The silver-plated box of blank wedding invitation samples had sat on the corner of her dresser for a week before she accepted the reality that she was late.
She'd been late before; twice, in fact. Both had been false alarms.
But not this time.
This time, she had sat in the exam room with her fiancé to be informed of their upcoming parental journey.
Connor had been overjoyed.
She had been hesitant.
She had accepted his ring. She had, quite happily, agreed to be his wife.
It wasn't as if she had expected for them to be childless.
But the more she considered the notion of mothering Connor's children, the more weirded out she became.
She had only ever imagined raising children with her ex.
Perhaps because during the second scare, she had been convinced she would.
Her ex who, fourteen years later, she had begun to fear she would never get over.
What was it about that fucking Dylan McKay that made him so damn impossible to forget?
She had crumpled the invitation she had planned to send to him, to - what? Rub his nose in her happiness? Prove to him she could move on just as easily as he had, albeit a decade after the fact? See if he reacted with the tiniest twinge of what she had felt when he had sent her his own wedding invitation years before?
It was futile. Whatever she had once meant to him, she clearly no longer did. She wasn't one who sent invitations out of pure spite.
She sent one to Steve, and one to David.
None to Dylan McKay, he who never released his fucking death grip on her heart.
If he had, perhaps she could have given her entire being to Connor Monaghan.
Instead of half.
Now, she didn't have Connor, or Dylan.
She didn't have Val, Steve, David or any of her closest friends in the various cities of her travels.
Fuck, she didn't even have Brandon.
For the first time in her thirty-six years of existence, she was truly and completely separated from her twin to the point that they weren't even in the same century.
She had a name.
Someone else's name.
Walsham.
She'd been born a Walsh, dreamt of becoming a McKay, signed the paperwork to confirm her acceptance of Monaghan, and now, she was Brenda Walsham.
Not that she had a prayer of becoming a McKay when she knew Dylan never had any intention of marrying her.
Never got a ring, unlike Connor.
Unless a ring around his eye from another jealous, intoxicated outrage counted.
The Diolún who Nuala had spoken of; was he Brenda's Dylan?
Not hers. Dylan hadn't been hers since he had decided for the second time that he would rather be Kelly's; after he had decided their relationship meant less to him than his stash.
She doubted Kelly, the daughter of an addict, would have accepted Dylan's addiction. He must have given up the drugs for her.
Was he Dylan, just Dylan? A past Dylan? Relation of Dylan? No relation?
Brenda focused on the questions plaguing her mind to avoid thinking of the pain clenching her body.
Her white silken nightgown was wracked with bloodstains that would never wash out.
She hunched over the medical table, hand gripping Nuala's as she held in the whimpers that sought to escape.
"Brenda." She liked the way Nuala sounded; soft, serene, as if some higher power had taken the peaceful moments of life and patched them all into Nuala's voice. "Brenda love, are you in the family way?"
Brenda nodded, her own voice emitting in a wisp of air. "Was."
"Have you a husband?"
It was an intrusive question. She figured she ought to become used to intrusive questions in her new-old life. Boundaries didn't exist in the way they had in her lifetime; yet, taboos somehow remained.
"I have, yeah." Her voice sounded strange to her ears. She doubted her own twin would recognize her voice, one much thicker than her best attempt at a Corkonian accent.
Her dialect coach would have been pleased.
Whoever Brenda Walsham was - if she had previously existed - must have been an Irishwoman, born and bred.
"Shall I get him?" inquired Nuala.
"No. You can't."
"Can't?"
You can't get him because he doesn't exist.
"Shipwrecked," Brenda announced with an ease that boggled her. Years of theatrical training were certainly paying off; years of devouring historical fiction, too. "We were - we were shipwrecked, by an -" Iceberg, she nearly said, hit by an iceberg, "-by a battleship, off the coast of -" Brenda tried to recall the last stop the Titanic had made before its unsuccessful journey to America, "- off the coast of -" Fuck, what was the old name for Cobh? "Queenstown. Connor; he's - he's -"
She playacted her sob, which wasted no time in becoming real.
"With the angels?" asked Nuala.
With the fairies, more like; over a century away.
"Yes. It pleased God to take him," said Brenda, "to take my Connor Monaghan."
"Good name," said Nuala. "Brenda, I'm so sorry. Have you accommodation?"
"We had planned to secure accommodation. The little cash I had was used for a carriage into the city. Connor; he had my purse. When - when…"
"You'll stay with me." Nuala's tone left zero room for negotiation. Her fingers drummed against Brenda's hand in a familiar rhythm; the rhythm of Brenda's father. "Mam will be thrilled. She's missed your mother ever so much."
"My mother?" asked Brenda, but the doctor arrived before Nuala could respond.
