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…