Disclaimer: The Stand and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

Part One: June 1990

Chapter One

Steam billowed from the mildly scalding water that showered Maggie MacNeil on the early morning of June 20th, 1990. She breathed in and out, listening to the steady wshhh of the slightly rusty old shower head. It was to be a clear morning, but a monotonous one. Maggie pondered over the same old schedule she had for the day as she absentmindedly rubbed her scalp with the Walmart brand shampoo. The soap dripped from her hair, and stung her blue eyes. She heard the nasty coughing coming from somewhere else in the shabby apartment. Sean must be up. Maggie thought. He'd been sick for a couple days now, at first it'd just been a cold, but now her older brother seemed to be getting worse. She'd try and convince him to stay home from work today, but she guessed that it would be to no avail.

She shut off the water and climbed out of the cracked claw foot tub, clumsily whacking her shin on her way down to the floor. She took a ragged blue towel with frayed ends and scrubbed at her hair with it. She wrapped it around her middle, just below the armpits, and went to work blow-drying her hair. By the time it was dry fifteen minutes later, her light auburn hair fell in slight waves all the way down to the middle of her back. She'd been growing it out for quite some time. She took the mint green waitress uniform that sat folded on the back of the toilet. It looked similar to that of the uniforms of the waitresses at the Double R diner in the popular TV series, Twin Peaks. Maggie loved that show, she'd watched it every Thursday night at nine since it's premiere at the beginning of March. Yes, a thought that she often had pondered over that spring had been, 'Who killed Laura Palmer?' She was anxious for the conclusion of the series. She buttoned all her buttons and tucked her hair back in a clip, a few straggly pieces escaping at the front. But she suspected she might already be late, so she let it be. She slipped on her white stockings and stepped into the white keds they made her wear. She looked back in the mirror and sighed; she hated her uniform. But beggars can't be choosers, can they?

Maggie left the bathroom and heard the baby crying hoarsely; it was the baby who Sean had caught the cold from. Needless to say, the two male residents of the apartment had been sleeping restlessly for the past few nights. Maggie, however, had been dreaming the same distant, hazy dream over and over again for the a week. She vaguely remembered an old black woman singing a hymn, a tire swing, and a field of corn? She shook her head, most of the details were much too fuzzy to decipher. She rushed out into the kitchen and found Sean, holding the baby with his right arm, and frying some eggs with his left hand. Sean looked feverish, but baby Finn was even more so. He screamed his strained and sickly scream as Maggie wordlessly poured herself a quick cup of black coffee. Only the strong stuff for Maggie. She glanced at her black plastic waterproof watch. She loved that watch, it was one of the few items she owned that cost more than a few bucks. It had the time as well as the date, she'd always had a thing about the time. She'd always needed to know exactly what time it was as well as the day, and with that watch she always did. 7:45. Only five minutes for coffee. Shit, she thought. She'd woken up late, a little shaken by the unclear dream. Sean coughed nastily again as his baby cried in his arms. Another morning in paradise.

"You gonna stay home today, Seanny boy?" Maggie said, turning to his back, her coffee in hand. "Could kick that cough today and be back to work tomorrow."

"If I don't show up for my shift," he began after his coughing had subsided, a little louder than usual over the cries of his newly year old son. The baby had reached the big year mark only a month earlier. Sean kept his back to her, still facing the nearly fried eggs, "Then I don't get paid. Simple as that."

"We can go without one day of minimum wage. And what's your boss gonna say if you get all of them other moving guys sick?" she asked, and Sean began to actually consider staying home, then he could be back in one hundred percent condition. Maggie continued to push. "Better stay home, take of yourself and your son, typhoid Mary."

"Are you sure it's a good idea?" he questioned with raised red eyebrows, sliding his fried eggs onto a plate from the cabinet. Finn's yelling had quieted, and he rested his head against his father's shoulder, looking over at his aunt with glassy eyes.