"Brenda Walsham," said the doctor she hadn't expected to be the jovial sort. "Why, I haven't seen you since you were a wee lass. But I recognize your eyes. You've your aunt's eyes, Lord have mercy on her soul. Taken too soon from us, so she was."
Some things hadn't changed.
"Doc, Brenda and her husband, may God have mercy on his soul, were shipwrecked. Brenda hasn't stopped bleeding since I found her."
"Bleeding?"
Nuala fanned out the bottom of Brenda's nightgown.
The alarm that leapt through the doctor's eyes heightened Brenda's concern.
"Have you been unwell, Brenda?"
"Indisposed," she said. She rifled through every book page filed away in her mental library that might lend a smidgen of help to her situation. "My doctor in America believed there to be two heartbeats."
"I see. Then fortunately for you, I am well experienced in the care of twins, with a pair myself."
Brenda would have been relieved, if she didn't have the blast of Nordic air jazzercising across her spine that told her her chance at motherhood had been snatched. The chill told her it was her fault, that her twins wouldn't have been in peril if she hadn't answered her mobile and taken Steve's call.
She would have never travelled in time if she had thought for one moment that her children may still be within her womb. She felt certain that had surely worsened the situation.
Could pregnant women travel in time without harm afflicted upon their baby? It was an inquiry she had never before pondered, primarily because it had never been something she had considered possible.
If she had been brought to nineteen hundred and ninety-two and had still been carrying -
No, she would have been seventeen. Her hips would have been smaller than she had seen them in decades.
But if she had been pregnant in the nineties, she could have had proper care.
She worried she would be one of those women she had read about who had died during miscarriages not yet labeled as such in the nineteenth century.
Being an unwed mother in a heavily Catholic Ireland may have not gone over well; as a widow, she would be pitied.
As the widow of another Irishman, she may be cared for by the community who believed Connor Monaghan to have been one of theirs.
He would be…eventually.
Perhaps she would be offered the hand of another.
"Well now, let's have a listen." The doctor began shuffling through a drawer. "I trust you are familiar with this instrument?"
In books, she thought. Movies. Television shows.
"Yes," said Brenda. "My doctor in -" New York? No, Diolún had likely searched there. A large contingent of the Irish had immigrated to the Appalachians. A larger one still had immigrated to - "Boston. My doctor in Boston used it."
Boston would work. She knew quite a bit about Boston, having visited Connor's brother there only two years previously. She could remember enough history of Boston to pretend she had lived there in the days of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Clara Barton.
Holy shit. Clyde and Bonnie were killed in 1939, weren't they?
The realization that she was alive before Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, whom she had read died young, made her head spin.
She wondered how often people travelled in time, disappearing without a trace or leaving a copy behind.
Had their heads spun, too?
Had Dylan vanished because he was travelling in time? What the fuck was he doing?
Rewriting history to cement Kelly as his soulmate, she guessed.
Except he had already done that, and Brenda had heard all about it.
If she had made it to the year of her seventeenth, she would have broken up with Dylan before he had the chance to cheat on her.
He had made it perfectly clear that they never should have reunited in London in the first place.
If she had rid Dylan from her heart then, he wouldn't be the unseen interloper in her marriage to Connor now.
A wooden Pinard horn poked into Brenda's stomach, disturbing her thoughts. It was a hollow stethoscope of old, designed with a large circle on the bottom. The doctor pressed his ear against the horn, listening for heartbeats Brenda feared no longer pounded.
He then palpated her abdomen, gesturing for a midwife as a second opinion.
They both wore the countenances of successful poker players, neither giving anything away.
A rush of gratitude poured over Brenda that Nuala remained by her side.
She didn't think she would be able to handle the horrific news alone.
"I see why your doctor believed there to be two heartbeats." The doctor withdrew his hands to look at Brenda. "There does seem to be two heads. Two buttocks."
Two. Both twins had followed her into time.
"Yet, I hear only one heartbeat, and this concerns me."
Nuala's eyes threatened to depart from their sockets. "Has Brenda a two-headed babe in there, Doc Haloran?"
Doc Haloran gave a small smile that creased along his kind eyes. "Now Nuala, you know those are just stories, yes?"
"My mam says she saw a two-headed babe once."
"Your mam is a storyteller herself, is she not?"
"She is that, but…" Nuala trailed off.
One heartbeat.
One of her babies had survived.
But the other…
"Doc Haloran," said Brenda, "why does that concern you?"
"Are you sure you want to hear this, dear?"
"Please."
"Very well," said Doc Haloran with a reluctant sigh. "Brenda, it is indeed possible your Bostonian doctor was correct. My concern is that the trauma caused from the shipwreck affected your womb, leaving one child intact and the other -"
Gone, Brenda thought, gone like their father.
