Michael and keeping Nicholas off balance long enough for Michael and Isabel to recover.
"I guess that makes you the power behind the throne," he said. She smiled again… brightly, brilliantly, beautifully. "That makes you queen," he said.
Her smile turned coy. "Would you deny your queen anything?"
He shook his head.
She pulled him closer and said, "Then I have my first royal request."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, and then he kissed her.
"You know, Spaceboy, you just proved my point," Maria said as they entered the bedroom.
"What?" he said, already not liking her tone. As usual, it had come out of nowhere.
"What do you mean, "what"? You and Nicholas, mano a mono, throwing yourself in front of trouble," she said, shaking her head. "This is just the kind of thing I was talking about. You're Sonny Corleone, a walking time bomb."
"Well, I mean, what was I supposed to do?" Michael sputtered.
"You're supposed to stay out of trouble," she said.
Michael felt the hair on the back of his neck prick up as the blood rushed to his face. "In case you weren't paying attention, he was going to kill all of us. That's the kind of trouble that's hard to avoid. And what about you? What about taking an iron poker and trying to brain him with it? At least I have powers," he said.
"That was completely different," she said, with an air of finality.
"How?" he demanded.
"It just was," she said.
"Look Maria, everybody dies, but not everybody… "
"Don't!" she shouted at him. "Don't give me that macho crap."
"Look, I don't want to lose you. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you, ever, if I can help it," he said.
Maria paused, and then threw her arms around him. "I thought I was going to lose you," she said.
He held her quietly for a long moment and then whispered, "You're not going to get rid of me that easily."
Pulling back, he looked at her and wiped the tears from her face. "Look Maria, everybody does die, but not everybody has a girl like you. In fact, I'm the only one, and I'm not going to let anyone get in the way of that. If that means taking out the odd alien in human form, then so be it. But whatever happens, you are not getting rid of me."
"Michael," she said softly, then she kissed him. A moment later, she pulled away and disappeared into the bathroom. When she emerged, she was wearing something black, and small.
Very small.
"Wow," was all he could say.
"It's a surprise," she said. "For you."
"But I didn't get you anything," he replied, approaching her. Then she was in his arms, and he felt himself getting lost.
"You'll have to make it up to me, then," she said.
Epilogue
After Isabel stowed her things in the van, she went back into the master bedroom and found the journal on the floor beside the bed. Picking it up, she placed it carefully on the shelf with the others.
She wondered why Robert Benton had shown it to her… she no longer doubted that that was exactly what had happened. Had he wanted her to know their story? Had he tried to warn her? To tell her something? She wasn't sure, but she was glad he had done it.
The upstairs was empty, and she walked through the family's bedrooms, lingering in Sarah's room, where the rocking horse sat. They were here, she realized. They were still in this house, together now, and it was a good place to be.
Comfortable, she thought. And happy.
But there was just one more thing she had to do, and she knew she had to hurry; the others would be ready soon. She headed out the back door, and into the backyard, though grounds was a more accurate word.
She walked in the field for a short time, explored it for a few minutes. Then she saw a grassy hill to the side. On a hunch, she walked over to it.
At the top near a large shade tree she found what she was looking for. There were five headstones. She read the dates. Four of them were decades old. One was much newer. There it was, the proof of everything she had thought and felt about this house and the people who had lived in it.
But she had not needed proof. She had merely wanted to understand something. To say thank you to Robert Ben-ton, who she now knew had no doubt saved her life and the lives of all of her friends. Isabel fell to her knees on the ground in front of the graves, in the wildflowers that grew on this hill but apparently nowhere else that she could see.
That did not surprise her. In fact, it made its own sense in the way this house made its own sense.
The tears came suddenly, and Isabel did not try to stop them. She cried for a mother and her children who had been taken by disease. She cried for a father who had lost everything but the memory of his family… a memory that had had to sustain him for fifty years of life alone in an empty house.
She cried for herself and the life she had left behind in Roswell. She cried for her parents and for Jesse who had loved her and whom she had loved. Then she did something she had not done since she had lost him. Isabel cried for Alex, who had been a better person than she was and who had died too soon. He had died before she could tell him anything, before she could give him what he wanted from her and what he had deserved.
As the ground soaked up her tears, she remembered what he had said to her: "It's getting late."
Late for her? Late for him?
Isabel wasn't sure what the answer was. She guessed that part of it was that she needed to let him go. Was that one of the things Robert Benton was trying to communicate? Isabel knew she wasn't ready, but she also knew the time would come.
Though the tears had started abruptly, they ended slowly. Finally, she heard voices calling her name and she rose to her feet. She took a last look at the Bentons' final resting place, then turned to walk down the hill.
She saw them all waiting for her by the van. There was music, loud music, coming from the van.
Michael and his heavy metal, she thought, shaking her head.
She brushed away a final tear and then heard Kyle say, "Come on, Stinky Van Express is about to pull out."
Isabel smiled. Then she ran to join her friends.
About the author
Kevin Ryan is the author of the Roswell book A New Beginning. He has also written three novels for the best-selling Star Trek series and cowritten another. In addition, Kevin has published a number of comic books and has written for television. He lives in New York with his wife and four children, and can be reached at Kryanl964@aol.com.