Olivia gripped the steering wheel. Her knuckles were white and the muscles in her forearms ached. Her teeth were clenched. She knew if she loosened her grip on the wheel she'd begin pounding on it. She would pound on it and scream and cry and the world fall to pieces around her. She would not let that happen. She would not lose control like that. Not while driving. Not while Emma sat behind her. Not today. Not ever.
"Mom?" Emma's voice came tentatively.
"Yes, baby?" she replied, willing the sound of honest curiosity into her voice.
"Are we going home to see if Natalia's okay now?"
Olivia clenched her teeth harder and pushed on the steering wheel. I can do this. I can do this. "Emma, we talked about this already. We moved out of the farmhouse today. We're going to stay at The Beacon for a few days until we find a new home."
"Oh… okay," Emma said in a voice so small and sad Olivia felt pieces of the world start to fall around her. She pushed her eyes open as wide as they would go, took a deep breath, and willed away tears. No. No falling apart. Not now. I will be strong for her.
"Emma, sweetie, it'll be fun." Olivia reached a hand into the backseat and Emma grasped onto it with both hands. "We'll camp out on my bed. We'll get lots of room service and watch movies all night. Okay?"
"But if she's not marrying Frank why are we still moving out? Wont she get lonely without us?"
Olivia felt her daughter grasping her hand as tight as her small hands would allow. "I think," she paused as she one-handedly maneuvered the car into a parking space in The Beacon's lot. Once the car was parked, she turned around and faced Emma. "I think today was a very confusing day for everyone." Emma nodded in sad agreement and Olivia pushed a strand of hair from her daugher's face. "No one knows if Natalia's still going to get married to Frank, so I'm not really sure what's going to happen next. I wish I could tell you, but right now I don't exactly know. What I do know is, no matter what, we'll always be together, and I'll always…always love you." Emma smiled at that. Feeling relieved, Olivia gently tweaked her nose and was rewarded with tiny giggles. "What do you say we go inside and have some dinner? Then we can have some ice cream? Watch a movie?"
"Okay, I guess." Emma eyed her suspiciously. "Can we really have food on your bed?"
Olivia closed her eyes and laughed, she felt a weight slide from her shoulders. Not all the weight was gone, but it was enough to allow a truly genuine smile to grace her face.
"Of course we can. I own the place." She winked conspiratorially at her daughter. Emma giggled. "Now, how about we go inside? I don't know about you, but I'm ready to get this dress off."
"Aw, but I like my dress," Emma said, her voice sounding a lot happier, as she climbed out of the car. "I want to wear it every day! Can I?"
"Um, no. How about we save it for…" Olivia started to say the dress should be saved for when Frank and Natalia really do get married, but she couldn't say it. She didn't know if she couldn't finish the sentence because she believed the marriage would still happen, or because she believed it wouldn't. Both outcomes were overwhelming. Instead, she changed the subject to food and movies as she tried to keep up with the little girl who skipped away from her toward the wide doors of the Beacon.
Natalia paced the length of her kitchen. Her legs felt wobbly, but she couldn't sit down. She felt she didn't deserve the pleasure of sitting. She ran her hands along the length of the kitchen table and sighed. The table was empty. Earlier that day it had held piles of Olivia's things. It had been covered in Olivia. She pressed the palms of her hands against the cool wood as if touching the table could bring the feel of Olivia back to her. She stood there for a long moment, her eyes shut, picturing the woman in her head. She pictured her smiling and could see the edge of her teeth and the little crinkle in her nose. It was a flirty, adorable smile and Natalia found it amazingly comforting. For the first time in hours, she stopped thinking about the people she'd hurt in the past weeks, and how many she would hurt in the coming weeks. For the first time, she began thinking of ways to fix all the damage she'd done.
"Hey, Ma? You home yet?" Rafe called as he walked through the backdoor of the farmhouse.
