A Brand New Twist, Chapter 33
by Luvin_Evian

Julian didn’t have to look up to know Eve was staring. He could feel her gaze on him. Penetrating. Unrelenting. She remained quiet as he cried. She never even got off the bed. She just sat there as still as statue. Silently waiting. Waiting for words Julian feared he’d never be able to find.

Pulling himself together, Julian finally met her gaze. Anger, sadness, and confusion jostled for position in her beautiful eyes. Every reason he had for not telling the truth echoed in his head. You can’t hurt her. You can’t risk losing her. But without saying a word, he’d done that and more. After drying the remnants of his tears, he made his way to the empty chair by the bed and reached out to her.

“No!” Eve snapped, jerking her hand away.

The sting of her rejection was like a boxer’s right cross, direct and potent. The knot in his throat tightened. “Let me try to explain.”

“Try?” She shook her head. “No, Julian, you’ll have to do more than try.”

“You don’t understand.”

“You’re right, I don’t understand. But I’ll tell you what I do understand. I understand I gave birth to two children all those years ago. I know I have no memory of one of those births, and I know you knew and didn’t say anything. What I don’t understand is why? That’s what I want to know. Why, Julian? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Eve, I…”

“God, I can’t believe I’m even asking that.” She leapt from the bed. Her fingers whipped through her hair as she stalked across the room. Julian ached for her, and she still had no idea how far this went. “Childbirth is excruciating,” Eve continued, “it’s not something a woman just forgets. Yet, I did. I can’t remember giving birth to another baby.” She turned back to him. “Why is that? Were you ever going to tell me the truth?”

Julian remained quiet. He didn’t know how to answer that. Eventually, he thought he would tell her, but he wasn’t sure.

“You weren’t, were you?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Eve, it’s so complicated.”

“It’s not complicated to me. I knew you were keeping something from me, Julian, but I never dreamed it was this.”

Guilt and regret rained down on Julian like a monsoon. His defenses grew along with his heart rate. Eve was just getting started and he wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

She held up the snapshot. “Why was this in your pocket? Why don’t I remember anything about it?”

“Why were you looking through my pockets?” he barked.

Eve recoiled. The battle of her emotions found a clear victor as anger flashed in her eyes like bolts of lightning.

Julian groaned. What the hell was he thinking? He wasn’t angry with Eve, he was angry with himself. Everything he tried to protect her from was blowing up in his face like so many land minds. How could he leave that picture in his pocket? Harmon and his damn tests. “Look, I didn’t mean that, Eve. I’m—”

“Sorry?” she clipped. “I figured that when you first walked in.”

Julian hung his head. Her acidic tone hurt, but he deserved the response he got. He met her hostile glare. The least he could do was face the wrath he stirred in her.

“For your information, I wasn’t looking through your pockets. I came here to help you pack and to try and talk to you because I’ve been so worried about you. I picked up your coat and this apparently picture fell out. I only noticed it after I talked to Sheridan and she asked why I didn’t tell her I gave birth to twins. I thought she was crazy, but she was right.” Eve tapped her hand to her chest. “I was the clueless one.”

Sheridan?

Julian shook his head. He couldn’t have heard her right. “Sheridan asked?” he repeated. “Why would Sheridan ask you that?”

Eve lowered her gaze.

He left the chair and bounded over to her. “Eve?”

“I told her to search for our son,” she said, meeting his stare with a defiant one of her own.

“Why?” He rubbed his neck, the tension like a million boulders stacked high on his shoulders. He dropped his hand, his attempt at relief futile. “I told you—”

“Yes, you told me,” she fired back. “You don’t tell me, Julian, we discuss, and you wouldn’t discuss it. I thought Sheridan’s offer was a great idea, and I wasn’t going to turn it down. She hired a detective, and the detective discovered only one woman gave birth at Boston General on the day I gave birth, and she had twins. I thought this was Alistair putting up roadblocks, but it wasn’t.”

