"My children think I'm insane. My husband hates me. I blame Elizabeth Guerin."
I thought when Liz went to Michael it would end Max's infatuation with her but it just made him mad for a while.
He still loves her. Even thought he loves our children, it's not what he dreams his life would've been like with her.
He looks at Daisy sometimes and I can see him putting dark hair and eyes on her like Claire and Alana Guerin have.
And our son... Eli. I swear, sometimes he looks at our son, my son, and imagines that he is Liz's. Sometimes I feel like an impostor in my own home. Like Elizabeth will walk in one day and ask what am I doing in her house, with her husband and her kids. Eli looks like he could be hers, with his dark hair.
Daisy and her cousin Emma Whitman brought home two friends yesterday. I nearly fell over when I saw one of them. Brandon Guerin could pass for Michael's twin as could his older brothers and since Emma looks so much like Isabel it was like turning the clocks back to when we were in high school. I nearly passed out.
I controlled myself... barely. Everything was going fine. Until Max came home. He looked at them, he looked at me, and then he swallowed hard, and smiled. We were both pretending nothing had happened, but I felt sick, physically sick. When Brandon's older sister Claire walked in the door to pick him up I almost died.
Suddenly I was sixteen again and I was going to lose the boy I loved, the boy I was meant to be with. I don't remember exactly what happened, but the next thing I completely remember I was being restrained by Eli and Max, while Daisy screamed at Brandon Emma and Claire to get out of the house fast, before they lost their grip on me.
The next day I saw Maria Valenti with her daughters and her son at the Crashdown. Jake Valenti stared at me and I suddenly remembered he'd been there as well. He and Brandon were best friends. When Maria spoke to him he nodded to where I was sitting.
I have rarely been so embarrassed. I got up, and got out of the Crashdown as fast as I could. It wasn't fast enough, Maria caught up to me. We rarely talk anymore, but she asked me how I was feeling. I tried to imitate the look Isabel has perfected, the one that makes you want to crawl up and die. It didn't work. Maria smiled. In that instant I knew she pitied me. It was one of the worst feelings of my life.
I told her again I was fine and walked away. When I got further down the street I came across something I didn't especially want to see. Make someone I didn't especially want to see. Two someones actually. Michael and Elizabeth Guerin. They were kissing in front of the art gallery where a lot of Michael's paintings were sold. My stomach dropped when I looked across the street and saw Max watching them.
The look on his face was one of pure longing. I knew, in a second that I was just the consolation prize. Elizabeth is the one he has always wanted. I started to cry. I was running, aimlessly, not able to see a thing. Who do you think I ran right into? Claire Guerin. She was alone, thankfully, but the expression on her face when she looked at me... She was frightened. I frightened her. But boy did she try to hide it.
"Are you alright Mrs. Evans?"
That calmed me down a little. I was Mrs. Evans. Me. Not Liz Parker. I was who I was always meant to be.
"I'm fine Claire. I'm sorry about yesterday. Are you alright?"
"Yeah, fine." She said. But she wasn't, not any more than I am.
"I am terribly sorry." I repeated. "I don't know what came over me." I tried to smile. "And your brother, how is he?" Somehow I knew, just knew that if Brandon was at all upset Daisy would hate me. Foreshadowing of what was to come, of the event that would destroy my little world as wife and mother.
"Brandon's fine. He's tough like Daddy. Doesn't let anything get to him." Claire smiled a little. She obviously adored her father. Daisy was like that with Max.
My head hurt. "Excuse me." I mumbled. I felt sick again. I made it just past her, about three steps, before I collapsed.
I woke up in the hospital. Max was beside me. So were Daisy and Eli. "What happened?" I asked.
Max looked at me. I tried to believe there was love for me, concern for me in his face, in his eyes. "You fainted." He said.
"Mom are you alright?" Eli asked. His eyes were worried and God he did look like his father.
"I'm fine sweetheart. Can we go home?"
"Mom, Uncle Alex was just here. He said there was a few tests he wanted to run before you left."