"Rafe!" Natalia covered her mouth and moved toward her son. "I'm so sorry I left you at the church like that. I was just about to call you…"
"I got a ride with Buzz, but… I'm not the one you left. What happened back there?" Natalia looked at Rafe with such sadness he could feel his heart clenching in his chest. Seeing that look overwhelmed and scared him. "Hey, it'll be okay." He moved toward his mom and she wrapped her arms around him. "No one was mad or anything. I hear things like this happen all the time around here." He shrugged. He didn't even try to understand Springfield anymore.
"I don't know what happened, Rafe. I don't know. I just…. I couldn't," Natalia said, talking into her son's shoulder. She tried to will away the tears that were springing into her eyes, but she couldn't. Rafe was confused and frustrated and angry at himself because he had no idea what was going on with his mom. He had never in his life felt so out of touch with her, and he was sure she wouldn't be crying right now if he hadn't been stupid enough to land himself in jail.
"You did the right thing," Rafe said, knowing he was right. He may not know her reasons, but if there was one thing he knew about his mom, it was that she always did the right thing.
"Oh, you don't know that," Natalia said, pulling away.
"Yeah, I do, Ma. I figure you got cold feet or something? I mean, it was really fast, right? I wasn't that out of it, was I?"
"Cold feet?" Natalia said, feeling a little dazed.
"I mean, if you're not sure about something that big, you shouldn't do it."
Natalia gave her son a small nod. "Sit. I'll make you something to eat." Rafe took a breath to protest. His first reaction was to not bother his mom with cooking, but he remembered how she tended to talk a lot while she cooked. Plus, he was starving. He gave her a wide smile and sat down. Natalia returned the smile and spun toward the refrigerator.
"You don't know how much I've missed your cooking." Rafe said as he leaned his head on his fist and watched his mom move around the kitchen.
"And you don't know how much I've missed cooking for you," she said, moving behind Rafe and giving him a little squeeze of the shoulders.
"Tell me what's goin' on, Ma."
"Oh Rafe," Natalia sighed as she filled a pot with water. "Can't we just have dinner and not talk about it?"
"Oh no. You wouldn't let me get off that easy, so I ain't gonna let you off the hook either."
Natalia closed her eyes and laughed a little. "I don't even know where to start" she said, still facing the sink.
"The beginning might be a good place."
"But I don't know when it began," she turned around and the look on her face reminded Rafe of a wounded puppy. He jumped from his seat and put an arm around her.
"Hey. Sit down." He guided her toward a kitchen chair and gently pushed her into it.
"But I…" Natalia gestured toward the food she'd pulled from the refrigerator.
"We can eat after you tell me just what the heck is going on."
Natalia looked at her son for a long moment. What would he think? How would he react to the truth of the situation? How could she do this to him? He gave Gus's badge to Frank. She was going to break his heart if she told him the truth.
"No, I can't," she muttered, shaking her head and looking down at the kitchen table which seemed suddenly very large. She couldn't touch it.
"You can."
"But you love Frank, and I just hurt him so much. It's all such a mess. I messed everyone's life up." She began crying again.
"Love Frank?" Rafe couldn't help but laugh at that even though the sight of his mom's tears was breaking his heart. "Ma, I barely even know the dude. The only reason I care about him is because you love him." Natalia made a high-pitched whimper and covered her face with her hands. Rafe raised his eyebrows in surprise and understanding. "Aw, man." He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his hair. "You don't love him."
"I do!" Natalia protested. "I love him. I love his whole family." She wrung her hands in her lap and lowered her voice to a whisper. "I'm just not in love with him."
Rafe leaned back in his chair and observed his mom. Why hadn't he seen that earlier? It all seemed clear now that the words were out there.
"Then why were you going to marry him?"
"I don't know," Natalia said in a small voice.
"Ma, you have to know why you were getting married!" Rafe was getting a little impatient now. This was big. This was big and important… and downright weird. He wanted answers. "I know how important marriage is to you. I mean, you could have easily married some random loser when I was a kid if you just wanted a husband. What the heck is going on? I can't believe all this happened while I was gone. I should have been here." He pounded a fist down on the table in frustration.