"Yeah, why not? I can get an extra shift I think, considering everyone at work's been coming down with whatever it is you got," she told him and sipped her coffee. She glanced at her watch. 7:48.

"Alright, fine," Sean said, strapping a dazed baby Finn into his high chair, then sitting down at the small round table with his plate of eggs. "But just for today."

"You might wanna be taking the baby to the doctor, he's had a fever for a straight three days," Maggie pointed out. "That's not so good."

Sean sighed, scratching at the slight bright red beard he'd grown over his freckled face. "How we gonna pay for that?"

"Don't worry about it. I'll pick this one up. I wear the pants in this household," she joked, putting her mug into the sink. When she looked back at the table, Sean was glaring at her sullenly. He was holding his head up with his right hand, too exhausted to fight back. Maggie held her hands up in surrender, a slight smirk on her face. "Even when we were little, you always turn into the devil when you're sick."

"You ain't seen the devil yet," he said grumpily, his voice hoarse.

Maggie kissed Finn quickly on his pudgy and flushed cheek, as the redhead baby lazily messed with the Honey Nut Cheerios on his high chair tray; she saved the kiss when she passed Sean and grabbed her keys off the counter.

"Bye, Seanny," she said as she slipped out the door, and her big brother grumbled in response.

They were six years apart, but sometimes it seemed like less. As children, their mother had died of a stroke. There wasn't much of a reason, one day she just had fallen down dead. Simple as that. Life's a bitch, huh? Maggie had been just five, and Sean at the tender age of eleven. It had been a hard few years, Maggie remembered them as she walked down the dull gray sidewalk that early June morning. The exchange with her brother had brought back memories of their earlier years. Their drunk Irish Catholic father had been no gentleman or scholar, he ran a failing car garage in a lot across the street from a little shopping center in the town of Murphy, North Carolina. Maggie MacNeil worked at a diner in that same little shopping center, all those years later. The thought of that old car garage, and the sight of it's abandoned remains every morning, always left a bitter taste in the back of her throat. It had been failing all her childhood, finally going under with the death of it's owner in 1986. Maggie had moved out of their little dusty house on the day of her eighteenth birthday. She'd dropped out of high school two months before graduation, but it was worth it to get away from the monster that had been her father. She'd gone to the funeral, and she'd been sad, but there was still a regrettable happiness within her. She hated herself for it.

As she walked past the abandoned lot that had been the garage, the gray brick building's walls littered with graffiti, she thought of a particularly traumatic childhood event. She had no idea what business she had with herself, stirring up all these bad feelings before work. But nonetheless, she couldn't escape the memory. She was sixteen, still two years from legal adulthood, and most don't turn into grownups until long after that legal deadline. But Maggie had always been a little beyond her years. The urine soaked smell of the lot with the chain link fence full of holes only intensified her recollection.

Her father had always worn his rings. Always. Even long after her mother was dead, he wore his wedding ring as well as an old fraternity ring he'd got off one of his drinking buddies who owned a pawn shop. The pawnshop was failing too. Big surprise, right? But those rings, on that night, became a staple of Maggie's childhood memories. It wasn't a big party, just a few of her friends getting together for a birthday. It went until around one o'clock in the morning, pretty standard for kids of that age. Then she walked home, and she should've been able to get into bed and go to sleep. But that wasn't how it worked. It never really works that way, does it?

Maggie hadn't been drinking alcohol, but her father had. However, that didn't really come as a big shocker. She opened the rusty screen door of their old house on Green Street, it banged against her back as she searched for her key, rummaging through her handmade purse. She'd taken a sewing class the year before, and the purse was an item of which she'd been particularly proud. Much like the watch that she would sport years later, but for different reasons. She found the key and stuck it into the lock, breathing in the sweet, humid summer evening around her, and discovered that the door was already open. She walked in the door to the familiar kitchen, with the ugly green leaf wallpaper. It looked as if the MacNeil family had ivy crawling up the walls of their kitchen, as if the house were deserted and barren. A makeshift jungle which had long since succumbed to the will of the scavenging animals in their small town, but it was not so. Two people still lived in that house, but both their lives seemed just as insignificant as that old deserted house that the wallpaper reminded Maggie of.

