It was the most extravagant funeral Sunset Beach had ever put on. Gregory's coffin was carried in state down Ocean Ave from his home to the park by the sea. The funeral had started small but gradually became so large that no indoor venue could contain it. Gregory hadn't been particularly religious, so it was mostly a secular ceremony. Roger did the eulogy, but Bette, Sean, Casey, Ben Evans- everyone had something to add. Congressmen and women from three states, even both California Senators attended and there were more limousines in the line of cars behind the carriage than there had ever been in that little town.
Olivia didn't speak. Bette considered it a minor miracle she had even managed to attend. She was listless, a waxwork done in ivory of the woman she had been before Gregory's death. Not that sorrow diminished her beauty. In a painful way Olivia was more beautiful than she had been when he was alive, as if his death had burned away what was left mortal within her.
Her eyes had an unearthly brightness that made them painful to look at. She stood in the center of the park, surrounded by the latest of the roses and the planters of lilies. Sean was with her, ten years older than he'd been when he left for school as he stood at his side. It hadn't yet been discussed if he was going back to England. Olivia wouldn't ask him to stay.
She'd barely batted an eye when Caitlin had been arrested for Gregory's murder. The world didn't seem to mean anything to her anymore. She ate because Roger told her too. She got up and got dressed because that was what she was supposed to do. Olivia hadn't mentioned the baby. She barely acknowledged that she was pregnant in front of Bette or anyone else.
The funeral seemed to have reminded her, physically at least, that her body wasn't her own. She was only half-way through the line of mourners with their whispered regrets for her when she started to look tired. She fidgeted with her back, and Bette was almost relieved when Olivia asked to sit down. It was human of her to admit the weakness, and the glimpse of humanity comforts Bette immensely.
Casey seems to have knack for bringing Olivia out of her shell. She nearly smiled when he brought up his wedding and she reaches out to touch his hand as he passes her in the line of strangers. "You should come by for Christmas." He whispers warmly. "I think mom would have liked that."
Olivia nodded, but Bette doubted that she heard Casey's polite request. Listening to the voice around her and hearing them were so far separated that Bette was certain she would have nodded no matter what Casey said.
The rest of the funeral passed in a daze. Olivia spoke very little, always polite when it was forced on her, but never more than a perfunctory reply to anyone. Towards the end of the funeral someone, one of Gregory's partners, asked when the baby was due. Olivia dropped the glass she was holding and ignored the way it shattered on the cobblestones beneath her feet.
"What? What are you talking about?"
The poor man gaped at her, unable to believe she'd buried the very obvious fact of her pregnancy. Bette just steered him away. "She's suffered quite a shock, and just wasn't herself lately."
It was easy to say that in the beginning. It was so easy to pretend that maybe the next day Olivia would wake up more like herself. That she acknowledge that she was carrying the child of the man she loved. But she didn't. She couldn't. Even when her water finally broke that cold day in February and the pain of her contractions made it impossible for her to breath without letting on that she was in pain.
She wouldn't let Roger take her to the hospital, even when that trip might have saved her. Bette could still picture her face as she saw the baby at long last. Olivia didn't even have the strength to hold her own child in her arms.
"Tell him I'm sorry." She whispered to Bette as she held the sleeping infant up next to her face. Roger made the call to the ambulance that would never come in time half-heartedly. Now that the baby was free, Olivia no longer had anything holding her back. "Tell him how much his father loved him." Her transparent fingers brushed across her son's damp pink cheek before she lost the struggle to keep her eyes open. Olivia only fought for breath a moment longer, than she was still. Her skin still glowed faintly with the residual of her tremendous struggle to release her son, but the light was akin to that of a dead star reaching Earth millions of years after its' demise.
Roger shut her eyes with his hand before he took the baby from Bette's arms. The baby was the only one in the room that didn't understand. He slept on, too exhausted from his birth to bother crying along with the two that held him between them. Bette was the first one to start to cry.
Without the baby in her arms, she was free to grab Olivia's shoulders, to shake her until she realized that nothing she could do would bring life back into that empty shell. Life had been gone from that body far longer than just the last few moments. Olivia had been gone for months. Roger knew that. It was why he hadn't fought harder, why he didn't share Bette's hysteria as she realized this time Olivia wasn't hanging on. She was finally free.
Bette awoke with a jolt in Roger's office. She'd fallen asleep sitting up on the couch. Olivia was curled up next to her, her head resting on the pillow in Bette's lap. In spite of herself, she had to check that Olivia was still breathing. The nightmare pounded through her mind, refusing to let her fall back asleep.
Olivia's face haunted her. More than the thought of Gregory's funeral, more than raising the Richards baby without either of his parents, Olivia's still, white face made her blood run cold. It was the worst kind of death, the quiet, creeping death that consumed someone from the inside out.
Bette didn't understand that kind of love. She'd never had it, and on some level she had to admit she didn't want it. For all the great romantic wonder of it, it was difficult and demanding. It required a fire and a sensitivity she had just never possessed. She stroked the soft dark hair on the head in her lap and decided she should be more grateful for her own inadequacies in that department. A certain amount of romantic ineptitude kept her from being in Olivia's terrible position. She might be alone most of the time, but being alone kept the daggers out of her heart.
