“I had to,” Liz answered. She was suddenly shy, she didn’t want to look him in the eye. All the same she couldn’t help staring. His hair was shorter than she’d ever seen it. His face was older, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“You never said goodbye,” he said. Oh that voice. It sounded just like she remembered it, low and sad and ringing through her soul. She was getting goosebumps on her arms.

“I couldn’t,” she answered. Those feelings she’d had all those years ago suddenly rose to the surface. She remembered all the guilt and doubt, that constant questioning if she’d done the right thing. Most of all she remembered that emptiness she had after she left Roswell, when she left Max Evans behind forever.

“I tried to understand for a long time. I never could. Which is why I’m here.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re leaving.”

“Leaving Roswell?”

“Leaving Earth. Me, Michael, Isabel, Tess, we’re going back.”

“To your home world,” Liz said, nodding. Somehow in all the situations she’d imagined in her head, all the possible reasons she and Max could be brought together, this scenario had never occurred to her.

He was silent and she didn’t know what to say. What have you been up to these past ten years? Kill any Skins lately? How are things with you and Tess?

Max walked to the window overlooking the balcony. “You got a new telescope,” he said.

“Last year.”

“You went into astronomy,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I read an article you published last year. I find it’s in our best interest to keep up with this stuff. A few years ago they found our world, they named it with a bunch of letters and numbers.”

“Is that why you have to go?”

“No,” Max said. “There’s going to be a war. The only way we can stop it is by going there. We’re not even sure that will work but we have to try. If not, they’ll destroy our planet. And then they’ll destroy us.”

Liz felt as though everything inside her head had been stirred together, all her emotions were spinning out of control. “Why are you telling me all this?” she asked.

“I couldn’t leave without seeing you.” He took a few steps toward her. “For years in the back of my mind, I always thought we’d end up together.”

“I know.”

“I had to say goodbye.”

She hadn’t moved an inch ever since she saw him. She was still holding the phone in her hand. But now she found her strength and came close enough that she could touch him.

“You’re not coming back?” she asked.

Max reached out and took her hand. Liz gasped as she felt a flash come. She saw in her mind a group of stars, she knew she’d seen it before.

“See that?” Max said. “The one in the middle, that’s where I’ll be.”

The picture changed and now she saw herself, working in a large room with a high-powered telescope she’d never seen before.

“Find it. Watch it.”

Now she saw the view through that telescope, she saw that same group of stars. Then, all of a sudden, one of them burst into a blaze of light and streaked across the sky, out of sight.

“If that star should fall, it means we failed. But our powers are stronger now. We know how to control the granilith, to take ourselves back in an instant if we know there’s trouble.”

She saw herself looking out of a window in a small house. But she saw it through the eyes of someone else, someone who was hurrying to her.