Out of My Dreams Chapter 4: Denouement, a guiding light fanfic

When Reva surfaced after a bout of frenzied kissing, she made herself ask, "Jeffrey - how are you still alive? What happened?"

Josh, who'd been standing at a discreet distance, still holding Colin, cleared his throat. "And, uh, what's happening with Edmund?"

"Okay," Jeffrey told them, "I'll give you the Cliff Notes version first. Edmund is dead! I killed him. That's finally over."

Two voices exclaimed, "Thank God!" Josh had the presence of mind to add, "And thank you, Jeffrey."

"And, Reva, I want you to know I didn't fake my death deliberately! I never would have done a thing like that to you. When I went down with that plane, I was sure I was going to die. Later, there was a very good reason why I couldn't let you know I was alive.

"But before I get into more of it, I have to ask you something. What's happened to Jonathan? And Sarah, and Henry? Are they still alive?"

Reva was stunned - by the questions, and by the real fear she saw in his eyes. "Still alive? Of course they are, all three of them, at least as of yesterday. But...why are you worried about Jonathan, asking me about him? Did you know he was in Springfield?"

"Yes," Jeffrey said grimly. "He was in Springfield because I sent him here! I was keeping in touch with him, mostly to make sure you were all right. But six months ago -"

By the time he'd gotten that many words out, Reva and Josh were both yelling. Reva, the loudest. "Jonathan? Jonathan knew you were alive all this time, and never told me?"

The frightened Colin began crying - and squirming, trying to get away from Josh.

Jeffrey, who'd been sitting on the grass with Reva, jumped to his feet and took the baby. Colin immediately settled down - though his eyes, darting back and forth among the adults, were as wide as saucers.

Jeffrey sighed. "There was a good reason why I couldn't tell you, remember? The same went for him."

Reva wasn't satisfied. On her feet now, she demanded, "But how did he know you were alive? Why did you choose him to confide in?"

"I didn't!" Jeffrey gave a bemused shake of his head. "This is going to sound crazy, but believe me, it happened.

"After I survived the plane crash off the North Carolina coast, and got to shore, I spent a long time wandering in the woods. Injured. When I was on the verge of giving up - lying down and dying - I finally staggered into a clearing. Collapsed, and passed out - in Jonathan's back yard! He and Sarah were living in a shack in those woods."

Reva could only stare at him, open-mouthed.

He went on, telling her about his terror when he learned, months ago, that Jonathan's cell phone number was "no longer in service."

She finally recovered her wits sufficiently to cut in, and explain what had happened with the phone. "Now I understand why he went on so about it! I'd never known anyone to care so much about a phone number. He claimed it had some sentimental importance - included a hotel room number that had meant something to him and Tammy. Ridiculous. I thought he was becoming mentally unstable!"

"Damn!" Jeffrey looked disgusted - with himself. "If I'd guessed it was something that simple, I could have gotten access to a computer - broken into a business after its closing time, if necessary - hacked into phone companies' data bases, and almost certainly found his new number. I was too quick to assume the worst, that he'd been murdered.

"But I'm still betting Edmund was behind what happened. He knew Jonathan had been helping me. If he didn't actually own stock in the phone companies, there may have been execs he could blackmail."

Josh had questions of his own. "We were told there was a dead body pinned in the wreckage of your plane, that couldn't be brought up. Was there a body? And if so, who was it?"

Jeffrey grimaced. "Yes. Unfortunately, there was a body. A Florida p.i. who'd worked with me before - he joined me in Key West, came aboard at the last minute. And he really was pinned in there, unconscious, from the time we went down. I tried to rescue him, but I couldn't.

"I still haven't contacted his family. But I've learned that while he's officially listed as a missing person, the family's given up hope. Knowing the dangerous life he led, they're sure he was killed, somehow. So I won't be giving them devastating news when I tell them the whole story."

Josh said, "Um, about the 'whole story' - you gave us the Cliff Notes version of what happened, so you could get to asking about Jonathan. How about the rest of it? In particular, are you sure Edmund's really dead this time - no more lookalikes?"