Disappeared, like I have from my life.
"What can we do?" asked Nuala, tears brimming.
"Look after Brenda. If a week has passed and nothing more has occurred, then the concern may be for naught. If, however, a week has passed and the bleeding continues, then -"
"Then I shall see you," said Brenda, drawing her own conclusion as she sought to keep her voice steady. "May I listen?" She gestured to the stethoscope.
"Have you an interest in medicine?" Doc Haloran asked, handing her the stethoscope with an amused air.
"You're forgetting," Nuala answered for Brenda. "Her father was a doctor himself."
Was?
Brenda bent her ear over the stethoscope.
One heartbeat, just as the doctor had said.
Her own heart repaired just a little, though still lay in tatters over the presumed loss of her second.
"That's right," said the doctor. "Séamus Walsham. Fine doctor, he was. An interest in medicine must run in the family."
"Doc," said Nuala, "I'd planned to send Lucas to fetch Diolún. Do you think I should wait a bit? Would that be a terrible upset for Brenda, in her condition?"
Brenda wondered why Nuala thought it might be upsetting. She further wondered what had happened between Diolún McKay and Brenda Walsham, and why they spoke of her father - erm, Brenda Walsham's father - in the past tense.
"Not at all," said the doctor. "In fact, Diolún's presence may be of help. Where is the boy these days?"
"Mam heard tell he was in Rosscarbery week past. Lucas claimed Diolún plans to head towards the Kerry mountains."
Dylan McKay and his fucking mountains.
The mountains of County Kerry held not an ounce of comparison to K2, but the mention rose within Brenda the same Eeyorish sentiment she felt at the mention of K2.
She had warned Dylan the expedition would be dangerous.
She didn't know it would shovel sand over the remains of their relationship, remains first created when he had cheated.
She didn't know what had possessed her to agree to take him back in London - which had been wonderful, while it lasted.
If only it hadn't all gone so terribly wrong.
Maybe it would be Dylan's child fighting to survive.
Or maybe Brenda would still be securely in the twenty-first century, with Dylan.
"Where in the mountains?" inquired Doc Haloran.
"Somewhere near Dingle, I think," said Nuala.
"At least a day's journey. You'd best send Lucas along now."
An entire day. The idea alone boggled Brenda's mind. It would have taken Connor a little over two hours to travel from Cork to Dingle.
"Ay, that I will." Nuala rubbed the small of Brenda's back. "Is Brenda fit enough for me to bring home?"
Brenda barely tuned in to their conversation, her mind torn between the man she would soon see, the men she had left behind, and the babe clinging on in her womb.
I'm sorry I let you and your father down, baby. I never should've thought for one second that Connor was displeased with our life together.
I don't know how I'm gonna get us out of this, but I'll figure something out.
There had to be another way Arís hadn't mentioned.
Brenda despised the idea of relying on Dylan to finish whatever task he had supposedly undertaken, especially since she convinced herself that task would ensure he had never met her.
Maybe he had returned to kindergarten to begin a lifelong relationship with Kelly.
Maybe it wasn't kindergarten. Maybe he was fifteen, using his connections to try to convince her father's old boss in Minneapolis to nix the relocation of the nineties Walsh family to southern California.
Not that Brenda would mind the change.
He could have gone to an earlier time period than hers, whichever one would secure Kelly as his.
Fuck, she hadn't thought of Kelly so much in years.
Brenda hated that Dylan had caused her to feel second-rate.
She wasn't sure she wanted to see Diolún; yet, she was desperate to see him, all at once.
What would he think about her showing up out of nowhere, carrying a child due in three months' time?
Another man's child?
If the child lived.
Brenda trotted alongside Nuala, eyeing all of the differences between the Cork she knew and the Cork she stood in. She dodged horses and carriages. She hadn't been much of a driver herself, opting to take the tube in London and living a short walk from her work in Dublin. In high school, Brandon or Dylan had often driven her around. In London, it had again been Dylan, when their travels went beyond the city. In Cork, it had been Connor; or on occasion, a driver.
Still, the concept of living in a world where cars were a rare commodity and travel relied on horse buggy would require some time to fathom.
She had lived in an Ireland nearing the centennial celebrations of the Easter Rising.
Nuala lived in an Ireland twenty-four years before the Easter Rising.
Connor's grandfather had been born in the year of the Easter Rising. His great-grandfather had fought the British government.
Brenda had gone from living in a republic to a country still fighting for its freedom.
It seemed from the news article that Diolún McKay was one of those freedom fighters.
She had to know more about Diolún, before she saw him.
"Nuala, whatever did you mean?" Insatiable curiosity overtook her lips. "Why would a visit with Diolún cause me upset?"
