Volume I, Issue ii

October 1998

Now and Then: Laura's Confessions by Amy McWilliams

Luke: "Once upon a time...there was a beautiful maiden named Laura. She was the finest babe in the kingdom. She had hair like spun gold, skin like porcelain, and eyes so blue they would pierce the armor of your heart. Every king, prince, and hotshot in the land woulda hip-hopped over hot coals to make her his own. But as it turned out, the beautiful maiden...had a mind of her own. And she married a blacksmith. Well, the kingdom was in an uproar; how could she do that? This blacksmith wasn't rich; he wasn't...smooth; he wasn't cultured. He wasn't even particularly good lookin'. He had a rakish charm? And they were married. And he was very very happy. She had a heart that was as big as the whole wide world. Not too long after that, they had a baby...the princess Lesley Lu. Oh, she was a prize. She was spectacular, Lesley Lu. The night she was born, all the creatures of the forest--the cats and the dogs and the...frogs and the butterflies and the caterpillars and the...birds--everybody got together and danced all night long; the stars and the moon got involved.... It wasn't until dawn, when the sun chased them all away, that they finally stopped their celebrating. You know why? Because the princess Lesley Lu made everybody feel like dancin'."
Laura: "Is there a referral?"
Nurse: "No ma'am."
Laura: "There has to be. Please, check again."
Nurse: "Uh, ma'am..."
Laura: "Please!"
Luke: "Then one day, the princess Lesley Lu wandered off into a forest and she got...lost. But...it wasn't a scary forest; it didn't have any of those...those, uh, apple throwin' tree toads that you hear so much about. No. It...it, it had some very wonderful things. It, it had three silver birds that warbled just like the Supremes, singin' nothing but heartache. A lotta wonderful things like that. It was so wonderful that the princess Lesley Lu didn't even know she was lost. But the blacksmith and the beautiful maiden did. And they declared it very uncool...very uncool. So the blacksmith pledged that he would go off into the forest and find Lesley Lu. And he said he didn't care what it took. He would wade through swamps up to his waist; he would fight off the dreaded swamp spuds; he would...he would slay any dragon in his way. And that's just what he did. Just what he did. Because he found the beautiful princess Lesley Lu and he brought her home. And when...he looked into her sweet puddin' face...he scooped her up into his arms...and she was safe. She was safe."

Sometimes people ask me why it is I adore Luke so much--why, despite his flaws and his mistakes, I can still defend him. This is my answer. I started watching GH in the summer of 1996--July 1st, to be exact, just after Summer session was over and my grading was done. I had been an off-and-on viewer of Days of Our Lives for just about 10 years (mostly off, actually, but I kept up), and that show had reached a new low for me. It wasn't my style, wasn't my taste. I heard that Stephen Nichols was starting on GH the end of June/beginning of July, so I tried it. I was immediately hooked by the Spencer/Cassadine story, and while I tried to resist, I had to quickly admit that Stefan was not my favorite. It was Luke.

This scene played on either the second or third day I watched--the 2nd or 3rd of July, 1996. And although I've had people loan me tapes of much of GH from the years immediately previous to when I started watching, though I've actually had the thrill of seeing some of the Luke and Laura storyline from the very beginning just after the rape, this scene is still my favorite Luke scene. It's colored the way I see him and the way I react to him from the very beginning. I love him for his hard edges and darkness, for his family loyalty and insecurities. I love all that because I first loved this Luke, the one turning to Laura to check on that rakish charm, the one telling the story about those apple throwin' tree toads you hear so much about (that may very well be the line that made me fall in love with the character). And Anthony Geary's performance of this scene was no small part of that.

I digress, however, from the purpose of this piece. I include this scene not only for self-indulgent reasons. First, it begins the intertextuality that I want to talk about in these scenes. Luke describes Laura's hair as "spun gold," which is just the metaphor he used to describe it as he related the rape to Lucky. It also serves to show the Spencer family before the return of the Cassadines. Luke was confident in Laura's love and in the thought that they had defeated Frank Smith and had settled in Port Charles to be happy. No matter how much he chafed under that very happiness at times, it was want he wanted nonetheless. Yet the phone call Laura received about Lulu's bone marrow donor--the donor she feared would not remain anonymous and at a distance (she had been trying to get in touch with Helena to have her son by Stavros Cassadine (we were then told) tested to save Lulu's life)--intersected Luke's story, much as her upcoming confession would slice into their happiness.