Maggie saw the panting monster waiting for her on the other side of the door already, eagerly awaiting the violence and abuse that would follow. Monsters feed off of hate, and those monsters can hide inside costumes that are deceiving. But this particular monster that stood awaiting Maggie MacNeil on the other side of the door on that warm August evening, wore no mask or costume. One could look into the face of Seamus MacNeil and simply see, feel, the grotesque brutality that lurked beneath his skin, coursing through the dark, boiling blood in his veins. She crept through the door, hoping that monster would be asleep in his cave, but when she saw him standing next to the kitchen table, grease on his overalls and a half empty bottle of whiskey in his hand (whiskey neat-that was his drink), she knew there would be hell to pay.

"You were out past curfew, little girl," he growled incredulously, his heavy Irish accent much more evident when he was drunk.

"You've never set me a curfew, Dad," she said, shutting the door and turning to him. She looked down at herself, the scant brown tank top and jean shorts with black flipflops. It wasn't a particularly revealing outfit. But it showed a little more leg than she usually did. And Seamus MacNeil's girl would not be a whore; he would not be made a fool of. He could see her light blue bra strap sneaking out from beneath the strap of her tank top as she stood uncomfortably, her hair thrown into a ponytail, that blue and green patchwork purse slung over her right shoulder. She was a meek creature in that moment. But the shy little girl was about to be changed. After all, scar tissue is tougher than unscathed skin. He eyed her hungrily, drunkenly, savagely as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. The air had a tense silence that was disrupted only by the chirping of southern crickets outside.

"Well, you got a curfew now, little girl," he snarled, oil and sweat shining his bearded face in the ill-lit kitchen. "Were there boys at that party? Is that why you're dressed like a slut?"

"There were no boys, Daddy, I promise," she said, looking similar to the little girl of five she'd been when her mother had died. The long since yellowed wallpaper had been white then, between the green ivy leaves. In those memories everything was always brighter, light streamed through the windows, and perhaps there was laughter during those times? Maggie could never be sure if the laughter was just something she'd imagined. A white lie she used to trick herself into believing that there was ever a time when life was good. She suddenly became aware of her personal retrogression, and then made a conscious effort to stand straighter, stand taller, stand stronger. Then, she surprised even herself.

"I'm not dressed like a slut, Daddy."

He stormed towards her, the liquor sloshing around in the bottle as he went. She flinched, and he grinned wolfishly. In that moment, one couldn't distinguish the difference in him between man and animal. He smacked her hard across the face, the hand with his rings, his left hand. Left-handedness was a trait he had apparently passed down to his son, but they'd used those hands for very different purposes. He drew a little blood from her lip, and some tears pricked in the corners of her eyes.

"Not dressed like a slut?!" he bellowed, "The cheap hookers on the corner of Lincoln street dress better than you do!"

Maggie didn't respond, rubbing at her stinging cheek. She tried to remain composed; she wouldn't let herself cry. She'd had worse before. She tried to push past him, to just get down that dark hallway to her room where she could cry without shame. Well, there would still be some shame, but not as much. He put a greasy hand on her shoulder, calloused and rough. Maggie's stomach did a flip but she stood like a statue, turning her head to the left to look him right in his green eyes.

"Did you do things with the boys at that party?" He asked her gruffly, his Irish accent heavy. "Are you still pure? Did you make a fool out of me?"

"I didn't do anything, Daddy," she told him quietly, her voice was angered and soft, but tears were close. "I promise."

Then he snapped, squeezing the shoulder he still had his hand on roughly, pulling her back in front of him. They stood face to face. He was a big, tall man with a beer belly. His thinning red hair stood up wildly on his head. He was quite a few inches taller than her, and he blew hot, intoxicated breath into her face.

