TITLE: MERRY CHRISTMAS, I COULD CARE LESS (A Kane Christmas Carol)

Author: Misty Flores

Email: mistiec_flores@yahoo.com

GENRE: All My Children
Pairing: Bianca/Maggie, Maggie/Lena
Rating: Mature

TEASER: Maggie, the former love-of-her-life, the one who Bianca had wanted to marry, the one that had cheated on her and ruined everything, the one Bianca was still desperately in love with (and becoming increasingly bitter about it), was currently in an expensive suite with her daughter and her live-in lover, Bianca's ex of all people, having a perfectly cozy romantic evening. Merry F-king Christmas.

PART II. THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten.

- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

The Ghost of Christmas Past, in the form of one Alexander Cambias Jr., aka Zach Slater, looked remarkably happy as he took another sip of bourbon, forcing his already rough voice into an even gravellier intonation.

“You’re not going to freak out, are you?” he said, face contorting slightly at the bitter taste. “Because the entire reason the Frankie girl came before me is because I’m distinctly uncomfortable with freaking out. It’s why I hate to go first.”

Wide-eyed, with a heart beat that was ricocheting off her ribs at a level that could pretty much guarantee a heart attack, Bianca had no words.

“If it were up to me, it’d be the future, then the present, and then the past. See, by that time most people are convinced that it isn’t a joke or a hallucination or a dream and I can just whip ‘em through their motivations.” He drained his drink, and set it back on the counter. “I once had this one guy try to hit me, and to be honest? I didn’t like it. Obviously I’m a ghost and you can’t really HURT me, but when you take a corporeal form – it leaves a helluva bruise. But see, we tried that once, and the guy was so unprepared to see his future first he had a heart attack and died. Boom. Right there.”

Palm suddenly rising to press against her heaving chest Bianca gasped at the imagery. Still unable to speak, she could only stare as Zach Slater smiled merrily to her, still nursing his drink.

He waited for a few seconds, as if gauging her temperament, before he added helpfully, “I’m only saying all this because you seem to be in shock, and I’m trying to wait until you come out of it, but we’ve got a lot to get through tonight, so we should probably get going. Or else I’m gonna keep drinking, and you don’t want to travel to the past with a drunk ghost. Believe you me.”

“Frankie was real.” The realization cut through her, and Bianca found herself physically reeling, gutted as her palms clapped over her mouth.

The grief had struck her anew, and as her eyes shut and her heart broke all over again, she could feel warm hands supporting her, a bourbon-breathed voice speaking in her ear. “Hey. Hey.”

Blindly, she reached for Zach Slater, arms scrambling over his chest and around his neck, until she was quietly sobbing into his shoulder.

“There, there,” she heard, and her eyes stung with moisture, heaving suddenly. “It’s okay.”

“Frankie,” she managed again, and the pressure of a soft pat against the back of her head was his response.

“She came back to you,” she heard, and closed her against the kiss pressed on her brow. “For just this once.”

Frozen, unable to comprehend, Bianca found the last image of the girl vividly frozen into her mind. “And I was a bitch to her.”

The ghost stiffened. “Yes, yes you were.” It was then, she realized, exactly who she was holding. It wasn’t Zach Slater at all.

Jerking away, Bianca’s blurry vision finally took in the apparition before her, looking down at her with Zach’s kind brown eyes and roguish smile.

“You’re not Zach Slater,” she whispered, more to convince herself than anything else.

“No, I take forms,” he said helpfully. “Woven from your past, designed to minimize the grief and freaking out.” He buried his hands in his pockets, and shrugged. “Obviously, in this case, it didn’t help.”

“Frankie said there’d be three ghosts.” Bianca’s tone was breathless, arms wrapping around herself, suddenly remembering the words that came from Frankie’s angry lips. The implications of what was happening had begun to make her dizzy, and unable to take it, she turned away, expecting to find solace in her chair.

What she saw instead astounded her.