I'm going to gloss over the details, but because of Bobbie's hope that the anonymous donor was somehow her daughter, given up for adoption when she was born, as well as because of Laura's own knowledge that Stefan had returned to town and that the secret was bound to come out, Laura knew that she had to tell Luke. He knew she needed to tell him something important, and he took her home. The setting of this first confession was brilliant; Luke and Laura went home, not to the living room or kitchen, the scenes of family life, but upstairs to their bedroom, as if they wanted to get as far away from the outside world as possible. The bedroom served as a place designated for the two of them apart from Lucky; it was a space of intimacy. That Laura would have to tell the story of a child born out of another sexual relationship in that space highlighted the effect of the confession--of what Luke might very well see as a betrayal, her keeping this a secret all these years.

Luke: "Are you tryin' to get away from me?"
Laura: "No. I'm tired. That's all."
Luke: "I've been trying to remember the last time you lied to me. Or would I even know?"

Suspicion had already set in. He knew that she was hiding something, and had been for the past little while. Oddly enough, his first question was the very same accusation he's just made to her in the most recent confession:

Luke: "Are you in love with someone else?"
Laura: "No."
Luke: [sigh of relief] "Ok. Then anything else you can tell me; you know that."
Laura: "I wanna tell you...I've wanted to tell you for a long time. The more I put it off the more I...dreaded it."
Luke: "Then let it end now. I'm here, I'm listening, and I love you. You already know who the donor was, don't you?"
Laura: "Yes."
Luke: "Was it Bobbie's daughter? Then who?"
Laura: "My son."

The question of whether or not she was in love with somebody else was and is paramount to Luke. His greatest fear is that she won't love him--because of something he had done or does, because she doesn't need him anymore because they are now safe, etc. He doesn't believe himself worthy of her love, and at the same time he stakes his entire soul on it. She is his gravity, he has said to her recently, his angel, his conscience. Anything else she could tell him is so much less than that because he couldn't conceive of anything, whether long term or short, that could be worse. Yet I think that it was from this minute, this moment of confession in which she opened up to him that period of her life about which she had been lying all this time, that he started wondering if she had loved somebody else. First, maybe, it was Stavros he wondered about. Later it would be Stefan.

This is not only about Luke, though, despite my own bias. This retelling is very much about Laura and what it took for her to tell Luke the truth. She lied to him out of love--I firmly believe that--but also because I think she too fears that she will lose his love. Her whole life she's been screwing things up and hurting the people she cares about, and she fears doing it again. While we usually see her as the one confident that their love and marriage will last forever, we have had many times when she wasn't at all sure. She has feared that Luke would die at an enemy's hands; she has feared that he wouldn't forgive her for the things she has done. I find it interesting that, recently, we've had a few scenes in which Luke has realized how afraid he makes Laura--how she fears his leaving, how that fear forces her to keep secrets. Perhaps that started here as well.

Luke: "You have a son? Who's not my son?"
Laura: "I'm sorry."
Luke: "Don't. Don't. You can be sorry about a traffic ticket, not that. What are you...what are you saying? That the same thing happened to you as happened to Bobbie?"

I loved Luke's explanation of why he never says he's sorry (he gave it in the scenes in which they discussed the rape), and that reasoning surfaces here as well. There are things you can't fix.