"Liar! I didn't raise you to be a liar! You are an embarrassment to this family!" he screamed. He punched her hard in the face with his ringed left hand, harder than he ever had before. He drew blood, oh yes, he drew a lot of blood. The size of his monster fist managed to blacken the corner of her right eye and his cheap fraternity ring tore a slash through the apple of her right cheek. A relatively small cut, actually, but a deep one. It bled like the dickens for a while after.

Pain exploded on the right side of her face, but for the moment, Maggie remained relatively numb. The white hot, blinding rage that filled her was far too strong, and it overrode the pain. They both stood in the silence of the thick air for a moment.

"You did things with those boys, didn't you?" he whispered angrily. "Let me check to see if you're still pure. If you're gonna bring shame to this family. I know how to do it."

Maggie was horrified at the proposal, her stomach twisted and she could practically hear nails on a chalkboard thinking about her own father checking the status of her virginity. Which, by the way, she still had, but that was none of his goddam business. He made a move to grab her, but she turned and ran out the door. He managed to grasp a small lock of her hair and rip a couple pieces as she sprinted out into their brown and crunchy front yard, but that was all he managed to do. Besides, of course, her split lip, black eye, and the cut on her cheek. She ran down the street and past the stop sign. Then, she turned left and ran towards town. Maggie didn't stop running until she reached the next stop sign, where the dusty gravel road turned to pavement.

She could taste the blood in the back of her throat as the breath heaved hurriedly in and out of her lungs, trying to catch itself. She sat on the side of the road with her elbows on her knees, her heart thudding rapidly in her ears. She didn't know what to do and where to go, certainly not back to her own house where the monster/potential rapist was sure to be waiting for her. Then, something occurred to her. Before she knew it, she was positive that the monster would follow her down here. He would put his big, grimy hand over her mouth and drag her into the woods. He would rip open the button of her shorts and check if she was still pure. She held these images in her mind as she stood up again, speed walking down the road and then down the next and then the next. Sick to her stomach, and her blood pumping viciously. She walked for a long time that night, maybe four hours, more or less. It was only three or four miles to her brother's apartment building, but to Maggie, on that night, it felt like a hundred. The sun was beginning to rise when she finally reached Sean's homefront. She remembered the salvation she felt when she finally arrived at that dirty little apartment complex near the shopping center. The town of Murphy was very small, only with around 2,000 people. Nobody lived more than a few miles apart. This had many pros and cons, one could feel close with their neighbors and everybody knew everybody. However, one could feel like they were suffocating, and everybody knew everybody's business.

She heard yelling from the apartment below that of her older brother and his girlfriend, as well as the barks and howls of a mean sounding dog. Maggie's tired legs managed to get her trudging up the , wooden stairs with many opportunities for a splinter. Maggie's light reddish brown hair was greasy from her long night in the sweaty air, and the dried blood was caked around the cut on her cheek, which would eventually scar. But, only noticeable up close. Meanwhile, her black eye was beginning to turn that pale bluish-purplish that all fresh bruises sport. She knocked on the door, a hazy summer hum filling the early morning. When the door opened, she expected to see a sleepy Sean, a bright red fuzz of bread on his newly wakened face. His facial hair had always grown fast. But instead, it was Missy who came to the door.

She was wearing one of Sean's hockey jerseys, and it fit her like a tent. Her dark brown, almost black curls fell below her shoulder blades, and it was unruly from sleep. She had pale olive skin, and warm hazel eyes. She was just a little thing, short, around 5 feet 2 inches, but she was slightly curvy. This unlike Maggie, who stood five inches taller than Missy, but was dangerously thin most of the time. Waif was practically Maggie's middle name.

Words couldn't really describe the way Sean loved Missy. It wasn't as though they had some grand, epic love story. They met in high school, they liked each other, eventually they fell in love. And then after they graduated, they moved in together. The end. At this point they'd been living together for around four years. Unbeknownst to everyone, Sean was planning to soon propose. It was a quiet love, a slow love. But a good love, still.

