Family Matters (CC, Mature) - Chapter 88 - Completed - 01/10/2024

[Parker1947]

Title:Family Matters
Author: Parker1947
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They were created once upon a time by Jason Katims and those associated with the writing staff of Roswell and before them it was the esteem creator of the Roswell High series by Melinda Metz. A book that captured all our attentions for coming on 20 years and more… This story is based on the television show that started in 1999 and ended in 2002. I am just borrowing them for my own fun and imagination or creating new ones to go along with what we were given, in terms of storyline or characters.
Disclaimer#2: This story in yes, in the backdrop of the pandemic. But this story is fictional. And takes places as if it has all started to get better early on. Therefore, it is not trying to take sides or make any statements. Only how things were during the period of the story and trying to come out of it, told in a fictional way.
Rating: Mature (Angsty)
Category: CC
Characters: ALL
Synopsis: Post Graduation: It is now 2021. But back in 2002/2003, in the wake of graduation. Max and Liz are forced to go their separate ways after life on the road ended their marriage. Although life did go on for the both of them, in different ways. But one day nearly two decades later, in the wake of a devastating pandemic they will find out that everything has changed for them and for those new lives they may or may not have started in the interim…
Music Credits: Songs to be revealed during the course of the story are from Simply Red, Whitney Houston, Michael Bolton, Reba MacEntire, Gloria Estefan and finally Taylor Dane
Changes from the Show: Graduation of course happened. Everything happened for good and for bad. Max and Liz just had some bad luck happen to them and they made decisions that did them in. One more so than the other. So, can they rectify now they are older and hopefully wiser?

And a certain show subplot is changed up from the show. Because I am simply doing it my way. Therefore, it might not completely dovetails into facts of the show, but then we tend to forget mind-warping was in play. But I am doing my best to honor the show but angst things up and moving that story onto another character.

This is a story trying to be a picture of current day. Or it was when I began writing it. It’s a fictional post pandemic world assuming it had solved itself early on. Albeit with some lingering lasting effects. I had to set it in this time because of a certain character, so to make it relevant to the post graduation era. If I was being true to the correct ages of everyone, and how much time has passed. This will try to be what a post pandemic life would be in Roswell, and for the characters, and naturally, it has done certain damage to everyone, so they are trying to rebuild in its wake.

It is not trying to be gloomy. But it’s not an easy time or story. The characters are trying to move on.

But the past haunts… and it can be messy…

And it hurts…with plenty of secrets along the way…

*****

May 2021

The car pulled up in the back of the moving van. It had been tailing it for a hundred or so miles ever since they got on the same schedule. You would think they would be missing each other since they both oriented in different parts of the United States. But no, they were now stopping in front of a restaurant that was all boarded up. The establishment in question had been closed for a year because of the pandemic that had ravaged the globe, and the economy, and restaurants were one of the ones that were treated like second class citizens. For good reason since the health of its citizens was a rightful concern and should have been treated with importance. But for a business trying to survive. It was hell. So, after trying to ride out the first weeks, the owners eventually had put up the boards and relocated to Arizona for the past year. Fully intent on coming back when things died down, but that turned out not to happen because they began a new life in a retirement community and had not wanted to come back when life started to reopen. And so, a for sale sign had gone up.

In a battered and bruised town. There had been no takers.

And the sign was in the process of being taken down due to circumstance that had popped up when the owner’s only child spoke up, and now 18-year-old Claudia Evans got out of the car and looked at both the moving van and the restaurant that would be her new home. She was six weeks from graduation, and because of a senior year that one would not consider to be a traditional experience, she still was on schedule to graduate.

Although not in person.

Because of how the pandemic had decimated the educational systems, much like the tourist trade. So, all she could look forward to after spending her life striving…

For her high school diploma…

Would be for it to be delivered to her by mail.

In her newest locale.

One that she did not have any real choice over although she did, and she was okay with her mother’s latest change to their lifestyle. She had become an expert on change. But now she was the only one to arrive because her mother was still on the road with her 10-year-old little brother. How do I know this? The eighteen-year-old asked herself. Even though she had not seen her mother since Christmas when she had watched her mother and brother drive off.

After they broke the rules to come see her grandparents. Retirement communities of all kinds had been hit hard, and Jeff and Nancy Parker were no exception. But they were one of the lucky ones, but it had become a close call. And their daughter and grandchildren wanted to visit them for the holidays. So, they’d driven out to near Phoenix. And by the end of the holidays, their granddaughter had stayed behind because when you go to school on-line. You could do your studies almost anywhere.

And especially in a gated retirement community that provided stellar wi-fi. Claudia did not regret her decision because she knew at the time her grandparents had needed her to be there, to give them support as they coped with the last of some nasty health issues, and then when the time came for a decision to be made about the family restaurant that resided in Roswell, New Mexico.

A place Claudia did not know even though she had been told that she had been born here before admitting that she really had not, she had been born elsewhere. But her mother had packed her up and moved to first New York, then Boston, and in between anywhere she could get away from her father.

Or more like the memories of her father. Because of course he has not been present in my life

Along the way, her little brother had come into their lives, and it had been the three of them ever since until of course Claudia moved into a senior’s retirement community for five months which had been its own challenges because it meant she was away from her mother and brother, and also her social network…

Her friends.

But then her friends were numerous, and they were scattered to wherever they could find jobs despite still having classes to attend most days of the week, or whenever they chose to show up. Claudia was more studious than that that because when there is not much else you can do in Arizona when a global pandemic decides to ravage every facet of life…

And upend the life as you know it.

So, now months later, Claudia stood there and looked at the challenge she would have to undertake as her mother had decided to reopen the Crashdown even though she had not had any restaurant experience since she was a waitress as a teenager. And that career had ended in a lot of dramatic action as she graduated from high school and in the end, had moved on from this town and went and became a premiere scientist.

But the last year had burnt her out.

Seriously.

So, now she wanted a new challenge.

Or it had been because of her young son whose name was JJ Parker. Given the name in honor of her father, the child’s grandfather, Jeffrey James, though he currently liked to simply call himself JJ. Why the siblings had different last names was a long story. And not one she was in the mood to share at this minute. There will be time. Still little JJ was now 10 and had not taken to the pandemic well, and unlike his big sister, he had not meshed with on-line learning. For a high energy boy. Computer learning was not his mode of learning. So, he needed a stable environment, and after some brushes with his attitude. Claudia’s mother decided to make this move.

And now here I am, Claudia thought. I gave up a summer in the mountains she murmured. As she went to the door and pulled the board off the door and opened the long-locked door in such a way that no one would suspect something was off and tore down the “for sale” sign.

She tried to get some movement out of the moving crew, but they would not listen to her, so they had to wait until her mother arrived. Which could be anytime as she checked see if she got cell service, which she did. She texted her mother and little brother to say she had arrived. Once that was done. She chose to walk through the abandoned building and saw the dust and the dirt. Assessing it like someone who had experience. Which she did not, but she was capable of a lot she knew. Fortunately, it did not seem like it would be a nightmare to clean up, even after fourteen months of inactivity.

But because of it being closed for business. It was going to need some freshening up if they were going to open his place and operate it. She could see the challenge, but oddly she was game for it. She felt like this was the right call.

For some reason because she did not know the place.

Still, she took to looking around and seeing the funny alien paint Funny Gramps she thought. But it fed the family and town until it did not.

She did not know if her mother would want to change the paint, or the theme because of how on the nose it was to their life.

She thought it was cool. Then what did it matter. Only that it spoke to her origins.

Not that dear old Mom wants to acknowledge that in me Claudia thought. Which is why the last five months had been a blessing to be away from each other.

Again, a long story as she heard movement in the back. Knowing it was not the movers. After all, they did not want to take orders from an eighteen-year-old. Still, she felt it was her duty to check, and she walked into the backroom.

A room that had not obviously been changed in eighteen years. It felt dated. But how would she know how it looked because she had never had any conscious memory of being here. The paint looks so yesteryear. As she had noted the green and orange alien mosaic paint in the front, and boy it was a little much for someone who had not experienced it.

Grandpa had gone all out…

Opening the door, or she pushed the creakiness of the door and walked into the back, and she stopped because she was stunned to see someone from her past standing in the doorway with boxes all over the places.

A shadow of a man stood there, and it was obvious from the stunned glances on both of their faces, that they would know each other.

Both were stunned silent.

Which stretched on for an eternity it seemed.

Finally, the silence broke, and he was first to speak as if the resemblance were instantaneous, which it was, which to Claudia, she did not know how it could be.

“Claudia,” the man uttered.

Perfect the teenage muttered out loud “Hello Dad,” came the eighteen-year-old who looked at the man she knew was her father, because he had no role in her life. But now they stood at least two meters from each other. Socially distancing is great thing for once she told herself. Funny one Claudia.

“What are you doing here?” came the stunned man, a shadow of his former self.

“Mom did not tell you. We are relocating back here…”

*

The words “relocating” were slow to sink in, and slow to come out of his mouth as he repeated them as the man looked at the girl who was more like a woman now and in total command much like her mother he thought. And so, unlike himself as they were staring at each other because he did not know this day was going to happen even though it had been a duty of his to keep an eye on this place thanks to personal deal he had made with its owners before they shut it down because life and business became too much.

Too much was something I could relate to…

Because that was his life.

For as long as Claudia had been alive. Ever since her mother woke up one morning and could not take the life she had anymore, because I forced it on her he thought and divorced him and walked out of his life.

Taking their daughter with her…

And now he watched the same daughter he shared with the love of his life and wondered how life had come to this place.

And he wanted to thank God because he was seeing his baby girl for the first time in eighteen years.

“Claudia,” Max Evans asked as he did not even know how Claudia would know him because it was not like Liz wanted him apart of their life. Because it was a deal they had made in the divorce. She would take his secrets, and crimes to the grave. And he would give up custody.

It was ruthless and not a side he would have expected to see in her.

But the one he would expect because it was not the life she had expected although she had accepted his ring when they were planning on running for their lives or a showdown with a shadow government agency determined to make you extinct or whatever came first. Fortunately, they got out of town just in time.

But it was not the life for two kids in love. Especially when a baby came too quickly.

On the road and forced to make do with life in any way possible to make money. It finally became too much for Liz, and she took their daughter and disappeared from his life before he could find them.

As a result. She had relocated all over the country. And he had never known where they were.

And faced with the destruction of the life he was leading. Max had come back here and settled into a life that he had not seen coming. Especially in the last year as he watched over the Crashdown and remembered when he would come into this establishment and sit in a booth and see the love of his life whirling around the restaurant in all her glory. As the beloved only daughter of the owners.

And their extremely rocky courtship once their eyes opened to each other which would lead to a lot of drama, and the ultimate demise of their relationship.