"No, sweetie," she covered Rafe's fist with her hand. "Please, never think like that. This is something… It's important that I deal with this on my own now. Listen. All my life, or… well, all your life, I imagined that one day we'd live in a house like this." She waved her hand around and tried to steady her voice which was coming out in jagged waves. "In a house like this, with a man there to care for us, love us, and be a father to you. I wanted that so much, but I couldn't marry anyone else when I knew your real father was still out there somewhere… when I still loved him. And you know that's why I brought us here to Springfield. To give you back the father you never had… to try to give us the life we never had."
Rafe opened his fist and grasped his mom's hand. "And I'm grateful for that. I didn't get a lot of time with him, but it changed everything. You know that. There's nothing you could have done…"
Natalia broke him off with sharp nod. "I know that, but still… I still want to give you a family." She reached out and cupped his cheek in her hand. "You're still so young. You need people other than me in your life to guide and teach you."
"Ma, come on. I've made it this far and well… okay there's the whole jail thing, but I like to think I got what it takes in here…" He took his mom's hand, placed it over his heart and said, "to get where I need to get in life. And all I ever needed to help me learn that was you."
"You're so sweet," Natalia said with a little awe in her voice. He really had grown up to be a good man.
"So let me get this straight. You were gonna marry him because you wanted someone around the farmhouse to take care of us and give us more of a family feeling?" Natalia nodded a little and shrugged. That was a big part of it, anyway. Rafe looked at her for a moment and let out a confused laugh. "Well, if that's all you wanted, you should have let Olivia and little Emma stick around! The poor girl looked so disappointed when I told her I wasn't gonna be her bother."
Rafe laughed and expected his mom to join in. Instead, her face turned pale and she let go of his hand.
"I should get back to making dinner," she said, starting to stand up from her chair.
"Whoa. No," Rafe said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back down, "not so fast. What was that?"
"What was what?" Natalia asked lamely, looking like a scared rabbit ready to flee.
"If you want Olivia to move back in, you know I don't…"
"No!" Natalia said, her voice loud and raw. Rafe opened his mouth to speak, but was too confused to think of anything. "No. Olivia left already," Natalia said, as if that explained everything.
"You can tell her to come back. I'm sure she hasn't even unpacked. She was happy here, right? This house is really big and I'm sure she'd be really happy to…"
"No, Rafe. I told you no already." Natalia slipped from her chair and moved to resume dinner preparations.
"But why, Ma? I know you two were getting along really well. I wouldn't mind having her here at all if that's what you're worried about. I know I didn't like her much at first, but she's growing on me. Plus, I know you'd love to have her back. I never see you laugh more than when you're around her. You're a really good influence on her too, ya know? She's changed a lot since you two became friends."
Natalia closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the sink. Usually she couldn't get more than a sentence about anything from Rafe and here he was rambling on about Olivia. She pushed on the sink in frustration before turning around. "Rafe! Stop! Please, just stop. Stop talking about Olivia. She moved out and that's the end of the story, okay?"
"Did you guys have a fight or something?"
Natalia took a deep, steadying breath and thought back to her last conversation with Olivia. "There is no us," said the memory of Olivia in a loop that ran through her mind over and over. She pushed it to the back of her mind, but the voice kept looping in the distance. "You could say that," she said to Rafe and brought a plate of vegetables to the table and began chopping them.
"Aw, what about?" Rafe asked. He grabbed a tomato and joined in the chopping.
"You know, Rafe. I don't think I've seen you this curious about anything since you were about six years old."
Rafe rolled his eyes. "Come on. What could be so big that you wont even ask her to come back?"
"She still thinks I should marry Frank," Natalia said. It definitely wasn't the whole truth, but she had a feeling she wasn't going to stop Rafe's new inquisitive side by changing the subject.
"But why? Didn't you tell her you don't love him?"
Natalia had to laugh at that. "Oh yeah. I sure did… in a really big way."
"I don't get it."
"Rafe, you know Olivia. She can be… confusing."
