Sleepyside//A Trixie Belden Fanfic

4

In the bustling traffic of New York City in the year 1970, there  was a car. And in this car sat a tall, dark, and handsome 36 year-old man with a white doctor's coat on. He looked out the window and sighed. The evening traffic, made worse by the raindrops that were pounding on the pavement, was preventing him from getting home. As the reader has probably guessed, this doctor was Brian Belden.

After Trixie had married Allan at the end of Brian's junior year of undergrad, he began to spiral. His last year of college had been rough and he had barely finished. It didn't help that he blamed Jim Frayne, one of his best friends at the time, for his sister's relationship mistakes. Jim had made it seem like he was waiting for Trixie. So when he had come home at Christmas break of Junior year with a serious girlfriend, it had screwed Trix up, and no wonder.

Brian took a year off of school and returned to Sleepyside, full of seething hatred toward Allan and Jim and pretty much everybody. The only person he could not, could never blame was Maddie Wheeler. When they were teenagers everyone had called her Honey, but taking on this new nickname was significant in that it signaled that her womanhood had begun.

She had agreed with Brian about Jim's stupidity, but she could never hate her adopted brother. In fact, she could never hate anybody. She was too good, too beneficent for that. That summer after graduating from college, Brian spent a lot of time with her. And it had changed him. She softened him, she taught him mercy and kindness in one of the darkest periods of his life. And so, at the end of the summer, Brian Belden had asked Maddie Wheeler if she would marry him and move to New York with him.

She had accepted immediately, but that was not the end of it. Her father, Matthew Wheeler, had become a brooding old millionaire with many ideas about who he wanted his daughter to marry. And exactly none of those ideas involved Brian Belden. For the next year, Brian worked hard as a junior employee at the Sleepyside Bank, where his father worked. He saved up all the money necessary and then some to move to New York City.

After all that struggle and sorrow, Brian and Maddie were married and it was a beautiful wedding. But still, it was painful. Trixie wasn't at the wedding, much less in it, and Jim showed up. Brian half wanted to not invite him, but that wasn't his choice. It was Maddie's. And so he came to the wedding. In the end, Brian ended up feeling sorry for Jim when he saw him sitting at the open bar alone, looking distinctly depressed.

He had approached him and said, "Glad to see you, Jim." His former best friend looked up at him and there was disbelief in his eyes. The two mended their relationship that night and so they were friends again. It wasn't the same, but it was something.

The newlyweds moved from Sleepyside to New York and it was pretty great for a while. Brian was working his way through medical school and Maddie was working at a publishing company. But Maddie wanted a child. After almost fourteen years, it seemed like that would never come true. She had been diagnosed with infertility and been told by different specialists that there was no fixing it, she would never have a baby.

It had been hard on them both. Brian tried to comfort her all he could, but in the end, he felt inadequate. They had drifted apart. They lived in the same house and yet hardly spoke to one another. He wanted to say so much, but he kept silent. And so they suffered, together but apart.

That afternoon, as the traffic waned, Brian almost didn't go home. He was breaking and he didn't want to hurt his wife anymore than he felt he already had. The night before he had suggested tactfully and cautiously that maybe they should adopt. It had not gone well.

Brian had hoped they could work it out. He had hoped she could be content in the arena of the home to just be his wife and best friend and if not that, then to be the adoptive mother of some child in need of love. But from all he had heard, this was not how it would happen. It wouldn't be the same. No.

Brian pulled into a parking garage, got out of the car, and began to walk home dejectedly. He loved Maddie, but if this was how it was going to be, he didn't see how they could last much longer.