A Brand New Twist, Chapter 27
by Luvin_Evian

The more those words repeated in Julian’s head, the more distorted they became. Transforming from a clear, succinct statement to drawn out, indistinct garble. Your sister is your daughter. No matter how the words sounded, the fact they were said couldn’t be taken away. He couldn’t believe this. He didn’t want to. For those words to be true, it meant… No. This was a lie. It had to be a lie.

Alistair removed the picture from Julian’s chest and smiled down at the immortalized moment. “Aren’t you going to say something, Julian?” he asked.

“What’s there to say?” Julian smoothed away the tears blurring his vision. A humorless chuckle rumbled deep in his throat. “You must really hate me.”

Alistair groaned as he took the cigar he gave Julian and twirled it like a tiny baton. “Oh, not that again,” he said, settling back into the chair.

“Really, Father, why do you hate me? Does my loving Eve offend you so much that you have to come up with this…this…” Julian struggled to find the right word.

“Truth?” Alistair dropped the cigar to the floor and held up the picture. “Look at this, Julian,” he said, returning to the bed.

Julian turned away, not interested in looking at the painful visual that added unwanted credence to the old man’s words.

“Look at it!”

“Go to hell!”

Alistair chuckled. “Eventually,” he said. “But I trust you’ll be living your own hell on Earth long before I make it to the fiery depths below.”

Hell on Earth.

Death’s words came rushing at Julian like a runaway boulder. ‘There’s a devastating storm headed for this bright future you foresee. You’ve done some terrible things in your past, Julian, and they’re going to come back to haunt you and your beloved Eve. You’re going to wish you were dead when this happens. You shouldn’t fight me. Come with me now; otherwise you’ll have to spend years and years living with yourself and everything you’ve done. I assure you, it won’t be pretty.’

“No,” he whimpered.

“So, how do you think Eve will take this news?” Julian’s eyes flew to his father’s smug face. Bliss radiated in Alistair’s cold, dark eyes. He smiled at the picture before slipping it into his side pocket. “I think she’ll be happy,” Alistair said, falling back to the chair. “Yes, I think this news will-- Oh, but, wait. You told her about your attempts to kill Sheridan, didn’t you? Hmm. That changes things. I don’t think she’ll be too thrilled to hear you tried to kill her baby.” Alistair gasped. “Baby! Eve’s delicate condition. She had a fainting spell yesterday. My goodness, the shock of hearing this could…”

“Shut up!” Julian winced and covered his chest, his sharp and sudden outburst aggravating the ache Alistair’s words all but made him forget existed. He had to stop the snapping. He couldn’t let Alistair see his doubt, his worry. This couldn’t be true. There were too many unanswered questions. Too much that didn’t fit. “Don’t you say another word.”

Alistair shrugged. “I’m only laying out what’s ahead, Julian. You’ve got some decisions to make.”

“The only things ahead for me is my marriage to Eve and the birth of our baby. And the only decision we’ll have to make is what name we like best. That’s it. You’re a despicable bastard, Father, and for a moment I almost believed you…almost. But this, what you’re insinuating, it’s too hateful even for you.”

“Insinuating?” Alistair scoffed. “You know, you really must give up on this futile hope that I’m lying, Julian. I assure you, I am not. Don’t try to make this my fault. I didn’t get your whore pregnant. All I did was preserve the family name.”

“Mother would never deceive me like this. If this was true, she would have told me.”

“I believe she would have, if she knew. It’s the same with Eve. It’s impossible to share information you don’t have. With your mother, she was certain her child was a girl. Even without all the fancy equipment they have nowadays, she knew in her heart she was having a girl. Oh, she wanted that baby. It was all she talked about.”

“And she had her baby. Sheridan.”

Alistair wagged his finger. “Wrong again, Julian. Even following the doctor’s orders to the letter couldn’t keep that baby from being stillborn. The blood. Ugh. It was almost like a slaughter, that child coming out of her. And for what? The damn thing was born dead. Katherine dying would have been one thing, but the child.” Alistair drew a harsh breath. His lips formed a tight line. “That was a problem.”

“Mother dying would have been better?”

“For me, yes. I never wanted that baby in the first place, and Katherine was always a consolation prize, but I couldn’t let the world think that I, Alistair Crane, fathered a dead child. You know how I hate negative publicity.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “Of course,” he grumbled, not believing audacity of this man. Negative publicity!

“Threats kept the doctors and nurses quiet as I started my search for another baby. And lo and behold, two days before Katherine roused from her coma, Eve and her spare spawn came to my rescue. Who would have thought your black whore could give birth to a pristine white baby?” Alistair slapped his thigh as he rose from the chair and made his way to the foot of the bed. “Certainly not me.” His pasty hands gripped the railing. “Besides my need for it, you can see why she definitely couldn’t keep it, right?”

