In the astral plain of white clouds and piquant honeysuckle air, Keri Reynolds waits her turn at the pearly gates, in considerable pain for abruptly leaving behind those earthly bodies she loved the most.
That is until the angels share events leading to her demise. The mastermind was the person she least expected.
In the misty orb, her father grins every time he is successful in destroying her world, as gleeful as a wicked villain— a man who swore to change, but never did. She is sure to fall through the weightless atmosphere, falling down to the nothingness, overwhelmed by despair and anger.
"I thought..." Keri shakes her head in disbelief and begins to cry. "How could he do this to me?"
Her heart tells her it's true.
Everything she saw really happened.
And she had been blind.
Elizabeth 'Liz' Reynolds, her alluring, blond-haired mother arrives then, floating, unharmed and basked in radiance as though an airplane crash had never brutalized her body. Liz wears a lacy white dress buttoned up to the neck— similar in style to Keri's— pearl buttons at the long, sleeved wrists.
"I'm so sorry that you are here before your time," Liz says softly. "I had a part in this."
"Not as big as he, Mom," Keri disagrees. "If I hadn't been so anxious to find my birth father, none of this would have happened."
"But then you wouldn't have met the love of your life— Antonio or created my beautiful granddaughter, Jamie."
Liz touches her daughter's shoulder and offers a comforting smile.
"It's both a fortunate circumstance and an omen all at once," she says. "Thankfully, you have been given a small reward."
"I can return home?" Keri asks, hopeful to right wrongs, to save her mournful soul.
Still utterly thrown by the revelations, Keri believes that if she weren't already deceased, she's sure death has been inflicted again upon her, by another hand entirely.
"No Sweetie," Liz replies, shaking her head. "You have choices for your final goodbye to the two men in your past life. One will remember your lament and the other will wake up as though it never happened."
"You mean, their memory of my visit will be erased?" Keri asks.
"Not necessarily. It will be buried deep within their subconscious. It would take phenomenal strength to access your supernatural visit."
"I understand."
"Choose wisely, my precious girl."
/
Tick tock. Tick tock.
The night hours pass by with the sounds of the sonorous clock.
It's three a.m.
Still unwashed and dressed in black clothes including a thigh length duster, a grieving R. J. Gannon sits in a bar stool at the closed Capricorn, pouring another shot of brandy. He swings his head of thick locs around and gulps down the hot alcohol, letting the temporary elixir burn his raw throat. He has cried enough this day and hopes the raging sear will reunite him with Keri, take away the everlasting pain that arrived with the gutting reality of her unnecessary death.
She comes down the stairs in a silent march, her black curls free and springy, her precious white dress as flowing and bilious as a bridal train. A flash of a wedding day that cannot ever be crosses his mind, that buzzing summer memory of her asking him to walk her down the aisle to reach his nemesis.
"You're here!" R. J. exclaims, astounded by her appearance.
He rushes up and hugs her, not realizing that her frail hands are at her sides, that her eyes are looking up at the ceiling, disinterested in his frenzied display of affection. She wonders if he can feel the impending coldness, the shards of pointed ice that have formed in her throat since the truths were revealed.
"Yes," Keri says. "I am."
"Don't ever leave me or Jamie again," R. J. commands. "We can still leave Llanview— just the three of us. Like we planned."
"I wouldn't go anywhere with you if you were the last person on earth. You're the monster that everyone said you were."
He gasps, terrified, his bones shaken to the core.
Immediately, he breaks apart from their hug and inspects her expression. In her eyes— usually joyous and sincere— he finds a fiery anger reserved for him, not her ex-lover who was so quick to move on to a rich girl.
"Then again, you would know something about planning— to get the things that you want, right?" Keri asks, her voice as sharp as knives. "That's your M. O.?"
"What are you talking about?" R. J. asks, playing confused.