Worry settled on Nuala's face. "You mean, you do not know?"
"The shipwreck -" Brenda began.
"- caused your mind to be out of sorts." Nuala nodded in understanding.
"Yes," said Brenda. "I'm afraid I have knocked my head against a barrel during my unsuccessful attempt to pry my late husband from the wreckage. Along with my grief at Connor's passing, I may be addled for awhile, on many things."
She had never lied so well in her life.
"That is to be expected," said Nuala. "You and Diolún; I've not been made aware of the details, but you were rather upset over an argument you had before your father's -"
No one had known the details of their falling-out in London, either; not even Brandon or Valerie.
Val and Brenda's closest Londoner friend Nicola had both tried to pry the information out of her, to no avail.
Until Steve's phone call, the last time Brenda had spoken of Dylan had been when she casually dropped the news of their breakup to her family.
There had been no further explanation, for none seemed adequate.
Her father had been full of questions, not one of which she felt required an answer.
"My father's?" asked Brenda, but Nuala's attention focused elsewhere.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," she exclaimed. "Brenda, quickly now!" She tugged Brenda behind a building.
"What is it?"
"It's that awful O'Connell." Nuala glanced over her shoulder at Brenda. To Brenda's surprise and immense relief, curses began to stream from Nuala's lips. "Right; you wouldn't know. So much the better for you. Jarlath O'Connell. He's the one who betrayed your Da to the authorities, he did. Oh, but was Diolún in a right state when he found out!"
"Betrayed my Da? But you said Da was a doctor?"
"That he was. Among other things."
"What other things?"
"Far be it from me to tell you in your condition. We'll just have to avoid Jarlath. He's had it in for your family since your Da caught his stealing from your Da's patients."
"Can you tell me about him? About my Da? It will distract me from -"
She couldn't say miscarriage. The word didn't yet exist.
"- from everything."
"I'm sure Mam will be happy to tell you. She'll want to hear all about America, of course." Nuala linked her arm through the crook of Brenda's elbow. "If we have any luck, Papa may have caught a fish for dinner. Otherwise, it's cold broth and cabbage."
"Will it be a terrible bother? An extra two mouths to feed?"
"Not at all. Mam would insist on it."
Brenda wished she could provide some form of payment, but if she had any, it would be the euro.
Her cents would help little in a world where William Jennings Bryan had not yet debated on gold versus silver currency in the United States and Brenda had seen sixpence peeking out from Doc Haloran's drawer.
At least, she believed it to be sixpence.
Brandon would have known for sure.
God. She missed him already.
She didn't know how she would get through the rest of her pregnancy without Brandon or Connor.
If she got through it.
Nuala called out to a boy in an alley.
No; not a boy. A man, casually leaning against a building as he gnawed at a chunk of apple as if it were a chicken bone.
A boy who reminded Brenda of David Silver; not in appearance, but in demeanor.
A younger David Silver, though the man perhaps surpassed David in years.
"You called?" He turned an amused smile on Nuala.
"Lucas, you remember Brenda, don't you?"
"By God! Little Brenda?" Catching the light of the sun, Lucas' eyes twinkled in much the same way Brenda had seen David's eyes do. "All grown up, I see."
"Lucas," said Brenda amiably, as one does when showing a polite manner to a stranger.
"What's 'a matter with her?" asked Lucas.
"Shipwreck," said Nuala. "Scattered her brain, I'm afraid. Her husband, may the Lord -"
"Have mercy on his soul," said Lucas, his tone apathetic towards the phrase yet sympathetic to Brenda's lie. "Shame, that. Would have liked to meet a lad given the honor of marrying the Doc's daughter."
"You would have liked him," said Brenda.
"Ay, maybe." Lucas tossed the core of his apple into an overflowing bin. "But I've always been fond of the idea of you and my brother."
"Your brother?"
"Lucas is Diolún's brother," Nuala patiently explained.
"The better brother," said Lucas. "You always thought so."
"She did not," said Nuala.
"Ay, but I had to try it, so I did." Lucas kinked his neck, his sunbaked muscles rolling in response. "Let me guess, Nuala love. You'd like me to ride over to Kerry and see if I can't convince Diolún towards this way?"
"If you please. Doc Haloran believes seeing Diolún would be a help to Brenda."
"This I doubt, but very well. I will be off before dusk."
"Nuala says your brother and I quarreled?" Brenda's inherent inquisitiveness won out over her silent vow to tread carefully.
Never had there been a more crucial time for the award-winning actress to be on top of her acting game than in a world where America had held a witch trial only twenty years previously.
She shuddered to think of the conditions she may be thrust into if she confided in anyone of her status as a time traveller, brought by the fairies.
