Breeze sing a happy song
This heart of mine is singing right along
Don't know where I'm going
Don't know where it ends
Till the grass is greener, beyond the bend
~ "Beyond the Bend", Elvis Presley
Abe arrived in the evening with Sami, Carrie, and Eric. He and Bo had brought them, along with Caroline, so that Roman and Marlena might explain what had happened to their lives over the last two weeks. Caroline and Susan took the children to the den, so they wouldn't be a distraction, but the older children had already noticed the addition of Emmi and Brigit. Marlena was pleased to see Eric, and Sami looked as if simply being there was causing her extreme discomfort.
While Marlena welcomed them, and offered drinks and snacks, Abe and Bo caught Roman up on the most recent news on Kristen and Dr. Rolf. Kristen had pled guilty to being an accessory to kidnapping in the Laura Horton case, and she'd pled guilty to kidnapping and false imprisonment in the case of Marlena. She'd been sentenced to fifteen years, and would be sent to the state penitentiary within the week. Rolf had also pled guilty to attempted kidnapping in the case of Stefano, and practicing medicine without a license. He was sentenced to four years in a federal prison, since Shane had gotten him the plea deal he'd ask for.
Once everyone had settled, Abe, Bo, Roman, and Marlena caught them all up. They took turns explaining what had happened, cutting into each others accounts if they thought someone left something out, but eventually they had covered it all. Their reactions were varied. Eric was happy, a wide grin lighting up his face, as he walked to Roman, and hugged him tightly. "I knew, you know," he whispered in his father's ear. "That other guy would never be my dad, because you were my dad."
"I love you, Eric," Roman told him, and then reaching for Carrie, he pulled her into his arms as well, saying, "I love all of you." He looked over to Sami, who sat sitting on the couch staring at her hands as if she were in shock. Roman watched her carefully, as silent tears trailed down her cheeks, before she suddenly stood up, and ran out the door onto the front porch. Looking to Marlena he said, "I'll get her."
Sami found herself on the corner of the front porch taking in great gasping breaths, as she tried to come to terms with the massive amounts of information she'd just had thrown at her. Everything she thought she knew, was wrong. All the anger that she had carefully grown and tended to over the last few years fizzled, and all she was left with as a dead garden of memories, and no idea where to go from here. She heard footsteps behind her, and then came his voice, "It's confusing as hell, isn't it?"
She turned to face him, her face ripe with fury, ready to yell something hurtful, but she stopped herself. Instead, her head fell, and she said, "My first instinct is to react with rage. It's like I can't stop myself."
"You have a right to be angry, Sami. We all do," Roman said softly. "You can feel whatever kind of way you'd like."
"I'm confused...emotionally," she whispered. "I've been so angry at you both for years, because you ruined my family...but now, we find out you are my family. You know, Eric refused to come back from Colorado because we'd lost you as our father. I used to get so angry at him, and I felt so bad for our Dad. I was so protective of him, because I was scared to lose someone else..."
Roman watched as Sami slid to the ground crying, and he asked her, "Can you tell me how you're feeling? Don't censor yourself...just talk."
Looking up at him, she watched as the man who was the center of her life until she was eight, the man she had called Daddy, slid to the floor beside her. He had been her everything, and then he wasn't. The man who replaced him, spent months berating her mother for loving him. He had been controlling, and verbally abusive. Eric had run away, and Carrie had moved out. Her mother had an affair...but now Sami was confused again, because had she? If the other man was an imposter, then there was no affair.
"I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to think!" she cried out, shoving her fingers into her hair roughly. "He hated you. He made me hate you, too, because you were the one who was wrong. You were the fake, the imposter, the one who stole his life from him, and when he came home it was supposed to fix everything...but nothing was broken. Nothing was broken, because you didn't steal anything!"
Roman pulled Sami into his arms as she continued with her heart wrenching cries into his chest, and he just held her. "Hey, hey, breath. Remember how we used to do it? In deep, honey, and out through your nose."
How many times as a child had Sami been upset, her emotions taking over, and her father had gotten on her level, and calmed her down just like this? She had felt an emptiness inside herself since she was eight years old, and now she knew why. "I shouldn't still be mad. Everything is right now...but I'm still mad. At Mom, at you, but I shouldn't be," she said, still trying to calm her breathing down.
"Sami, you've been angry at us for a long time. I don't expect that will just disappear, because the really powerful emotions aren't usually coming from the rational part of the brain," he told her, smoothing his palm over her hair softly. "The affair effected you. I didn't know I was Roman. Your mother didn't know I was Roman. We had an affair, and we have dealt with the guilt of that ever since."
"But did you? I mean really? He wasn't Roman Brady, you were. You were married," she said.
"I'm not going to minimize your pain Sami. I'm not going to make excuses. Technically, you're right, but we didn't know that, and in that context...what we did, the affair, it was wrong. It hurt people. It hurt you," he told her.
"Do you love her?"
"Sami, I never stopped loving her. You know that. Don't you?"
"That's why I was so angry. I would see you with Kristen, and I knew it was fake. You didn't love her, not the way you loved my mom. You would watch mom, every time she came in the room. Sometimes I would watch you sniff the air as she walked by you...and...and, I would hate you so much! I wanted you gone so badly...now you two tell that everything we believed is wrong again."
"This is going to take some time. We know that, honey. I'm just asking that we get through it as a family. Can you try? I'd like to get to know my grandson. I'd like the chance to be your father again."
Sami pulled out of his arms, and looked at him with a tentative smile, "Okay."
"Hey Sami!" Brady yelled busting out the front door, and onto the porch. "I's Beau Brady! You's gotta call me that now, cause mom said that could be my's new name."
Sami looked at Roman, and he could see the questions written plainly on her face, so he laughed, and said with a shrug, "Brady Brady wasn't going to work."
"I guess you're right about that, but Beau Brady?" she asked.
"I's picked it myself," Brady said smugly. "I's said I wanna be Beau Brady, and theys said yes!"
"Well Beau Brady," Sami said, getting to her feet, and holding her hand out to him. "Why don't we go inside, and you can help me meet the rest of my family."
"That's good," Brady says. "Cause we gots new babies, and baby John gots a new name too!"
"Sami," Roman said, touching her shoulder lightly. "One thing has never changed, and that's how much I love you."
Smiling up at him softly, she said, "I know. I do. I'm just going to need some time to process it all."
"Take as much time as you need. I just ask you to please be kind to your mother. Doc has had so much pain in the last few years..."
"I will. I promise," Sami said, before following Brady into the house.