"First, it was you stalking me all over town. I said that I needed time to process that you were my father, but every time I turned around, there you were, suffocating me, wearing me down, ensuring that my gentle nature would become ensnared in your little trap. You saw me with Antonio and wanted us over before we even truly began. You erased his voice mail message. You planted that phony tip to embarrass him on our first Valentine's Day. Boy, you had me helping you clean up a mess you caused him to make? The audacity of you?! You acted like I was a stilted child incapable of making adult decisions. I was the happiest I ever been. Then you paid Shawna to accuse me of favoritism— putting my career on the line and for what? So that I could become isolated in California with you? And what would you have done— set me up with another man as long as he wasn't Antonio? What kind of cruel person would set up his own daughter— a mere stranger— and claim to love her as you had done? You don't even realize the depth of what could have happened then? You sat there as she taunted me, smeared my name. Do you know how awful that time period was for me in my second semester of professorship? The filthy newspaper headlines? To see people looking at me and shaking their heads? Students were either skipping class or propositioning me for a good grade. You will never know the horrors I suffered because of your interference."
"Look, I did that for you— to protect you. He wasn't the one for you. A former gang member is not the right fit for my daughter! You've seen his temper! Hell, you were inviting him to be that way to get custody."
"And whom did I receive inspiration from in order to plan that out? Oh, let's not forget the most horrible thing you've done, Daddy Dearest! I was sick. Pregnant with Jamie. And you took advantage of me! You took advantage of me, R. J.— your own flesh and blood to save your skin after you broke Lindsay Rappaport from prison— your accomplice in drugging Nora! You set the clocks, you recorded the bridal program, and woke me up, making me think that I was your alibi. You made me look dumb. Stupid. Naive."
"You're none of those things. None of them. I'm the stupid one. Blame me. Only me."
"I loved him so much, still do. Perhaps I always will. I let you destroy us, a complete stranger that I thought was committed to changing for the better. You lied and lied and lied some more. You demolished the few good things I had. My heart, my career, everything. I thought I was going to be teaching for years, that we would be married, and raise Jamie together with a slew of siblings. If it weren't for you— my conniving bastard father— I wouldn't have allowed my pain to become depression, to end my life. You did this to me. For what? To one Antonio up? To win? Well, congratulations. You hit the jackpot. He's out of my life. Are you happy now? Isn't this what you wanted?"
With Capricorn's environment chilled to negative degrees, a remorseful R. J. falls on his knees at Keri's feet, sobbing, grabbing at her legs. Although she looks down on him with anger and disappointment, Keri cannot hate the man.
"Not like this," he cries. "Never like this."
"Despite the wrongs you have done to me, you must do right by my daughter," Keri says. "I forgive you for who you are and hope that for the rest of your life, you make amends. You ensure that Jamie does not end up like me."
"I would never harm my granddaughter. You know that. You signed me over as her legal guardian."
"You think I would if I knew the truth of what you were doing behind my back? Since you met me, you were controlling, playing the puppeteer. You stole time that I can never get back. You broke my heart in ways that cannot ever be healed. Jamie does not deserve to repeat my mistakes and she will if you're in the picture."
"What are you even saying?"
"You must sign her over to Antonio and don't give the Vegas any trouble about it. Please."
/
Maui was the place.
Their chosen place.
"Someday we'll return and remember where it all began," Keri told Antonio before they left the island.
"I'll never forget our vacation," she says, walking up to him on the sandy beach. "I truly thought that when we headed back to Llanview, that we were going to have a beautiful future. I guess we were karma bound for destroying Rae's life after all she had done for us."
"Don't say that," he says, sitting up and taking her hand, making a place for her beside him on the wheat-colored hammock. "I dreamed so much about you becoming my wife. I knew you were it for me. As for Rae, we had nothing to do with her lying about who she truly was."
"I know one thing too, another matter that tore us apart. You were right all along. He did everything you accused him of."
"What? Who? Who do you mean?"
"My foul excuse for a father."