Alistair.

In all the time he searched for their son, he never got an inkling Eve gave birth to twins, yet Sheridan found out in a matter of days. Dread joined the anxiety threatening to split him in two. That old man wanted this. He was pushing for this truth to come out. Julian squeezed his eyes shut. How could he ever prepare Eve for this? For her to learn their second child was the sister he tried to kill.

“You should have told me, Eve.”

“I tried,” she answered, “which is a lot more than I can say for you. What’s your excuse, huh? Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“I was worried about you and the baby.”

She folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes narrowed. “You can do better than that!”

“It’s the truth, Eve. You passed out the other day because you were overly worried about me. Ellen told me you needed to stay away from stress, and I was determined to keep you stress-free. To hear you had a child you have no memory of is a prescription for stress, so I decided not to tell you.”

“What else?”

Now it begins.

He looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

“Yes, you do. Julian, look at me!” she demanded, jerking him back around. “You’re not telling me something, and I want to know what it is. If this were just about you being worried about me, you would have said something before now because you knew I was already worried about you and whatever this was eating you up. Yet, you kept quiet. What else aren’t you telling me?”

“Eve, it’s…” Julian started.

“What?”

Images of Eve writhing on the floor in agony as she lost their child haunted his thoughts. Julian shook away the horrific image. He couldn’t tell her. She was already so angry; this shock would be too much. “It’s nothing, Eve. I just think we should discuss this some other time.” He picked up his bag. “Let’s table this discussion and go home.”

“No!” She grabbed the bag and dropped it to the floor. “We’ll discuss it now. I won’t wait another minute to find out what you’re not telling me!”

Her body shook with rage. Julian thought to reach out to her, but figured his touch would do more harm than good. “Eve, my darling, please, calm down.”

“I will not calm down until you answer me!”

Nurse Stringer barreled into the room. “I keep hearing raised voices. Is everything okay? Dr. Russell?”

“It’s fine, Nurse,” Eve answered through a forced smile. “You can go back to your post.”

The nurse’s gaze strayed to Julian.

Eve cleared her throat. “That will be all, Nurse Stringer,” she reiterated, the authority she wielded at the hospital pronounced in every word as her attempt at playing Ms. Nice Guy came to a screeching halt.

The woman’s face reddened. She nodded obediently. “Yes, Doctor,” she said, before glancing at Julian once more and scurrying out the room.

Hushed whisperings could be heard coming from the nurse’s station before the door closed behind Stringer. Julian could imagine the cackling of the hospital busybodies. News of his exchange with Eve would no doubt be the topic of conversation at many a Harmony dinner table tonight.

“Now, I want to know everything, Julian,” Eve directed at him, “starting with how long you’ve known we had twins.”

Julian trudged to the window and stared out into the distance. A cloudless blue sky presented a backdrop to trees of red, brown, and gold. Leaves tumbled to the ground below as a breeze swept through the colorful treetops. Fall. How ironic the season, considering his life was falling apart.

He turned to Eve. The look on her face one he remembered seeing on his mother’s when he was a young boy and he’d done something wrong. Protesting would be pointless. She wasn’t letting this go.

“I’ll tell you everything, Eve,” he finally said, “but you have to promise me you’ll sit down and calm down. I won’t say another word until you do.”

“Fine!” She dropped into the chair and turned a squared jaw to him. “I’m sitting and I’m calm.”

He watched Eve closely as she clutched her purse with one hand and clung to the picture with the other. She was far from calm, but at least she was sitting. Julian searched for the right words. None came.

Her foot tapped against the edge of the bed. “Well, I’m waiting.”

A dull ache throbbed behind his eyes. Julian rubbed his forehead, sighing. “Eve, this is not something I can just jump into.”