Laura: "No. It wasn't like that."
Luke: "Well, it had to be before we met. Was it Scott's? David Hamilton?"
Laura: "No. It wasn't before we met. Luke...you...I told you what happened; I told you what they did to me. They gave me every single proof that you had been killed."
Luke: "You had Stavros Cassadine's child?"
Laura: "I was married to him Luke; for all I knew it was a legal marriage. In exchange for an hour three or four times a week when...I would have to feel his breath on my neck or feel the weight of his body on top of me I was allowed to take a bath alone. I was allowed to go for a walk by myself, to...to go as far up into the hills as I wanted to, alone, and I could...scream as loud as I wanted to and no one could hear me. That was...everything to me at that time. That was really the best I could hope for. Until I found out about you."
Luke: "You saw a newspaper?"
Laura: "About your election. I did, Luke. I never lied to you back then; I told you the truth about everything. I...oh god...god...of course I lied. I...I lied in the things that I didn't say, b.... I don't know where the newspaper came from. Obviously someone intended for me to see it. It was probably Helena or.... What does it matter. What does it matter. My son was only a few weeks old at the time, and I think that that's probably why I was able to escape. Helena had gotten her grandson; she wanted to be rid of me. She thought I was gone for good; she was more optimistic than I was. I wasn't...thinking that far ahead; I wasn't thinking at all, except that my husband...my real husband...was still alive. Luke, the day of your inauguration was the sweetest moment of my life. You were so proud and so handsome and everyone who loved you was around you, including me. Even though you didn't know it. Luke? You didn't know this at the time, but I didn't even intend to stay; I didn't even allow myself to think that far."
Luke: "Because you knew Stavros would come after you, and he did."
Laura: "I would have gone back even if he hadn't come looking for me."
Luke: "Why? Because of the boy?"
Laura: "Because I knew what I had done. I...I lived with a man that you despised. I married him by my own choice and I had his baby. And how could you ever look at me with anything but disgust? How could...I ever ask you to forgive that much?"

Luke didn't want to believe that this was something that had happened since they met, and he looked for every reason it might not be. Laura then began her tale, giving every detail unprompted, hoping that Luke would understand if she told him everything. Her description of their reunion was amazing. I've often argued, however, that Laura didn't choose to come back to Luke. She wanted to see for herself that he was alive, and he saw her and that made her choice for her. I was very moved by her explanation as to why she hadn't planned to stay. It wasn't for her son, though that was a factor, and it wasn't because of Stavros, as much as Luke would like for it to have been. It was because of her own guilt. That guilt kept her from telling the truth to Scotty about the rape, and it's kept her quiet about this for almost fifteen years. That's very much in character for Laura, I think, and the thought of the pain she must have suffered had to move Luke--they were both in tears by the end of the conversation.

Luke: "Why wasn't I given the chance?"
Laura: "I wanted to tell you, Luke. I've wanted to tell you every single day of our life together. But it was a risk that I couldn't take."
Luke: "Why? What did you stand to lose, Laura? Except maybe my trust?!"
Laura: "Your life."

He was still upset at her lack of trust in him. It seemed as though she hadn't trusted their love enough to let him decide whether or not to forgive her. In this confession, she had a reason--Helena's threats. Currently, though, she doesn't have that excuse. She has lied out of fear of his reaction and out of guilt, but she didn't give him the chance to forgive, and I think that's a cumulative effect. If she had told all at this point, perhaps Luke would have taken it all in and forgiven her. But this dragged out into a series of confessions: the first in 1983 when she came back from the dead, the second in 1996 (which was actually several scenes; note that she doesn't mention Stefan anywhere here), and the third in 1998. By the time Luke got to her final secret, he couldn't trust her, because even then she didn't volunteer all the information. For her part, Laura's fear grew and grew as the stakes grew higher.

Laura: "But you wanted me back, and that was something I'd never expected. I felt...soiled and...weak, second hand. But you only looked at me with love. And that rebuilt me: believing more in what you saw in me than in what I saw in myself. For that, I would lay my life for you...without a second thought. At first it was easy not to tell you that I had had a child because I knew that you would move heaven and earth to get the child back for me. I also knew that Stavros would kill to prevent it. But once he was gone, it seemed possible. Helena hated me; why would she want my son?"
Luke: "Because your son is a Cassadine."
Laura: "I was at my mother's house when I got the call. Maybe I should have known that that was a warning; maybe I should have known that that was where she'd strike first but...Helena was incoherent. She was screaming at me in...in Russian and Greek, calling me a murderer whore. I tried to placate her; I tried to tell her how Stavros really died, but she just kept screaming at me "An eye for an eye; a son for a son." She said that if I made any attempt at all to take my child back, to see him, to speak to him, to even let anyone know that he existed..."
Luke: "I would have protected you from her."
Laura: "She said that out of respect for Stavros she wouldn't take my life. Instead she said she would do what she claimed I had already done to her. She would take my husband, my sons, systematically take everyone that I had ever loved. Luke, she was vicious, she was...she was mad. I...I believed that she was capable. So I made the promise to her. I told myself that I would bide my time, that she was old, that she wasn't well, that she wouldn't live forever. But...the thought of an innocent little baby being raised by that evil vicious woman was just more than I could bear. I had to see him; I couldn't bear it. And my mother is dead because I dared to try!"

