with her husband. “Are you going to tell me, what has gotten into you?”
“What do you think?” Michael muttered. “I figure it was pretty easy to know what is going on with me, after more than eighteen years of marriage?”
Space boy is too damn predictable because yes, she did know what was up with him, she mused. But it does not mean I like it.
“I don’t know, but maybe you should enlighten me” Maria murmured as across town Claudia stormed up into the apartment that had been too quiet for hours now, prepared to pack up and leave this forsaken town. It should not be this hard, she thought. Why am I doing this. If Mom is not the woman, I thought she was, why should I stay here? she muttered even though she at the end of the day knew it was all talk because the last thing she would do was abandon her little brother when he needed her.
Mom can drop dead, but JJ is why I am sticking around Claudia muttered. Even though she knew she was only hurt because this had been the routine with her mother and her since she came of age and could see that this was not the life her mother had wanted to lead but for some reason it a was life, she was leading Claudia down.
I just did not expect her to be the person she is she thought. And wondered once more if she should get on the first bus to the nearest airport and head to Colorado.
But before she could put any new plan into action, she heard “Hey, you are still a beauty as the last time we saw each other” came a voice and she stopped short of the front door of the apartment she was heading to as she walked up the stairs.
“Archie, what are you doing here?”
“If you could not come to me, well, I might as well come and visit you” Archie Holmes smiled. “Don’t I get a smile?”
“You will get the hell more than that,” Claudia rushed and jumped into his arms, and the intense passion between them started to boil once more as she and Archie soon made it behind closed doors, even though this was the last thing she knew she should be doing with how heated she was feeling about her mother.
All the while Tripp Valenti had witnessed his dream girl heading into the apartment with another guy as he had stopped by to deliver a note from his father for Claudia’s mother, this was before Kyle became of aware of where Liz was now spending her time and he had taken his time with the task and felt it was a way to see Claudia again. And plus, he had a note of his own.
He turned and left after sliding the notes under the door.