Where the cabin had once been, with a floor and walls and a ceiling, was now a beach, with moonlit beams fighting with shadows to provide the dim visibility. The sound of waves pounding against the surf slicked icy salt against her cheek.

“I’m going to show you some things,” she heard behind her, and with a look of confused panic, she jerked her head back to the ghost.

Sand crunched under her feet, and with a jack-knife of pain in her heart, Bianca immediately knew where she had been taken.

“Why would you bring me here?” she snapped, angry now, hands curled into fists. The emotion was hard to contain, because she remembered – SHE REMEMBERED- and it was a time she wanted so desperately to forget.

“Because you’ve forgotten where you’re coming from,” she heard. “You’ve lived so long in your own version of things past that it’s time to consider what really happened.”

Hands still in his pockets, Zach brushed up against her, and nodded with his head. “Follow me.”

She trudged along the wet sand, until she heard voices, and then two figures in a cluster of rocks. Two girls, eating ice cream.

She froze. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “It’s me and Maggie.”

“You were cute kids,” he agreed, and put his hand on her elbow. “Come on.”

They got closer, and there she was, younger, tall and skinny, with short unkept hair and a faded t-shirt, sitting on one of those beach rocks. In front of her was Maggie, with those blonde streaks she had abandoned years ago in favor of her natural chestnut colored hair, small and tiny and perfect.

The sight of her former lover, with the playful smirk, staring down at the younger version of herself caused a sudden rupture inside of her that made her pause.

“Don’t worry. No one can see you, no one can hear you,” Zach added helpfully. “We’re just doing some eavesdropping.”

In a daze, she followed him, bits and pieces of the conversation floating to her over the surf.

“This is gonna be kind of weird, though.”

“It’s not going to be weird!”

“Well… we’re going to be off… by ourselves… living alone… not telling anyone what we’re doing, not letting anyone visit us. People are going to think that we’re a couple.”

She froze, the words suddenly pinging a memory in her brain. “I was pregnant,” she said to Zach, grabbing hold of his sleeve. “And only Maggie knew. We were going to run away together.”

“To have your baby,” he confirmed, pulling lightly on his tie. “Just you and Maggie. Maggie had just convinced you to move in with her, remember? She wanted to be there for the sonograms, and the lamaaze classes…”

Drinking in the sight with a sudden rush of emotion, Bianca stepped forward, unable to stay away.

“What if some guy’s interested in you?” she breathed, alongside her younger counterpart, and despite herself, couldn’t resist a small, painful smile as Maggie smirked right back, looking through her to her own Bianca.

“I’ll just make sure he gets the right idea.”

Bianca remembered this moment, the dark period of her life in which there came the emergence of this one hope – precious time with the woman who had become her rock, in the form of her baby. Ideas of baby books and toys and …

“I’ll flash him my feminine wiles,” Maggie burst, interrupting her thoughts by ripping her blouse open, exposing a tanktop and her small but gorgeous chest.

She whirled, looked at herself, and saw that flash of hunger that Bianca knew had been there. The moment of flushed temptation, as the younger Bianca blushed fiercely, dug into her ice cream.

“That would work,” she breathed.

“You were so insistent, after this day,” she heard in her ear, Zach’s voice low as her eyes pinned on the movement of the two women on this beach, “That it was Maggie you needed with you, remember? There were fears, of course. But Maggie soothed them.”

And those words washed over her, as this Maggie crawled forward, and Bianca felt the warm pressure of her palm against her stomach, a movement so tender just the memory caused a burn of warmth.

“Tell your mommy, to stop worrying. The three of us are about to have a crazy adventure.” Cheeks moistened with tears as Bianca remembered that sentence, and remembered wanting to believe it; so badly.

She swallowed, wiping the stinging tears away. Palms covered her eyes, and to her astonishment, she realized she was trembling.

She had been scared, scared all the time, and the only relief back then, the only time she ever felt safe was when she felt Maggie’s arms around her.

Blind in her grief and her rage, there was so much burden, and when she was unable to bear it, her head landed on one shoulder.

Her eyes shut tight.