Luke: "Is it possible you're giving Helena just a little more credit than she deserves? Lesley died in a car accident. Helena couldn't control the weather, the ice, the visibility."
Laura: "Do you remember where we were?"
Luke: "Ya, we were in an airport in Northern Europe somewhere. Rick called and had us paged."
Laura: "Cairo. We were on our way to Cairo and there was a mix-up with the tickets."
Luke: "Right. You had to take a different plane than me, and you had a long...layover somewhere."
Laura: "Athens. It wasn't a mistake. I managed to reach the one person on the island that I could always trust, but before we even left the airport we got the call from Rick. And at first I thought just like you, 'How could have Helena had anything to do with this?' But when I stepped out of customs in Athens, there she was. Smiling that hideous, gloating smile. I coulda killed her with my bare hands; I don't know why I didn't. It was no accident. Someone purposefully drove my mother off the road. Helena said she thought it would be a good reminder to me, to be motherless like my son. And it was at that point that I realized that I had to wall off that part of my life permanently, never to see my child again, never to speak of him, never to let you see me think of him. Because if I failed, you might be next. Luke...if what I did was wrong, and if you can't forgive me, then please tell me what should I have done instead?"

I include this long section of the tale for the benefit of people who weren't watching back then. The story of Lesley's death was incredibly effective, and provided an answer to all of Luke's questions. The last line above, when Laura said that she couldn't even let Luke see her think of her son, was very powerful for me. The rewriting of Luke and Laura's past has given some people fits, and I'm perfectly willing to grant them that the fact I started watching with this storyline may make me more accepting of it. Yet this explanation makes sense to me, and to other members of the editorial board who have been watching since the beginning of Luke and Laura. All of this seems in character, and the almost three year tale of the one thing that has the power to break up Luke and Laura has been amazing to me. Luke and Laura are a wonderful creation, but their relationship isn't perfect. They aren't perfect. And as much as I enjoy seeing them united against the world, an exploration of those problems that could avoid looking at until they were settled after all of these years fascinates me.

Two brief comments: I loved that Laura simply ignored Luke's comment that her son was a Cassadine, and I actually laughed at his assertion that she couldn't control the weather....

Laura: "Oh, God, I wonder..."
Luke: "There's no use in wondering, angel. 'Til we get back to the hospital we won't know if...the boy is hangin' around or anything else about him."
Laura: "That wasn't what I was gonna say. I wonder if he will ever look at me with the same love and trust he had for me only a few hours ago."

We had, at the end of these scenes, the beginning of Luke's intolerance and hatred of Nikolas. He didn't see the child as a child, but as a Cassadine--and Laura's tale did little to foster sympathy in him for any member of this clan. For he has heard about even more pain that they have caused his wife--pain that he couldn't protect her from, just as he couldn't protect her from the kidnapping, from Stavros, from his own rape of her. He failed her, and Nikolas is a reminder.

These scenes of Laura confessing to Luke were intercut with the scenes of the first encounter with Lucky and Nikolas. Nikolas announced himself to Lucky, got in a few low blows against the son his mother chose to stay with, and left Lucky in great pain. I'm not saying Nikolas wasn't justified in his emotion, but at this point, all my sympathy was with Lucky. He went home and asked his mother to tell him that this boy was lying.

Laura had to retell the story again and explain everything to Lucky, or try to. Lucky was angry and didn't want to listen, and Luke told him to sit and be quiet and listen to everything his mother had gone through. That simple move--a move not to cause Laura any more pain than she'd already experienced--stands as the main difference between that confession and this. Then, he felt enough guilt himself--at not protecting her, at not even knowing her pain, at causing her to fear telling him--that he was willing to bide his time, calm down, and decide what he thought later. It was about Laura, and he could protect her now where he couldn't then.

In the following episodes, we had the family going back to the hospital to check on Lulu. Laura saw Nikolas in the hallway but he disappeared onto the elevator and Luke and Laura running down the stairs couldn't catch him. Lucky was scared that Laura would bring Nikolas into the family; Luke said that would never happen if he had anything to say about it. Luke protected Laura, but he was also determined to protect his son. Finally, there was a scene where I think Laura was going to tell Luke about Stefan, but instead, she repeated herself about choosing to marry Stavros. He assured her that it wasn't a choice and that she was not to blame. She couldn't confess her affair then; he couldn't bear to suspect it.