Though, when Sean had announced to his father that he was in love with an Italian girl from New Jersey, the news had not been taken as well as hoped. So, that was part of the reason why Sean had moved out the day after graduating high school. The other reason, of course, was the drunken beatings. As he'd grown older, and stronger over the years, he'd been able to escape the abuse sessions. And he'd been able to save Maggie a few times, but other times there was just nothing he could do. Then, she was alone. But Sean and Missy were living in relative bliss, and Maggie was happy for them. Seamus MacNeil, however, was not very happy for his son. They hadn't spoken since he'd moved out, and by that night, it had been four years.

"Hey, Maggie?" Missy said sleepily, yawning into her fist, "What are you doing here so early?" She looked up. "Oh my god! What happened?"

Maggie didn't say anything. She just burst into tears, she'd been holding it in the whole walk there. An owl hooted in the distance, and Missy enveloped Maggie in a hug, shushing her quietly.

"It's okay...shhh...it's okay." Missy led Maggie into the tiny apartment and shut the door behind her. She took the tall girl and sat her down on the green couch in the small living room. There was a battered wooden table in the middle of the imitation oriental rug, and a cabinet full of VHS tapes with a little box TV opposite the couch. It was a little cozy, but it was certainly a home. A real one, with a lot of love to fill it. That was more than Maggie could say.

That night, Missy bandaged Maggie up as she explained what had happened. Sean paced on the rug in front of them, clad in only a t-shirt and boxer shorts, his anger steadily mounting and then coming to a climax at the point when Maggie told him their father had punched her. She did, however, leave out the part about her father checking the status of her virginity. She left that part out for a long time, it would be three years before she told someone about that particular detail of the story, and that someone was Missy.

"You can't live in that house anymore, Maggie!" Sean seethed, turning towards his girlfriend and his baby sister as they sat together on the couch. The both looked up at him with fearful eyes. Missy's arm was around Maggie, who was shaking violently with her chin held up by her hands. It had been a very tiring night for her. "That's enough! That asshole shouldn't get to throw you around like that!"

"Sean, stop yelling!" Missy exclaimed, she had a heavy New Jersey accent. "It's not like it's anyone here's fault. So, just sit down!" Sean hesitantly obeyed, sitting down in the old rocking chair near the couch. He drummed his fingers on the arms restlessly.

Maggie leaned back against the couch, her hands fidgeting in her lap as she tried to stop shaking. When she spoke, she spoke slowly, her voice was tired and weary. It was the same, deep, smoky, but feminine voice that she always spoke with. A voice far different from the one she had used when recounting that night's tale of woe, tearfully and cracked. But in a way, the voice she used now scared Missy and Sean more than that other voice had. It was a voice that was far too old to belong to someone who had only lived for sixteen years. It was a voice like a late autumn wind through the dry, brown leaves of a hundred year old oak tree. "Seanny, I only have two more years until I turn eighteen. I'll move out on the day I'm old enough. But, for now, it's okay."

"No!" he yelled, but then quickly regretted it as his girlfriend shot him an angry look. He put his elbows on his knees. "No, it's not okay," he spoke softer this time, "You can't stay in that house, it's not safe there."

"It's not safe anywhere, Seanny boy," Maggie smirked in spite of her fatigue. "Anyone who tells you different is selling something."

"Maggie, it's not funny," Missy said. "You can't live with someone who hurts you."

Maggie knew she was right, but her adolescent confidence and sense of revenge got the best of her. As well as the fear that something really bad would happen to her if she moved out. She knew logically that her own father wouldn't kill her, he surely didn't have the balls for that, but still, she wondered.

"It's not like I can just move out. One: he's my legal guardian until I'm eighteen. Two: I wouldn't have any place to live. And three: I'm not gonna just run away. I shouldn't've run away tonight, I should've just stood up to him. Maybe if I finally do, all of this will stop."