“The past is the past,” she managed, because she suddenly remembered the present, and where Maggie was, and where Miranda had ended up, all those years later.

All the talk of hopes and dreams, and she was standing on a beach with a ghost, a literal incarnation of those wishes: mere aspirations.

“So what? Yes, Maggie and I were kids. Things changed.”

“Where’s your daughter now?”

“So rub it in!” she snapped. “Yes, Maggie and I were a family. A shell of a family because apparently that wasn’t good enough for her-“

“Okay, stop,” Zach’s hand rose, losing patience. “Again with the assumptions and the rewriting of the past. You know for someone that used to be such a damned saint, you really get judgmental.”

“You think cheating on me isn’t something I should be angry about?”

“You dwell on things long enough they become a heck of a lot more than a chip on your shoulder,” Zach answered. “Let’s take one thing at a time.”

“No,” she snapped. Already, her heart was bruising, bleeding even, and Bianca was not up for this: not the longwinded walks past memory lane, not the torture of reliving the darkest time in her life, when Maggie was the woman who would never hurt her. “I’m not doing this with you.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t look so damned smug.” Wiping angry tears winding tracks down her face, Bianca stepped forward, challenging the amused ghost. “I’ve read Dickens. I know what you’re trying to do to me. You’re going to show me everything that’s happened to me and you’re going to say it’s all my choice. Well, what’s the use? It doesn’t change what’s happened or our choices. There’s no miraculous explanation that will explain away the fact that Maggie cheated on me. Or will away my rape.”

“Or explain away Zarf?” Zach interjected, and momentarily cut a hole in Bianca’s rant. The memory of the transgendered rock star came with an unintentional loss of breath, and at the expression, her personal ghost only raised an eyebrow. “Now that we’re getting things out on the table…”

“ZOE was a sweet… is a sweet woman,” she enunciated, “Who showed up at a time in my life when I desperately needed to feel loved, and wanted.”

“Because Maggie betrayed you.” She didn’t respond. “You know what, Bianca? You’re right. There’s not going be any miracle that’s going to happen tonight. I mean, obviously there’s no need to bother with any of this.”

Now he was being infuriatingly sarcastic.

Brown eyes darkened into a cold black. “Don’t waste my time,” she began thickly. “I’ve had years to go over my life, to nitpick every mistake, every betrayal. You don’t think I’ve asked myself why I can’t forgive Maggie, how much happier I could have been if I could have just gotten past what happened?”

“You can’t forgive Maggie because she made you out for a fool,” Zach answered simply. “It’s your pride, Bianca, and your fear. And it’s too late now, anyway for that. This isn’t about Maggie.”

The blanket statement cut through an odd sense of hope she didn’t realize she even had. Feeling foolish, her spine stiffened, and she swallowed hard, determined to keep her expression icy. “Then why are we spending so much time talking about her?”

“Because you’re still in love with her, and if you can’t get past that, then you’re going to have a miserable, lonely unfulfilled life.”

She could only smile bitterly in response. “So forcing me to relive all this – to sit back and look at all of this and remember everything I could have had and lost – that’s going to make me feel better about this?”

“I’m just the guy with the Past,” Zach bit, puffing his chest out like a peacock, summarily offended. “You’ve got two other spirits coming atcha, so don’t put all this on me.”

“Oh, right…” She nodded, pretending to look thoughtful. “The past, the present… the future: in which I die a lonely old widow with thirteen ex-life partners, and Maggie and Lena live happily ever after with Miranda in their care. God, that is insightful! I’m going to change my ways!”

“Okay, enough with the sarcasm, you’ve gotten way too good at it.” He squinted, looking down at her as if he were trying to figure her out. “Okay,” he announced suddenly. “Since you know so much, let’s skip this.”

That was way too easy. “Excuse me?”