Laura never confessed Stefan then. Luke found out about him through a visit to a very ill Helena (those were delicious scenes, by the way, but Helena and Luke are for another article) and confronted her about not telling him. Even then she didn't tell him the whole truth; she told him enough to explain her omission, and then we were off on the roller coaster of a feud reborn between these two families.

Now, in the confession we saw in August, things have changed. Luke has suspected this affair for some time, and the fact that Laura hasn't confessed it in all those other chances may have added to that--and to his reaction. For this time, he wasn't understanding, nor did he stifle or delay his anger. He wasn't fighting for his family; his family is fragmented, primarily because of his own confession to Lucky about the rape. And that thing that he fears most in the world--that Laura would love somebody else--has come to be a reality.

This confession took place in the living room, in the scene of Luke's confession to Lucky about the rape. This is the heart of their home, the shared room where family and friends gather. The choice was as appropriate as in the last confession. This could not have taken place in the bedroom; we haven't seen that set for ages. That, in itself, is a statement on the Spencer's marriage--on their all-but-severed intimacy, on their distance. Their discussion happened in the club office, apart from their home and family just as the rape happened. But this confession was an intrusion into family, and the location helped show that.

Laura: "I'm not gonna...waste our time asking where you've been over the past couple of days. I'm just so glad that you're home...so we can start...dealing with all of this."
Luke: "Sorry I was out of touch. Took me a little time to get used to the idea of my wife in bed with Stefan Cassadine."

Laura: "I'm not in bed with anybody but you. Yes, I...I testified for Stefan, and...and right here in this room I tried to tell you about it ahead of time to prepare you for what I was going to say. But...you wouldn't listen to me, and then you left. You said to do what I had to do anyway."
Luke: "What you had to do. God, the things my wife has had to do. The day we hacked our way through the rape, Laura, you said something about...if we added up everything that you had done wrong since then-is...is this what you were th...thinking? This? These lies? This betrayal? Were you thinkin' about every time you made a fool out of me?!"

Because it's his worst fear, it was the only thing he suspected as their conversation began. He thought that she was having an affair with Stefan in the present, and that it had begun back on the island. This was such a nice reference to their mutual confessions about the rape when they made peace with it, and I was actually happy to see that things weren't going to be wrapped up that easily between them about the rape (Luke still carries that guilt, as I've said, or at least that motivation).

Laura: "Oh, Luke, don't you think I wanted to tell you? I did. I went to the ball at Wyndemere because Nikolas had been to see me in North Carolina. I hid that from you because you hate Nikolas because he is a Cassadine. But that is what he is. And I love you both. I'm not good at splitting my heart and keeping one son separate from the rest of the family. I'm so not good at it that I make mistakes sometimes, big ones, and I made a mistake that night. But you know, you're just so inflexible when it comes to the Cassadines. There's no room for me to make a mistake and admit it. Luke, I tried to tell you that I was gonna testify for Stefan and that there were things that I had kept from you. But you said that you couldn't bear to hear one more word about my other son and to leave you out of it, and...and then you just left. I mean, so when do you wanna know and when do you not wanna know? You know, you seem to want it both ways. I don't know how to do that. No, no, I'm wrong. You...you don't want it both ways, do you? You just want me to have absolutely nothing to do with Nikolas. You wish that he was never, ever born. Well, he was. And I love him."
Luke: "Look, stop it. Stop--stop trying to turn this into something that it isn't. In court, under oath, the DA asked you if you had slept with Cassadine. Stefan, not Stavros, because we all know you did that. And I waited. And I waited. For you to look at me, for our...eyes to meet or something so that we could share a wink or a laugh or a smirk because the idea was so absurd. But you didn't look at me because you couldn't. And there's only one reason for that. Because when you said that you hadn't had sexual relations with Stefan Cassadine, you were lying. You had an affair with him, didn't you? Say it!"

I was so happy to see Luke acknowledge and put a stop to their pattern of talking about their problems in terms of Nikolas. For a while now, Luke has let all discussions turn to Nikolas because he hasn't wanted to ask the hard question--hasn't wanted to find out that his suspicions are correct. This time, however, she was hoping she could get away with it again and make this about Nikolas, but it wasn't, and they both knew it.

Laura: "A long, long time ago, yes, I had an affair with Stefan."

