When you learned the truth about Kyle and I, I think you were angrier than you had been when you thought I betrayed you. "You lied to me, Liz" was all you would say. Then you left and I did not see you for three months. I cried for days, refused to eat. My parents thought I was anorexic or suffering from extreme depression and forced me to see doctors and psychiatrists. I lied to them all. That's one thing you taught me well, to lie.

When you did return, you made it clear that you would take me back if I were properly sorry for misleading you. I had been dying inside since Future Max came and told me how to destroy us, and you were worried about whether I was sorry for a few pathetic lies. By then I had lied so often I don't even think I had a concept of the truth.

Except that I loved you. I apologized, cried on your shoulder, let you hold me, and then we made love. We made love and I knew that I had to be with you beyond all else, that if I were separated from you something inside me would go wrong and sour and poison me against life. I wasn't afraid. I had you.

You were everything to me and for three years my world was brighter than the sun. Maria told me I was always laughing, radiant and exploding with joy. I had 1096 days of perfect happiness. Three years and one day. Then you decided that it was necessary to make an effort one last time to contact your people. "I need to, Liz. I have to try one more time before I can go on with my life," you said. I was hurt that I wasn't enough, that apparently you did not consider the life we were building together part of the progress necessary to you. But I wanted you to be happy more than anything, so I agreed. You sent off a signal with the orbs after convincing Michael and Tess and Isobel to do your bidding one last time, and you brought Hell raining down on all our heads.

You couldn't have known that the Skins were not your only enemies. You couldn't have guessed at the clever alliances they had formed over the last years, and you never even considered what would happen if there were other ears listening to the scream of the orb. Why couldn't I have been enough?

When they took Michael and tortured him he survived and escaped, but when he came home he was a broken man. Maria still cries over the fragments of Michael today. They are married and have each other, but he is not what he once was. He has lost his strength of will and nothing will ever replace it. Maria is his crutch and he leans on her heavily. She bears the burden with love, but I see the pain in her eyes. My silly, light-hearted friend is dead, replaced with an old woman toiling in the body of a twenty-nine year old. See what you did? See how you hurt your brother, maimed the sister of my heart?

Isobel nearly died trying to save you. She has the same brittleness as Maria now, with none of the the love to lighten her load. Her house is tiny on the outskirts of town. No flowers bloom there. She sees no-one but the elderly at the nursing home where she spends her days working. Isobel had a heart bigger than any of ours behind the cool façade she put on. See what you did? She was your sister, and she loved you.

You destroyed lives, Max. You were always supposed to be the cautious one, so careful and practical in everything but your love for me. Yet it was your mistake that ruined us all.

Ten years have passed since you made the decision to try one more time, and I still can't forgive you for it.

You realize I will be thirty in a little over a year, Max? I will be thirty, and the only touch I have ever known will be yours. I hate you for branding me this way. I never thought love would leave this kind of scar. I only hope our baby girl will never know this kind of pain. I will keep her away from the mysterious boys, the ones with the slow smiles that flood with light, with the eyes deep with secrets and a heart for which one can only pray to have the key. She will not love someone like her father. I won't let her.

I wish you heard me tell you these things. They are truths that are nasty and harsh, part of the reality you made for us. For the survivors. If you were going to do this, Max, why couldn't you stay alive to help us with it? It was your loss that destroyed us most of all. That devastated me. You died to send the equivalent of a letter. What makes it worse? We never heard anything from your family. Nothing ever came from your home. All that was accomplished was death and ruin.

I have to go home now, Max. I have a little girl who has no daddy, and she is only nine years old. She wants her Mommy when the dark falls. Too bad Mommy hasn't had any light for a decade. It is your fault.