“Well, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover and we’ve seem to have wasted a lot of time snarking, and really, what’s the use of rubbing it in. Let’s just see if we can find something that hasn’t been hashed out to death.” Digging into his pocket, he produced a blackberry, and removing the stylus, appeared to scroll through a task list. “ If you don’t mind…” Leaning forward, he grabbed hold of her shoulders with surprisingly gentle pressure and swiveled her around. “Let’s see… what was next? You finding out Maggie had registered for classes and convincing her to withdraw because you two still had plans to run away together…”

Bianca blinked, unnerved when she felt a light gush of wind and suddenly that exact scene played out before her, carpet suddenly at her feet, and a mildly pregnant version of herself pulling the still blonde Maggie in for a fierce hug. “Moving along… You and Maggie’s first kiss… which came about because you had told her she was no longer needed… you were going with Lena…” The completely flippant interpretation of what happened forced a rather fierce glance over her shoulder, before she remembered she was actually seeing a fast-forward of this happen and so glanced back, just in time to see Maggie press a kamikaze kiss against her lips. Just the sight made her heart lurch. “Maggie freaks out, sleeps with Jamie, Lena leaves, your mother freaks out about the baby, you get lost in the rain…”

“STOP.”

The world froze on a dime, on the image of a soaked Bianca holding a perfect baby, inches away from an equally drenched blonde.

The birth of Miranda.

Wordlessly, she brought her hands to her face, heels clacking over the dank wood of the cabin floor, toward a girl and her baby, already hopelessly in love.

Little Miranda was so beautiful. Reaching forward, Bianca slid her hands over a soft cheek, the chubby face with a wide open mouth, in the middle of a diligent yawn.

“My baby,” she whispered, and this is how she would remember it, this one night in the cabin that she clung to for months on end; held tight with both hands because this was her happiness, her hope: her life and her child. Everything she fought for, pinned down in one instant, and then, as if the fates had decided there was already too much happiness, they ripped it away.

As if she couldn’t have it, ever again.

With a sob-soaked breath she tore her eyes away from Miranda to look upon Babe, an angelic, exhausted face, staring upon her with so much love and devotion… how could that have been the same person who ripped Miranda way from her? Kept her a secret, when she KNEW what that child meant – she had held Miranda in her arms and given her her baby.

The stab of ugly hate hit her full force, and she wasn’t prepared for it, overtaken so quickly she reeled back, held in place by the man to whom she was charged.

Shuddering, she closed her eyes against the image, unable to express with words how much the frozen scene crippled her.

The ghost in the form of Zach seemed to take the hint, because he said simply, “Let’s move on.”

The images moved again, jerked back into motion, and with unblinking eyes, Bianca sudden saw a helicopter flash, a broken image of herself, lying on the ground, splotches of mud streaked against her skin. Maggie was there, hands against her face, and then she was in a hospital, and Kendall was there, and she was being told her baby was dead and then the images became fast so fast she could barely register them, pin prints in her mind.

Without warning the images slowed, and in place of a cabin or a forest or even a hospital, her office appeared.

The decorations weren’t recent; colors muted and lifeless, an office style she inherited. At the time, Bianca was still figuring out her place in the unfamiliar office culture that was Cambias, and hadn’t yet had the guts or the inclination to make the office feel more like home.

The picture of Miranda on the rich mahogany desk placed the little girl at a little over three years old.

There was nothing momentous about the occasion. This version of Bianca Montgomery was wordlessly working, typing at her computer and speaking through a headset.

Wordlessly, she looked to her guide for an explanation.

“You said you couldn’t forgive Maggie, you wanted to know why.” His voice was rough and smooth at the same time, the odd contradiction that was Zach Slater. “This is the moment, the exact place in time, when Maggie realized that you were never going to forgive her.”

In her confusion, she forgot to be acerbic. “But Maggie’s not even in the room.”

He smiled mutely. “Wait for it.”

She recalled this period as a lonely time. She had only recently returned to Paris, cynical and less idealistic than before. Blinded by her affection for Zoe, Bianca believed she was in love, over Maggie forever.

That affair went nowhere fast. As much as she had tried to convince her sister, her friends, herself, that Zoe’s anatomy didn’t matter, when confronted with the extreme reality of it, it did matter.