It? This old man was calling the baby he stole from Eve, a child he’s saying is Sheridan, an ‘it’? “You are so blithe about all this. My God, what are you?”

“A lucky son of a gun, that’s what,” Alistair answered with a self-satisfied grin. “That child looked so much like Katherine, it was like it was meant to be. When your mother saw that baby, it was love at first sight. She had her daughter, and she loved that child until the day she died. And when she died, I sent Sheridan to boarding school. Having your mongrel bastard around calling me ‘Daddy’ for one more day was more than I could bear. Be glad I didn’t send her to a sweatshop in Thailand. So, no, Julian, Katherine didn’t tell you the truth, because she didn’t know.”

Julian gripped his bed sheets, trying mightily to keep the intense rage he felt at bay as he asked, “What about Eve?”

“What about her? Oh, you mean how is it she doesn’t remember she gave birth to twins?”

“The idea crossed my mind. Giving birth to twins is not something a woman just forgets.”

“With the right help she can. I knew someone in Salem who was working on a little something to alter memories. Of course, it was very experimental, not planned to be used for a few more years, but I was desperate and with Eve as my guinea pig, Stefano had someone to test his little idea. He was hesitant, but in no position to argue with me.”

“Stefano?” He couldn’t possibly mean that madman who dies and comes back to life in order to wreak havoc on scores of innocent people. Eve’s friend, Dr. Carver, was this man’s daughter.

“Yes. DiMera,” Alistair confirmed.

Spasms of uneasiness erupted in Julian’s gut. He knew for a fact DiMera had a man convinced he was a believed dead cop, until the cop turned up very much alive many years later. If he could erase all of one man’s memories and implant another man’s memories into his head, he could-- “What the hell did you do to Eve?”

“I didn’t do anything to her. Stefano sent the doctor in charge of his experiment, Rolf, over to do it for me. I must say it worked like a charm. Wiped that baby clean out of Eve’s mind. I would have erased that brown bastard, too, but she had that blonde friend who knew about the pregnancy, so…”

“You just let her believe the baby died,” Julian said, the missing pieces of this horrific puzzle suddenly falling into place.

“Now you’re getting it. And you should both continue believing that, because I will never tell who or where he is.” Alistair pulled out the picture and walked the length of the bed. “You always asked how I could be so cruel to my own daughter. Well, now you know how. She was never mine in the first place.” He smashed the picture into Julian’s open palm and then proceeded to the door.

Anguish squeezed Julian like a mighty python. Crippling his already weakened body with a blinding ache of despair he feared would never end. Suffocating in misery, he reached out to the one person who could end his agony before it swallowed him whole.

“Father, wait,” he said, through the knot threatening to close his throat.

Alistair turned. “What is it now?”

“I’ve always tried to do what you asked of me, even to my own detriment, and I’ve never asked for anything in return.”

“Where is this going?” Alistair asked, looking at his watch.

“In all that time, I only hoped for some sign of love from you, any little thing to show I meant something to you. I never got that when I was young, but it’s not too late. Please, Father, if I ever meant anything to you, tell me what you said isn’t true.” Tears blinded him as he smothered a sob. “Please, just tell me it’s not true. That you didn’t assign me to kill my own daughter. Eve’s daughter. Please, tell me you didn’t do that.”

Alistair released a long, drawn out sigh. “What kind of Crane man are you? Huh? Begging, pleading, and crying.” He snorted. “Pathetic! You want me to get you off the hook, to tell you I’m lying, but I can’t, and even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because time and again I told you to stay away from that woman, but you wouldn’t listen. Had you just stayed away from Eve like I told you, this secret would have stayed a secret, but you just had to scratch that itch.” Alistair stomped over to the bed, pointing an angry finger. “This, Julian, is what defying me will get you.”

“I love Eve.” Julian swiped at his tears. “Telling her about this will…”

“Loving this woman is your destruction. Living with the fact you tried, on more than one occasion, to kill her child will eat you from the inside out, whether you tell her the truth or not. I, for one, am hoping you do tell her, and if there’s a God above, that mongrel inside of her will never see the light of day. So, no, Julian, I will not rescue you from your personal hell. You earned every second of it.”

