“So lemme get this straight... You two,” Anya pointed toward Liz and Max’s general direction, “your best friends, were my parents? And you haven’t seen them...”

“Since... the incident back in 2004, it wasn’t safe to have two five year olds with us.” Max spoke slowly, it was still painful to speak about that year, that awful year. The only thing that had kept him from quitting had been Liz, her face, her words, each and every detail of every aspect of her life that he couldn’t stand to not be a part of. The energy her love and his love for each other, purely each other, had formed and pushed them to overcome every obstacle (even Tess) so they could live together. But they wouldn’t ever be safe, no, that could not happen.

Anya’s words snapped Max out of his haze. “So you left us in the desert. Mmmhmm, yeah, I can see how that is much safer.” Sarcasm etched her voice and echoed the feeling of anger and frustration at Max for not being able to just flat out tell her the who, what, when, and why she was here.

Liz’s quiet voice eased the tension almost visibly gathering in-between the triangle of Max, Anya, and Kevin. Their attitudes were so very different, it was inevitable they would clash. “It wasn’t supposed to end up how it did. Max, Michael, Isabel, Maria, Tess, and I, we had to take care of some problems that made it impossible for us to have you with us.

“But we were your children! How could you just ab-”

“Shh, listen. Alex, my friend, they were going to get you and take care of you until we could come back for you. But it wasn’t safe for us to directly meet. So we left you in the cave, it was one we had stayed in a lot, so we knew it was safe. Except, Alex never came. He got, we think he got captured.” An awkward silence ensued as Liz struggled not to cry.

“Oh...”Anya slowly whispered, not sure what to say, not sure how to voice the millions of little questions that were swimming through her head, bumping into each other, making a muddled mess of her usually clear, concise thoughts. Then a thought took over every single crevice and space of her brain filling it up, forcing the words out of her mouth. “Why should I trust you? I mean, how can I trust you?”

“How do we know we can trust you?”

The simplicity of Max’s words struck a bone in Anya. He’s just as scared as I am. For the first time, Anya allowed herself to look at him, really look at him.

She was struck with the same awe as when she first saw Kevin, maybe even more intense. It’s the eyes. The swirling anarchy of color amazed, except everything was even more tinted with a glimmer than Kevin. Truly amazing. “I guess we’ll just have to trust each other until we-”

There was a bang of the front door and everyone’s eyes flew to the entryway. Fear sizzled in the room.

Chris fairly flew into the room, anger traced her face and outlined her voice. “Anya!”

“Chris!” Anya masked her surprise with a face of happiness, in hopes Chris would take this all as a big happy meeting. Fat chance.

“Great.” Kevin put his head in his hands and dismissed the fact that they could ever explain this one. Everyone knew Christine Everett was the biggest snoop in the school.

“What are you doing here? You don’t even know them!”

Anya rose to her feet and simultaneously throwing an inconspicuous glance at Max. No was clearly written in his eyes. “My foster mom went to college with them and I’ve just been catching them up on how she’s been.” That must be the worst lie I’ve heard out of my mouth in a long time. You’re better than that.

“Yeah, finished. Let me show you to the door.” Max ushered the girls toward the door, fear bubbling inside of him. As he passed the table with a telephone he scrawled a message lightening quick on a piece of message paper and handed it to Anya as discretely as possible.

Anya plastered a sickly sweet smile on her face but let her eyes burn and boil. She wanted to know everything now, and if that meant her telling Chris the real reason she was here, so be it. “It was very nice of you to have me.” She took the note from Max and lingered near the door to read it.