It mattered very much.

Adding insult to injury was the fact that Zoe seemed less interested in a relationship than she ever did before. She wasn’t ready for the automatic family that Bianca wanted so desperately. In fact, she later told her that she believed the reason Bianca was trying so hard was because she was trying to replace Maggie, and she was beginning to resent her for it.

She had been, of course. Bianca’s ridiculous rebound had everything to do with Zoe’s blind love for her and the complete shattered confidence that came with losing Maggie. Bianca knew that now, but at this moment in time, recently returned rejected, believing herself in love and still nursing the throbbing hurt that came with the memories of what had happened before she had left Paris the first time, Bianca wouldn’t hear of it.

The phone buzzed, and the flashback version of herself immediately reached for the phone. “What is it?” Her face contorted, and she saw a wince contract on her features. “No, no. I told before I don’t want to see her. I don’t care if she’s insisting.” She listened a minute, and as she did, prickles of this conversation began to slink back into Bianca’s mind.

Bianca had known that moving back to Paris would put her in the direct path of Maggie Stone. At the time, believing she had truly moved on with Zoe, she thought she would be strong enough to handle it.

She had imagined a crushing look on Maggie’s face, when she realized that Bianca had managed to move on. There was a dark, sinister part of her that had actually wanted Maggie to HURT, because the truth of it was that just the thought of her still made her weak, and Bianca was determined to be anything but.

“You wanted to hurt her,” she heard, as if Zach could read her thoughts. “And you did.”

“Because I didn’t take her call?” Bianca asked, disbelieving. “That doesn’t make sense. I never took her calls. That never stopped her.”

“Until it did,” Zach said, as Bianca watched this version of herself carefully, delicately hang up the cradle. Alone in her office, Bianca was free to compose herself, head falling to her desk, breathing unsteadily. “You were afraid of her. You were afraid if you allowed her in, if you let her be a friend to you, like she had asked, then you wouldn’t know where to draw the lines. And you weren’t wiling to trust her. You were too afraid of getting hurt.”

“With good reason!” Bianca snapped, feeling a raw flare of pain at the unspoken accusation. “What Maggie did to me… what she did to me and Miranda… I wanted to MARRY her. This was supposed to be it for us. She was supposed to be the ONE person who would never hurt me.”

“That’s funny,” Zach interrupted, moving around her and peeking over her past self’s shoulder, watching her work. “I thought that was Babe. I remember you saying something along those lines about her. You know… until you realized she stole your baby.”

A hot flush of anger stained her cheeks. “This isn’t the same.”

He stared at her from behind the other Bianca’s desk. “Okay,” he answered simply. “We’re getting off track. I said this was the time when Maggie realized you would never forgive her. What do you think made the difference?” Pausing, he seemed to openly consider the idea, before he motioned toward the door with his head. “Let’s peek outside, okay?”

Reaching out with his hand, he grasped hold of her palm, and they passed through the door, to the imposing desk of her secretary, and the startling image of an obviously upset Maggie, standing right beside her.

Sucking in her breath, Bianca froze. “But Cindy said she was on the phone.”

“Cindy was just acting on orders,” Zach told her frankly. “Your orders, to keep Maggie away from you. Maggie was having a tough time getting the hint.”

“Ms. Stone, I’m sorry,” she heard Cindy saying. “But you’re not making my job any easier.”

“Cindy, it’s me.” Maggie’s voice was oddly shaken, and Bianca found herself rooted to the spot, listening to the conversation she obviously missed. “Just let me talk to her.”

“Why?” Cindy demanded. “Why should I?”

“Because she needs a friend.”

“The kind of friend you are?”

Maggie snapped, thwapping a newspaper on her desk that had an obvious picture of Kendall on it, looking pale and stricken. Cindy jumped with the movement.

“Her sister is in trouble, Cindy! Her nephew might be deaf and her other nephew...” Maggie seemed clearly effected, brown eyes staring at the door as if she could bean it down with some sort of laser vision. “For once in her life, Bianca can’t go back to be there with her.”