"Whole story, coming up," Jeffrey assured him. "But let's all sit down and be comfortable, okay? Pretend we're in the park.

"And, Reva, did you bring any of Colin's toys with you? To keep him occupied? He won't understand the things I'll be telling you - some of them pretty gross - but I'd still rather have his attention focused on something else!"

Five minutes later they were settled on the grass, Colin playing contentedly within reach of both his parents. Reva had brought a half-dozen of his favorite toys from the truck. Jeffrey, she'd learned, had moved both it and his car to the side of the road while she was passed out.

Now that she had time to think about it, she was amazed at how quickly Colin had accepted his father - clearly preferring him to Josh. He'd recognized him, after all this time! While keeping only one photo of Jeffrey on display in the house, she had been showing Colin more of them, every week or so. But in all the photos, Jeffrey had a mustache and beard. Colin had recognized his eyes!

There were a few tears in those eyes as Jeffrey watched his son at play. But then he pulled himself together, and began telling his story.

First, he explained what had happened after he survived the plane crash. How Edmund had learned he was alive, and teamed with Jonathan. And then, the threats Edmund had made: first, that he'd kidnap and raise Colin, Sarah, and Henry if he thought Reva had learned the truth, and later, that he'd kill them.

"My God," Reva whispered. By now she was holding her husband's hand. After a few moments' thought, she said, "Of course you couldn't tell me. With his wealth, he really could have had spies anywhere, bugs planted anywhere. If someone mentioned you in a public place like Company, and the wrong expression came over my face, just for an instant..." She shuddered. "I would have been a wreck. And if I never went out, that would have been suspicious in itself."

Jeffrey nodded. "Yes," he said grimly. "And there was another possibility I had to think of. What if the bastard did order an attack on the children, out of sheer sadism? If you'd known the truth, you'd blame yourself - imagine you'd given something away, even if you hadn't.

"From a distance, I couldn't protect the children. But by truly keeping you in the dark, I could at least deny him that way of torturing you."

He hesitated, then continued, "Actually, there was something else I could have done. He'd given us a tape recording of his first threat, a note containing the later one. So I finally had evidence he was alive! I could have surfaced, gone public with the whole thing. Then I could have come home...let law enforcement go after him...gotten police protection for everyone he'd threatened.

"But you know what they say about a wounded animal being the most dangerous. With his resources, Edmund would have been extremely dangerous. If I'd taken that action to thwart him, he might have struck out and killed more people, in hopes of including his intended targets. One possibility I thought of was that he might have his agents poison Springfield's water supply. And there were bound to be other possibilities I wouldn't think of.

"I'm sure he knew what he was doing when he presented me with that dilemma. He was daring me to take the risk.

"And as he'd foreseen, I had to give in, and let him have the sick game he wanted. A long, dragged-out fight to the death between the two of us...with you thinking me already dead."

"But it must have been hell for you," she said softly. "And for poor Jonathan, especially after he came to Springfield and was seeing me almost every day."

"Yes. Maybe I shouldn't have asked him to do that."

"Selfishly, I'm glad you did. And I think he was very aware you might still be killed. He, more than anyone else, helped me stop obsessing unhealthily about my dead husband! He wouldn't have thought it mattered if he was sure you'd show up soon and snap me out of it." Then she smiled. "He'll be ecstatic when we show up together!"

Too late, she realized it might be insensitive to dwell on that in front of Josh.

Jeffrey must have realized it too, because he quickly changed the subject. "About Edmund's nastiness - Josh, you mentioned his having lookalikes, like our John Doe. Can anyone guess who Dinah really killed?"

When Josh didn't speak up, Reva did. "I think I can. She killed...no one."

Jeffrey nodded approvingly. "Right. I eventually learned what happened.

"Edmund had a henchman made his double with plastic surgery, and used the guy to establish alibis for him. To make it seem Edmund Winslow was in one place when he was really somewhere else, doing nefarious things. When he came to Springfield to kidnap Henry, he found some excuse to bring the double along.