But with a lasting memory.

Their daughter.

Claudia Diane Evans

This was not what he was thinking when he was doing his usual walk around the premises, and he heard commotion inside. Talking to Jeff the day before, his former father-in-law, did not give him the heads up of what to expect.

The fact he was on speaking terms with his former in-laws was a miracle. Given how rocky the days were before he and Liz had vanished from its shores. But coming back after the divorce had given him time to win back their support of his in-laws, even if they were now his former ones.

But Jeff had been kind to him. After all, Jeff had not known how to explain what his daughter had done or why she had not come here, and instead chose to vanish from their lives as well as Max’s. And therefore, in the past year, Max had shown the kindness back to his former in-laws and he had kept guard on the beloved establishment even though he knew from the sign on the front that it was due to be sold.

But he had not be warned of any changes to that fact.

So, this was a shock. To come and check on the premises, only to find his only child staring at him. And now he was being told that she would be relocating back to this town.

Their town.

Once upon a time.

“How do you know it is me?” Max stammered as he tried to figure out how to handle this change to his life. “You, are, what?” he asked as he did not know how this was happening when he was unprepared to handle it.

“18 years old,” came Claudia as it was just as stunning to her for her to be facing her father. Then man she never experienced before because her mother had asked her father to stay away from her, and he had abided by that request. “And about that other thing. Mom did show me pictures you know,” she said as she had clarified it to herself. Not that mom wanted to talk about you, so, instead she kept it to pictures, and the informal this is your father. “And so did Grandma and Grandpa.” After all, they were kinder than their own daughter about their granddaughter’s birth father Claudia now muttered. I will never understand you, Mom.

Mom has made some crazy decisions Claudia sighed.

“Right,” Max muttered as he was trying to compute this bombshell, as suddenly there was commotion out front, and it brought back to the realities of their life. And how this was not the place that should be their first meeting after a life spent apart. But it forced Claudia back to the reality that she knew would have her mother coming back into it, anytime now.

“Hey, Claude, where are you?” came a high-pitched female as she raced into the old restaurant. “Hey, this place is so cool” came the pixie blonde. Echoing another time in the man’s life. As he witnessed his best friend’s daughter as she stormed into their present. With the blonde pixie haircut, she echoed the beginning of an incredible journey for Max and for the blonde’s parents.

“In here,” called Claudia as she had not been expecting her friend to show up.

Barging into their private moment. Although both parties welcomed the diversion as Lucy Guerin came rushing into the room. “Hey, this place is far out,” came Lucy as she stopped in front the man staring at her. “Oh, I did not know you had company. Hello Max,” she said deferentially towards her father’s best friend.

Claudia would not know Lucy knew her father.

“Hello Lucy,” came Max “I also did not expect to see you,” said the man still in shock of seeing his daughter for the first time in eighteen years.

Still Claudia welcomed the diversion because this was not what she had been expecting to happen after setting out on her own from her grandparent’s home near Phoenix and drove here to meet up with her mother and little brother.

Now she was facing her birth father.

Needing the break, she turned to her friend “When did you get in?” she asked her best friend. Eight months was their age difference, so Lucy still had another year to go in high school before she finished. Maybe she will have a more traditional senior year that I was denied thought Claudia. Not that she was willing to deter graduation for a stereotypical senior year of parties, making out with her boyfriend, and then finally prom. Nah, I am more willing to get on with life.

The last year had given her a wake-up call into this cruel world.

And life changes, and it is what you make of it, and she did make it in different ways.

“Last night,” came Lucy as it still stunned her to see her father’s best friend standing in the belly of the Crashdown. “Staying with Grandma and Grandpa, while Mom and Dad are moving into the new place. They did not need me to get in the way,” she said softly as she may have lived elsewhere but she was someone who knew every inch of Roswell because of summers here in Roswell with her grandparents.

Claudia was not really listening, and Max knew this, and knew he had to be going and said as much “I guess I better go,” he said simply. “It’s a real pleasure to finally see you Claudia,” he murmured as he did not know how to handle this how do you handle seeing your daughter for the first time since she was a baby “And Lucy, I will be seeing you and your parents later?” as the pixie blonde nodded.

“Good-bye Dad,” came a shell-shocked Claudia as she was still processing the whole encounter and Lucy’s jaw dropped as if she was finally let in on some deep secret.

As Max nodded and walked through the shell of the old restaurant, and walked out into the sunshine, and stopped short when he saw someone from his past.

Standing talking to some gentlemen in front of what was clearly marked as a moving van, as it looked like it was to deliver the family belongings into the building.

She is still radiant he thought as he almost wanted to walk away so that she did not know he was here, but it was Liz he thought, and he could not walk away. She can walk away from me he muttered But I could never walk away from her. So, he came back to the reality and said the one-word he did not think he ever would again, “Liz,” came his voice when he finally found it and used it and time stopped when the brunette turned around and went pale at the sight of man who she had walked away from.

The love of her life.

And her ex-husband.

“Max,” Liz Parker formerly Evans said as a small young boy stood next to the car, using his phone to amuse himself while his mother debated strategy and the change in his mother’s voice made him look up at the man he had only seen in pictures.

Still, that did not stop him from butting in…

“Mom,” came the boy and Max was reminded once again that Liz had moved on from him.

[totallizfan]

It's a good start.

[Parker1947]

Liz was all that he could say.

Because not far from where he was outside of the Crashdown Cafe was the object of Max’s astonishment as his former wife stood staring at him. Almost like she could not believe this was happening. She could not. Please no, not on this day, please no, she wanted to cry but wisely did not. But she did stand there paralyzed by inaction because this was not in any of the plans for this day. The day of their arrival. Not at all. Especially not after the year she had. And after how burnt out she felt. No, she cried. This cannot be happening she asked of herself. This was not in any of her plans, especially not for day one.

Even knowing she was coming back to her hometown. A place that held intense memories, which is why she had stayed way as she chose to ignore the other reasons, I stayed away but now that she was back. She did need to see him because the flashbacks had invaded ever since she had bypassed the Welcome to Roswell sign outside town limits. As if they had been holding back until she saw her the name of her hometown.

Because seeing that piece of wood allowed her to fall into the past. And even with her visit to her younger years. She regretted making the decisions she did. She may have managed to make a life for herself and had found a lot of success. But you still rue those people you gave up, and those roads you choose to take instead of the obvious. And that is where Liz was today because after such a long and unfortunately cruel year, she needed something to give her hope again. Which is why she packed up her son and started on the drive to Roswell.

And prepared for a new beginning in the place she had left so long before. Prepared to accept the challenge before her but she also now stood here looking at the man she left. The man whose heart she broke as a door opened as they both stood in some trance, and the boy next to the car looked up at his mother with a jaw that was dropping because he had never seen his mother like this, not in the 10 years since he had come into her life.

Wake up Mom he wanted to cry but he chose not to say a word. Just as the door to the restaurant opened and out walked a fellow brunette.

Who was now officially an adult in the eyes of the world? If not in the eyes of her mother.

A woman who was now awakened from the state of paralysis she was in because she concentrated on the two girls now coming out of the place that was supposed to be her new beginning. Max, she thought but then she saw her daughter, Claudia Diane as she had come out of the restaurant with Liz’s goddaughter, Lucy Guerin. Someone who was mimicking her own mother before her in so many ways.

It brought back those days where everything was bright, and she had no idea what she was going to bring into her life.

And yet seeing Max and seeing their daughter they shared so grown up, and in so many ways the mirror of them both. She instantly felt guilty for taking Claudia away from Max and his family, but she had little choice at the time, and as time went on, she saw the futility of that decision, but it had been made and it was something she could not go back on, no matter how much she wished it or how she had changed the life her daughter had to live.

It is my fault Liz wanted to cry.

And while Liz had not seen Max coming out of the place, she had once called home. Spotting her daughter. She knew that they had seen each other and had maybe even talked. Which had been her nightmare. Simply something she had dreaded once her daughter started to grow up and assert her independence. After all, they were different people. And Liz could not always think that her daughter would abide by her wishes.

Claudia definitely lived up to that… Liz muttered.

Especially since they had really seen each other since the holidays because she failed her parents by being a neglectful daughter because she had allowed her daughter to uproot her life to stay with her grandparents while she, Liz, had returned to her life with her son. And now she was changing the very fabric of her life once more because she was giving up her cushy job for a life of uncertainness when it came to going into the restaurant business.

In the middle of a pandemic.

Yes, she knew she was probably crazy. And probably could use a good session with a shrink she thought.

But I cannot do that, can I? she said as she had enough common sense to know that there was no professional that she or her daughter could talk to about their problems, because there so much that had to be left unsaid.

And now she did not know what to do or how to proceed as Claudia had stopped as she had seen the commotion outside as she and Lucy finished their perusal of the inside of the premises and came out as Claudia noticed her mother’s car and her little brother standing by it and she had not immediately seen that her biological father…

A man she had not seen in nearly eighteen years until today was staring at her mother like she was a long-lost treasure he was seeing for the first time, just great she muttered to herself. But what surprised her was how her mother was reacting.

Like she was in a state of paralysis. Which she was but Claudia did not know this, and she and Lucy watched the two react to each other Unbelievable she would think, as she saw that her mother was not moving one iota and Lucy was laughing because this was a such an amusing shock.

Despite her surprise inside. What she was witnessing was validating everything she knew because yes, she knew the stories, or enough that were fit for the ears of a growing girl. She knew that the legend of Claudia’s parents was so great and so intense that it ultimately broke them apart because they had been too young, and life was too cruel, and Max was never the same once he lost the one, he loved so much.

And of course, Liz had not simply left.

Liz had vanished into thin air.

Taking their only child with her. And she had not come back, until now. As she moved around the country and Lucy knew Claudia because she and her parents had been living in Nashville while her mother was a country singer. Building a successful career, in which she could perform and also write her own songs. The world had loved her twisty songs, but time had moved on, and Maria gave up the thrill of the stage and wanted to settle back in Roswell while Michael had mostly been a house husband. Taking care of their daughter and puttering around in his own pursuits.

But unfortunately, the pandemic had hurt the music business because touring opportunities were suspended and as the months continued to dig into their savings, Maria and Michael knew something had to change and so they elected to return to Roswell to give themselves and their daughter Lucy a more stable life as she finished up high school and planned her future. And so, they were newly arriving back in Roswell and the whole family almost were thrilled to know Claudia because her mother and brother were coming to town, to settle down, but for Lucy, the fact she would have her best friend to help with her transition to town made it all the better. Although unlike Claudia, Lucy knew this town, so she was able to rush over when she got her friend’s text that she was at the Crashdown.

