Many of the characters within this story, and the universe they inhabit, are the intellectual property of Jason Katims Productions.
Roswell: Re-Imagined
Written by Horatio Jaxx
Chapter 9: The Evans
Max Evans parked his jeep in the driveway in front his family's two car garage. The attached building was a single story three-bedroom home made of brick. It was an attractive house of modern design. The lawn was well maintained, and a single bushy Bur Oak tree shaded the front entrance. Max and Isabel climbed out of the jeep and walked straightaway to the front door at a hurried pace. They both suspected that their parents had heard about the incident at the Crash-Down Café and were waiting for their return.
"Where have you been?" Diane Evans excitedly questioned the instant Max stepped through the front door.
Phillip and Diane Evans had heard the jeep pull up into the driveway and they watched from the window as their two children climbed out of it. When they saw Max and Isabel approaching the front entrance to the house, they hurried into the foyer and arrived just as the door was opening. The sight of the blood on Max's clothing took them both by surprise. An instant after asking her question, Diane rushed towards Max and threw her arms around him.
"We took Michael home, and then we couldn't leave until he and Max finished rehashing the whole thing."
Isabel delivered that explanation as she walked through the doorway.
"… You alright, Max?" Phillip questioned.
"I'm alright, Dad," Max responded while still clasped within his mother's embrace.
Phillip and Diane had gotten calls from several acquaintances forewarning them of Max's involvement in a shooting at the Crash-Down Café. They had thought to go down there, but a call to the Sheriff Department provided them with the information that Max was unharmed and would be released to go home within minutes. That was nearly an hour ago.
"What happened?" Diane questioned Max as she led him by the arm into the living-room.
"It was no big deal, Mom," Max minimized with a nod of his head.
"Well tell us about it. We want to know," Diane overruled in a pleading tone as she coaxed Max down onto the sofa.
As soon as Diane had taken a seat beside him, and Phillip had taken one opposite, Max began his recounting of the events that happened at the Crash-Down Café. He identified Liz as simply a waitress who got shot, and he described how he gave aid to her, minus the merging of their minds. Phillip and Diane were proud of their son and happy for being his parents. He and Isabel had become far more than what they had hoped for when they adopted them.
Phillip Evans and Diane Kessler first met each other while attending Arizona State University. Less than a year after graduating from same, they married and moved to Tucson, Arizona where Phillip attended Law School. Diane found work there in her chosen profession, Business Administration. After obtaining his Law Degree, Phillip, with his wife in tow, moved to Roswell, New Mexico. This location was a compromise between Phillip's hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico and Diane's hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona. The offer of a position in a respectable law firm helped their decision along. Once they were situated in their new home, the couple felt they were ready to start a family.
Diane became pregnant within their first year in Roswell. The pregnancy ended with a painful miscarriage. Immediately after her recovery, the doctor advised them that there was little hope of her ever carrying a pregnancy to term. After two additional miscarriages over the next four years, Diane and Phillip finally came to an acceptance that they would not have a child of their making. In that same moment, they began their search for a baby they could adopt.
Almost two years later, Phillip and Diane came across a little boy who was just over two years of age. It was the hope of the Evans to adopt a newborn or at least an infant. After two near misses at accomplishing that, they began to reconcile themselves to the prospect of adopting a toddler. That inclination was helped along by a very persuasive Director of the Holcomb Children's Home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The final selling point that won the Evans over was the report that little Maxwell had a twin sister who went by the name of Isabel.
The Evans adopted both children and took them into their hearts as well as their home. Initially they were concerned with how eerily quiet and detached their two new charges were. For the first two weeks of the adoption, Max and Isabel never attempted to communicate and almost never cried. Phillip and Diane began to fear that they were manifesting the effects of some psychological trauma. Their fears began to relax in the third week when Max and Isabel began communicating with them.
Phillip's and Diane's fondness of Max and Isabel only grew from that time on and they never experienced a moment where they regretted the adoption. Their two young adoptees were bright and affectionate. With each passing week their bond to their children was reinforced by their happy acceptance of them as their parents. Phillip and Diane quickly came to a state where they could not imagine their lives without Max and Isabel.
Other than their strange silence in the first two weeks of the adoption, Phillip and Diane never noticed anything peculiar about Max and Isabel. They quickly grew accustomed to their above average intellects and their ability to quickly grasp anything they were told. After all, they had no firsthand experiences with children to compare them with. What they saw in Max and Isabel quickly became the norm for them. There had been the odd occasions when they wondered if their adoptees were truly twins. Their variations in appearance, habits and tastes seemed so strikingly different at times that they could not help but ponder the question. However, they were never concerned enough about it to give it any great study. At times they entertained the idea that, due to their mutual birthdays, the children's home packaged them together to affect a dual adoption, but the possibility of that deception made no difference to Phillip and Diane. They were their children now and that was all that mattered to them.
Max and Isabel had their doubts too that they were biologically related. They came to this thinking through objective analysis and gave no importance to it, as well. However, they chose never to speak of this to their parents. They had already began having suspicions that this was just the tip of the lie.
Max's and Isabel's first memories were of a woman. They could recall her face and an impression of her voice. But there was little else that they recalled about her. They had a vague memory of other children nearby, but the first people they remember interacting with were Phillip and Diane. However, were it not for these distant earlier memories they might have gone on to believe that Phillip and Diane were their birth parents. Because of their above average intellects, Max and Isabel soon reasoned out that something was amiss about their earliest beginnings. At the age of eight, they questioned their parents if they had been adopted and they accepted the answer that they were as though it was a casual remark.
The inquisitiveness in Max and Isabel was helped along by the discovery that they could communicate with each other through their thoughts and listen in on thinking of others. They were not shocked by this discovery or by the fact that it was only they that could do this. It was not until the start of puberty that they began to realize a predisposition in them to be guarded about their abilities. When they questioned themselves why this condition was so naturally accepting to them, the answer that came back was a fear of being different. By this time Michael had become known to them and their cabal of secrecy grew to three.
In the beginning, Max and Isabel had no concerns about this difference between themselves and their adoptive parents. They loved them dearly and basked in their affection towards them. It was only after their powers of reasoning began to mature that they began to comprehend the enormity of this difference between them and to worry about what was behind it. Their concerns became anxieties, and their anxieties became a fear. Max and Isabel were completely accepting of their mutual difference, but they dreaded to think that this difference could lose them their parents.
The very thought of Phillip and Diane looking at them differently terrified Max and Isabel. That fear gave new intensity to their need to stay hidden. Concealing their telepathic and telekinetic abilities was no longer sufficient for the task. They felt a need to blend into the community around them. Shortly into their puberty, they began to dumb down their intellects. Standing out or looking exceptional was something they dared not do. They began monitoring the minds of others for any thoughts about them being unusual, and they even tweaked the thinking of a few individuals, here and there, along the way. But the one thing they never did, nor did they ever consider doing, was telepathically tamper with their parent's thoughts in any way, shape, or form.