"It was the real Edmund that Dinah clobbered with the baby stroller, and dumped in the river! But he wasn't dead. John Doe had seen the whole thing, from hiding. He rescued his boss - actually gave him artificial respiration.

"And Edmund repaid him by killing him. Changed clothes with the dead body, and put it in the river - caught in some brush along the bank, so it would surely be seen. He left that pouch of diamonds with the body too, because the dead person's having been carrying something that valuable would strengthen the illusion of its being the real Edmund.

"All for the purpose of framing you for his murder, Reva! I think he'd meant to kill his double and frame someone all along, even if he'd succeeded in kidnapping Henry. He'd wanted it to appear that he'd killed the baby, and disposed of the body - which would never be found - before someone killed him. Then he would have raised Henry, and no one would have been looking for them.

"By the time he actually killed John Doe, he'd given up on the idea of trying again to kidnap Henry during that visit to Springfield. He figured he'd have better chances down the road, with everyone thinking he was dead and there was no longer a threat.

"The person he hated most was Shayne, because he'd caused Lara's death. Shayne probably would have been his first choice for framing. But Dinah had come to believe she was Edmund's killer, and she was in love with Shayne! He knew she'd confess to protect Shayne...but not to protect you, Reva. And in fact, she only did confess out of concern for Mallet and Marina."

They all shook their heads. Josh muttered, "To waste the mind he had, on schemes like that..."

Jeffrey continued, "I'm guessing he bribed someone to make sure the body was cremated, and the ashes scattered in the lake, before the police could get fingerprints or DNA. There's no DNA in actual ashes, but cremated remains often include bits of bone. He knew we already had his DNA on file, of course - that was how he planned on framing Reva. He put fresh blood of his on the fake 'murder weapon' he planted in her car."

She'd started guiltily when she heard the word cremated. "Oh! He didn't need to bribe anyone. I'm afraid I played into his hands. I ordered the cremation - didn't you know that?"

As the mother of Edmund's nephew, she'd been accepted as the closest thing to a "relative" in Springfield.

Jeffrey looked puzzled. "I thought you denied it."

She shook her head. "No. I was accused of having ordered a quick cremation in hopes the police wouldn't discover he'd died of a head wound, rather than by accidental drowning. I only denied that, denied the intent. Damn it - everyone was so suspicious of everyone else back then, even you and I weren't really communicating.

"I did order the cremation, and scattering of the ashes. But just because I wanted to know we were rid of him, once and for all. That soon after the body was found, it hadn't occurred to me that it might not be him."

Their eyes met. Yes, he knows what I'm not saying...and why.

Technically, she hadn't lied to the police. She hadn't known for a fact that "Edmund" had been murdered, let alone how. But she'd suspected he'd been murdered - by Shayne. And she'd wanted to protect Shayne. She and Jeffrey had argued at the time. When he thought she'd ordered the hasty cremation, he'd pointed out - correctly - that she was risking legal trouble for herself, when her first obligation was not to an adult son, but to the infant son who was totally dependent on his parents.

There was no need to get into that now, in front of Josh...

The look in Jeffrey's eyes told her there'd be no need to discuss it again, ever.

He gave a slow nod. "Understandable. And Edmund may have anticipated your doing that.

"But on the other hand...now that I think about it, he was so well-known and widely recognized that it might never have occurred to anyone to go beyond visual identification of his corpse. Maybe he was banking on that."

He's trying to let me off the hook, she realized. She felt a surge of affection for him.

And yet...Jeffrey had evidently been the first person to suspect that the dead man wasn't Edmund. Was it possible he'd only seen the potential for fakery because he himself was a lookalike, courtesy of plastic surgery, for the deceased Richard Winslow?

Was it also possible Edmund had thought Jeffrey would be so sensitive on that subject that he wouldn't suggest it? Perhaps, wouldn't even allow himself to consciously suspect it?

Jeffrey went on to describe how he and Edmund had hunted each other for more than a year, with first one and then the other seeming to have the upper hand. They'd wound up in Nicaragua.

"There were other guys after him too, a mercenary commando team. I finally learned they were on the payroll of Phillip Spaulding."