When they last saw each other. They had partied when Claudia was in Nashville, celebrating Lucy’s 16th before the pandemic affected their realities. Unlike her friend, she was home in Nashville with her mother and father before this move. While Claudia had spent the last five months in Arizona with her grandparents so Lucy knew the transition would probably be more brutal for her friend as she dealt with living with her mother one more. Because Lucy knew mother and daughter were famous for their friction as much as for their bond. Which despite the odds, that bond was still tight even with that friction in the mix?

And now the girls were within the middle of a soap opera. As both girls were watching as Claudia’s mother was reacting to her father.

Unfortunately, in the background the moving van was not going to stay silent when there was work to be done.

“Mrs. Parker,” came the lead driver. “We need to get started?” he said as he carried his clipboard and ignored the glances his client was giving to her former husband, someone she could not even utter a single word to yet, but the third party did allow for Liz to come back to reality as she saw her young son JJ (Jeffrey James) with his jaw dropping because he had not seen his mother like this. Neither had his older sister, Claudia.

“It’s only Ms. Parker,” Liz said instantly. “I am not married,” she saw as if it was a reflex and Claudia noticed how her biological father brightened at the knowledge that her mother was not married, and single as much as you can be she supposed when you do not partake in the social scene despite being single since Claudia was a baby. And she smirked when her mother added. “Any longer...”

A frown came to Max’s face, and everyone could see it. Claudia knew her father probably wondered since it was obvious that she now had a brother, and her mother now had a son who was staying near the car before taking steps towards their mother. She knew enough had gone down, and they might as well deal with the now. “Mom,’ she called.

And once more Liz was confronted by the now, and the present. As she talked to the man, and it could not be helped but be noticed that her father’s glaze moved with her mother’s movement.

“Yes, let us get on moving,” was all Liz could say as she did could not even utter anything more to her ex-husband, as she went with the men into the building that her daughter had just vacated. Disappearing from the sight of them all.

“So, that is your father?” Lucy would only say. As they were still at a distance from where the man was, and he was unlikely to hear them talk.

“Yes, he is my father,” Claudia muttered. But I do not know him, nor does he know me, or could I call him my father because a father would have been there, she thought but she knew it was not all on him, because it was dear old mom who took me away.

And she did not have to be very old before she understood the situation that had ended her parents, although she did not all that had transpired, but she knew enough she thought. Or she felt she did.

Liz would dispute that notion.

“So, cool” Lucy smiled.

Claudia did not know if it was that cool or not.

*

All the while Max was still in a fog. The double whammy of seeing his baby girl for the first time in eighteen years, and then on top of that emotional beating. Seeing the love of his life. The woman who still held his heart. It did not matter that she tore his heart apart when she took their daughter and vanished from his life, and their town. Because nothing stopped him from loving her.

If only he had stayed away in the beginning. Once he changed her life forever, and if she could have gone and create the discoveries that were just waiting for her to find if she had not gotten mixed up in his life and put her own in jeopardy on an almost daily basis for more than two years, more like close to three.

I should have stayed away Max thought. I should have heeded my own warning to her… it did not matter that he had put it on her to decide what she wanted to do. She wanted me, he thought. Just as I wanted her, he also thought.

And we had a little girl.

A blessing.

And just like how it always was meant too. They ended. She had vanished. Taking their daughter with her, and she was now back with both Claudia who was now eighteen. But also, a little boy.

Who looked ten or eleven? But it was hard to gage age. How did that happen, he thought? But shook his head because it should not matter to him. Because we are divorced, and she wanted it, he thought. And therefore, we both have moved on.

Not that he did. Not one iota, he thought. Although I have tried, in different ways.

But nothing stuck.

As he could not help but look at the two girls who were at the start of their lives. And they did not have to deal with what he had to when he was their age. Although of course he did not know what kind of life his daughter may have had, or led, because it did not have him in it with her. But he supposed until the last twelve months or so that life had to have been better than the one, he had experienced once they opened that pandora box that would come with that shooting back in 1999.

He did not know how to respond but he was thrilled to know she was not married. That is something, right? he asked himself as his daughter did not say anything as she said good-bye to Lucy and watched as the pixie blonde skipped off in search of the closest bus. Claudia did not say anything to man she did not know, except to know what he looked like. She simply walked back into the restaurant that moment later became a commotion as people started to walk back and forth with boxes into the establishment as it suddenly became crowded, and yet…

He stayed and that was probably because he could not get his feet to move. Almost like they wanted him to stay. This is too bizarre, and probably pretty bad for my mental health he chided himself. So, why am I doing this to myself after so many years of successfully getting over what happened?

Dream on Max if you ever got over losing your wife and daughter, he told himself. Sure, you did not become a hermit, but it is not like you have a life he would utter as it did not escape him that there was a small boy looking at him.

Assessing him. Like he is curious just as I am curious about him Max told himself.

The boy meanwhile had been yes, watching and ended up walking closer to him. Curious to know who had bewitched his mother and older sister. Because they had acted in such a way that was foreign to him, and he did not have anything better to do because as a ten-year-old. It is not like they actually trusted him to help in any way. Why would they?

And he was fine with it, but it made him curious of the man staring at him with a faraway glaze.

“Who are you?” JJ Parker would ask Max as he came closer. And he knew he should not be talking to strangers, and this man was a stranger to him because the boy knew that one of the benefits of having a mother and yes, an older sister who was eight years old than you are, well, they could not help but teach you a lot. Or you could observe, and they certainly had told him to be careful of who he had trusted in this unfriendly world.

But they did not have to spend the last year mainly in on-line classes and away from most of your friends and only regulated visits with masks and at least six feet away from your friends if you were able to see them at all.

And of course, sports were out of the question.

So, he was hoping this move would change things but from what he heard on the radio in the course of the drive. He did not know if he would be getting his wish but at least it was something different.

A new environment. A new playground.

Which is why curious about this man in front of him.

“Max Evans,” Max would say because he did not know how to deal with the situation. It is so bizarre he would tell himself. The mere fact that there was another child.

“How do you know my mother?” JJ would ask. As the question could not help but remind Max once more that Liz did have another child.

“I know Claudia,” was all Max could think of saying even though he knew it was a lie because the last thing he was is known to Claudia. There is no way that would be true. “I am her father…”

That revelation hit its mark, in the boy whoa okay, that is something I did not expect for the man to say he would murmur to himself as he was quick to access the stranger. Because Max was a stranger to him, right? “But not mine,” JJ asked.

Of, course he knew the answer and therefore he did not expect Max to surprise him with any answer of the affirmative because JJ long knew the situation of his birth, and why he and Claudia had different last names.

“No,” Max said as he felt a pang to know that his former wife had moved on enough to have another child as Liz came out of the restaurant and once again froze but did not stay that way as she called for her son, “JJ” she called. “Why don’t you come and see your new apartment?”

“Yes, Mom” JJ called as he rushed off. Because he wanted to see his new home. And knew this man would not stay gone. So, the chances were that he would see him again. As he quickly grabbed his mother’s hand and pulled her into the Crashdown.

And his mother did not resist the pulling, and she was gone in a flash.

“What else is new,” Max muttered to himself as his feet suddenly started to work and he knew he could not stay here, and his feet took him away from the Crashdown. That is all Liz does is disappear from my life.

But at least she is back this time.

… you have to start somewhere, right?

*

Meanwhile,

The suitcase got lugged and placed on the newly installed bed, with bedding still to be placed on the mattress. But it was a start came the blonde in a new bedroom. And in a new home. That was more palatial than anything her mother could have afforded when last she lived in this town. Before she met her husband, and they married in an eccentric type of ceremony that was oddly perfect for her.

Not as much for her Space boy. But then he was my odd ball, she thought. He loved me and dealt with it when she upped and changed their lives by moving to Nashville to try her hand at the craft of music that would allow her some input into her sound and her music. And with a lot of luck, she had succeeded.

Even when a baby came early on. Still, she managed to make it in the world and craft a winning career that she could control, and still have a home life with her husband and their daughter.

Singles, albums, and awards piled up.

She did not regret anything in her life. Because she had someone to share it with, and Michael managed it in his own way. Maria Deluca Guerin smiled as she looked at the furniture piled into the room, still unorganized and boxes were bountiful, and would need a lot of unloading in the days and weeks to come. But this needed to happen, she thought.

She did not regret it.

Because the last year had been one headache after another. For a touring musician who valued her family but thrived on the road. The early days were a relief. Good to be home with her husband and daughter, but not when it was months later, and still she was not back on stage.

She could make music and she did, but still that was not the same thing. And it came as Lucy was dealing with on-line schooling headaches and was approaching her senior year, which Maria knew were all about decisions that would have to be made. So, she and Michael had sat down and had a long talk and decided that settling back in Roswell and focusing on their family until their daughter was hopefully in university, was the best thing for their family and their finances which had taken a hit because of the lack of touring, and virtual singing was a different beast and Maria did not take same joy in it.

So, she could take a couple of years off and go back if she desired when she and Michael were empty nesters needing something to thrive off, and so they came back to Roswell and found this house, and now had officially moved in.

And once more, she knew this was the right thing for herself, Michael, and their daughter Lucy.

As she was in her mind, Michael was in the office setting up the computer and sound systems throughout the house. She had room in the basement to make music if she wanted and they were currently making it soundproof. So, she was on hiatus as they adjusted to their new circumstances and surroundings, and she could not wait to share it with her best friend because finally she and Liz would be in the same town again.

Eighteen years later.

Because they had gone their own way on the road. Liz had ended back in Roswell ever briefly, and her marriage failed before she took her child and vanished to different parts of the country for the next eight years before her friend would settle in relative peace with her daughter in one location, and had gained a son as a result, while Michael and Mariah had landed in Tennessee and had married and had succeeded but now were back in their hometown.

The slam of the door made her pay attention to her surroundings. She was not alone in the house. Michael was around. But still, it was a new house. Her mother and Jim had been around earlier helping with the last of the movers and the boxes being loaded into the house, but they had gone off because they had plans with Kyle.

Who was newly single after several failed marriages? The last one almost succeeded, but nope, it left Kyle brokenhearted this time because the last ones were on him. Personally, Maria believed her stepbrother was pining for the unattainable. The one he had not been able to have back when they were younger and found his dream girl but that dream girl was married to someone else.

And when that marriage broke down, she had met someone else, and moved on, until her second husband died the year before and from what Maria knew. Isabel was single, but neither her stepbrother nor Isabel had seen that they were probably perfect for each other. Kyle had thrown himself into another marriage. But now he was single, and raising his son from his first marriage, Tripp.

And of course, Isabel was here as well.

Which was a story for another time as the bang of the door disrupted Maria’s thoughts, as she called “Michael,” she rang out throughout the house. “Is that you?” she asked and got nothing. Not even a grunt or a yell from her Space boy. Sighing, she was ready to explore. She kept the suitcase unzipped and walked of her room and gave a shutter, “God, Lucy’ she said of her daughter.