“So send her a card.”

“I would but you keep rejecting each and every one.”

“Maggie, don’t you get it?” Cindy’s palm pushed up, and her assistant, tiny as she was, could be tremendously forceful. “She doesn’t want you anymore. Whatever connection you two had? It’s over. She’s moved on, and frankly all this… it’s pathetic.”

In spite of herself, Bianca found herself gasping at the harshness of the words. She had heard them before, said flippantly in a rush of anger, venting to her secretary when she was confronted with a package from Maggie sent to Miranda for her birthday. She knew Cindy was paraphrasing, but she had never imagined that Cindy would ever repeat them…

Maggie was thrown, dark eyes tinted with hurt. “You don’t know that,” she managed, voice weaker than it had been.

“I do, because that’s what she told me.” An apologetic frown flashed on Cindy’s face. “Maggie, I’m sorry. To be honest, I liked you. I still like you. But that’s how she feels. And you owe it to yourself to move on.”

“Oh, God…” Bianca whispered, taken back by the look of very real pain on Maggie’s face, as the tiny girl stepped back, sank deeply in the chair beside Cindy’s desk.

Her former lover looked absolutely stricken, and even Cindy appeared regretful, kneeling in front of the girl, taking her hands in a gesture of support.

“She’s never going to forgive me, is she?” Maggie whispered, and Cindy didn’t respond, only hesitated and looked away.

That was as good an answer as any.

“Maggie,” she chocked, ready to move forward, when she was stopped by a large hand on her shoulder, keeping her in place.

“This is the past, remember?” Zach quipped, dark eyes staring down at her. “Can’t do much to change that.”

“I said that to Cindy,” she breathed, glancing at him beseechingly. “I didn’t think she would ever repeat it. I never dreamed she would ever tell Maggie…”

“Well, she did,” he said simply. “And after this, Maggie understood it was over.”

She had often wondered why the communication had stopped. After months of rejecting Maggie’s phone calls, when they stopped coming…

Bianca would never acknowledge the hurt she felt when she realized Maggie had stopped calling, but it had lingered in her mind. She had thought Maggie had given up.

Not that she herself had caused it.

“Look,” Cindy was saying, obviously feeling horrible and trying hard to compensate, “Those presents you send to Miranda? I’ll make sure she gets them, okay? I will. I’ll talk to Bianca about it, and I’ll make sure it happens.”

“Why would you do that for me?”

“Because people make mistakes,” Cindy answered quietly. The sight of her assistant, kneeling in front of her ex-lover, caressing her hand so intimately, gave her a sudden jolt of irrational jealousy. “It’s just that with some people… you can only make them once.”

Sadness seemed to pass into bitterness for Maggie. “Right. Or you know, you can steal a baby. That grants you an automatic Get-Out-Of-Jail free card.”

Gently, she pushed Cindy away and stood up, still looking a little shaky.

“That’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not,” Maggie agreed, shrugging on her coat.

“Are you going to be okay?”

Pausing, Maggie took that question seriously, taking a moment to really think of the answer. “I’m going to get drunk,” Maggie decided.

Staring up at her, Cindy had a small, careful smile on her face. “Maybe I’ll join you.”

An ugly fear began to manifest itself, as Bianca saw the glance exchanged between them. “They slept together, didn’t they?”

“No, no,” Zach answered lightly, “Cindy and Maggie were only ever good friends. She slept with Lena that night.”

There couldn’t be any worse way to break that news to her. The image that immediately reeled into her head nearly left her catatonic, and she whirled on her guide, speechless at the admission.

“Oh, what?” he asked, unruffled at the scathing look. “You know how the story ends. You know they’re together. It had to start somewhere.”

“Maggie said they’ve only been together a couple years,” Bianca managed roughly.

“And that’s true,” he assured her. “A one night stand isn’t exactly a license to buy a U-Haul, Bianca. They ran into each other at the gay bar. Lena had heard the story and confronted her about it.”

