236: Laura Greene-Part 1

Warning: coarse language

Bridgeport, present day

At exactly 11:55am on Friday, Devon walked into the conference room at O+ Records to sign his record deal.

He was still angry with Eloise for sending the demo without his consent, but he was slowly starting to see her meddling as a blessing in disguise. For the first time since he got his degree in Music, he’d be doing something he truly loved, and Eloise had made it possible, along with Krisis and his team.

"Good timing, Devon!" Mark enthused as he showed him to one of the many unoccupied seats arranged around the long table. 

Stanley was already seated, and a tall ginger-haired woman sat beside him. She introduced herself as Natalie, and Devon learned she was in charge of all PR Ops for the record label.

They spent almost an hour going through the contract and Devon’s own terms.

And when both parties were satisfied with the terms, Devon signed the contract, sealing his future with O+ Records.

Across town, while her brother celebrated his record deal, Leigh was in her studio working on the last batch of paintings for her gallery's opening in a few weeks. She could feel it, the masterpiece at her fingertips waiting to be born, but hard as she tried to bring her hands on the canvass she couldn't.

Her lack of focus had a lot to do with her kids, in the corner of the room, squabbling over an old photo album and an assortment of useless things they'd brought from their old house.

Leigh glanced at the clock on the wall and frowned. Krisis was supposed to pick them up and take them to the carnival; his meeting was obviously running late.

She turned to the easel again, but before she could even splash the first blotch of paint on the canvass, the argument in the corner broke out again, this time louder than before.

As much as Leigh wanted to stay out of it and let them handle it on their own, she couldn't. From the painful way her son stuttered, she could tell he was close to tears. Just like his father, Kristian never cried when he was sad or hurt. He only cried when he was furious, and only because he felt powerless under the crushing weight of his feelings, scared to death of what he would do in his fits of rage.

The faint, burning smell emanating from where Kristian stood, pulled Leigh out of her inertia, she dumped the brushes and the paints on the end table and approached the brewing storm, the last thing she wanted was her son going radioactive, especially when Krisis wasn’t around to calm him down.

"What's going?" Leigh stared pointedly at her eldest kids, one hand draped impatiently on her hip. 

"Lily's telling lies!" Kristian raged at his sister.

"No I am not!" Lily yelled back, the anger in her green eyes matched her brother’s. For a frightening second Leigh could swear she was staring at Jacqueline, and she wasn't in her studio anymore, but back at Plasma 501, paralyzed by the accusations in the other woman’s eyes, feeling herself crumble under her mesmerizing gaze as she compelled her to leave Bridgeport and forget Krisis. The fear and confusion she'd felt back then, so many years ago, fell on her like a ton of bricks, Leigh instinctively wrapped her arms around herself, mentally shielding herself from her painful memories.

"She keeps saying it's you in the photos. And I know it's not you, mom. It's not you!" Kristian carried on. By now, a thin cloud of smoke had surrounded him, and Leigh knew she had to calm him down somehow before he burnt down the house.

"Yes, it is! Who else could it be?" Lily asked pointedly.

Before Leigh could ask what they were talking about, Kristian snatched the photo album from Lily's hands and threw it across the room violently.

It landed close to the barre where Ariel and Azalea were passing time while they waited for their father.

A startling silence swept through the room as they all stared at the photo album, and held their breaths, each silently wondering what ghosts it had resurrected.

"It's not her,” Ariel was the first to break the silence as she picked up the album and handed it to Leigh.

Leigh stared at Krisis' past in her hands with a look of dread in her eyes.  She didn't have to look at the pictures to know. Laura Green, her mirror image, had finally paid them a visit.

She knew it would happen at some point, she just didn't think it would be so soon. She'd figured her kids were still too young and she and Krisis still had a couple of years to prepare them, come up with a logical explanation, a reason, an excuse, anything to explain away the cruel joke fate had played on them.

"Tell them it's you mom, tell them," Lily, in an almost pleading voice, cried.

As angry as she was with Krisis, Leigh said a small prayer of thanks when he chose that moment to walk in.