This was so much like Luke's confession of the rape to Lucky, both with this opening line and with Luke's demand for details. The staging was also consistent: Luke sat on the sofa to tell the story of that night to Lucky, he sat on the sofa to hear Laura's confession here, and he sat on their bed after hearing Laura's confession that afternoon in 1996.

Laura: "I didn't tell you about the affair because it began and ended when I thought you were dead. It never would have happened otherwise. And also because I knew how you'd react. I knew that you'd never forgive me. And that you might retaliate. Nikolas' uncle...might die. You might end up paying. You see, both sides of my family could be destroyed. If you could just put yourself in my place for a second, can't you see why I didn't tell you?"

Again, it was her fear of his reaction that kept her from saying. But it wasn't because she feared his action against Stefan, it was because she feared him leaving her. She didn't say that, however, perhaps because she feared that he would take that as an accusation and perhaps because she can't speak what is her greatest fear--amazingly similar, and the irony is that it is their mutual fear of losing the other by their own fault that has driven them apart.

Luke: "I want specifics. I want to know when it started. I want to know where you and your brother-in-law met. Was there a special place? Was it a cove or on a boat or in a cave? And how did you keep it a secret from the brother that you'd married, the paranoid, homicidal...how? How? That must have taken incredible planning, a lot of guts, and motivation. You must have had a great deal of need. So no more lies. I want details."
Laura: "I don't wanna dredge up past history that's only going to hurt you, Luke. That's the reason..."
Luke: "Oh, come on, come on, come on. Confession's good for the soul. We've already found that out."
Laura: "Please don't make me do this. This is just ridiculous."

It was almost masochistic of Luke to demand such details, to tell her every single thing he had thought of while he had been away from the house. Yet he had to speak these things now because he had kept them silent for so long. Also, he wanted the whole truth--the answer to that long-asked and never-answered question, "Just how does it work between you and Stefan."

Luke: "Come on, Laura. Put some truth with your lies. All this time, I thought there was one undeniable fact that this marriage was based on--the foundation of this family. And it was a lie. All this time. All this time there's been another man between us..."
Laura: "What?"
Luke: "...and he's a Cassadine!
Laura: "No. Stop! Stop doing this! Don't--stop thinking these things. My god, Luke. All right, you want details; I'll give them to you. Turning to Stefan in Greece was a move to save my own sanity, to save my own life. You were right about Stavros. He was cruel. He was controlling. I made a bargain for my freedom and...in return, it meant that I had to go to his bed whenever he called. And I thought that you were dead. Luke, I wanted to be dead, too. My god! I wanted to be with you. But I couldn't do it. That affair with Stefan saved my life. But as soon as I found out that you were alive, I chose you."
Luke: "Oh, wait--no. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't say you chose me. I've been in a coma for a long time, but I'm awake now. This affair is still going on."
Laura: "No!"

I was hoping that Luke was going to go back to that 1996 confession and remind her that she had told him that she hadn't chosen to come back to him. He didn't, but he finally spoke the final accusation--that she was still sleeping with Stefan.

Luke: "You are still in love with him."
Laura: "No, Luke! No! No."
Luke: "Then if it isn't love, Laura...there's something more...like a son."
Laura: "Luke, wait a minute. Wait. Wait."

That was the worst he could imagine; that was the last lie he thought she was telling. Instead, he believed her protests, and it all came clear. Nikolas was Stefan's son. And perhaps that bond was worse to him than a sexual affair. It means that she will never be free of Stefan, or of her emotions for him. He knows first hand what it means to father a child with Laura, and the echo of his disappointment at not being the father of her first child comes up here even more strongly.

Luke left town after this confession, for the reasons I've discussed before, to lick his wounds, to decide what he wanted to do. In the meantime, we've begun an exploration of Laura's feelings for Stefan. I want Luke and Laura to come back together, but I think that she has to make the conscious choice that she never made. She had to decide to put Stefan behind her and let herself hope for forgiveness and a new life with Luke like she couldn't do back then. Most of all, she has to forgive herself, for she's carrying around the guilt of that affair and these lies with her just as Luke carries around his own guilt about the times he has failed to protect her.

We may yet get another confession from Laura. She may have to tell the story of the kiss she shared with Stefan, or of another affair. She had run out of secrets and lies with this last confession, even though she still didn't tell everything. Now she has another, and she has a choice to make between her two families.