“It’s your lack of jumping into it that got us to this point. You can’t clean this up, Julian. Just tell me everything.” She expelled a breath and joined him where he stood. Any other time she would take his hand when standing so close, but not today. Julian wasn’t surprised. “Look, I understand you’re worried about the baby and me, but you don’t need to be. We’re absolutely fine. Now, just tell me. When did you learn about the other baby?” She folded her arms across her chest, the picture still clasped in her hand. “Just from what you’ve said, you couldn’t have known for too long.”

“I haven’t,” he answered softly. “I’ve only known for a few days.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Since after you were shot?”

“Yes.”

“How did you find out?”

Julian closed his eyes. Could his heart pound any faster? Was it fear or worry that made it feel like his chest was about to explode? “Eve, listen…”

She groaned. “Julian, please, no beating around the bush, okay? You were hesitant about telling me about what Alistair made you do to Sheridan, you knew I was pregnant then, but you managed to tell me. That was a secret I didn’t even want to know, but you insisted. How can you tell me that and not tell me this? I want to understand, but I can’t.”

Julian rolled his eyes. Oh, how sharing that had come back to haunt him. Had he known then what he knows now, he would have never told her what he did to Sheridan. “Eve, you just—you don’t know,” he said.

“No, Julian, I don’t know. I don’t know why I can’t remember giving birth to a second baby, and I don’t know why you felt the need to not tell me,” she said, her voice breaking. Tears slid down her cheeks. “I can’t understand that.”

Julian closed his hand over her shoulder, but she shrugged it away. He choked back a sob. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“You failed!” Eve swiped away her tears. “You failed.” She held up the picture. “Stop trying to protect me from my life and explain this. You explain all of it!”

He took the photo from her hand. Tears blurred his vision, but the image seared to his brain was forever in focus. “This picture is compliments of Alistair. He paid me a visit the morning after I was shot and shared this incredible story with me. A story that made Death’s words make so much sense.”

“Death? That thing you saw when…”

“When I died, yes. He said my mistakes were going to come back to destroy me and us, and he was right.” The creature’s words repeated in his head, tormenting him. Hot tears burned Julian’s cheeks. “He was so right.”

“What did Alistair tell you?”

“The last thing I wanted to hear.” Julian sniffled. “You’re going to hate me, Eve. You’re going to hate me more than you do right now.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You won’t even let me touch you,” he countered.

“I’m angry, Julian. I’m very angry with you, but I don’t hate you.” She sighed. “I could never hate you.”

“Just wait.” Julian stuck the picture in his pocket. “Maybe you should sit back down.” He took her elbow and directed her to the chair.

“Stop!” she said, wrenching her arm free. “I’m not in the mood to be touched right now, and I don’t want to sit down. I just want you to tell me what Alistair said.”

Julian dropped his hand to his side. “I’m sorry.”

“Ugh! Not that again. I really can’t take another ‘I’m sorry’ from you right now, because it only makes things worse.” Her hands balled into tight fists. Julian braced himself for the ensuing onslaught. “God, I am so angry with you, Julian,” Eve railed. “This isn’t like you forgot my birthday or we were married and you forgot our anniversary. No, you intentionally kept vital information from me. A piece of my life was ripped from my memory, how is still a mystery, but you knew, and you kept it from me. I brought a child into this world that I…”

“Sheridan.”

Eve’s wide-eyed gaze fell upon him. A deadly silence hung between them before she finally spoke. “What?”

“The child you have no memory of is a baby my father gave to my mother when her child was stillborn. That’s what I couldn’t tell you, Eve. The sister I tried to kill on two separate occasions is our daughter. Sheridan is the child you can’t remember.”

Her eyes stayed fixed on his, searching. “That’s—that’s not possible.”

“I’m afraid it’s very possible. Father had no intention of letting you keep our baby, our son, so he made it his business to be there when you delivered.”

“Alistair was there?”