“But it was because of this.” Her hand pointed to the office surroundings, the way Cindy stared after Maggie in that apologetic way. “This is what caused that.”

“Moments in time are always linked together. You know that.”

This was where her past was catching up to her present. She could see the glimmer of the future that was beginning to take shape, and the resulting emotion was sudden sadness.

Feet abnormally heavy, Bianca reached for the newspaper that lay forgotten on Cindy’s desk, flipping idly to the glossy pages that featured Kendall and her limelight stealing family.

“You said you’d show me things,” she managed roughly. “That I would understand why things happened, see them from a different perspective.” She looked up, met eyes darker than her own. “But even now, I never understood why Maggie cheated on me.”

Zach just stared back. “Have you ever tried to ask her?”

“Yes-“

“I’m not finished,” he snapped. “Have you ever asked her, and have you ever really listened?”

Shoulder’s slumping, Bianca turned back to take in the dark wooden doorway that separated her from her office. “I tried,” she answered, as honestly as she could. “I couldn’t hear it.”

“Why not?”

She tried to process the question. Eyes closing, achingly, she managed, “I don’t know.”

A knock on a wooden door forced her to open her eyes. Her office had disappeared, and in its place was her home, a penthouse that was immaculately put together.

It was beyond comprehension that by now, Bianca had grown used to this. Sharing a quick look with her guide, she simply waited for herself to appear.

Within seconds, she emerged, panic stricken, moving from the living room to the hallway, grabbing hold of the knob and jerking it open.

“Miranda?!”

Maggie Stone, 32 and gorgeous, stood alone.

Three years had past since she had last run into Maggie, and had Bianca’s mind not been numbed with panic, she would have taken a moment to register how her heart skipped a beat, how she became suddenly breathless.

“Where is she?” she demanded.

“Relax,” Maggie said immediately, hands coming up, palms spread wide. “She’s downstairs. She’s waiting in the cab.”

Bianca blinked. “Why is she waiting in the cab?!”

“Because I wanted to talk to you before I brought her up.” Maggie sounded infuriatingly level-headed, and it didn’t calm her down at all.

“Maggie, are you crazy?!” She began to move, but strong hands kept her in place, Maggie coming into her house and pushing her back into it.

“Bianca, calm down. She’s fine. Okay? She’s fine.”

Fingers clutched tightly around her forearms, and overwhelmed, Bianca realized how intimately they were now posed. “Let go of me.”

“Not until you listen to me.”

“Why should I listen to you?”

“God,” Maggie whispered, brown eyes searching hers, “No one says no to you, do they?”

“Maggie, let me go.”

“NO!” Maggie’s grip only grew tighter, and it was from experience that Bianca remembered that cold words and idle threats did not stand with the stubborn little doctor. She knew how to stand her ground. “We’re going to talk before she comes up here.”

She jerked with her shoulders, trying to shake her off, unable to handle Maggie. Not now. “What gives you any right to tell me how to handle my daughter?”

“Because your daughter ran away and showed up at my doorstep,” Maggie responded heatedly, “Lost and looking for answers that you hadn’t given her. And you owe it to her to understand why she ran away in the first place.”

Palms were smoothing up and down her arms, until they came to a stop at her shoulders, possessive and natural.

In the kind face of Maggie, Bianca, who had been wound so tightly since that morning, when she realized her daughter was missing, simply crumpled.

Head falling, she buried her nose into the familiar scene of her most intimate partner, arms wrapping around the smaller body and shuddering when she felt the brush of lips against her temple, fitting together so neatly it was as if they had never been apart.

“Shhh,” she heard, whispered in her ear. “It’s okay, Bianca.”

The pressure of a hand against her nape woke her to a grim reality, and with a heavy sigh, Bianca pulled away, wiping at the tears that had clouded her eyes, giving herself a moment to compose herself.

“You didn’t leave her alone, did you?” The words are foggy, rough with her tears.