Rafe tilted his head. "She can? She always seemed pretty easy to figure out to me. She's got that heart-on-her-sleeve thing going on. There's something more, isn't there?"
Natalia looked at her son with wide eyes. "What do you mean?"
"I have no idea, but you're actin' weird, and the way you're describing it, so is Olivia." Natalia pressed her lips together tightly and stared at her son. She wanted to tell him the truth, but what then? What would he say? How could she do that to him? How could she sit here and tell him that his own mother was in love with another woman? That just wasn't something people did.
"You're starting to worry me, Ma," Rafe said when his mom didn't offer a response.
"It's complicated, Rafe," Natalia said and poked her knife into a sliced vegetable.
"Why?" Rafe was starting to seriously worry because he couldn't think of a single reason for the way his mom was acting.
"I can't… It's just so complicated," Natalia said in a small voice. "I just can't…"
Rafe dropped his knife and dragged his chair close to his mom. "Look at me, Ma." She shifted reluctantly and turned to him. "You can tell me anything, you know that right? All I want is for you to be happy. No matter what's happened." She shook her head. Rafe leaned in close, touching foreheads with his mom. "Tell me."
"I think… Olivia and I… I think I'm in love with her." Her voice broke. "I am. I'm in love with her." She gave her son a look tinged with mild panic. "With Olivia." She closed her eyes, unable to bear his reaction. Tears began streaming down her face.
Rafe sat back. His eyebrows rose as high as his face would allow. His mouth dropped open a little, and he rubbed at the stubble on his face.
Natalia covered her face with her hands. "Say something, Rafe," she said, still unable to look at him.
Rafe laughed. Natalia peeked through her fingers.
"Oh, shit," Rafe said and kept laughing.
"Rafe!" Natalia admonished. Rafe covered his mouth and bit back some of his amusement.
"I'm sorry, but I so wasn't expecting that." Natalia looked at him with a confused and disapproving look on her face. "And I know that this is big… like, really big for you. But you were actin' like it was the end of the world."
"It is big, Rafe. It's not funny either. I hurt a lot of people because of this."
Rafe's amusement faded. "Wait. Oh Ma, now I get it. Olivia moved out because she doesn't return your feelings… That's why you almost married Frank! I'm so sorry… She's stupid as hell! Doesn't she see…"
"No, she's in love with me too." Natalia interrupted, blurting out the sentence because she couldn't listen to his Olivia ramblings again.
Rafe covered his eyes with his hands. "Okay, now I'm back to not getting it."
Natalia raised her arms in the air in frustration and stood up. "What isn't there to get? I'm in love with Olivia and she's in love with me. Nothing out of the ordinary there, is there? Nope! Just your average love story."
"I'm sorry," Rafe said, feeling a need to apologize in the face of his mom's sudden outburst. He stood and grasped both her hands in his, a steadying move she'd done to him countless times before. "You can't possibly think I'd judge you or think anything bad about you because you fell in love with a woman?" Natalia shrugged a little. "You raised me better than that. How many times do I have to say it? All I want is you to be happy. I mean, jeez, now that I think about it, it's barely even surprising. If Olivia makes you happy, go for it."
Natalia felt a mountain of weight fall from her shoulder. "Thank you," she said in a small voice as she wrapped her arms around her son.
"I still don't really get why all this is happening," Rafe said as their hug ended. "I mean, if you guys love each other…"
Natalia sighed a very tired-sounding sigh. "Rafe, please. Can we just eat now? It's complicated, and to tell the truth, I don't really get it all either. I just don't have enough energy to try to figure it out anymore today."
"Yeah, sure." Rafe said, reluctant to let the conversation go, but worried about pushing his mom too far. "Let me help you make all this," he said and moved to retrieve the vegetables from the table. Natalia watched his back and realized she felt hopeful for the first time in weeks. Her baby was home and there were no more secrets between them. She felt like she'd finally let go of a deep breath she didn't know she was holding. Well, let's consider that step one. Only a thousand more to go.