"No, I'm fine, really." I sat up too quickly, and the world spun.
Max pushed me back into the pillow. "Tess, for God's sake, relax." He softened the words with a tender gesture. He pushed a lock of hair out of my face.
I started to cry again, but I had no idea why. "What's happening to me?" I sniffled, trying to stop when I saw how scared I was making the kids.
"Daisy, Eli go get yourself something to drink." Max said.
"Okay Dad. C'mon Daisy." Eli led his sister away.
I looked at Max. I was so scared at his expression. "Max what's wrong?"
"Nothing. You'll be fine Tess." He gave me a smile.
I tried to smile back, but I knew he was lying. He didn't know what was wrong.
I was losing my mind. I could feel it. Seeing Claire yesterday in my house had just sped up the process. I would lose everything that had ever meant anything to me. Max, Daisy, Eli.....
The tears sped up again. "Are you going to leave me?" I asked.
"No." He looked shocked at the question. "No, Tess, what would make you think of something like that?"
"No reason." I lied. It was far from the first time I had used that lie, but this was the first time I knew he would call me on it.
"Tess I'm not going anywhere." Max assured me.
Of course he wasn't going anywhere. Where would he go? The only girl he'd ever leave me for was married to his best friend. He was stuck. We were stuck.
The kids came back in then. I mechanically wiped the tears off my cheeks, and put on my bright 'everything is fine, or it will be soon' face. "How's that coffee?" I asked Daisy.
She wouldn't meet my eyes. "It's okay." She mumbled.
"Tess?"
It was Alex. He looked worried. Oh God I was pregnant. "Alex what's wrong?"
"Tess, have you noticed anything unusual in the last few weeks?"
"Unusual?" I asked. "No, nothing."
"Are you sure?" He was dissecting me with his eyes.
"Nothing worth mentioning." I answered.
"No tightness of breath? No sudden dizziness? No memory lapses?" He asked.
I frowned. "What are you getting at?"
Alex looked at the kids. I looked at Max. The kids needed him. I needed him. Was he going to leave me?
"Kids, wait out in the hall." Alex said.
Daisy shuffled her feet, and looked at Eli. Eli was staring at me. He had no intention of leaving until he got some answers. So like his father...
I tried a smile on my son. "It's okay, honey. This is going to be boring anyway." I looked at the clock. "You should be in school anyway. Don't you have some big presentation today?"
"That was yesterday Mom. You've been out of it for about two days." Daisy answered.
"Well, anyway, we'll talk about it as a family in a few minutes." I said, brightly. I was shocked that my tone was almost normal. "Your father will go with you."
"Daddy?" Daisy turned to him for guidance.
"Aunt Isabel is outside guys. Why don't you go tell her that your mom woke up?" He evaded. He took my hand. "I think I need to hear this too."
They left. "Tess, you might be suffering from some form of depression." Alex told me, when it was just adults.
"Ridiculous." I said quickly.
"From what Max has told me it's not that ridiculous." Alex said making a note. "I'd like you to see a doctor on staff here."
"A shrink." I said. "No way."
"Tess it might be good for you. You basically attacked Claire the other day. I think you have some problems."
"It's nothing." I protested. "Really. So what if I had a little psychotic episode. Everyone's allowed one a lifetime. Michael's had way more than that, and so have you and Isabel." I looked at my husband. "Max, you've got to know, I would never hurt you, or the kids, or anyone."
"I know you wouldn't hurt us but I still think you should talk to someone. I did."
"Your parents made you go because you tried to strangle Michael in the middle of the Crashdown when you saw Liz and him kissing over the counter." I told him. "I don't need help."
But of course I was talked into it. I'm here now solely because I was afraid Max would take the kids and move out if I didn't come."
The psychiatrist made a note on her pad. "Go on."
I laughed a little, bitterly. "Isn't that enough?"
"I don't think you've told me the whole story. You said your children think you're crazy. Why would they think that?"
"I attacked their friend's sister for no reason."
"What else?"