"What's going on?" He asked, his gaze shifting between Leigh and the kids.

"The kids found your photo album." There was no accusation in her tone, but Krisis could see it in her eyes, and at that moment he would have given anything to take it all back, he would have given anything to rewrite his past just so Leigh would stop hurting. Laura was a part of his past he could never open up to Leigh, not because he didn’t want to, he just didn’t know how. And now, that past had come back to bite him in the most horrible way.

They led the kids into the living room.

"Look-" Krisis began when all four children had settled on the sofa.

But Kristian cut him off, "Don't you love mom anymore?"

"What?" Krisis looked at his son, confused by his question.

"You were kissing another lady in the picture, and it's not mom!" Ariel clarified.

"She looks like her, though," Azalea added seriously.

"It is her! It's mom. Daddy doesn't love anyone else." Lily insisted.

"Then why is he kissing someone else?" Kristian retorted.

"Does this mean you are getting a divorce? Please don't get a divorce, we'll be good," Azalea burst into tears. Before long the girls were crying their eyes out, they didn't want to end up like Skylar, their friend from school. She spent weekdays with her mom and saw her father on weekends and some holidays.

It took Leigh and Krisis some time to calm them down. 

"Hey, no one is getting a divorce. I love your mom. And I love you. I'm not going anywhere," Krisis told them when the sniffling had stopped.

"No divorce?" Azalea asked.

"No divorce," Krisis assured them. He opened his arms and they jumped into his embrace. He squeezed them hard, drawing gleeful laughter from all four.

Leigh felt a tinge of jealousy then. She loved her kids, and there was nothing she wouldn't do for them, but they were much closer to Krisis, and deep down she knew it was her own fault; she'd struggled to connect with them soon after their birth because of their abilities. Krisis on the other hand had loved and accepted them without reservation from the moment they were born, and his bond with them had strengthened even more when they discovered their strange abilities.

As she watched her children make funny faces at their father, Leigh wanted so much to join in, but a part of her, the one that always felt like an intruder looking in when it came to Krisis' bond with the triplets, held her back.

A sad sigh escaped her lips. She didn't realize how loud it was until she looked up and caught Krisis staring at her with a worried look in his eyes. She shook her head quickly, and smiled her assurance. She was highly pissed at him for leaving his past where their kids had found it, pissed that he could never open up to her about Laura and yet he carried her around wherever they went, going as far as bringing her into their new home, their lives, their present. But as furious as she was with him, she knew they'd get through this like everything else they'd been through in the past.

She looked away then, forcing Krisis to break his embrace with the kids.

They all resumed their seats, and without getting into much detail, he told them about Laura Greene.

"What happened to her?" Lily wanted to know.

“She died; she was sick."

"I'm sorry," Ariel gave him another hug, and he gladly accepted it.

"Do you miss her?" Azalea asked, and Leigh held her breath, waiting, stilling herself from the impending heartbreak.

"Sometimes." Krisis replied truthfully.

Leigh exhaled, her body shuddered visibly from relief. The pain she'd expected to feel wasn't as crushing as she'd thought it would be.

"Did you love her?" Kristian asked, but it came across as more of an accusation.

"Yes," Krisis told him, breaking Leigh's heart a little more.

"What about mom, don't you love her?"

"I love your mom, she's my life."

"But you can't love two people," Kristian retorted sharply. From all the kids, he seemed to take the stuff about Laura the hardest.

"It's a different kind of love. The way I loved Laura is different from the love I feel for your mom because they are not the same people."

"But they look the same," Lily pointed out, and it began again, her war of words with Kristian.

"No they don't! Mom wears glasses and that lady didn't. Mom's eyes are different, her face is thinner, and when she smiles the whole world lights up.  That lady never smiled, she's always angry and sad in the pictures-" Kristian would have carried on if Leigh didn't step in.