Reva's eyes widened. So Phillip hadn't forgotten about Edmund!

Jeffrey continued, "I would have been perfectly content if they'd been the ones to take him down. As it turned out, they weren't. But even though they didn't know about me - or rather, they thought Jeffrey O'Neill was dead - they helped me, indirectly, by getting him separated from his own goon squad.

"So there we were, just Edmund and me, stalking each other in the Nicaraguan jungle. There'd been previous occasions when both of us had missed clear shots because we'd had to assume the other guy was wearing a bulletproof vest, and aim for the head - much harder to hit than the torso. But in the sweltering heat of the jungle, neither of us could have endured wearing one of those things. So I think we both knew we were nearing the final showdown.

"When we met, I was in a tree and he was on the ground, but he was still better hidden by foliage. My shot at him missed. He shot me twice, in the left side and left leg - it's okay, Reva, this was three months ago! - and the impact knocked me out of the tree. I came down on my back, hard. Nowhere near my gun.

"I couldn't get up, couldn't even sit up. But I could bend my right leg. And before he reached me, I was able to palm the dagger I'd had strapped to that leg.

"Then he was standing over me, gun in hand. All he had to do was put a bullet in my head or my heart, and I was a goner. But he couldn't resist having some sadistic fun. So he bent over me and started mocking me - saying I was a fool. I'd thrown my life away for nothing, because you, Reva, Jonathan, Shayne, and the three children were already dead! He'd had his men kill all of you!"

Reva almost choked. "Oh God, no!" She looked at Josh, and saw that he was as white as a sheet.

"I had no way of knowing whether it was true," Jeffrey went on. "But I wasn't going to let him play me. So I sneered right back at him, and laughed at him. Told him, 'You're a lousy liar. I don't believe a word of it!'

"I wanted to goad him into trying to strangle me with his bare hands. I don't know whether he eventually would have. But I made him so angry that he got down on one knee - to spit in my face, and be sure to connect.

"He connected, all right. But he'd never spotted my dagger. And I drove it right up his nose, into his brain.

"The sounds of that - the sounds he made, dying - were so bad that I threw up. Damn near choked on my vomit."

Reva finally broke the shocked silence that followed by saying, "I can see why you wanted Colin to be busy with his toys..."

Josh said hoarsely, "H-how did you survive?"

Jeffrey took a deep breath. "I didn't expect to. With Edmund's body on top of me, I couldn't even move. But we were found by people from a nearby village - Central American Indians. They'd heard the gunshots, and after waiting a while to be on the safe side, they came out to investigate. They accepted that I was the good guy, and did all they could to help me. But I was stuck in the jungle for months.

"This is important. No one could be deader than Edmund was. But even so...

"I vowed not to let myself lose consciousness till he was buried, and I didn't. Never let him out of my sight. The man I'd skewered with that dagger was definitely the same one I saw in full rigor, and saw buried in an unmarked grave." There was a wicked glint in his eye as he concluded, "On my suggestion, the villagers filled the grave with garbage."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the innocent toddler at his play.

Then Reva said, "And you...you d-didn't know whether Colin and I, and the others, were alive or dead? For how long?"

"For months," Jeffrey replied grimly. "Months of hell. But when I got out of the jungle, I at least made sure of you and Shayne. Remember a phone call where the caller never said anything, but just hung on while you said 'Hello? Is anyone on the line?' a few times?"

"Oh, God! That was you?"

"Yes. I did the same thing with Shayne."

"Why didn't you -?" She broke off, seeing the explanation for herself.

He answered anyway. "You believed I was dead. If I started talking to you, you would have thought either that it was a vicious trick of Edmund's - trying to gaslight you - or that you really were losing your mind. Ditto with Shayne, except that he would have been sure it was the 'vicious trick of Edmund's.' I didn't think either of you would stay on the line long enough to let me tell you things that would prove who I was."

After another somber silence, he said, "And of course, I couldn't rush to the media and say, 'I'm Jeffrey O'Neill, I'm alive, and I killed Edmund Winslow'! It was a kill-or-be-killed situation, had been for more than a year, but proving that might not have been easy. And in any case, I didn't want to give my family that sort of shock.