“Am I not welcome?” came the seventeen-year-old. And so much a replica of her younger years, although she had been done with the pixie phase by the time, I was sixteen she thought. It was one of those moments in time that was done because I was in the mood, she thought. And I thought better of it later on, she thought. Although there was that time with reddish dark hair that quickly changed when she went on the road, and she had to hide so her appearance changed shortly after the wedding of the decade that did not end so well life can suck, she thought. But I got my Space boy. “Of course, this is your home. You are more than welcome. It was that you scared me. Why not call and your father or I could have picked you up?”

“Mom,” came the outlandish whine of her daughter, “I know this town, remember. I can deal with it,” she said with a smile as she looked around her parents’ bedroom. She had been told by her grandmother that she could meet her parents at her new home. As the moving in had progressed past the mass of people and moving of boxes, so Lucy had come over, and now for the first time was seeing the house for really the first time.

It is like a different place, she thought with all their furniture now in the house. Everything was not hooked up, but she had seen her father working on it, and she knew he would have it all done in short order, “Cool place,” she said. “Can I see my room?”

“Sure,” Maria said softly as she viewed her daughter through different eyes. So, unlike me she thought despite the pixie look and why she can like that haircut is beyond me Maria thought as she knew she did not look at that phase with warm eyes even though it brought me my Space boy she thought, but it was the start of an incredible journey, and one that was still lasting to this day.

So many memories.

And she was here, we are here, Maria thought as she and her daughter looked around their new home.

As Maria elected to leave the suitcase on the bed and walk out of the bedroom with her daughter as they walked down the hall to the teenager’s room, and they walked in and the many boxes, and Lucy’s own suitcase now resided on the unmade bed. So much work to be done before we make this place our home, Lucy’s mother thought.

This is cool Lucy thought again, maybe I am overusing the word she conceded but this was a new environment for her, away from the show business that was Nashville, and this was definitely a small town. So different than Nashville but she was well familiar with it because she had come here in her summers to spend time with her grandparents.

Because Maria would usually take that time to tour, in the summers once Lucy was of school age, and needing the structure of school. Although it posed difficulty as her career soared and they needed to be on the road longer, and in more depth and therefore Lucy would come along because Maria did not want to be away from her family, and therefore Lucy was known to do a hybrid model of academia. Always changing both now thought.

But the pandemic changed everything.

And now we are here Maria thought with the hope that Lucy would be having a more traditional experience for the next year, hopefully she muttered to herself. A lot is riding on the next year for my daughter which is why we settled back here.

It was a big room.

So, unlike the one that Maria grew up in, but then Lucy Elizabeth Guerin had a very different life than the one both of her parents lived in, with more success for her mother, while her father had to work too much to get to the end of the road.

Therefore, both Michael and Maria wanted a different life for their only child. And they definitely planned for her to achieve.

Lucy might have different plans.

Because if you ask the pixie hair teen. She did not know what her future was. She was different to the vast majority of her friends, and she was walking her own line. That was very different from her parents, or from what even Claudia was walking. She was looking at Roswell as the start of an adventure, and she was always up for an adventure.

“You will be able to study in this room?” Maria murmured as she and her daughter looked over the room that was now her daughters, and Lucy winced at the mention of school, we are day one in this town… why does she have to bring up school?

“Come on Mom, not with all that please,” Lucy muttered. “I have the summer off from school, and the last thing I want to remember is that building…”

Maria could only shake her head because their daughter was very much like Michael in one retrospect, she hates school. But she gets by with outstanding grades, just like her father Maria told herself, but Michael did not have parents who actually wanted their son to show up to school, so he came and went on his own schedule and as such did not graduate.

Neither parent wanted that for Lucy.

We came back to give Lucy a more traditional school experience, Maria told herself and said as much and Lucy only rolled her eyes. And Maria had only shook her head because while Lucy took on her father’s motto about school, still she was very much like her mother, down to the blonde hair, and the current pixie hair.

For Michael, sometimes it was eerie to see their daughter, and know how she looked like the younger version of his wife.

And that is what he found when he came upstairs and found his wife and daughter in Lucy’s new bedroom. “What do you think?” Michael asked of her daughter.

“It will do,” Lucy said with a smile. “For more than just homework, or on-line studies,” she said as she twisted around and looked around as her parents could only smile at her trying to ignore her education. “Can’t wait for Claudia to see it.”

Claudia Maria smiled, of her goddaughter. Sure, she did not see the teenager much, but she was the vision of both of her parents as she knew her daughter would do well to have a friend near her age here in town, and Michael nodded, but his own thoughts were with someone else, his best friend who had not been able to see his daughter all these years.

Because she had vanished with her mother. For absolutely no reason, or none that Liz was able to tell Maria when they met up again, for the first time after the separation and out-of-state divorce. So, they were still mystified all these years later, even though Liz had gone on, and so had in Max in vastly different ways.

Now they would be in the same town.

“Have you talked to her honey?” Maria asked of her daughter’s best friend.

“I just saw her,” Lucy said with a smile. “She has arrived at her grandparents’ old place, and I could have been watching a soap opera” she said of the show she had seen. “No television show has the ability to recreate such a display.”

“What are you talking about?” Maria asked her daughter, and Michael could only shake his head. Because both his daughter and wife had this capacity for the outlandish and were always quite interested in the soapy aspects of life.

And he could most lose it from his life.

“Claudia showed up, and so did both her mother and father at the same time,” Lucy smiled. “I mean it, the same time,” she said with a giggle and smile. “It was so unreal and cool, and awesomely romantic, although I do not think Claudia was thinking that way,” as she saw the jaw dropping looks on both of her parents’ faces. “She was super confused,” she said softly as she glanced at her parents because she was well aware that she was very different from her best friend.

Because I have my parents together, she thought. It was a trip to see such a soapy display she thought. “I thought it only existed in Nashville, or you know television” she said with a smile. “I am hungry, I am checking the kitchen. Do we have anything like pizza” she muttered to herself as she trailed off and walked away from her parents, who were left looking like they had no idea what had just happened.

Which was a prevalent feeling with their daughter involved, but still this time, it was larger. “Is Lucy serious?” Michael asked.

“I have no idea,” Maria muttered as she thought of the knowledge that having Liz coming back town would bring her life, but she had no idea that it would all collide on day one, “We knew it had to happen?”

Michael nodded as they headed downstairs to get more details.

[totallizfan]

Looking forward to the adults reunion.

[Parker1947]

Meanwhile, Max did not know what had hit him. Really, he did not and did not know what to feel or think as he drove across town. Taking his time so not to find himself in the middle of an accident, one that would be his own damn fault, therefore he was taking his time before he pulled onto a very familiar street. One that had been in his memory banks since he first came to this planet, and this town.

As he pulled into the driveway. He thought of the day it was, and how momentaneous it was because of who he had seen, completely surprising him and fortunately he was not going down the rabbit hole or falling apart because he had too many responsibilities to do such a thing as he took a minute to sit in his car and look up at his family home. A home that had given him a roof over his head from the time he was six years old until he moved out in the wake of some unique circumstances stemming from his graduation from high school. Life on the road, early marriage, but that ended too soon, and then he was back.

And still he lived on his own until six years before, when life inside their family once more changed in ways, he had never come to accept even though time would move on and now he was sitting here and staring at his childhood home with new eyes, older eyes unfortunately he thought with knowledge that he was no longer eighteen. He was the father of an eighteen-year-old, even though he had not a role in her life.

But now she was back in town, if not in his life.

That might come later Max thought as he got out of the car and walked to the front door and walked into the house that was his now, as he did not have to go far before he saw the trash, and the smell of alcohol. A life that might have been his one time and had been in those early days when he had been morning the loss of his marriage, and loss of both his wife and baby daughter. But he then pulled himself together.

As much as you could in Roswell. But he did, so he never imagined he would be finding this life with his father as he stooped down and picked up the left-over containers from restaurants who would deliver to his father, because he refused to cater to his father’s behavior. Even if it was worse than usual, it is that time of year Max now thought. “Can’t you pick up after yourself?” he asked of his father who sat where he normally always was, in a chair, looking at the television in stony silence.

“I did not feel the need too,” Phillip Evans muttered. As he was a shell of himself. And Max hated it because this was not the man who he had idolized at one time even though that idolizing had run into some hard times during his senior year of high school. But then he found himself coming home, single, and alone.

He and his father would make up and were better than ever. But that might be the reason why Phillip was so out of it, not that Max would know this…

Until six years ago, when the unfathomable happened.

And Max was still mourning it along with his father.

But I do not let my life go to the shits Max thought and he ignored his father’s behavior. Because this was his home now. He had taken it over from father in the wake of a devastating reality that hit their families.

“Dad,” Max muttered.

“Don’t Dad me,” Phillip muttered. “Leave my life to me to live,” he sighed as he continued to watch television.

“I know it’s rough for you,” Max muttered even though he knew he should not be the one to speak to his father about his life when he was no better, only slightly better, and definitely more functional he thought. Although there was a time, that was not the case.

“You do not know anything,” Phillip said roughly. “You do not know anything about it?”

“I know something about it,” Max muttered loudly. “And you know I do.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Phillip muttered. “After all you let your wife take your child, this is after you lost your other child.”

Shit Dad, knife me why don’t you while you are at it, Max muttered. “Why bring that up,” he said softly as he still was not over eighteen years ago. I will never get over it. So, it was not going to suddenly mean everything was hunky dory now, even though I am more functional than my own father.

“Because it’s the truth,” Phillip muttered. “If you were only honest, I could have done something to bring your daughter home to you” he muttered. “You would have gone after them, but you allowed your wife to take her, and to vanish” as he felt something in his gut for the dagger that he was placing in his son’s back. Especially when he knew so much more about the situation than Max thought he did, or even more than Max knew himself. So, Phillip had to ask himself, why am I doing this?

Max did not know anything, and he felt saddened by what he presumed was the situation at hand Oh, Dad Max thought. I tried to go after them but I hit a stone wall he thought in his quest to find his wife and to convince her to bring their daughter back to him but that was then, and this was now, and the last thing he needed was to inflame the situation by mentioning that his daughter was now back in town, because he knew that this was an old issue between himself and his father, and they had not always see eye to eye. “There was only so much I could have done,” he muttered. Liz had me there, he thought. She knew how to leverage my secret, he thought. Not that he blamed her, she was in this life because of me, he thought as he stared at the stony face of his father. “You know why I could not tell you all. Why Isabel and I had to stay quiet,” he said softly and really all he cared was what the reality was, or the one he hoped was true. “Claudia was safe, and that is all I wanted for my daughter because unfortunately that was not the life that was destined for my son.”