"Hey, it's okay," she pulled him close to her chest and hugged him tightly, feeling thankful for his keen powers of observation. Her sweet child, her six year old, had picked up on what everyone had chosen to overlook when she came into Krisis' life, all the things which set her apart from Laura. Granted in the grand scheme of things, they were minuscule differences, and she could understand why people overlooked them sometimes, but they were still differences. And she was touched that at least one person other than her husband had picked up on the little things and saw her. Her son saw her as a person in her own right and not as Laura Greene's doppelgänger.

"Sweetheart," she began when she finally allowed herself to pull away from him. "Your father loved Laura very much, and when he lost her he was heartbroken, he didn't think he could love again. But then I came along, and because he's got such a big heart, he had enough room to love me as well. And we've both loved all of you so much from the moment we knew you were going to be a part of our lives."

By the time she was done, Krisis had tears in his eyes, it was just like Leigh to make sense out of a complicated mess, and he loved her even more for it.

"Can we go now?" Azalea and Ariel, who were not too keen on the topic to begin with, had lost interest in the matter. The carnival seemed much more fascinating.

"Yes-" before Krisis had even finished what he was going to say, all four kids were already running upstairs to get their backpacks.

Alone with her husband, Leigh did a very good job of looking at everything but him.

Krisis tried to reach for her, but she shook off his hand.

"Don't!" She warned him, her voice cracking just a little. She was very close to tears, but she wouldn't cry. Not now. Not when her kids would come back into the room at any moment.

"Leigh, I'm sorry."

“How long?" She demanded.

"What?"

"How long have you been carrying her around?"

"I didn't know it was there, I thought I'd locked it away in storage with everything else."

"That's just it, Krisis, you locked everything in storage but you still carry her around in your heart and in your head. But who can blame you since I'm a constant reminder of her!" Leigh was in tears now, and Krisis wanted so badly to hold her, to comfort and assure her of his love for her, but every time he reached for her, Leigh would hiss at him like a wounded tigress, baring her fangs.

"I love you Leigh, nothing will ever change that! Not my past, not even Laura," he whispered.

"I know that! But I'm tired of walking on eggshells where your ex is concerned!" Leigh screamed at him, and Krisis lost it then, he honestly didn't understand why she was so hell-bent on not hearing him.

"What do you want from me? I said I'm sorry. You want me to get rid of the photo album? Fine I will!"

Without waiting for her response, her grabbed the book from the table and threw it in the fireplace.

"There! She’s gone!" He told her quietly.

"That's not what I wanted," Leigh cried softly into her hands. "I just wanted you to stop walking on eggshells around me where Laura is concerned. You don't ever talk about her; she's the fucking elephant in the room. She may be gone, but she’s always there between us. I know I look like her, and I remind you of her sometimes. I just want you to be okay with that, and I want to be okay with that. I want us to be okay with Laura being a part of you. But we can't if we never talk about her, if we keep pretending she never existed-"

She stopped talking and quickly brushed away her tears when the kids ran back into the room, screaming their excitement.

"Let's go, daddy!" Kristian was the first to shoot out of the front door, his sisters following hot on his heels.

“Bye guys, have fun!” Leigh sounded cheerful as she waved goodbye to her kids, but her heart was bleeding.

Krisis hesitated. He didn't want to go, not when there were still so many unresolved issues between them. But-

"You promised the kids you'll take them. Go!" Leigh had read his mind.

“I can always take them some other time,” Krisis suggested, but she cut him off.

"I'll be fine. Just Go!" Leigh insisted. She knew he would never bring himself to leave her alone when she was hurting. But at that moment she desperately wanted to be alone with her thoughts, her irrational fears and her petty jealousies. She wanted to be alone so she could confront the insecurities she’d hidden so well.

“Leigh,” Krisis tried again to get through to her, but she turned away from him and stared at the calm ocean; she’d said everything she was going to say about Laura Greene.

Without a word Krisis turned on his heel and left the room.

The moment the front door slammed shut, Leigh burst into heart wrenching sobs.

Numbed by her tears she didn't feel the scorching flames on her hands as she blindly dug the photo album from the fire place.  She cried harder when she turned it over and saw it was partially burnt. She clutched it close to her heart, wishing there was a way she could take it all back.