"I threw a fit a few years ago when Eli brought Alana Guerin home one day."
"Tell me about it."
"Nothing much to tell. They were lab partners, he brought her by to work on a diagram of some sort. I saw her and suddenly I couldn't breathe."
"Because Alana looks so much like Elizabeth?"
"Look, I don't want to talk about that." I said defensively.
"That's why you're here Mrs. Evans. To talk."
I took a deep breath. Evidently the words "Mrs. Evans" calmed her immensely. "Yes. It was like looking at Max and Liz at that age. Eli looked at Alana the same way-" Tess sighed. "The same way his father used to look at her mother. I felt like time had been turned back and that this time Max wouldn't choose me."
"Does Eli still see Alana?"
"He never did see her. She was not interested." I nervously adjusted the clip in my hair. "And I nipped his crush in the bud by sending him to California for a summer." I smiled ironically. "It's the only time I've talked to Elizabeth Guerin since she married Michael. I told her I wanted to separate them. Elizabeth agreed with me. She was sending Alana to New York for the summer. I agreed that it was perfect. Alana came back head over heels for some artist. Eli was hurt, but he's moved on, thank God."
"You have no regrets about what you did? Alana could have been Eli's one."
"Her mother was my husband's one and she broke his heart. It didn't need to happen twice in a lifetime."
"Ah. Go on. You said he moved on. What did you mean?"
"He started seeing Paula Thompkins. We, Max and I, went to school with her mother. Eli really cares about her. He's happy."
"Tell me about your daughter."
"Daisy's a wonderful girl. She's a lot like her aunt Isabel was when she was younger. She and her cousin Emma are best friends, the way I always wished Isabel and I could have been."
"Why weren't you and Isabel close?"
"I don't know, I think I was just too- God I just don't know." I took a deep controlling breath.
The psychiatrist nodded again. "You said Max hates you. Why?"
"I’m not Elizabeth."
The shrink’s mouth tightened. "When was the last time you felt that your husband truly loved you?"
"I don’t know." I sighed. "There have been moments with the children- but I don’t know if those count. Probably not."
The psychiatrist waited.
"I think the day before Elizabeth and Michael moved back to Roswell, from New York. It was like, while they were gone, he loved me. But when she came back, when they came back, he fell out of love with me. She was his dream girl. Always. He settled for me, and it’s the plain and simple truth."
"Do you really believe that?"
"Yes I do."
"Why did you stay with him?"
"I thought I could make him love me."
"You changed your mind?"
"No."
"So you stay with him because he will someday love you."
"He loves me now." I said. "I know he does, but I don’t doubt that he would leave me, if he could have Liz."
"Tell me about the relationship you had with your parents."
"I never knew them. They died shortly after I was born."
"Who raised you?"
"A man named Nasedo. He cared for no one. He raised me because it was his duty."
"How do you think that affected you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did it make you more eager for approval? Did it make you feel like you had to earn love?"
"Yes." I said softly.
"Mrs. Evans, I think you have a lot of issues to work through, but I know I can help you. Will you come back next week?"
"Why?"
"So I can help you."
I nodded. She didn’t believe that this woman had the kind of help she needed, but it was worth a shot. "Thank you."
"Before our next session, could you find a way to talk to your husband about how you’re feeling?"
Terror covered my face. "What if he left me?"
"What if he did?" The doctor challenged.
"I would be alone. He would take our children. I couldn’t live without my family." I said, tears filling her eyes.
The psychiatrist sighed. Inferiority complex, feelings of insecurity, possible neglect as a child, this one has it all. No wonder she’s depressed. Only wonder is she hasn’t turned to drugs or alcohol. "I’m sure just talking to Max wouldn’t hurt, but if you’re not ready I won’t pressure you."
"Thanks." Tess brought herself under control. "Anything else?" The petite woman began to gather her purse.
"No, that’s all for this session."
I left, heels clicking on the sterile tiles. I walked into the sun, feeling some of the pain burn away. For the first time in too long I truly believed things would be all right.
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