I've been away from Pine Valley for over a year. (I stopped watching right after the Satin Slayer was unmasked.) When I left them, Zendall was front and center and in the midst of a murder mystery. When I returned, I found them part of a sextet. (WTF?) There's another murder mystery, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with Zendall. WHAT HAPPENED TO MY ZEN?? What follows is my pathetic attempt to understand and to cope. This may go on for several chapters – I think of it as my AMC Therapy.

Chapter One – The Way Things Stand

Zendall glared at each other across a gulf of hurt feelings and misunderstandings.

"What happened to us, Kendall?" Zach really wanted to know.

"Nothing!" she insisted. "Nothing! It's just that what Ryan is going through is so HUGE, I need to be there for him! We both do! You can understand that, Zach. You're the one who wanted us to be one big happy family!"

No, he didn't, Zach was certain. When did he ever say that? Why would she ever think that?

"I want us to be one big happy family, Kendall. You, me and the boys."

Kendall nodded. She could understand that. Spike and Ian meant everything to her. They were her sons. Nothing could ever get in the way of the bond that existed between them. And yet…

"I can't turn my back on Ryan. What he's going through is so --"

"HUGE. Yes, I know, Kendall."

But Kendall thought that Zach didn't sound at all as if he knew.

"He's married to a whack-job," she therefore elaborated.

Zach nodded. "No question about that. Annie is a fruit-loop."

"She's insanely jealous of Greenlee of all people," Kendall went on, picking up speed.

"Kendall, she's having a baby," Zach reminded her. "You know how that is. Her hormones are probably --"

"Who knows how she got pregnant?" Kendall shot back before he could finish imagining what Annie's hormones were doing to her.

"The usual way?" Zach guessed.

"You mean she stole some of Ryan's sample from Dr. Madden's Clinic?" Kendall asked, since stealing from a sperm bank was the way many if not most children had been conceived in Pine Valley in the last few years. "Good guess, but I don't think so. First of all, there is no Dr. Madden's Clinic anymore. Second of all, there is no Dr. Madden anymore. Did anybody ever find out who buried him alive?"

"I doubt that it was Annie," Zach doubted.

"Only because it was before her time. Do you doubt that she is fully capable of doing that, Zach? Do you?"

"Kendall, what have you got against Annie? Other than that she's married to Ryan, I mean."

Kendall shrugged. That was easy. That was obvious. There were so many reasons. She struggled to find one.

"She probably killed her brother."

Zach raised an eyebrow. There was that, he couldn't help but acknowledge. But there was something in his wife's behavior that didn't add up, even given the real possibility of Annie's fratricide.

"Your sister killed my brother, and I don't hold that against her," he began to reason for them both.

"Your brother was a monster," Kendall reminded him.

"As was Richie," Zach reminded Kendall.

Kendall frowned, unable to find a pithy come-back.

"Annie isn't right for Ryan," she managed after some intense thought. "Greenlee is his soul-mate."

"Greenlee just married Aidan," Zach pointed out.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Kendall demanded. "People marry and unmarry people all the time. I was married to Dimitri Marick's son, Anton. That didn't mean we were soul-mates. Actually, in those days, I'm pretty sure I didn't have a soul."

That got Zach's attention. "You were married before?"

"Well not me exactly," she made haste to explain. "It was years and years ago. Another me. An earlier version of me. You know what I mean."

"So it doesn't count? Zach checked.

She shook her gorgeous head vigorously. "Not any more than it counts that I made love to Aidan a few months ago when everybody thought you were dead."

It was Zach's turn to frown. "We don't even mention that lately, do we? It's like it never happened."

She smiled at him. "Exactly. It's like it never happened. The important thing is that Ryan is dying inside because he can't be with his soul-mate."

"Which would be Greenlee?"

"Who else?"

Zach was nothing if not perplexed. It seemed to him that their entire lives had been taken over by people who bored him, who were living out storylines that bored him.

"Why are we so completely caught up in these characters' lives, Kendall?" he exploded. "Why should we care if Ryan and Greenlee are together or if Annie tricked Ryan into conceiving their child or whether or not she murdered her brother? Why shouldn't I care that you got schtupped by Aidan Devane when you were supposed to be mourning my death?"

Kendall was regarding Zach with the widest of wide eyes. Why was he asking all of these stupid questions? Why was he so upset?

"Somebody definitely got up on the wrong side of bed this morning!" she concluded.

At which point Zach chose another tact.

"Kendall, look around. Where are we?"

Kendall didn't need to look around.

"Zach, we're on your corporate jet," she said softly, beginning to be concerned. "Where do you think we are?"

"But why, Kendall?" Zach cried out. "Why are we here? Why aren't we home?"

"We can go home, Darling, if you want to," she said soothingly, embracing him, hoping against hope that he wasn't cracking up. "We're only here because we flew to Las Vegas for some reason. And we saw Greenlee and Aidan's wedding. And Annie's freak-out when Greenlee and Ryan got locked in the bathroom together after Greenlee accidentally dropped the earring she used in place of a wedding ring down the toilet. Lucky thing she didn't flush! Don't you remember any of that, Zach?"

He remembered all of that too, too well.

"Why aren't we at home with our boys, Kendall?"

Kendall blinked. "It's because Ryan is going through something HUGE, Zach. He's married to that whack-job Annie, but now that he's gotten his memory back, he knows he belongs with Greenlee."

"Kendall, why don't we have a home anymore? Why don't we have our family? Why don't we have a real mystery to solve? Why don't we have an adventure? Why don't we interact with anybody beside Greenlee and Aidan and Annie and Ryan? When was the last time you had a scene with Erica? Where the hell is Josh? Why don't you and I banter like we used to? Kendall, we used to have Fans! They used to write about us on Message Boards! We were the heroes of Fan Fictions! Kendall, why don't we have a freakin' storyline?"

At this point he had begun to shake her.

"Zach, st-st-stop!" she begged him. "You're sc-sc-scaring me!"

Zach stopped, appalled that he had applied physical force to the one being he treasured above all else in the world.

"Kendall, forgive me! I must be losing my mind!"

Sensing his angst, she threw herself into his arms and kissed him like she used to kiss him when they were a Destiny Couple with a freakin' storyline.

"I wish I knew why you're so upset," she told him after they came up for air. "I don't have the slightest idea!"

"I know," he knew.

Truth to tell, I don't have the slightest idea where I'm going with this. But then neither does AMC. Will Zen recapture the Zen-Magic or remain bit players in the Rylee/Ryannie/Graiden snoozefest? Maybe we'll find out together!