DAYS: Maggie Is Innocent
■ Unaware that she did not cause the Mother’s Day car crash, Maggie can’t come to terms with everything she’s done to her loved ones and prepares to end her life. “Maggie feels that she’s let everybody down,” summarizes her portrayer, Suzanne Rogers. “Obviously, that’s not how she ever saw herself, that she would take anyone’s life. She thought she would be a beacon in Victor’s life, but she let him down. She let Sarah down, and she killed her own granddaughter. She doesn’t think she has anything to live for. She feels it would be better if she was out of [her family’s] lives than in their lives.”
Victor, meanwhile, reads Maggie’s farewell letter, realizes what his wife has planned, and sends Xander to stop her. Xander races to get to Maggie, but it appears it’s too late. He finds her hanged in her cell. “Xander gets the sheets off Maggie’s neck and lays her on the ground,” notes Rogers, whose character is initially unresponsive. Then, fortunately, he manages to get her breathing.
“The next time you see Maggie, she’s in the prison infirmary,” explains the actress. “Xander tells her that she didn’t kill anyone, but she’s not sure he’s telling her the truth. So many lies have passed. So many half-truths have been told. Part of her is hoping what he’s telling her is the truth, but she dares to believe it.”
Soon Kayla and Will arrive and explain that Orpheus and Evan framed Maggie for the accident. Maggie is emotionally overwhelmed as she realizes that she didn’t kill Adrienne and her grandchild. “The white light finally hits Maggie,” says Rogers. “She was ready to take her own life. The worst of the worst drove her to that point. Then, all of the sudden, the curtain goes up and she’s okay. She’s not the awful person she built herself up in her mind to be. She’d been holding her breath for months. Now, all of a sudden, she can exhale. She realizes she didn’t do it. It’s such a relief that all of this was just a really bad episode in her psyche.”
Later, Sarah goes to the prison, where she and Maggie have an emotional and cathartic reunion. “Seeing Sarah, there’s a part of Maggie that thinks, ‘How could I have considered taking myself away from this beautiful daughter and leaving her alone in this world?’ ” shares Rogers. “To me, that’s kind of what [that scene] was all about. That’s what makes Maggie feel so badly, that she had contemplated doing that. And Maggie also admits how hard it was living with herself, when she thought she’d hurt Sarah.”
In the end, mother and daughter finally reconcile. “They hug and, at that moment, all is forgiven between them,” sums up Rogers. “But it’s going to be hard moving forward.”