IN THE WOODCUTTER'S COTTAGE AT MAISON BLANCHE:

“I can’t do this,” Sami whimpered as Lexie implored her to push. “I can’t.”

“Oh, yes you can,” E.J. said, hustling back to Sami’s bedside and taking her hand in his. “You’re Samantha Gene Brady. There’s nothing you can’t do.”

Sami offered a grimacing smile in response to the flattery and began pushing with all her might.

“That’s it,” E.J. said, biting his lip as Sami’s grip squeezed uncomfortably tight around the hand he had used to knock Lucas unconscious just a few minutes before.

But E.J. knew whatever discomfort he felt was about a million times less than what it must have been for Sami in childbirth.

“You’re almost there,” Lexie told her.

“You’ve been saying that for hours,” Sami snapped and collapsed back into the bed to rest after another round of contractions passed.

“Well you’ve been almost there for hours,” E.J. quipped with a sly grin on his face that prompted a smile back from Sami even though she didn’t much feel like grinning. “It’ll be all right, darling. When our child is ready to meet us, he’ll come.”

And so the labor went on with Sami pushing, E.J. supporting and Lexie coaching until just before dawn, when with one final push Sami’s child, a son, and the first Brady-DiMera baby, was born.

The baby let out a spirited cry almost immediately and Lexie cut the umbilical cord and took him away to the sink to be cleaned while E.J. followed the babe with his eyes filled with so much joy he didn’t think he could stand it, yet still he remained at Sami’s bedside holding her hand.

“It’s a boy,” Lexie told them. “A happy and healthy boy.”

Suddenly, Lexie was no longer at Maison Blanche as her thoughts drifted back to Salem and her own boy, Theo, who she had neglected far too long. But she couldn’t think about that as she wrapped the newly clean baby in a towel.

“It’s over?” Sami asked, somewhat delirious and completely exhausted.

E.J. laughed.

“No, darling. The fun is just beginning,” E.J. said. “But your labor is most certainly over. How are you feeling?”

Sami frowned at first but then her eyes caught Lexie walking toward her carrying the swaddled child, which she then laid in her arms.

“I feel much better now,” Sami said staring at the baby and then looking at his father with a smile. “Much, much better.”

“Well, I think my work here is done so I’ll leave you too alone while I get some fresh air,” Lexie said, as she was filled with shame and regret for all the time she had missed being there for Theo as a loving mother back in Salem when all these months she thought it more important to be an obedient daughter and try to secure his legacy as a DiMera in Maison Blanche.

Lexie stifled tears as she opened the door to the cottage and stepped outside.

“So you checked and he has all ten fingers and all ten toes, right?” E.J. said, smiling but eyeing the child impatiently.

“E.J., do you want to hold him?” Sami asked with a weary sigh but a sly chuckle.

“Well, if you insist,” E.J. said smiling from ear to ear.

E.J. cradled the child in his arms and then stood up gently rocking him and whispering gentle words of welcome to the world.

“Oh, he’s so little. I can’t believe how small he is. It’s so remarkable,” E.J. said turning his attention back to Sami. “Samantha, have you thought of any names for him yet – for our son?”

“Well, I have been trying to think up a good name for our son, and I’m not sure how you feel about this, but I’d like to name him after someone in my family,” Sami said.

“Oh, what name were you thinking, sweetheart,” E.J. asked nonchalantly.

“I want our son to be named Roman, after my father,” Sami said pausing. “And DiMera, after yours.”

E.J. said nothing for a moment, but just stared.

“Well, if you think that’s the best thing I…” E.J. said before being interrupted.

“Look, this child is a Brady and a DiMera,” Sami said flatly. “We can’t ignore it. We can’t ignore the way that our families have been at each other’s throats for decades. But if we want this feud to stop and if we don’t want this child to suffer from it the way that both of us have, I think it best we acknowledge it, so that neither family holds the other half of his blood against him.”

“You’re right, darling,” E.J. said to Sami before turning his attention back to the child. “I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough, but I just want to be the first to tell you what an amazing mother you have, Mr. Roman DiMera.”

OUTSIDE THE WOODCUTTER'S COTTAGE AT MAISON BLANCHE:

Celeste walked over to the ashes of Maison Blanche and began wandering through smoldering rubble leaving Tony and Anna to sit alone with their backs to the cottage staring at the heap where the stately mansion once stood.

Anna sat with her arms folded, so that the engagement ring on her left ring finger glistened in the moonlight and caught Tony’s eye.

“I wish that you wouldn’t have pulled me out of the way of the fire,” Tony said finally, breaking the heavy silence.

“I wish that the fire had never started in the first place, Tony,” Anna said bitterly. “I wish that John and Marlena and Roman were still alive. Even Stefano, too. I wish that you had never become so much like him that this all might happen.”

“Contessa, don’t you think I wish all that, too?” Tony said, using his favorite pet nickname for his ex-wife.

Tony turned to look at her, yet Anna bashfully turned her head afraid that even in the darkness before the coming dawn he might see the tears dripping down her face.

“Hey,” Tony said. “Look at me… as hard as I know it is for you to look at what I’ve become.”

Tony sighed.

“If only we had never been torn apart, my love,” Tony said. “I tried so hard to move on, thinking you were so happy in London. I tried to move on with Kristen and when that failed miserably I had no one. No one except Stefano…”

“But Tony I wasn’t all that happy in London,” Anna said, cutting him off. “I almost came back, once, but I had heard you were with Kristen and so I stayed away and tried so hard to forget you. I had heard from Carrie that you had been involved in some horrible things in Salem but I told her that couldn’t be ‘my Tony’ and so when I heard you were released and that job came up at Countess Wilhelmina I decided to see for myself.”

“And you found out I was no longer your Tony,” Tony said in exasperation. “I was Stefano’s Tony.”

“Well what Tony are you now?” Anna asked. “Now that Stefano’s gone.”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Oh, Anna, I wish things were different. If only our child had lived, things could have been so very different.”

“What do you mean, Tony?” Anna said touching her stomach instinctively as she was reminded once again of the grief she had never totally set aside from when a boating accident caused the miscarriage of their child so many years ago.

“Even if I wouldn’t have had you all these years, I could have lived for that child instead of my own father,” Tony said. “I could have been a better man for him.”

But before Anna could respond the two of them were startled by the sound of a baby crying.

“Oh, thank God,” Anna sighed with relief. “Her baby made it.”

Tony and Anna looked at each other and knew each was thinking of their lost child, even though neither said a word.

Their silent stare was broken, however, when the door pushed open and Lexie stepped outside.

“Whew!” Lexie said wiping her brow. “I didn’t think that poor child was ever going to come out. But finally that baby did and not a moment too soon, for Sami’s sake and mine.”

“Well, how it is it?” Anna asked cheerily. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“It’s a boy,” Lexie said with a weary sigh. “A healthy and happy boy.”

“That’s great news, Alexandra,” Celeste said with little enthusiasm as she walked toward her daughter.

Lexie looked beyond her mother to see the ash and rubble where Maison Blanche once stood.

“Oh dear,” Lexie said hysterically. “The mansion is gone. It was here and now it’s gone. All gone. Did everyone get out all right? Did they?”

“I’m sorry, Alexandra,” Celeste said. “But Marlena and John and Roman and your father, Stefano, all were consumed by the inferno. I only wish I had given some warning sooner when my tarot told me that something like this would happen, although even the cards said only two souls would die.”

And just then the four of them were startled to hear a stirring in the rubble.