"So I decided to head back to Springfield - meaning to look for Jonathan before I did anything else. If I found him alive, I was going to ask him to break the news about me, gently, to you, Reva. But when I recognized you and Josh in that truck, headed the other way, I...I guess I just lost it."

Laying her head on his shoulder, Reva murmured, "I'm glad you did."

An hour later, they'd shared a picnic lunch and were all preparing to head back to Springfield - though Josh only intended to stay long enough to let everyone see he wasn't a sore loser. As Reva and Jeffrey were installing Colin's car seat - which she'd had in the back of the truck - in his father's rented car, Jeffrey said regretfully, "I'm afraid I spent most of the money that was supposed to guarantee his college education."

"That should be the least of our concerns," she told him. "You greatly improved the odds that he, and two other children, will live to reach college!"

"There is that."

She'd realized after he left Springfield that he'd all but cleaned out his bank accounts, and cashed in most of his investments. Scrupulously taking only funds that were indisputably his - he hadn't touched anything that had initially been hers, even though he'd had access. She'd wished he had taken those funds as well.

"I was wondering, though," she asked now, "what did you do with the money? Not 'what did you spend it on' - I know that. Travel, renting cars and planes, paying for leads, hiring helpers. But you couldn't have been carrying it around in cash."

"No," he admitted. "I had a half-dozen false identities that I'd set up years ago, and never bothered to deactivate. They all had bank accounts with a few dollars in them, and still-valid ATM cards. I knew I'd want to use different aliases in my travels, to elude Edmund. So I transferred the funds into those accounts, online.

"Luckily, when the plane went down, I had the documentation for all the fake identities on my person, in a waterproof packet. Along with my real passport, and a photo of you and Colin! I formed the habit, years ago, of carrying important papers that way when I travel.

"I hadn't envisioned Jeffrey O'Neill's being 'dead' unless I was really dead. But I would have put the money in the aliases' accounts even if I wasn't thinking of Edmund's possibly getting at it. I didn't want you to be a nervous wreck, checking accounts you knew about every day, to look for activity that would prove I was still alive. Better to call you now and then - not on any agreed-to schedule - but otherwise, make a clean break."

She shuddered. "Yes, I can see that."

But I was a nervous wreck, from the start, anyway.

After they'd gotten Colin strapped in, Jeffrey said tentatively, "There's someone else I'll have to see in Springfield...very soon."

She got the point at once. "Olivia, right? So she can call Ava and tell her, and then put you on the phone."

"Right." His smile was weary, but so full of love that she couldn't imagine how she'd ever thought she could live without him.

"You should do that today," she said decisively. "I can wait an extra hour or two to have you all to myself. But" - she brushed suggestively against his crotch - "not much longer!"

Now he was grinning like a schoolboy. "You know what? I was hoping against hope that all would be well with Jonathan. With everyone. And on the chance it would, I brought you, um, a gag gift."

He rummaged in the car, produced the gag gift.

And Reva's jaw dropped.

A small box, wrapped in silver foil and decorated with red, white, and blue ribbons...

She stared at the box for a full minute.

Then she looked at him and said, "Well, it's about time. I really needed these nails!"

One year later.

Reva looked at herself in the mirror.

Her husband came up behind her, studied her reflection.

Pouting, he said, "I'm concerned about the way you look today."

Reva, resplendent in vivid blue, knew a punchline was coming. She asked coyly, "What's the problem, Mr. District Attorney?"

"You're too stunning. I'm afraid my wife is going to outshine the brides."

She gave a rich, throaty laugh. "At least we won't have to worry about you outshining any grooms!"

A half-hour later, they were part of the buzzing crowd that filled the church. Josh's church, Reva reminded herself. She could still hardly believe how their lives had fallen into place.

When Shayne and Marina had decided to wed, Shayne - bless him - had pointed out that Josh was still technically a minister, and coaxed him into performing the ceremony.