Antonio nods, his mind working fiercely, remembering their beginning— a promising and gratuitous beginning. Emotions for the lovely, attractive professor started a path to uncertainty until the blind date set up by Nora Buchanan changed their perceptions, opened them up to what lie beneath stubborn exteriors.
"You always knew, my smart, brilliant, award-winning student/detective," Keri continues, sharing a morose smile. "I kept giving R. J. chance after chance, quieting my intuition, ignoring those feelings that he was a bit off kilter, too neat and convenient. He kept being around us— did you notice? Every time something bad was on the horizon, he popped up at every corner, waiting to spring in and be my knight-in-shining armor. It was very disturbing because I had a boyfriend— fiancé. He wanted to take that role away from you, pull me deeper into his undertow. I thought it was love and making up for lost time."
"You wanted to believe he reformed, that he could be a good person."
"I was a criminal professor. I should have seen it. No one changes that quickly, not overnight."
"What did he do exactly? Tell me."
Keri shares the full scope of what her father had done to them in great detail, sobbing throughout the confession, especially on the parts that greatly affected her— the false charges and Lindsay's breakout and all the malice inflicted on the Vega family. Antonio wants to take Keri in his arms, tell her that it's not her fault that her father succeeded. He vows to throw R. J behind bars so that he cannot manipulate anyone else ever again, primarily Jamie.
"I wish I could go back to autumn, when we were together during the pregnancy," Keri admits, rubbing her empty belly for emphasis. "She was ours the whole time. I should have known. Remember my mystery illness that you didn't even catch?"
"I remember," Antonio replies.
His eyes water, reflecting on earlier that year, post putting Matthew Buchanan to bed at Nora's house, he and Keri confided not being ready for children whilst grinning at each other as though they were teenagers experiencing first love. That summer, fate had something else in store for them. On their second Christmas holiday, alone in the house, they were getting ready for the baby's arrival as his guilt over sleeping with Liz continued haunting him. If only they had known that Jamie was theirs, he would have relished it even more— take his glowing Keri on one of those babymoons, spent money on her growing belly photos (even if she protested), and confessed sooner.
Then again, if Antonio had successfully taken down R. J. in the first place, there would have been nothing to confess— no accidental murder of Ben Davidson, no one night stand with Liz, no huge secret.
In fact, Antonio was sure they would have been married and working on kid number two. Keri would also be writing another article for journals and remain everyone's favorite professor at Llanview University. Often, he missed visiting her in her office, room 450. He missed her love notes, her way with words, watching her teach. He thought they had forever.
All ruined simply because a man didn't want his daughter with his sworn enemy— a police officer.
Antonio's mother came to see Keri's incredible character only for R. J. not to give Antonio the same courtesy.
Pathetic.
"Often, I keep thinking if I tried harder—" Antonio begins.
"It wasn't your fault," Keri assures him. "I kept trusting in someone who didn't deserve it. I named our daughter after that man."
Antonio grimaces and balls his fists anew, finding words difficult to utter.
"You ended us three times," he says. "You promised me that you would never leave me like the others. You did anyway. The first and second— I thought I could handle you continuing to choose him over me. The third was the hardest. I kept thinking you would return to town someday, that you would forgive me, and that we would eventually become the family, get married. When I heard that both you and my baby—our baby— had died, my heart dissolved into nothing."
"Oh Antonio," she sobs out, hugging him, causing the hammock to rock. "I never thought I could be so cruel. I should have allowed myself—"
"Shhh. He took advantage of your goodness, twisted it to his sick purpose."
"In the end, turning me into him."
"You're not him. Never him. I knew beneath your hurt was the woman I met and fell in love with, the woman I asked to marry me."