"Did she, now? Canna say I know details. It had something to do with that damned O'Connell, this much I know. Diolún hasn't been the same since he missed your ship."
"Missed my ship?"
"Oh, but that is not for me to tell. Morsel before I leave, Nuala?"
"Mam will never forgive me if I let you leave without a meal, Lucas McKay."
"Your mam's a good woman." Lucas helped Nuala to steady Brenda. "We must find for Brenda a decent pair of shoes. Her feet will be boiling."
Barefoot and pregnant, walking a cobblestone road underneath a beguiling sun.
It seemed a role, something Brenda would film for a television movie.
A Lifetime movie, perhaps.
Would she spend the rest of her lifetime as a foreigner out of her own time?
Perhaps she would prefer it, than to be so insignificant to Dylan McKay that he would travel in time himself to erase her from his life.
Fuck that Dylan McKay.
Whether Diolún would act the same, only time would tell.
xx
He had become a man obsessed.
Whilst West Bev's star-in-the-making Brenda Walsh was in rehearsal, he was in the library; pulling books off of the shelves, working with tech gurus to learn how to search the Web in the days before Google and Ask Jeeves.
The search engine Archie was only a year old. Online archives were rare.
He was on the hunt; the hunt to find every bit of information he could on his pasts with Brenda.
Or the pasts that used to be, before he had torn them asunder.
They'd had three reunions thus far that he knew of.
If all of their lives reunited, would Brenda stay his? Was that the task he had to complete? He couldn't force the reunions, could he?
What the fuck had Itero meant when the fairy had indicated a past in Ireland?
And how the fuck could he possibly prevent Brenda from falling into Anteros' trap?
The books that usually held centuries of knowledge weren't telling Dylan a damn thing. Archie didn't help much, either.
The information he needed, if it existed, would be in Ireland.
Which meant he either had to go to fucking Ireland, or pay half of his fortune on international calling that would inevitably result in a trip regardless.
It would have to be during the trip to Paris, which he began to feel less certain wouldn't include Reina.
The guy was obviously trying to weave his way into Brandon's life, likely to get Brandon on his side.
Brandon. There was a Brandon Mountain, in the Kerry mountains.
Kerry mountains; why did those seem so familiar?
Dylan had never even stepped foot in Kerry; or in Cork, for that matter.
Hell, the first time he would have ever gone to Ireland would have been to stop Brenda's wedding.
He was particularly drawn to a passage on the Ireland of the late nineteenth century, though he couldn't explain it.
"An Outline of Irish History. A New History of Ireland. Two Centuries of Ireland." Fingers skimmed over the spines of the books stacked in front of Dylan. He briefly looked up to see Brandon swinging his legs over a chair, his tone hushed in clear care for the setting. "Didn't know you were that big into Ireland, McKay."
"Your sister wants to go," Dylan grunted.
"Bren wants to go to Ireland, so you're doing a deep-dive into its history?"
"Figure I oughta know some things when I take her."
"D, if you're taking my sister to Ireland, I am point-blank demanding to come along."
"You gonna be like this on our honeymoon, too?" Dylan's own voice remained soft, barely spoken to prevent the scoldings of a passing librarian.
"First off, you're assuming you'll have a honeymoon with my sister." Brandon scanned over one of the pages. "Secondly, if your honeymoon is in the land of my father's father's," he stopped to contemplate, "father? Then yes."
"B, you doubt me, but one day, you and I are gonna be family for real. Just you wait."
"Hey, I'd be more than happy to have you as a brother, but don't forget to take care of yourself, too. You've jumped way ahead and Bren's still trying to fight off her attraction to Emilio Reina."
Realizing their conversation approached intensification and the consequential increase in noise volume, Dylan gathered up his stack of books. He nodded Brandon over to an empty room.
Shutting the door, Dylan sank into a chair.
"So Bren is attracted to Reina." His words seemed hollow. Void. The happiness sucked out of him.
The idea throttled him in much the same way as when he had glimpsed the magazine amidst Donna's possessions; the one with an exclusive on Brenda Walsh's new relationship with Connor Monaghan.
An exclusive that had been released on Dylan's thirty-third birthday.
Happy fucking birthday to him.
"I mean, they've spent a lot of time together this summer," said Brandon. "He's seen her more lately than I have. It's bound to happen."
"Think anything will come of it?" asked Dylan in a tone much more even than the ache that dominated his insides.
"I don't know. Bren's more worried about hurting you than she is letting Reina down easy."
"I keep telling her that it doesn't matter what she decides."
"I guess she's confused why it doesn't."
Because I've known life without Bren, and I don't want to know it again; not for one single second.