“Yes. He wanted to make sure everything went according to plan. There could be no mistakes. He and the medical staff got a surprise when you gave birth to a second baby. A little girl that looked amazingly like my mother--in every way.” Julian reached in his pocked and handed Eve the picture. “If you look closely, you’ll see there’s a difference between the two babies. Father was only too happy to point out these details.”

She stared at the picture for several moments before returning her attention to Julian. “Oh, my God.”

“Alistair couldn’t let the world know he fathered a stillborn baby; so while Mother lingered in a coma after her delivery, he searched for another child. As his luck would have it, he found that child in your delivery room.”

Eve’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, Julian,” she murmured, the sad truth of his words clearly starting to sink in.

“He had some psychotic doctor in the employ of Stefano DiMera erase the memory of the second birth from your mind, and he presented our daughter to my mother as her own. Mother never knew the truth, but Father did tell me a few days ago.”

He closed his hands over Eve’s shoulders. To his surprise, she didn’t frown or shrink away from his touch. Was this the calm before the storm? “Alistair knows you’re pregnant now,” he explained, “and he knows I told you what I tried to do to Sheridan. For you to learn she’s our child--I was afraid to tell you.” Fresh tears stung his eyes. He lowered his hands and stepped away. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, Eve. I can’t even forgive myself.”

Eve shook her head. “No, Julian. Please, don’t do this. I didn’t understand before, but I do now.” She approached him and pressed her hand to his cheek. “I don’t blame you. Please, please, don’t blame yourself.”

“Who else is there to blame?” he asked, removing her hand from his face. “Nobody! It’s just me. You and our baby will be better off without me. I love you with all my heart, Eve, and all I do is hurt you. I hurt everyone I get close to. The Crane curse rearing its ugly head. Now, do you understand why I couldn’t look at you? To see the love you feel for me in your eyes when I know I didn’t deserve it. I tried to kill our child, Eve. Twice! There’s no forgiving that. I should have died from that gunshot, because I can’t live with myself. I should have let Death take me like he wanted.”

Eve gasped. “Don’t say that!”

“I mean it.”

“Julian, I love you, and I need you.” She pressed his hand to her abdomen. “This baby needs you, and Sheridan, our daughter, needs you, too. She’ll understand. We’ll tell her the truth. She above anyone knows Alistair’s cruelty. She won’t blame you. It’s going to be okay now. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that. No one can. Don’t you understand what I did?” He moved his hand away from her stomach. “I tried to kill our child. I did it knowingly when I believed she was my sister, and I hated myself then, but now… The knot in his throat grew bigger. More tears filled his eyes. “Eve, I can’t begin to explain to you how I feel. And looking at you now and seeing love and understanding staring back just makes it worse. I hate myself. I hate I’m such a coward.” He swiped the tears from his eyes. His gaze darted about the room. “Death, you morbid son of a bitch, come back! I changed my mind. Come get me!”

“Julian, stop that!”

He ignored Eve’s pleas. The best thing he could do for her was to get out of her life. To spare her and their baby the pain loving him would always bring. To prevent Sheridan from wasting her time in telling him to drop dead. He pounded his closed fist to his chest. “Death, where are you, huh? Come the hell back! Come and—” Crippling white hot pain shot through his chest, robbing him of his breath and knocking him off his feet.

“Julian!” Eve dropped to her knees, cradling his head in her lap. “Hold on, Julian. Hold on.” Eve looked over her shoulder. “I need some help in here!” she shouted, the fear in her voice chilling, very much like his skin. He was so cold.

The room grew dark. Too dark. Was this it? Had Death answered his call?”

“Julian.”

He looked around the cold, vast blackness surrounding him in search of the owner of the taunting, singsong voice. “Death?”

“Yes, I’m back. And today might be your lucky day.”

“No! Death can’t have Julian,” cried another.

The ever-increasing darkness suddenly took on a less sinister feel. That voice. “Timmy?”

“Julian has to fight Death. Timmy won’t let Julian give up.”