"You could stay with us. We've got that extra room," Missy chose to address the second issue Maggie had brought up, instead of the more complicated third. She gestured to the small spare bedroom across from the master. Well, not that you could really call it a master. Their junky queen-sized bed took up practically the whole room.

"You know what?" Sean said, standing up, his anger had been brewing internally again for the past couple minutes. "I should just go kill the bastard and that would solve all of our problems," he said cheerily and then turned towards the small kitchen, with a hallways to it's left which led to the front door.

"Sean!" Missy exclaimed, she jumped up and grabbed him roughly by the arm, staring him down even though he stood about a foot taller than her. "Go and sit down on the fucking couch next to your sister and we'll talk about this rationally." Once again, Sean made the wise choice to obey her.

They talked for around another hour, both Sean and Missy still trying to convince Maggie that she needed to get out of that house. But, she refused. She'd always been a stubborn girl. She continued to argue that she didn't want to run away from her problems, she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of her fear. He did scare her, of course. Both by his great height (he stood at around six and a half feet tall), and by his monstrous behavior. But, after that night, she would always fight back. She usually got away relatively unscathed, with a few rare exceptions. After all that attempted convincing, Maggie pointed out firstly that both Missy and Sean needed to get ready for work, and that it was her life, and they couldn't tell her what to do. That was when Seanny and Missy knew that their efforts would ultimately be fruitless. There was nothing that could stand between a teenager and their theoretical future.

Maggie went back to the house that afternoon, but not before she'd slept for a few hours on that old green couch. In Maggie's opinion, that couch was ugly as hell, but it sure was comfortable. And she knew that Missy and Sean had almost certainly picked that couch up from the dump on the edge of town. Things sure were cheap there. After that day, Maggie continued to live in the house with her father, but they hardly ever saw each other. Maggie would go to school in the day, and usually spend the evenings at Sean and Missy's house. Then, she would come home to sleep, and the cycle would repeat the next day. During the summers she would leave the house with a book in her hand every morning, go read it at Sean and Missy's all day, and then come back to sleep just as she did during the school year. Sean and Missy were more than happy for her to stay at their house, they only wished that she didn't go back to her father's house every night. There was always that slight possibility that Maggie would show up the next day with a scratch or a handprint on her cheek, bruises on her arms, the purple outline of fingertips on her shoulders from where he had grabbed her. Or, their worst fear, that she wouldn't show up at all. This never happened, but it was always a lingering, whispering fear in the back of Sean and Missy's minds.

For the next two years, that was how things went. Maggie and her father hardly ever talked, and Seamus had taken to picking up night shifts at the car garage. Or, sleeping on the cot in his office. There were only a few unlucky nights when Maggie would run into the drunken monster that had put the scar on her cheek that one night during the summer when she was sixteen.

A year after that summer, Sean had proposed to Missy. And she, obviously, had said yes. She wore the small silver ring with the little, tiny, micro diamond embedded in it. She wore it everyday, she wore it with pride. Her own parents had been in love the way she and Sean were, like two pieces of a puzzle that could never be taken apart once they were put together. But, her parents had died when she was around fourteen. Plane crash. They were on the way back to New Jersey from a funeral in Florida. A family friend that Missy had never known, there was no reason for her to go. She was staying at a friend's house that weekend. There was a thunderstorm and the pilots couldn't see, an engine went out, and that was it. Bad luck, Missy told herself, just bad luck. But, for whatever reason, as children who've lost their parents often do, she felt that she was in some way responsible. Maybe if she had gone to Florida, they would've missed their flight back, or would've had a different flight or something. Just something that would have thrown off that perfect course of events that had led to her parents burning up on that fiery plane when it landed in a field in South Carolina and exploded. But, she had come to live with an aunt in North Carolina, and she had met the love of her life. A perfect course of events, huh?