There was a tense beat, and suddenly Maggie began to extract herself, unfolding her arms from Bianca’s hold as if they were a puzzle that needed to be unlocked.

“No, she’s not alone,” she said after a beat. “My girlfriend’s with her.”

She glanced up sharply discovered a curiously closed face. Bianca had no choice but to nod. “Do you trust her?”

A morbid smile flashed upon her ex-partners face. “Ironically, yes.”

Palms wiped sweat against her jeans. “Why ironically?”

Maggie didn’t answer. Instead she cocked her head and began, “First things first. Miranda.”

Right. “How’d she find you?”

“She said she snuck a look into Cindy’s contacts in Outlook when she wasn’t looking.”

Of course she did. “She’s a smart kid,” she admitted grudgingly.

Maggie’s look was guarded, but she nodded. “Bianca…” Tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek, Maggie hesitated. “She said she found out about her dad. About what he did to you.”

A gutted feeling enveloped her, and Bianca closed her eyes, stricken. “God…”

“Apparently this … kid in her class found something on youtube – showed it to everyone off his IPHONE. Some tabloid report. Bianca, she knows everything.”

Weakened, Bianca sank down on the couch. “She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you.” Soft pressure bobbed the cushion of the couch, and Bianca felt the press of fabric against her jeans as Maggie sat down carefully next to her. “But she doesn’t understand. How could she?”

“What did you tell her?”

Maggie looked frustrated. Her fingers were curled against her lips, and she appeared lost in thought. “I told her you loved her. And that how she came into this world didn’t change how much of a treasure she was, to you… to Kendall and her family… and to me.”

To think of her little girl forced to hear the truth of her birth in such an awful way was like her worst nightmare coming true. Blindly, she reached for the hand beside her, felt the comforting pressure of Maggie squeezing back.

“I didn’t want her to hear it this way.”

She concentrated on the fingers interlaced with hers, and heard Maggie’s quiet, “I know” in response.

When she glanced up again, it was Zach’s hand she was holding, and she was no longer on her expensive Penthouse couch, but the couch in the charter plane.

“That’s it,” Zach said, squeezing her hand before letting go.

Stunned, Bianca sat dumbly.

“Thank you for riding, hope you had a good time.” Straightening his tie, Zach squared his shoulders. “May the evening be filled with retrospection and hope.”

Suddenly she wasn’t ready for this to be over. “No! You can’t leave yet.”

“Oh, but I have to. I’m outta time.” He pointed at his watch. “Check it out. You’ve got two appointments to go yet.”

“But I didn’t learn anything!”

“Who said you had to learn something?” he responded, looking puzzled.

“Well…” she managed, flabbergasted. “I thought that was the point.”

“Well, then…” Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he considered the comment. “Let’s go with this: History repeats itself.”

“Oh, that’s original.”

“Fine,” he sighed. “I’m saying that everyone makes mistakes, and before Maggie abandoned you, you abandoned her, many times, many ways. And she forgave you for it. Each and every time. Grateful every time you came back, because she didn’t think she deserved better. No one’s perfect Bianca, we except our flaws and we deal with them. When you put anyone on a pedestal, there’s only one place for them to go, and that’s down.”

“So you can’t find faith in someone?”

“Faith? Faith, yes. But with faith there also needs to be wisdom, and the ability to look inside yourself. How you treat people is a direct reflection of how you want to be treated. You knew Maggie more than anyone. She was a messed up kid. Maybe it went too fast for her. Maybe it was too much, too soon, after Jonathan Lavery. And maybe, just maybe, she was sincere when she told you it wasn’t what it looked like and she wanted you back. Think about it. That’s all I got.” He grinned. “Look at the whole picture, honey. You’ve got a whole two spirits to go yet.”

“And what? Then I’ll get what the point of all this is?”

“Well, if you haven’t already, I’ve got my doubts.” Grabbing hold of the bottle of bourbon, Zach grinned rakishly. “One for the road.”

With a toast to her, Zach Slater disappeared, leaving behind only the smell of open alcohol, and the silence of the cold winter night.

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