Alistair took a few steps and then turned around. “ Oh, and just wait till you see my performance as the bereaved father, doing what he had to do all those years ago to keep his beloved wife happy.” He slumped his shoulders and sniffled. “I—I just couldn’t bear to see my poor wife’s heartbreak. The birth almost killed her, I couldn’t tell her she lost her baby, too. That would have surely killed her. Perhaps, it was wrong, but I did—I did what I did out of love,” he said, his voice cracking and shoulders shaking with fake emotion. Alistair looked up and smiled. “Academy Award worthy, wouldn’t you say?” His body shook with laughter. “Do give Eve my best.”

The old man’s cackle echoed in the room long after he left. Julian’s teary gaze fell to the picture in his hand. His lovely Eve and their two beautiful babies. Babies. Sheridan. Eve’s current pregnancy. “Oh, God, what am I going to do?” He clutched the picture to his chest and surrendered to the tears. “What am I going to do?”

“Thank you,” Eve said, receiving the cup of water from Sheridan and taking a sip of the cool beverage as the young woman joined her on the couch. Speaking of that night was hard, but she was glad she did. Sheridan was proving to be a wonderful sounding board.

“I wish you had let me get you some herbal tea from the cafeteria.”

“No, this is fine.” Eve took another drink and sat the cup on the end table. She covered Sheridan’s hand with hers. “I’m okay,” she assured her.

Sheridan sandwiched Eve’s hand between hers. “I’m sorry about what happened between you and T.C. I always knew he had a temper, but I just can’t believe he would try—”

“Me, either. I had never seen T.C. so angry. Earlier in the day he…” Eve paused for a long moment, and after a moment of internal debate, continued. “Earlier in the day he saw me with Julian. Really with him,” she added, meeting Sheridan’s gaze.

“Really with…” Sheridan paused for a moment. Her cheeks tinged to a bright pink. “Oh,” she said.

“I don’t have to tell you about the history between T.C. and Julian, and to find us the way he did and internalizing that rage until he saw me later that day… It was too much. He just snapped.”

“Well, snapped or not, what he did was wrong.”

“What I did was wrong, too. I don’t regret it, but it was still wrong.”

“That doesn’t excuse what he did.” Anger flashed in Sheridan’s eyes like lightening during a thunderstorm. She sucked in a breath. “You are going to press charges, right?”

Eve shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“I do.” She didn’t expect Sheridan to understand her decision, but she had resigned herself to it, and wouldn’t change her mind. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive T.C. for what happened, but as the father of my girls, I can’t send him to prison.”

“Maybe he stopped just short of raping you, but assault is still a crime, Eve. He belongs in prison.”

“He belongs in treatment. I was married to him for over twenty years. T.C. has a violent temper, but he’s not a violent man.”

“Humph.” Sheridan grunted.

A slight smile tickled Eve’s lips. “Not really,” she said. “He just needs the right help and he’s getting that. I want that for him.”

“Eve.”

“T.C. and I had a talk before he left town this morning, Sheridan. He’s extremely sorry for what he did, and he realizes his anger is a big problem, so he’s getting the help he needs. That’s why he left Harmony. He’s not going to contest the divorce and he hoped, with time, I wouldn’t be afraid to be alone with him and we could become friends again.”

“You’re open to that?”

Eve shrugged. “I couldn’t promise him friendship, but for the sake of the girls, I agreed to be civil. I did promise I wouldn’t tell them what happened. They love their father, and I don’t want them hurt anymore than they already have been.”

“I don’t want you to be hurt anymore, either,” Sheridan said, patting Eve’s hand. “Your children are giving you unnecessary grief because you’re protecting T.C. That bothers me.”

“I’m comfortable with my decision. Hopefully, in time, Simone and Whitney will come around. Maybe I can give T.C. a call and have him put in a good word for me.” Eve chuckled.

“You laugh, but it’s the least he can do. You’ve been through so much already, and you’re pregnant. You don’t need stress.”

Eve squeezed Sheridan’s hand and stood. “I think the stressful part is over. My girls know the truth, Julian is doing better, and I’m having his baby. It’s time for new beginnings, and for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to the future.” She checked her watch. “Julian must be wondering what happened to me. Come along, I’m sure he’ll love to see you.”

“I’d love to see him, too.” Sheridan rose from the couch. “I think-- Hey! I just got an idea,” she said, her beaming smile matching the twinkling in her eyes.

“From the look on your face it must be a pretty good one. What is it?”

“You mentioned new beginnings, and certainly your baby is that, but you and Julian have another child out there, too. So, my suggestion is, if it’s okay with you, while Julian is recovering and you’re taking it easy being pregnant, because you did pass out yesterday, I want to find your son.” Sheridan clasped her hands together. Her smile widened. “I’m going to unite you and Julian with your lost child.”