Maggie moved in with Missy and Sean on April 12th, 1985. It was a quick and easy thing, it hadn't felt as life changing as Maggie thought it would. She had been packing slowly, putting things in boxes every now and again for about three months, until finally the day came when she took her ten boxes, packed them into Sean's car, and left. Her father hadn't seen her leave, of course, he'd been working in the garage that Saturday. But Maggie often wondered if he ever even knew she'd moved out. It wouldn't have been much different for Seamus MacNeil if his daughter was living with him or not. Perhaps, Maggie had thought as she was sitting on her twin bed the night after she'd moved in, he thought she'd moved out that night when his ring cut her cheek. She tried to remember a time since that night when he'd seen her without alcohol in his system. And she couldn't think of a single one. He probably didn't remember any of what he did when he was drunk, so when was the last time he'd seen her or remembered her at all? Maggie never exactly figured it out. She couldn't even remember the last words she ever said to him. But, she decided to put him behind her. And for about a year and a half, until she heard from some of the people in town that he had died of cirrhosis of the liver, she hardly thought about him at all.

Even when she heard of his death, the news was surprisingly painless. It was not the death of a man, but the death of a monster and a myth. When she told Sean and Missy, who had been married for around three months at that point, that Seamus had died, Maggie had insisted they hold him a funeral. This was much to Sean's protest, but Missy had agreed. And so, with a vote of 2-1, they gave Seamus MacNeil a small funeral three days later. It wasn't hard to arrange, nothing really is in a town as small as Murphy. Not many people attended. Besides Sean, Missy, Maggie, and Seamus' poker buddies. Along with a few employees of the car garage, who, by the way, were out of a job. Seamus didn't have a will, and he had around three hundred dollars in his bank account, which was used to pay for his funeral and small headstone, which only beared his name and the years he had lived. No one could think of anything else that was appropriate to write on the headstone of such a man as Seamus MacNeil. They buried him next to his wife. Though to lay the monster to rest next to such a kind soul seemed like a colossal travesty, there was nowhere else to put him. And they had, of course, loved each other. Or, at least, Maggie thought she remembered them loving each other. But in the end, she really wasn't sure.

So, the lot with the old car garage was abandoned, and the remaining MacNeils (Missy now included as she had taken Sean's name after their marriage she was, legally, Melissa Denton MacNeil) continued to live life as normal. Death does not stop the world from turning. Missy, at the time of Seamus' death was already two months pregnant with her and Sean's first child. They'd started making babies early into their marriage. Maggie knew, of course. The walls of the apartment were very thin. Maggie had begun waitressing at the Ace of Hearts Diner a few weeks after she'd moved in with the couple. They'd told her that she could continue high school if she wanted, that it was even a good idea. But Maggie disagreed. She wanted to save up enough money to get a place of her own, or to at least contribute to the household and stop mooching off of Sean and Missy. And when Missy pointed out that Maggie had kind of been mooching off of them for a couple years already, Maggie had simply said that it was neither here nor there, and the conversation was ended. She actually did get her credits together and got her GED three years later, at the age of twenty one. It had only taken three months off of work, and she had saved enough money by then to take half her normal hours and still manage to support herself in the shoebox apartment she'd started renting for herself about six months earlier.

But, if she looked back on her life, she would've said that the year and a half that she'd lived with Sean and Missy was the happiest time in her years. Baby Colleen had arrived seven months after they'd held the funeral of old Seamus MacNeil, about three weeks after Maggie's nineteenth birthday. Maggie thought about those good times in her old room, with the young family right across the hall, as she walked by the car garage in June 1990. She went straight into the diner, the bell dinging over the door as she walked in. Five minutes late.

Author's Note: Story is already finished and will be updated every Saturday. Thank you to all those who read. Please note that we will be seeing our favorite characters from The Stand appear shortly, just a bit of backstory first. Ah, tension. Don't you love it? Anyway, thank you so much for reading and PLEASE review.

Peace and love.