Phillip nodded and did not say anything more, because the situation with his once grandson was more unfortunate than the one for his granddaughter, and so that was something Max was grateful for, and wanted to keep that way so he just walked on, past his disheveled father, and past the pile of beer bottles, and moved onto the kitchen, pushing himself through the door to get away from his father.

And away from the negativity because I do not need it.

“Sorry about that,” came the voice of a woman who had come into the house via the back way. So, she had not run into her brother and father, but she heard enough of it as stood in the kitchen. “I should have warned you,” she said, and Max nodded, although it was not like he did not know what the state of play was for their father, as he looked at his sister, Isabel Evans Ramirez Anderson, although she was now back to her maiden name Evans, after the death of her second husband.

She was carrying a bag of groceries as she put them down on the counter.

“It’s that time of year,” Max muttered. There is very little I can do about it except hope that this year will be different, and he will be a different person come June 1st.

“As if Dad is any more functional the other 11 months of the year,” Isabel muttered as she gave her brother some food items to stock in the food cabinet “I wish he was better for it, because I know something about losing someone, but I did not let it destroy me” she sighed as she thought of her second husband, after Jesse. “Neil was a good man, who did not need to die.”

“No, he did not” Max agreed of his brother-in-law. Max had liked both of them. Okay, I was a little late in coming around on, Jesse, but still that was a marriage that if it had happened, may have had a chance of working out.

Especially if he had known going in the uniqueness of my sister Max thought. I should have taken her failure as a lesson in my own life.

“Neither did Mom,” Isabel sighed, and Max nodded.

As they both remembered Diane Evans, who was lost to them six years before.

And one of the reasons why her husband was the way he was.

Unfortunately, for her children.

*

Isabel Evans finished milling around her childhood kitchen. She did not live here anymore. That was her brother’s duty because he had taken the house over and bought their father out in the wake of their mother’s death. With the trust fund that came from their mother’s death. Real estate was still low in this town or was in the wake of the devastating hit they had taken in mourning their mother.

Diane Evans, who had been lost to them in May 2015. It had been way too early. And they missed her every day, and their father Phillip had never gotten over his wife’s death. Because he was little by little, letting it all get to him until finally he was a shell of himself. And it was something she and her brother had to deal with on a daily basis.

Even though his was her brother’s home. She helped out, and tried to keep food in the fridge, as she often came and kept an eye for their father because often it was left to her brother, and he was often not wanting to deal with it, and so she took a lot of the burden off his shoulders. Because Max has other issues.

And it was a downright miracle that he was not as bad off as our father Isabel muttered as she glanced at her brother and saw that fortunately he knew how to deal with his life. It is still a shell of what it could be.

But it is no way like their father.

Even though he was sounding like a broken record, “I told you that I could handle him, and the groceries too” Max muttered as he knew he should not be leaning on his sister to help out with stocking the refrigerator in the home that he owned.

“It’s no issue,” Isabel said softly. “It gives me something to do because I do not have to worry about the girls.”

“Oh,” Max said with a smile, because of his nieces. Three of them he thought.

One that was born to his sister, using a sperm donor before his sister married her second husband, Neil. Mikyla And two sisters Poppy and Katy who would be later adopted by his sister and her husband after their marriage. Mikyla was on a student exchange in Europe, and Poppy and Katy are visiting their paternal grandparents in Maine once classes were finished for the thirteen years old’s. As opposed to their older sister who had been gone since January.

“They are due back, all of them, next week, so I have the time” Isabel said as she figured Kyla, Poppy and Katy would want me helping their grandfather.

Somehow, I have to get through to that man she sighed.

“I do appreciate it,” Max said softly as he sat down at the table and could help but look around the kitchen. Which was like the rest of it. Because so much of the house was like it was before their mother died. And back in the 90’s he thought. He had not wanted to disturb it and make it more of his own home because he wanted to keep it to the memories of an earlier time. Although he was beginning to wonder if he should be changing something in the house so that he and his father did not have to remember his mother all the time, because everything about the house still told them about Diane Evans and the life, they all shared here.

Maybe their father would come back into his own.

Isabel had been resistant to changing it, but she was slowly coming around to it.

Because it was still their childhood home.

Because it might be the only thing that saved their father from himself, “I know the place is old, but taking away its charm loses so much,” Isabel muttered even though she is no better because she was not living in an old place. Her house was modern, so she did not know why she was hanging onto the past.

Because the past was history.

“I am going to talk to Kyle about it tomorrow,” Max said. Because he was coming around to the feeling that this was the best way of going about the future, and really, he did not have to change the whole house, but some changes here and there he thought and Kyle was the best person to ask, because he was in construction these days. And runs his own company, Valenti Construction.

Isabel nodded and made no sigh of anything when the mention of Kyle’s name was made. Which was a feat itself, as far as Max knew.

“Because changing this place might be the only one thing that makes Dad move on, because change is all around us.” Max said softly.

“Changing the core of this place will not change everything,” Isabel murmured.

“Hell, do I ever know that” Max muttered. “We have to try at least…” he said. “Change is coming,” as if he did not already know it because they were coming out of a devastating pandemic.

Which had changed all of their lives.

“What is with you and change all a sudden,” Isabel asked with a smile. “Because I mean you might be a more functionally Dad, but the last thing you could be is described as is moving on,” she asked with sigh because the one thing her brother and father had in common was their mutual inability to move on. My brother has never been able to move on from Liz or his daughter, naturally…

“I know it has to happen,” Max muttered. “Dad does not.”

Oh, I know it Isabel muttered.

“How about you?” Max asked.

“What about me?” Isabel wondered.

“Has Kyla said anything more about the fact that Kyle is her father,” Max asked, and Isabel naturally became sullen.

“Kyle is not Mikyla’s father,” Isabel muttered. A name that came from a good friend, and not because of who her father is… “A nameless sperm donor is,” she sighed because after Jesse fell apart, she had wanted a child and therefore she had gone through a donation to become a mother, before she would meet her later husband, but when she did, they would find out Neil was unable to have children and so they would adopt twin sisters who were orphaned days after birth, and therefore Poppy and Katy would come into their life and into their family.

Dream on Max thought because they knew the truth, and it was something that his sister and Kyle had been denying for years because they had come to an agreement. One that they had been lying to everyone about because it had been obvious for a while now that Kyla looked like her natural father, and not her mother. “One of these days, sis, one of these days.”

“So,” Isabel muttered, but not giving her brother and inch as Max only nodded and headed for the fridge and took a beer out of it, something that he definitely had in stock because of course he lived with his father, whether he wanted it in stock or not.

“It all comes back to haunt us, all those secrets that we think should not, but they will. People come and go, and they come back again.”

“If this is about Liz?” Isabel muttered.

“Not everything is about Liz,” Max muttered, and the comment got his sister bursting out laughing as a response. “Look, I know I am one to talk, but it definitely not about Liz,” he sighed even though it is about my ex-wife, and it always will be about Liz. “It is about Claudia?”

“Oh,” Isabel murmured. Of her niece she thought. Someone she had never met because of events in the past that had ended her brother’s marriage, way before it should have. A story they had never really gotten but her niece named after her grandmother, years before the name would become poignant, and a tribute. “What is it is?”

“Claudia is here Is,” Max said softly, too softly.

And therefore, Isabel almost did not catch what he said.

“What,” Isabel asked.

“Claudia is in town,” Max murmured. “My daughter is here in Roswell.”

Wow Isabel uttered.

Change was indeed coming…

*

Claudia definitely was in town. The 18-year-old was coming to realize a lot had changed since Christmas when she last saw her mother and little brother. A lot she muttered to herself as she stood in her mothers’ old bedroom. Or a shrine she was muttering to herself because it was becoming evident to her that her grandparents had kept the room exactly how it had been when their daughter had left this town in the first place, back when she and her father self-destructed their marriage.

Or whatever they had together.

Claudia did not know what they had because she had not been born to see it, obviously she muttered to herself, and she was way too young to know what they were like together when she was born, and in short order, well, her parents self-destructed, and were finished and she was raised by a single mother before she got a brother in the bargain that was their life together on the road, or moving around through the United States.

She should be happy that she got to see more of the country than her mother had at her age. Because as often her mother would say, she had been sheltered until she met her father, and it was one of the reasons they failed. Claudia suspected there was a whole lot to the story, but there was much her mother did not want to tell her or was only forced to because of circumstance. Now Claudia stood in her mother’s old bedroom because she was taking over this room, and her mother would take her grandparents’ old room.

She could have taken her grandparents’ room, and even offered it but for some reason her mother had resisted taking back her old bedroom, and they figured it was not suitable for her little brother. For obvious reasons she now saw because there was an easy exit Claudia now thought.

Wow, Mom had a way out of being under her parent’s thumb all the time and yet Claudia knew her mother was too studious to take advantage until of course her father had come into the picture, but Claudia did not know the story to that, and she did not know if she ever would. Or if she wanted to know.

Because she did not know the man.

She had only known the woman who raised her, and she knew they were two very different people even though they looked like mother and daughter, and most would say she was her mother’s twin, if that was even possible, she thought. But we are very different.

Different personalities, and we clash all the time she thought. Which made the last five months of living away from each other better for our relationship, even though living at an old age retirement community’s villa was not all that it was cracked up to be. Especially since Grandma and Grandpa are still young in their approach to life, and they liked to keep an eye on me, she thought.

But she was okay with that because she knew how difficult of transition it had been for her grandparents Jeff and Nancy Parker to move away from their home. And to eventually have to decide the fate of her grandfather’s beloved restaurant back here in Roswell because to hear them say it, the intention was always to come back here, but circumstance and some initial health struggles prevented it.

Which is why she stuck it out with her grandparents and was not your average eighteen-year-old on the eve of her high school graduation.

And now she was back because her mother was going to take it over…

And she and mother would have to live in the same town again and would not have distance to heal any fractures in their relationship. And now they were in the same place together, and they had barely uttered a single word to each other because they did not know what to say to each other given what had happened on this day already.

Seeing her father.

And her mother, seeing her ex-husband, someone she fled from many many years before. So, Claudia took refuge in this room and tried to seek out some answers, as if she wanted them to make her feel like life was making sense.

Because she did not know how to deal with the man she saw today. She did not know what to feel.

She had seen her father after eighteen years of wondering about the man. About why it ended for her parents, and why her mother had walked away from him. Was he a bad man, someone who she could not live with because to hear it from everyone else, the answer was no because her parents had a timeless love?

According to all reports on the subject.