That had set Josh to thinking, reevaluating his life. When he married Frank and Blake a few months later, he was a minister - no "technically" about it.

Now he was a pastor with a growing congregation. In Springfield! There was still no woman in his life, and Reva had teased him about it, saying, "You're not a Catholic priest, you know!"

Today, she was thankful he wasn't. The Catholic Church - as was its right - still opposed same-sex marriage. But the state had just legalized it. And their friend Natalia had concluded that her conscience would permit her to go against the faith in which she'd been raised, to marry her partner Olivia.

Reva suspected she wouldn't have been able to do it if they'd had to be married by a stranger. Even if they'd been willing to settle for a civil ceremony, Doris Wolfe was no longer mayor.

Of course there'd been chuckles. Not the first same-sex marriage in the state, but certainly the first in which the minister's an ex-husband of one of the brides! But all the joking had been good-natured.

Now the organist began playing, and to the oohs and aahs of the assembled guests, the wedding party paced up the aisle.

First, Olivia's adorable little girl, Emma, led Natalia's toddler daughter Francesca by the hand. Both were clad in pink; their respective fathers, Phillip Spaulding and Frank Cooper, wore the brightest smiles in the church.

Then came the two young-adult attendants, walking side by side: Natalia's son Rafe, and Ava, the beautiful daughter Olivia shared with Jeffrey. Reva felt honored that Ava and the brides had let her help them select Ava's lovely light blue gown.

And finally, Olivia and Natalia, hand in hand, smiling through tears of joy. They wore simple, identical gowns of ivory silk; but that was irrelevant. If they'd worn burlap, no one could have outshone them on this day.

Josh performed a tasteful, dignified ceremony, in which the two women exchanged heartfelt vows that they themselves had written. By the time it was over, there wasn't a dry eye in the church.

Four hours later, the reception - in the church hall - was in full swing. Reva, floating across the dance floor in her husband's arms, thought she couldn't possibly be any happier.

Until Jeffrey whispered, "Hey. I'm seeing something that might turn out to be...beyond our wildest dreams."

"What?"

"Take a look. Over by the piano. Look who's dancing together!"

She looked. "Ohhh..."

The young couple weren't just dancing. They were gazing into each other's eyes as if they were truly seeing each other for the first time, and they'd just received a wondrous revelation.

Jeffrey's Ava...and her Jonathan.

The End

Author's Afterword: I was a fan who could have accepted Reva's winding up with either Josh or Jeffrey, if the writing of the show's final months supported it. The writers hadn't been given enough notice of the cancellation to have Reva and Jeffrey break up, plausibly, without alienating fans of Jeffrey. But they could have had him really die - heroically, taking Edmund with him - and then had Reva reunite with Josh "One Year Later."

Instead, they chose to show viewers Reva's agonizing grief over Jeffrey's "death," then let us know he was still alive. By then I'm sure many fans were, like me, waiting with bated breath to see her shock - followed by ecstasy - when all was revealed, Edmund apprehended or killed, and her husband came back to her.

The outcome we saw was, in my opinion, unfair to Jeffrey, Reva, and Josh. If we imagine them - and innocent baby Colin - as real people, they were all being set up for undeserved anguish, months or years down the road.

When Reva and Jeffrey were last together, they'd been portrayed as deeply in love. And nothing had happened before the finale that could have changed that. With Jeffrey alive, a "happy ending" could only be one that reunited them.

So I wrote my own, in which I was constrained by two decisions I made at the outset: that I wouldn't contradict anything we'd actually seen (except the words "The End"), and that Reva and Jeffrey would be reunited before she'd made matters worse by having sex with Josh.

I can't guarantee that in the six pieces I ultimately wrote, there are no canon errors. But I am sure there are no typos!

Postscript added Sept. 2, 2012: I've learned there was a plan to show Jeffrey arriving back in Springfield - probably, at the lighthouse itself - just as the oblivious Josh and Reva were driving away. That scene was taped, but later cut. I think it would have left viewers with a very different impression: that Jeffrey would undoubtedly try to follow and catch up with them, and every viewer could imagine the outcome he or she chose.