"Can't lose what I don't have." Bette whispered to herself as the nightmare demanded recognition again. "Gregory's funeral was gorgeous Livie, but it's not going to be that soon. Dear God, it's not going to be that soon. And you-" Terror made her voice catch in her throat.
"You're not allowed to die like that because I just don't think I could handle that." Deeply grateful Olivia was still sedated, she could allow herself the moment of weakness. As fond as she was of Gregory, losing her best friend, her oldest friend, wasn't something she could take. "I know you love him, but there are a lot of people who would really miss you if you try to go after him. Especially me! I can't raise your baby. Roger can't be Gregory and I'll never live up to you. I mean, I've watched you, and your little darlings, and you're not always perfect, but you still put the bar pretty damn high for little old moi."
"Don't make me do this Livie. Just don't...don't..."
Sean had never worn a suit this long before. All the starch was out of his shirt, the wrinkles in his pants were more set than the crease and the jacket was still crumpled in the corner of the observation room. Every fifteen minutes a nurse came through to check on his father's vitals, and each time he got a sympathetic nod or a few comforting words. When morning came one of the nurses brought him breakfast.
He picked at it, and than devoured it. Sean didn't know he was hungry, but his body wanted the eggs, the toast and jam, even the bad coffee. He'd never liked coffee, it was something he associated with his father. Today he drank it because it was there. He had the second cup because he wanted to be closer to his father.
He'd do anything to understand him now. Now that he might never be able to talk to him again, he was grasping at straws. Roger was the one checking on Gregory and the one to catch his wince when he began his third cup of coffee. Sean found his voice. "Dad likes it. I've never really found out why."
Roger nodded as he checked over Gregory's vital signs and made a note of the unchanging situation. "I didn't start drinking coffee until Ethan was born. Just couldn't stay awake without it."
"Seriously?" Sean tried to picture his father as a young man, buried in work, but still struggling to find time for his children and his wife.
"Uh-huh. There's a reason they call it liquid sleep." Roger set the chart back at the foot of Gregory's bed. "Sure I can't get you anything?" He glanced over Sean's black coffee and grinned. "Try cream and sugar. Think of it as training wheels. Makes it go down easier. I'll be right back."
"Training wheels..." Sean whispered to himself as he stared down at his father. "I remember you buying me that bike, the blue one with the training wheels on the back. I remember practicing with it every chance I got because I wanted to be able to ride it, just like Caitlin. Then we finally took the training wheels off, and I fell over, and fell over again and again, and my knees got all bloody."
He left his chair and walked over to the window. "You ruined one of your good handkerchiefs trying to keep me from bleeding. When we walked home. I remember crying when Rose threw it out. I wanted it as a souvenir so I had something of yours. You bought Caitlin everything, but that bike, that bike was something we had together."
He turned back to his dad, waving his hand over his father's still one and trying to get up the courage to take it. "I was almost sad when I finally got it because it wasn't something we had together anymore." Dropping his hand to the sheet next to his father's, Sean sighed heavily. "We don't have a lot of things in common. Never did. We both love mom, but we haven't even had that very long. She's been so happy. I never thought I'd say that to you, but you make her happy."
Roger set down a tray of cream and sugar packets. "I know it doesn't seem like good news, but your dad is holding his own. Few people survive the kind of poisoning he suffered. I know waiting is a terrible game, but it's just time now. When he wakes up-"
Sean finished the thought for him as he stirred the cream and sugar into the coffee. "He'll either be my father, or not."
"Brains are still the final frontier in medical science, we don't know how they heal, but I've seen worse get better." Roger crossed his arms over his chest.
"And better get worse." Sean finished grimly. "I just never thought I'd want him to get better."
Roger perched on the window sill and managed a quiet chuckle. "Gregory's not the easiest man to get along with. In fact, he's probably down there with the most difficult."
"But he's my father." Sean didn't even realize he was holding his father's hand until he looked down and saw Gregory's gold watch next to his thumb. "I should have tried harder. I should have been a better son-"
Roger hit the back of his head, nearly hard enough to cause Sean pain. "No! You're a great kid. The best. You should have heard your father rave about you all the months you've been in England. Every letter from you was a national holiday in Sunset Beach." He pantomimed a banner hanging in the window. "Letter from Sean Day!"
Sean shook his head as he watched the second hand on his father's watch turn past the three. "You're making that up."
Shrugging a little, Roger smiled. "Your mother vetoed the banner, she didn't like the colors your father picked out."
He started to laugh as he pictured his parents arguing about the colors of a banner for the balcony. Then he felt his father's hand twitch beneath his fingers. Sean's eyes flew to his father's face as Gregory's eyelids moved.
Roger was instantly at the bed next to him, just as anxious as he was to see what remained in Gregory's mind.
His father's brown eyes, usually so certain and intense, wandered confused until they found Sean's face. He watched the muscles in Gregory's face relax as recognition flowed through him. Ecstatic, Sean smiled and started to explain that his mother was just down the hall and he could get her in a second.
But Gregory's first request wasn't for Olivia. He swallowed, struggling against a dry tongue and swollen throat. "Alex?" He coughed and pulled himself up on the bed as he started to sit up. "Where's Alex?"