No one else could come close to sharing it except maybe Lucy’s parents, she thought. But still, it never made sense to her because why would they fall apart if they loved each other so much and yet she figured coming back to this town, she would get some answers. But she did not expect even more unknowable answers on day one as she checked out the window, and saw the balcony, far out she thought. Mom, you were so lucky she thought. I could have used this so many times over my life, she thought.

Which is why her mother probably had not brought her back, because Claudia was the sort who would have taken the balcony up on its offer of escape.

And gone out and sought trouble.

So, she opened the dusty window, and climbed out onto the balcony and looked around. I love this place, she thought immediately as she walked around, entranced by the idea of looking out and seeing the town’s main street because they never lived in such confine’s spaces, and she did not know how they would do it.

Especially when they also had her little brother.

How we are going to fit into this place will be fun to see Claudia thought as she looked down and out of nowhere, she saw a face staring up at her. Whoa she thought of the good-looking teenager looking up, like Romeo looked up at Juliet, or Tony looked up at Maria in West Side Story. She didn’t expect this…

She did not call out, nor did the boy call out.

They only stared at each other and forced Claudia to remember that she did have a boyfriend. Archie …

“Claudia,” came the sound from inside the apartment. And she took the call from her mother as a welcome sign that she needed to get off this balcony, and so she did, she walked away, and climbed into the apartment, closing the door on the freedom the balcony held.

While the boy on the street had turned after seemingly getting caught by a vision that was on the balcony and had gotten into a truck that had the sign on it, Valenti Construction.

[totallizfan]

Complicated!!

[Parker1947]

Meanwhile,

While Claudia had been in her old bedroom. Liz had been in her new bedroom. Her parents’ old bedroom, and it was difficult to look at this apartment with different eyes, and to know she was no longer the sixteen year or even the eighteen year who had last seen it. Now she was nearly two decades from the final days. She was nearly forty, and she felt that age approaching with every dreaded birthday.

Because she was getting older but not necessarily wiser, because who decides to open a restaurant in the closing embers of a devastating pandemic that has changed every fabric of our lives, she told herself.

No sane person would…

But I am Liz thought she could not stay in her parents’ old bedroom as she walked into the belly of the apartment and tried to figure out how they would find the space in the apartment to give her son some privacy. It had worked out well when it was her parents raising only one child.

But I have two she thought. Although one almost out of the house she thought and that one had been out of her eyesight for way too long. Since Christmas when she had given her aging parents the responsibility to care for her daughter, one more thing I feel guilty about she thought. I should have been the mother. Not my elderly parents.

Although her parents could still not be considered elderly, but they were not as young as they once were, and not as vibrant because of health challenges which is why her father made the devastating choice regarding the restaurant that had been his life since she was a child. Choosing his wife’s health, and even his own, and taking the stress of trying to bring the Crashdown out of a devastating pandemic.

The place had given her father a purpose for his life, that had been too rocky in his youth. Although she had not figured that out until her own rocky time in high school when she almost ended up on the same path, okay maybe I did join him she thought as she was very lucky, she was not in some prison serving a life sentence for some of the things she had done.

Or Max had done, and she had gone along for the ride. Although I did enough…

Max Liz was forced now to think. The reason she had her daughter in her life.

Yet someone’s heart she had broken by her own choices, not that I had a choice she thought as she of the fifteen-year-old she had been and how intense they had been for being young and in high school, and they had believed everything could work out in the end. Because they were meant to, we were, weren’t we?

She wanted to tell herself that because after some major obstacles that were unreal for our time and age she thought. We made it through, and we got married.

And then unbelievably we had our little girl Liz thought.

A little girl who was now eighteen, and willful in every way that both her parents had been at one time when they fell in love at fifteen and went through obstacles that no sane individual should be forced to go through. Still, we did go through them.

And we are standing when not everyone else is Liz thought of those days back in 1999 through 2002. When they were forced on the road, and into trying to get through the days and figuring out how to stay alive when they had a government agent after them, wanting to catch them, exterminate them, or one of them at least and maybe poke and prod me as well as Max.

They had already tried, and there was no telling what they would have done if they had gotten ahold of them until the day when it all changed for her, Max, and their daughter. If I only had told Max, why I was leaving.

And it forced Liz into making a life-changing decision that would end in her divorce from Max, and her relocation with her daughter.

And eighteen years in different locals, and now they were back because she was changing their lives once more. And she was staring at the walls of her childhood home. Trying to find out how she was going to make it work.

“Claudia,” Liz would call. As she had to also figure out how they were going to make this work with her daughter too because she and Claudia were now going to be in the same town, finally she thought.

It was something she had wanted, it was not. You wanted your daughter back, Liz thought to herself as she looked for her daughter and found her son watching the television that was hooked up in advance of their return. I have to figure out how to make JJ a room she thought. We do not have a lot of space in this place.

“Maybe I can talk to Kyle?” Liz was asking herself softly as she thought of her ex-boyfriend who now owned a construction company. As she spoke out again, “Claudia,” she said again because she had yet to see her eldest child.

“Coming,” came the eighteen-year-old, as Liz sighed when she heard the window closing from the back room where her bedroom once was. There was a reason Liz had resisted taking back her bedroom because of that balcony she thought, because the last thing she needed was reminders of a time when everything was so bright and shiny.

Bright and shiny Liz, she would tell herself now, when was it ever bright and shiny she thought as she saw her confident daughter come out of her old bedroom, that was going to be Claudia’s bedroom, and who knows what they would entail, I do not want to think about it she thought. No way in hell. “What were you doing?” she asked of her daughter.

Knowing it came a little brusquer than she intended.

“Checking out my new bedroom,” was all Claudia could say even though she wanted to mutter something more offensive that would only explode things between her and her mother. Because she knew she had chosen this, because she could have been up in the mountains with Archie. Hiking and doing so many more pleasurable things with my hunky boyfriend she thought of the boy that had taken her heart when she was sixteen, and so they had been together for two years. Archie Holmes was working in Colorado, giving hiking tours.

And she could have gone there, but she chose to come back to Roswell, and now she was wondering why she had.

Because she had to deal with her mother and figure out if she wanted to the know the mystery man that was her biological father.

A man she had no knowledge of because of her mother.

Liz nodded. “How are things going?” she asked as she knew she did not know how to deal with her daughter anymore. Not since she turned eighteen; a birthday she had missed because they were across the country from each other, but even before.

“Fine,” Claudia muttered as she saw the tentativeness in her mother. A state she knew well because of the life they had led before. Before JJ came into their lives. When life was a whole lot more mysterious than it is now. They were living different lives with different names, she thought.

But that is a whole other story she thought that her mother had not been too honest with her only borne. So, Claudia grew up with a lot of hard knocks, and knew her mother had faced them, so she felt for her mother. Because it could not have been easy to live the life she did. So, Claudia felt it, but still it was hard now that she was eighteen and wanting to live her life.

Still, she had come here, when I could be in some bed with Archie and not thinking of anything in the fresh air and him all summer before she dealt with the quest to get to university because she promised her mother she would.

Or what was in her future.

Liz nodded.

And before either woman could say anything more, the doorbell rang and they were reminded that they were in a whole new world, “I will get it,” Liz said softly, and Claudia nodded as the 18-year-old watched as her mother went the door and swung open the door.

To a very familiar face…

“Girlfriend, my god, you are finally here” came an exuberant Maria Deluca Guerin as she swung in her best friend’s arms. “Finally, after 18 years, you are finally back in this town, and we are finally going to have some fun together” Maria murmured as she looked at a newly eighteen-year-old Claudia Diane Evans, and knew life was not like it once was…

Which is something anyone could say…

*

And Max definitely could say it, as he took his sister up on her plan to spend time with their father and try to get him back to the land of the living. Sometimes, Isabel had more of a touch with Phillip than his son did and instead of seeing the groans of a devastated old man. Because if given the chance, Max sometimes would sink right down in the depth along with his old man, and Isabel had not wanted that for brother, so she pushed her brother out of the house and as a result Max got in his car and headed across town to see his own best friend.

Who was finally back in town. After nearly a life on the road, and especially in Nashville. It was weird for Max to think it was Michael who had got out of this town and had been able to travel when for so long it was thought to be something they could not have done.

Although it was in his dreams, common sense prevented it, and he had all kinds of dreams and they were not happening, so why would he think he could get out of this town and leave his sister or Michael. But then in the end, both Michael and Isabel had gotten out…

Isabel had come back much earlier, and now Michael was back.

The three musketeers were back in the same place.

He was always happy for Michael because he had gotten away from this town, even if he stayed on the planet, which had been his original plan, to leave all of this, but life changes everything. And Michael had gotten out, along with the woman he loved.

While Max had gotten his own dreams, if only for a brief time. After all, every one of his dreams had something to do with Liz, so it had been Liz, Liz, and more Liz…

For a little time, there he had gotten one of those dreams, marriage to his dream girl. He allowed himself to dream that maybe they could have what they dreamt of, together.

Well, time would dissuade him of that notion.

And now he was nearly forty and single and had a child he did not know.

And another child who was dead.

Zan as he thought of the baby that was not meant to be, because Tess was now dead, and unfortunately his son had gone before his mother had eventually perished, and therefore he had not been born. Lies Max stewed. Of all those signs in senior year and the ride I was taken on because of the baby that did show up, were just hoaxes. To be found out because of medical testing done after the adoption showed I had been lied too…

Although there had been once been a baby, so he was told, but Tess had lost his baby early on, and any sign that his son had been reaching out to Max had to be glimpses of a fractured mind who wanted to believe the baby he had destroyed his relationship for was still out there, given the possibility of life. But nope Max now thought. Because when he had learned the devastating truth, it had shaken him.

Not as much as it was to lose Claudia.

Who was alive, and safe and sound? And being cared for by a mother who loved her but could not stay with me, Max muttered to herself. As long as Claudia was safe, then at least I knew someday it might all change and she would come home to me.

And now it had, but what did it all mean?

So, Max was fine getting out of the nightmare that was his father’s circle and let his sister deal with it as he parked in the parking lot of his friends’ new home and remarked to himself how far his best friend had come. A ratty little apartment that had a lot of charm, but a home Michael mostly was unable to keep without sacrifice, and now he was living in a more palatial home with his wife and daughter.

Michael has come a long way Max told himself as he got out of his car, and went and knocked on the door, and the same pixie blonde that he had seen earlier came to the door, and her eyes raised at the sight of Max. “Are your parents’ home?”

“Dad is,” Lucy said with a smile. “Come in,” she said and welcomed Max into the house. “So, you are Claudia’s father?

Am I Claudia’s father? Max was forced to ask himself because he felt like one, but he knew he had not been a father to his daughter. It was different to know his daughter was back in his hometown, and it was not this little secret he had because she was nowhere to be found. Okay, people knew where she was, but they never told me.