The warm Hawaiian sun kisses the doomed figures lying together quietly, each reminiscing on their short lived coupledom. They were wearing the same clothes from the departure, shedding adjacent tears for what should have been. Antonio gently cups Keri's heart-shaped face, smells and touches her soft, fragrant hair, his ravenous eyes attempting to place her wondrous perfection in every inch of his memory. He wants to frame her, give this lasting gift to Jamie because he knows that their daughter will mirror her mother in all the ways that matter.
Antonio also vows that R. J.'s influence will not affect Jamie as it did Keri.
"I remember telling Nora that my head was too far in books than to notice when men were interested in me," Keri sighs. "I didn't think... I always thought I might be alone. I didn't mind it, being so invested in my research. Then I saw you at the coffee shop my first day in Llanview, a handsome man. I thought, 'could he ever be interested in a bookworm like me?'"
She laughs and shakes her head at the memory, her cheeks containing a slight blush.
"Keri," Antonio breathes. "I bet all the men who ever met you wanted to collapse at your feet and spill sonnets. You just didn't pay attention. You do have the tendency to overlook certain things."
"Like my father?"
"No. I don't mean him. I mean, romance. I asked you to coffee many times."
"Even though it was against the rules?"
"Yes, but you had to notice the attention you get. I saw how people looked at you everywhere we went— on campus, at restaurants, here in Hawaii. You're a magnet, a catch. I was lucky to have you."
Keri tenderly strokes his warm hand, yearning for him anew.
"If I could, I would have named her Belle," he whispers in her ear.
"For beauty?" She asks.
"Yes— beautiful like her mother."
They lie still, clasping fingers. He hates that hers are frozen icicles, a vicious reminder that this is not real.
"Tu no eres solamente parte de mi vida, pero eres parte de mi alma," he says.
"You're a part of my life, you're a part of my soul?" She asks.
"You remembered."
"I also remember te amo."
"Te amo too."
"Really? After everything?"
"After everything."
"Thank you, Antonio."
"No, thank you, Keri. You have given me the world. Promise me that you will be at peace."
"I promise."
Keri closes her eyes, finding the poignant serenity that she sought in Antonio. She can feel herself slipping, feel her intuition announce that this solace would be ending very soon— a jarring difference from their violent earthy encounter that she regrets with her whole heart.
"How long do we have?" Antonio asks, holding her closer, pressing his lips at the top of her head.
"Not long enough I'm afraid," Keri replies.
She wishes to be tied to his strong arms forever, that they could make love once more. She will miss his handsome countenance, his many hairstyles, his voice, his Spanish, his cooking, his hugs and kisses, and his dancing. He always protected her and she regrets not doing the same for him.
"With us, we were never granted enough time," Antonio says.
"No," Keri agrees. "We weren't."
"I'm sorry."
"Me too. So, so sorry."
/
In Antonio's Llanview apartment— a tiny place that was formerly her second escape from the world— an ethereal ghost Keri watches her lost family sadly, tears spilling down her cheeks, her splintered, unbeaten heart shattering into tiny shards.
A headache ridden, sleepless Antonio places the milagro in Jamie's chubby finger and admires the way it looks against his daughter's golden brown skin. Her big umber eyes gaze between him and the jewel in wonder, reminding him of when he gave the gift to Keri before the phony charges trial. Regrets come crashing into him, the heated words they exchanged in the previous night before her death. He still cannot believe the permanent ending. That she is truly gone. An exceptional woman that he thought was his soulmate.
"Your mother loved you very much," Antonio says to Jamie, choking on the words.
He knows he had a deep, complex dream, but recalls none of it. His heart tells him he must remember, but his brain tells him to move on, to live for his little girl right now.
Keri knows she's made the right decision in scarring R. J.'s perception of her. He realizes how foolish he's been for keeping them apart, that his torment ruptured her psychological, emotional, and mental state of mind.
She's wracked with extreme despair and guilt, slowly blowing a goodbye kiss to her baby and her ex-fiancé.
It's over now.
When she returns to where she must remain a spirit, Liz's comforting embrace awaits her.