"It's simple." Dylan pretended to thoroughly examine a page detailing the Irish struggle for Home Rule. "I don't want to look back one day and regret pushing away the people closest to me."
"People?" Brandon skimmed a book off of the stack to look through himself. "You think you'd do something to push me away?"
"You and Bren are a package deal. If I hurt her, I hurt you. Don't I?"
"Well yeah, but what makes you so sure you would hurt her?"
"I'm a McKay," Dylan said with ample disgust. "It's what we do. We push the people we love until they can't take it anymore and then they walk out of our lives to protect themselves from us."
"Well, I can tell you right here and now that you're stuck with the Walsh twins." Brandon displayed an easy smile. "Once someone gets Bren and I to care about them, it tends to be permanent. And we both care an awful lot about you, D. So you're kinda stuck with us."
Yeah, unless that someone walks out on your sister and decides to hook back up with your ex-fiancée.
"No one I'd rather be stuck with," said Dylan.
"But you don't have to put yourself through the torture of watching Bren and Reina together, if that happens. Bren won't quit caring about you just because you aren't around each other."
"You've been hanging around Steve and Stacey."
"It's not the same thing, and you know it."
"B, you like Stacey."
"But I haven't been with Stacey. Not like you and Bren. The pregnancy scare really messed with her. She's a lot less confident than she usually is, and it's causing her to feel less secure about you and her."
"Yeah, I've noticed." Dylan smoothed a hand over his own stacked hair. "I don't know how to convince her that she doesn't have to be."
"Want to know how to convince her? Easy." Brandon rested against the edge of a table holding a computer that seemed to Dylan to be ancient.
"Don't say make her jealous." Dylan's palms pressed outward into the air as he gave a ferocious shake of his head. "I'm not lookin' to go that route."
"Not even close." Brandon's lips curved into a sly grin. "If you think you and Bren are built to last, convince Val. Convince Val; she won't give up until you and my stubborn sister are back together."
"Val, huh?" It was becoming extremely difficult to pretend he didn't know Valerie Malone.
"McKay, get Val on your side and Reina won't stand a chance."
Tempting, but he worried precisely how Val would ensure Emilio Reina would exit Brenda's life.
Knowing Val the way he did, she might try to turn Reina's head from Brenda to Valerie herself.
And that could dent the friendship of the two girls, as he believed he had dented their friendship by sleeping with Val.
"I don't want Reina to come between Bren and Val," said Dylan. "Not even if it will help keep Reina away from Bren."
"Nothing in this world can come between my sisters," said Brandon.
In this world, maybe.
"I'll try to get Val on 'my side,' so to speak," Dylan said with air quotes for emphasis, "but not if it costs her her friendship with Bren. Because I'm guessing Val would do something like work on getting Reina interested in her? Incredibly tempting, not gonna lie, but if Bren likes the guy, then -"
"You're being way too chill about this."
On the contrary; Dylan was simply taking a page out of Brenda's book and acting to a level that could have won him an Academy Award.
I'm playing the long game, Bran.
"She's still in love with me, Brandon. That's gotta mean something. Her whatever-the-hell-this-thing-is-with-Reina is already doomed. I don't need Val to make sure of it. I just need Bren to be sure of us."
"Is that why you're planning this trip?" Brandon waved a hand over the stack of books.
"No," said Dylan. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
Brandon had met with the Blaze staff for a meeting to discuss assignments for the first issue of the school year. On the way out, he had spotted Dylan and became curious of the book titles set in front of Dylan.
He invited Dylan to dinner at Casa Walsh, who was torn between sneaking a moment with Brenda and avoiding Jim.
Ultimately, the desire for Cindy's home cooking and the promised sight of Brenda coaxed Dylan into going.
He hadn't expected to walk into a trap: the trap of Cindy needling him for details on Emilio Reina.
Unbeknownst to Dylan, the role of Brenda's driver to morning rehearsal had been taken from Brandon and given to Reina.
"What do you know about this Emilio Reina?" asked Cindy as she dished out a large helping of buttery mashed potatoes. "Should we be concerned about him bringing Brenda over to the school every morning?"
"I don't think you have anything to be concerned about with him," answered Dylan, though it pained him to do so. "My family's known the Reinas for years."
"I thought as much," said Cindy. "Does this mean you and my daughter are finished?"
Fuck no.
"Paused. For the summer. Bren's figuring some stuff out." Dylan didn't feel comfortable discussing Brenda behind her back. "I think you know I love your daughter."
Cindy's reply was drowned out by a briefcase being set down and an accompanying heavy footsteps.
"Ah, Dylan. Good. You're here. I've been wanting to speak with you."
Dylan felt small, younger than sixteen.
The entrance of Jim tended to do that.
He looked at Cindy, who smiled and nodded to indicate Dylan needn't worry.