Saying it was Liz’s decision, Max respected it. Even if he could have set someone out to look for his daughter, as she grew up and put his foot down and say he wanted to be her father, but nope, he respected the woman he loved at nine, and then married at eighteen. I allowed this role to take a life onto itself.

But Max knew he was Claudia’s father. “Yes, I am”

“Awesome,” Lucy said as her own father came up from behind her, and only nod his head. “Max,” he said of his best friend “Welcome.”

“It is good to see you,” Max said and meant it. It was good to be back in the same town with his best friend, and their sister.

“So, I take it that some drama has already found you once more?” Michael asked about his best friend as he and Max walked into the living room, where boxes were all over the place. So much needed to be clarified, that goes for everything they both thought.

“Unfortunately,” Max said with a laugh as Lucy grinned and rushed up to her bedroom. Leaving lifelong friends to ruminate about the changing world.

*

“This place brings back so many memories?” Maria Deluca Guerin said with a smile as she toured it with her best friend. Of course, the tour had not taken very long because it was still the same small apartment, it was always back in Maria’s day, but still it was a blast to see it after so many years because she was like the prodigal daughter. Maria had not seen it since they had left this town in flight from those pesky government agents after Tess had betrayed and nearly taken them down with her, and of course Maria knew what fate would come for Tess, but she knew Liz did not know everything except that Tess is dead because she had honored her friend’s request to close down all the channels to Roswell.

So, Maria did, and it helped when Maria lived elsewhere herself. But Maria had ties to this town that she would keep up and running once things calmed down to a manageable pace and they were not running for their dear lives. Still, they had settled in Tennessee, and she was able to craft a career for herself, but would come back, and see her mother and allow Lucy to know her Roswell history.

Liz had not. So, Claudia was in the dark about a lot even if her mother had never lied about who her father had been, and she had told the growing child his name, and a simplified reason for why they were no longer together, and why her father could not be a part of her life. Claudia had accepted it, until she did not.

And Maria knew now that had been a lot of the push and pull the mother and daughter had faced because eventually Liz’s stories had fumes, they were running on, and Claudia wanted and needed answers.

So, Maria was curious how mother and daughter would live in this small apartment. “I do not know how your parents could stand it?”

“Probably because they did very little else except work,” Liz said with a smile as she knew this had been her father’s dream job and had a tough time leaving it, even when she had left this town. During those first years, she had barely seen her parents, for many reasons she would acknowledge now as she thought back to those days when everything seemed simple, until it was not. “Heck I was even working at a certain age,” she said of the fact this place had been a true mark of history in the family, and that is why she had not wanted to let it go. And why she had decided to upend her life, and take it back, so that she could allow the town to enjoy it…

Once more.

Of course, she did not know how to go about it. She had experience as a de facto manager when her parents could not be physically in the building sure, but that was a different thing than actually running and making sure it did not send them to the poor house. And eventually would need to be on the hook for everything that came with running an establishment and would eventually need to hire employees.

After all, she and her children would only be able to last on her previous job’s savings for only a time. Because so much of those savings had been planning on her daughter’s university career, and now that child was on the cusp of an achievement if Claudia would just reach for it and then she also had a growing son who still would have eight years before he headed himself to university.

She wanted both of her children to reach for the stars. And now to be stuck, or to have to deal with the consequences of decisions she, their mother had made before they were in the picture.

Maria could see her friend was wrestling with a lot, and she wondered if her best friend was up to the challenge. “Do, you think you can do this?” Maria asked. As she knew what her friend was trying to take on and did not know if she could do it.

It was a tall order.

Even though her best friend often was able to deal with stiffer challenges. But this one was a big one, with a lot of moving pieces.

“I hope so,” Liz said although she did not sound as if she was convinced of it herself. As she looked at the apartment and was seeing it with different eyes as she knew what she was taking on, or she believed she did. “I did not want Dad to sell this place, even though they tried. But because of the state of the economy in the town, they had no takers, so it made me realize what we were losing. This place was such a piece of this town’s history, and I want to see if I can give some joy again.” I want to see if I can find that same joy she thought because the last year had taken so much from her, and from everyone.

And she needed some joy again.

To show that the world can run sanely again.

Maria nodded. Because she felt the same, which is why she and her husband along with their daughter had come back to their hometown. She knew what she was potentially giving up, but the last year had been a lot. “We all could use some joy,” she said with a smile, as she looked around the restaurant and she spotted her friend’s old bedroom and knew who was residing in it now. “So, my daughter told me you saw you know who…”

Max

“Yes,” Liz said softly as images of her ex-husband came to her mind. As she was still coming to terms with the fact, she had seen her ex-husband, and the fact that he was even more gorgeous at 36 than he was at eighteen. Why, she thought, why are you giving me this to endure she muttered? “I made peace with the fact I broke his heart, and walked away, and we both moved on, so why does this have to happen. The moment I come back to this town?”

Maria could only smile at the fact that Max was still Liz’s heart, although she knew full well how Max had not moved on. “Petunia, you were able to move on, but Max did not.”

Not by a long shot.

[totallizfan]

Like the Liz and Maria reunion.

[Parker1947]

“Just because he is a functionally man does not mean you did not change his life when you left,” Maria said with a frown as they were now sitting in the living room. As they were sharing a drink and visiting for the first time in a long time. Because the pandemic had taken a bite out of their ability to spend time together, and therefore they had not really seen each other since Lucy’s 16th birthday celebration in Nashville. If you discount Zoom friendship calls. They were not the same. But the party celebration had been their last real visit, as the girls had a real time of it, and their friendship had deepened, and Liz and Maria had been able to shop, and eventually mother and daughter would later be entertained by one of Maria’s last concerts before everything hit once they were back in their individual homes and sent them into survival mode in so many different ways. As JJ was watching television in his mother’s new bedroom. So much has changed since those days when we were teenagers both women thought. Claudia was in her bedroom, unpacking or pretending to unpack, but the door was slightly open, and she was overhearing her mother and her aunt talk about her biological father.

A man she did not know.

And so, she was listening to her mother talk to her best friend about her biological father. Because she had barely heard her mother utter two words about her father for most of her life. Sure, I knew the name.

But not much else.

Which is why coming back to Roswell was enticing because of the little search she could do, because there was not much about Max Evans in any search engine she thought. Man, I did not think anyone could be that invisible in this day and age she muttered to herself, although she was choosing to ignore what she had learned about her mother and father on any sanctioned search engine, that business in Utah?

She did not want to think of her parents as robbers, and in jail.

But anything else about how her father was just not there, she thought. So, she did not know a lot, which is why she had wanted to come back to Roswell.

So, she was trying to pick up something worthwhile as she was trying to put some books on the shelf after clearing it out of her mother’s old ones.

Which were now in their own box.

She continued to clear out the remnants of her mother’s old life, and Liz could hear it from the other room. She knew her parents had kept it as if she had still been here, and she did want to talk about Max.

Because there was so much unsaid.

It was almost too much.

“When you took Claudia, and left, everything changed for him,” Maria murmured. “It has not been easy for him.”

I know I left him Liz thought. I had too because I did not have any choice. As she was trying to tamp down the feeling of guilt. She knew she had hurt Max with her decision to leave. We thought we had a future.

Only that was a lie, she thought.

“You know it’s going to be alright,” Maria murmured as she could sense that her friend was overwhelmed with the choice she had made. It had surprised Maria if not thrilled her at the same time because she had gotten so used to having her best friend living elsewhere in this country, and now she would be here, and they could get together at any time.

“What is?” Liz asked, as if she did not already know.

“You know, everything” Maria smiled. “You remade your life once did you not?” she murmured of the challenge upcoming for her friend. As she was hoping that the friendly corners and streets of this town would bring new memories, and right old wrongs. “This is our hometown, and we know it, and so, it had to be alright.”

“I know it will be,” Liz sighed as she did not know if she shared the same hope as her best friend. “Or I hope it will,” she nodded, and she knew by being back in this town. She could not outrun her past, because if she could then she would never have come back to this place in the first place. She would have allowed her parents to sell the Crashdown, and let it get changed into something completely foreign to the town.

Because it was not as if the last year and then some had not already changed their lives into something that it had not been before…

But she knew she had to face it.

Not only because of herself, but because of her daughter, so she had to put a foot before her, and keep walking, no matter the cost.

Maria nodded. “All you need to do is take it one day at a time,” she said of her friend because what she was facing did not seem as overwhelming as her best friend because Maria had always kept a toe in this town. Even when she was massively successful. Beyond all her dreams. She knew she could come back, and plus she had her Space boy with her, and she and Michael had been able to make it work.

Liz had been different because she had wanted it to be different. After all, she could have stayed with Max. And had a very different life than the one she faced over the last nearly eighteen years.

Liz nodded, as she knew she could not hide from her past, nor could she outrun it. She needed to figure it out, and to talk about it. “You asked before, and it was true, I did see Max” Liz sighed. “We did not talk, not really, but we saw each other” and it was evident that Claudia had seen him, and maybe even talked to him she muttered to herself.

Maria nodded. Because she remembered how giddy her daughter had been because of drama she had witnessed. The soap opera was always something her daughter, the seventeen-year-old, was looking to find. Because Lucy was very much her mother’s daughter. She had both parents’ sense of mischief. But she looked and acted like her mother did at one time.

Therefore, it made things interesting.

But she also felt for her friend. While she and Michael personally had time before they had to deal with their daughter out in the world. Liz on the other hand was already facing it, now that Claudia was eighteen, and had been living with her grandparents since December. Not that Maria believed that Jeff and Nancy had given their granddaughter an easy ride. If raising their daughter did not give them a clue as to putting some limits, and some boundaries. Still, it was different than what she and Michael were facing with their daughter.

So far.

“You did not expect it?” Maria asked.

“Of course not, maybe I should have given I was returning to this town after long time. And I knew he was likely still here, not that I really asked.”

“No, you did not,” Maria smiled. “I learned early that you did not want to know what was going on with Max.”

Liz nodded. It was better that way, the fact I could still keep in touch with Maria was a win Liz thought. It helped that she settled in Tennessee. “I knew it was the best way to make a clean break, anyways, I knew it was going to happen. But I guess I did not figure that it would so soon,” she muttered. As if it was god’s way of saying that I should not have gone and done what I did.

It was not like I did not already have that feeling Liz muttered to herself as inside her new bedroom. Claudia was listening. And it was odd for her to hear her mother discussing her father. Because it was one of the subjects that was not talked about, from back here.

She had to do her own investigating. Because for some reason Mom did not want to utter Dad’s name.

Mostly, she had kept to that secrecy because for the longest time, she had not wanted to know. But obviously, that had now changed.

She did not know why, because it’s not like she was a small kid.