They walked into the living room, Dylan awkwardly examining his surroundings until Jim encouraged him to sit.
He had to remind himself that this Jim Walsh had never threatened him with a charge of statutory rape. Never forbid the dating of Brenda. Hadn't seen Dylan at his lowest, during an intervention in Jim's home.
Didn't know how he had treated Jim's daughter in London, as the other Jim had undoubtedly learnt.
This Jim knew Dylan only as the alleged troublemaker who had nearly knocked up Jim's daughter.
"What is this about, sir?" Dylan sat on the sofa, keeping his hands tucked together.
"Dylan, I've been talking to Nat lately and well, frankly, after what he's told me, I believe I misjudged you."
Dylan found himself unable to speak.
"When Brenda first began to date you, it was difficult to separate the rumors I had heard from colleagues about you and your father from the boy dating my daughter. I regret to say that this caused me to act much more like my father - like Cindy's father - then I ever thought I could. And when Cindy found the pregnancy test; well, my instinct was to blame you. I know my little girl has a mind of her own and cannot be so easily influenced, but it was difficult to accept that she was beginning to move away from me."
"I think she'll always be your little girl," said Dylan, understanding Jim just a bit better after Dylan had become exactly what Jim had always envisioned he would.
"She will, but she's also approaching her seventeenth birthday. She'll be off to college soon enough and I'll have to accept that she's not the same girl whose tears drenched my suit jacket when Cindy's parents had to put their dog to sleep."
That, Dylan thought, would never change.
He visualized Rex, nose frequently drenched by the puddles he liked to dip it in, and a pink tongue that stretched out towards his feet. Full name Oedipus Rex Walsh, the black labrador given to Brenda by a RADA friend seeking to rehome a litter of puppies.
Leaving Rex behind was almost as hard as leaving Brenda behind.
Rex had probably become Monaghan's, just as everything else in Dylan's life had eventually become Monaghan's.
Including his unofficial in-laws; in-laws he failed to realize how much he wanted until after he had zero chance of getting them.
"Trust me," Dylan hid the bittersweet chuckle that pinched at his throat, "she's definitely still that girl."
You just know Rex was there to comfort Brenda when she found out what you told Kelly.
I still wanna know how the fuck she found that out.
It doesn't matter how she found out. You never should've said that horseshit.
Horses. He had almost forgotten.
He could relive horseback riding with Brenda for the first time, when Bobby Walsh visited.
Is that something we did in the past? Rode horses?
You're probably off riding a horse somewhere, gallivanting to catch her before she walks out of your life just because your twenty-first century asshole self couldn't make things work like all your past selves.
How did they make it work?
Likely didn't attempt to erase their connections with the past Brendas, for starters.
You never should've gotten so angry with Brenda to the point that you fucked up every single one of your lives.
He would fix it.
He wouldn't let his Bren be erased; not ever again.
"But it won't be me who she'll turn to the next time her beloved pet dies," said Jim. "That will be whomever she's with. And I must say, I would be proud for her to date a guy who is financially supporting my good friend Nat."
Dylan couldn't believe he had earned Jim's respect already.
"It's not really something I want getting around," he said sheepishly.
"Dylan, at the beginning of the summer, when you were hospitalized, Cindy had asked about you staying here. I strongly believed you would take advantage of our hospitality by taking advantage of my daughter, and worried that you would hurt her in some way. Instead, you moved in with Nat to shoulder a responsibility I would never expect any teenager to take on. Brandon and Brenda have said you've also accepted a job, which is certainly not something I had anticipated. Brenda said you encouraged her to apply for a job of her own, which I appreciate."
Brenda's dreams were something Jim had desired to help her achieve, he said, but there was only so much he could do for a daughter whose dreams included university abroad.
"I began working at fourteen myself; did you know that?"
Dylan had known little of Jim's life prior to becoming the father of the Minnesota Twins, or that he had saved up every penny he earned from swiping the counters in a St. Paul soda parlor to travel to Woodstock.
He struggled to picture straight-laced Jim Walsh, smoking a joint at Woodstock.
"No really, I did," said Jim.
"Oh God, is Dad telling you about the time he supposedly went to Woodstock with the money he claims he made at the soda pop fountain?"
Dylan scooted over on the sofa for Brenda to sit beside him.
"Actually, your dad and I were having a really nice conversation," he told her as he concealed his hand in the cushions behind him to avoid touching Brenda in front of Jim.
"Ask your grandmother, Brenda. Mom's the one who encouraged me to go to Woodstock," said Jim.
"Now I know you're lying," said Brenda. "There's no way my grandma would have told you to go to Woodstock."
"Looks like I'll have to get Mom on the phone, then."