She was curious because there was so much, she did not know. Sure, she did know some of the more complicated because her mother had sat her down when it was obvious that she was different from other kids her age. Not by how she looked or even behaved. But because she knew she could do things that other kids her age were able to do, and her mother had told her that she needed to keep it to herself, and to be careful.

But not wanting to get into why I was different Claudia thought. Just that my biological father was not like most men she knew, and that meant that as his daughter. Claudia might have inherited certain skills.

Well, yeah, I certainly have inherited certain skills Claudia told herself.

Which made her different from other kids, but not Lucy she would find out when she got a chance to see more of her Aunt Maria’s family once, they settled in Boston after too long on the road, traveling through the state of New York and around not staying more than a few months or at most a year in one location. They stuck there, until she had relocated to stay with her grandparents in Arizona. And now they were in Roswell because her mother had changed their lives once more.

And now she was in her mother’s old bedroom.

And hearing her mother speak of her father. “How am I going to handle this?” she heard her mother say to her aunt.

Yeah, how? Claudia muttered to herself as she felt oddly copacetic with her mother on this one subject. She did not know how long that would last.

“But I am glad you are here, and I know you will figure it out” Maria smiled.

“I hope so,” Liz said softly as she and Maria continued to talk, and Claudia closed her door and finished up unpacking her suitcase, moving to something that did not make her overthink, clothes.

And then moved onto her posters, as she took down the ones that decorated the ones prior to her arrival. Of different universities, but especially of Harvard. Weird Claudia thought because she knew her mother could have gone there, and even had an acceptance from Northwestern, but she did not go, and ended up getting her part of her degree in New York when they lived there and finished it in Boston when they also moved there.

Yeah, we had a pretty colorful life Claudia remembered as she continued to remove the posters off the wall and put them aside. Planning to ask her mother if she wanted to keep them and started to replace them with her own choice of posters. Mostly interests that differed from her mother, music, countries she wanted to visit really, she almost ready to go off to university and had a deferred acceptance in her back pocket. So, she did not need any institutions to keep her goals on track. All she needed was her diploma from her high school, which was coming in the mail from her school in Boston.

She definitely had a nontraditional senior year. She did not feel the need to go back for a simple graduation ceremony. I have moved on.

So, she continued to take down a poster, and in doing such a thing, a thumb tack or something fell off the wall she was putting into the one of the bricks as it fell out of her hand, on the fall, she went to pick it up and she went and was preparing to put the poster back on the wall and felt that it was loose. Oh, she thought as she saw the brick was coming out, so she took it out, and she looked in, and was shocked to find a hole, and a book inside.

Whoa Claudia thought as she took the book out and saw that it was a formal book with a stiff binding. What is this doing here? she mumbled to herself.

As she took it out and looked at it and opened up saw her mother’s name and the phone number to this apartment in it, she knew it because she would use it when she was younger, she thought. Then she read the first page, It’s September 23rd, and five days ago I died…

“Are you serious? Claudia asked in complete silence. While she knew some, still there was a lot I do not know she thought as she read the first entry to the diary and was stunned. What? she asked as she stood up, and looked at the door, and opened it, and walked out and her mother was still talking to Maria.

*

Liz knew that trouble was in the offering when her daughter opened the door to her new bedroom and came out looking like a ghost. She did not even want to guess what the reason for her daughter’s expression might be because it could be almost anything yeah, anything she told herself when it involved her daughter because Claudia had been so different from her, despite how much they looked a like.

Now her daughter was seeking something from her. “Claudia, what is going on?”

Maria also got the same sense, but she had more of the sense that Claudia had discovered something. Which was possible given she knew that Jeff and Nancy had said they had kept the room just like it had been during senior year of high school. And she had seen it for herself when she took the little tour of the apartment.

“What is this?” the eighteen-year-old asked of her mother as she handed the book to her mother and it did not take much for Liz or even Maria to see what the book was, oh god both women muttered to themselves as they saw the emotion on Claudia’s face.

“It’s my journal.” Liz said softly.

“I can see that,” Claudia muttered. “It has your name and this phone number,” she sighed. “But it was in like the wall, why?”

“Because it became my hiding spot back in high school,” Liz said softly as she glanced at Maria who nodded because both of them had become quite familiar with that event in their history. And how it had gotten them up their arms when they believed Liz’s journal was missing and it was, Liz thought, for a time. Because Maria’s now husband had liberated it from her during one of her shifts at the Crashdown. An event that would be told to his wife years later, and she had not been happy to know Michael had been the one who had done it. Because of all the worry it brought to them, the mere mortals in this tale to know that a documented version of what happening in the early days of the alien invasion was out there, and it had gotten them questioning everything and everyone, we mean everyone they both thought now as both Alex and Kyle would be accused, wrongfully it would be found out. Even though the journal would find its way back to its owner and there was never any danger that what was on the written page of the book would leak out, as it would stay a secret until it was not.

And now it was in the hands of the next generation.

One of its members.

Which was the good news. The bad news Liz knew was that the information in the book would cause a lot of confusion in her daughter, because that was how it was back when those words were being written.

“Why would you put it behind a brick in the wall?” Claudia asked of her mother, who could only nod as if she knew where it was, which of course, she did. While Maria on the other hand never knew where it was, just that it had been put in a safe spot. And really, she had forgotten about the documented proof of her husband and daughter’s existence of being anything other than the normal individuals that they were…

Now, it was back in limelight.

And it was a reminder of the chances they had taken once upon a time.

“I needed a place no one would think of looking for it,” Liz said lamely. Because she knew it had been a safe place. No one would think of checking the wall. Especially as they would learn that Topolsky would be onto their secret and wanted proof. Fortunately, for them, she did not find her journal. But she could have… Liz told herself, and she knew how much of it was a risk to be writing down what she had been experiencing.

So, she became more selective with what she had put down on those pages. Still, she wrote stuff down, that might be a little much for their world.

And she had gone off, and left it here, and now she knew that was a new definition of risky given that eventually her parents would not even be here. So, if someone had known of her and Max, or anything at all. They could have broken in and found it.

Fortunately for them, no one did because it was still around.

And now it was in her daughter’s hands.

And Liz was remembering all she had written, especially in the beginning. “It does not really matter at the end of the day.”

Claudia nodded. “I read those first words?” she murmured as she thought of what they said.

“I am sure you did,” Liz muttered because she would have expected her daughter to be that nosey, “I am sure it surprised you,” she muttered. Yeah, that would be an understatement, Liz.

It is September 23rd, and five days ago I died. Claudia muttered as she shocked her mother by reciting the words, and even Maria was surprised. Because even during those years. She had not read the journal. Only my Space boy has had that special treat she thought. I did not need to, because I lived my own version.

Albeit I was not the one who nearly died or was saved for that matter she thought. Space boy saved me, but in a more conventional way, by loving me, and allowing me to love him.

“I have not seen it in many years obviously, so I have to believe those were the words I wrote,” Liz said softly.

And Maria laughed, nice one Liz.

“Did my father save you like the first entry suggests he did?”

And with that question, Liz was flooded with memories.

“Yes.”

*

Yes, he did. And his whole life was changed by those events. And Max knew it as he stood in his best friend’s new home and knew he could trace those events to the face his best friend was able to achieve more than he would have believed he had any right too given that Michael wanted off this planet.

And I was the one rooted here because of my mother and father and of course my sister. Now Michael was the family man, and he was the one who was aimlessly out in the world and trying to stay sane, in an insane world.

Truly insane even if he continued to live here in his hometown.

The same town that he had called home since those days when he and Isabel and later Michael would be found wandering in the woods, after coming out of a cave because they had hatched from some sort of sack like pods.

And he and Isabel would be found by Phillip and Diane Evans, and as they say, the rest of history.

Their history.

And now they were rooted in this society and had never left. Even when they did because they had been on the road, and on the run from those government types who wanted to end them, but that had only been a blip in time, and they were soon back.

Except Michael had not, instead he had made his home in Tennessee.

While Max and Isabel came back to Roswell. And Max every day wanted to be anywhere else, because he would be with the woman he loved. But that was an impossibility because she had left him and taken their baby daughter.

Now, she was back, and Max did not know how to make sense of that development in his life. As he shared a drink with his best friend. “You are finally back?” he asked his friend. “You always did want to leave this town…”

“Sure, but in those days, it was to get the hell off the planet,” Michael said with a smirk. “What did I know…”

“At least you left, because you got everything you wanted in Maria and later Lucy,” Max said. “I am proud of you.”

“You can have it too, you know?” Michael asked even though he knew it would be a tall order because if his friend was resisting and would never even think of going there. “You have chosen not to.”

“I had it all once, so, how can I ever think of going there again when it not what I would want, or with who I want it?”

“Liz chose her life…” Michael murmured.

Max could only shake his head as his friend unfairly targeted his ex-wife for the fact his wife had left him. Sure, Liz had wanted the divorce, and refused to share custody. She wanted a clean break from this town. Still, it was unfair in Max’s view to blame his ex-wife because it was him who brought Liz into this life and expected her to accept it. “I know she did, because I let her go, because I knew she had signed up for a lot that she did not ask for when she became embroiled in my life.”

Michael knew it was truth, “Maybe in the beginning, but eventually she knew what she was getting into” Michael muttered because even if he did not get upset that Liz would eventually leave his friend. Because he knew he had gotten lucky with Maria and he had known that his own relationship probably should have gone a different so not to bring his wife along on the danger ride, but I could not stay away from Maria, but he did know that at a certain point, Liz had known what she had been getting into and she had married Max even knowing that danger. So, why did she run once again when it got tough? he would ask.

And take Claudia, because he knew how much Liz had taken from his friend when she stabbed him in his back by taking his child.

Even if running was Liz’s specialty?

Therefore, Michael had to muff his miffed feelings because of how close his wife was to Liz. Even in those first years, his wife had not seen her friend all that often, which surprised him. Because he felt there was nothing stopping Liz and Maria from being in each other’s life. But in those first years, not a lot happened.

“I wanted Liz to be safe, so I did not begrudge her…”

Well, I did, Michael muttered. But knew better to actually say to his friend and stuck with a simplistic “I know.”

“Claudia’s back,” Max said simply. “Michael, my daughter is back in town.”

And Michael nodded even though unlike his friend, he had known this day was coming because his wife had been counting down the days so that she and her best friend were in the same town. So, Michael had known Liz was returning, and he sighed as he knew whatever happened now. Everything was going to change for his friend.

“What are you going to do about it?” Michael asked.

“Hell, if I know,” Max muttered because he had no idea what he was going to do about this new development in his life, and what it all meant.

All he knew was the love of his life was back.

And most of all, his daughter was back.

And I will find a way to move on…

[totallizfan]

Michael and Maria will help sort Max and Liz out.....eventually