Jim departed at Cindy's beckoning, leaving Dylan to focus solely on Brenda.
"So my dad wasn't yelling at you, or anything?" asked Brenda worriedly.
"Not at all, Bren. He mainly talked about Nat and St. Paul."
"You're gonna regret getting along with Dad if he starts telling you all about his childhood in the Twin Cities."
"I'd be happy to spend hours listening to your dad's stories, if it means I get to see you more often." Dylan cautiously approached the subject weighing on his mind. "So Reina is, uh, giving you rides in the mornings?"
Was that a hint of guilt he noticed arabesque across her gorgeous face?
"It's kind of out of the way of the beach club for Brandon to keep bringing me. Emilio offered and I accepted. I wasn't sure how you'd take it."
"I don't need to take anything."
"But he's bringing me and you usually pick me up. It just feels like I'm leading you both on, or something."
"Brenda, forget about how I might feel, okay? I want you to quit being so hard on yourself about this. It makes sense for him to pick you up when you're going to the same place. It's just a ride, right?"
It better just be a ride as defined in American terms.
That fucker better not try anything.
"Yeah." Brenda spoke with uncertainty. "It's just a ride." She stretched her legs out over his. "So are you staying for dinner?"
"Brandon invited me." He instinctually gathered up her feet to remove her shoes. Thoughts flew about of Monaghan massaging those feet. "That cool with you?"
"Of course it's cool with me. One more week of rehearsals, one week of the play, and then we'll have one week of freedom together before school starts."
"How about we go on our trip the weekend before?"
"Trip? I thought you said it wasn't overnight."
"Day trip," he specified. "It'll just be a long day. We'll want to leave bright and early to avoid traffic."
"Bright and early?" she groaned. "I can't sleep in?"
"We can stop somewhere to catch some z's for a few hours, but no, we'll have to leave early to see what I want to show you."
Brenda grumbled a reluctant acceptance, which caused Dylan to smile at his girl's neverending quest for late mornings.
She had been the same in London; scheduling classes later in the day, complaining about early-morning rehearsals.
His preferred way to wake her up had been the only way to get Brenda out of bed.
"It's like you and Bran are on a mission to make me a morning person. He wants us to leave extra early for camping, too."
"How is a girl who loves horses and fishing so against waking up early?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Now, I know I didn't tell you about fishing."
Fuck, you did it again.
He'd had one slip-up too many.
Time for another list, categorized by information Brenda had told him by junior year, and information he would have to pretend he hadn't heard.
Dylan quickly scanned the living room.
Score.
"That picture over there." He pointed to a picture he didn't recall seeing before, one of the Walshes displaying a large-mouthed bass. "You're holding the fish. I just kinda assumed."
"Oh, right." Her look softened. "I forgot about that picture. I could take you sometime, if you want."
"To a Minnesota lake?"
"I was thinking more fishing in general, but sure; if you're getting along so well with Dad, maybe you could come along to the lake with us next time we go."
"Better be careful, Bren. You start inviting me on family trips and it'll seem like we're dating again."
"Brandon would love the company," she said in a brush-off.
"Would you?" He eyed her until she was forced to meet his gaze.
"I wish I knew why your eyes do that."
His skin prickled at the caress of Brenda's fingertips against his cheekbones.
"Do what?" he somehow murmured.
"It's like there's a flicker of sadness every time you talk about our futures, and then it's gone so quickly that it's almost unnoticeable. It's the growing up thing, isn't it? You're scared to grow up?"
She makes me sound like Peter Pan.
He guessed he had been a gentler Peter Pan, in a way. Living on his own. Free of responsibilities. Dragging people down with him.
Perhaps Barrie had been the acquaintance of a McKay.
"Grow apart," he confessed. "I hate the thought of growing apart; from you, from Brandon."
"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. We won't let it happen."
"Brandon said the same."
"Then he's right, but don't tell him I told you that. His ego would never recover."
"So you're here to keep both my ego and his in check?"
"If I need to." She grabbed for the remote. "Wanna watch TV 'til dinner's ready?"
"Sure. On one condition."
His condition was bizarre, he knew, but he was grateful Brenda allowed him to do so regardless.
Massaging her feet, the spoken reason being that she had been on them all day at rehearsal and deserved a respite that only Dylan could provide.
The real reason, left unspoken, was because Connor fucking Monaghan would be doing the same in another time, another world, whilst he probably sang Irish lullabies to Brenda's growing children.
Dylan wondered if he had once done so as well, in a life long forgotten; or, perhaps, erased.
By him.
Fucking Battleship.
-x
As always, thanks a million for the readership, reviews, follows, favourites, alerts, discourse, plot ideas, etc. Stay healthy and safe out there. x