-35-

Friday, August 15, 2014

4:30 pm

Alex was sitting in her usual seat in Dr. Jackson's office, the dim lighting a sharp contrast from the hot summer day outside. She felt more and more like a truculent teenager each time she came here, or someone who'd been sentenced to court-ordered therapy. She'd once told Liv she was willingly-even happily-seeking the help, but now she felt like every session was a battle. She just wasn't sure if the battle was with the doctor, or herself. It reminded her of running: When she wanted to run, even the longest, hardest route was rewarding, and the feeling of exhaustion afterward was welcome. When she didn't want to, but felt like she should, it was a hard slog even on flat ground.

"Alex, have you ever asked Olivia to consider including any type of BDSM practice into your sex life?"

Today was obviously going to be a hard slog.

"God, no," Alex said immediately.

"That was quick," the therapist observed. "Why do you find that idea so distasteful?"

"Because that's not who Olivia is. She is loving and kind. She'd never hurt me. Her job is to put people in jail for sex crimes, for God's sake."

"But mutually agreed-upon activity between consenting adults…" Dr. Jackson began, but was summarily cut off.

"I would never ask her to do that. I won't."

"Why?"

"Because I don't need it."

The veracity of that statement was doubtful at best, but Jackson chose not to challenge her patient on that point. For now, anyway. She was, however, determined to keep Alex talking, to move her along before she could shut down again.

"What's the real reason?" she asked gently.

"She's said before that she's not interested in it," Alex admitted.

"You've asked her?"

"No, but we've discussed it. Cases come up. She's said she just doesn't understand it, that she could never willingly hurt someone she loved."

"When was this?" the doctor asked.

"Several years ago."

"Things change," Jackson said. "People change. She might be see that differently now, especially if she knows it would make you happy. If you have a heart-to-heart conversation about this, Alex, what's the worst that could happen?"

"She might say yes," Alex blurted out, a frank admission that surprised them both. She looked directly at Dr. Jackson, the words coming to rest in the quiet air between them. Alex's eyes glistened-she rarely cried, even in this emotional cocoon, but tears were pooling now.

"How would that be a bad thing, if she were amenable to accommodating your desires? She might be interested in some exploration herself. I don't need to tell you that people who work in positions of power or authority can find some release or comfort in an intimate power exchange."

"No." Alex was curt. "No, you don't need to tell me that, obviously. But you don't know what Olivia sees every day. She's not in some high-pressure boardroom, needing to let off steam after a hard day of mergers and acquisitions. Every single day, she is up to her neck in the very worst things that human beings do to each other. Home is an escape from all of that. It should be, anyway."

"You want to protect her."

"No one else ever has," Alex replied angrily. She took a breath and modulated her voice before continuing. "Of course I want to take care of her. She's my wife."

"And you are her wife," Jackson countered. "Does she want to take care of you?"

"Always. And she's spent far too much of her time doing that already."

"So, you've used up your allotment, then?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by that."

Alex was defensive, but still engaged, and the therapist pushed on, determined not to cede the opportunity she felt she had right now.

"Well, your line of reasoning would indicate that Olivia has taken care of you enough already. You are no longer allowed to have any needs?"

"She would do anything she could for me," Alex allowed. "Everything. Even things she'd rather not do. That's why I can't ask her. I won't."

"We've talked about this before. You view Olivia as a very noble person, don't you?"

"She is," Alex said. "It's not my opinion. It's a fact."

"Has she ever protected you from something, without consulting you? For example, has she withheld information or a problem from you because she thought it would be easier or better for you?"

"On occasion. I don't like it, though."

"Yet you are willing to keep important things from her. You have very clear ideas about what she needs and what she can and should be able to handle, but that doesn't allow her to speak for herself. It doesn't allow her to surprise you with her own needs or desires, or to rise to the occasion in meeting yours."

"Alex, I have to tell you, I think you're not being fair to Olivia. If she were in a situation like this, struggling mightily with a secret she'd rather not tell you, what would you want her to do?"

The answer to the question was obvious: Of course she would want Liv to confide in her-to trust her, really-but Alex had tried a hundred times to imagine asking for this, and she couldn't do it. She couldn't say the words.

"You don't understand. I'm sorry, but you just don't. Olivia has risen to more occasions in her life than most of us would ever even be faced with. I refuse to be one more problem for her. It's just not an option."

"She's a tough woman," Jackson ventured.

"Tougher than you can imagine," Alex agreed. "She's in San Francisco right now tracking down a serial killer."

"That's a long way from home."

"It is, too damn far. But this person has committed crimes in three cities now, that we know of, and she will be the one to catch him. I know it."

"What is it like for you, the hours she works and the danger she faces?"

"It's Olivia. It's just part and parcel of who she is. It's the only way I've ever known her."

"It doesn't scare you?" Jackson asked.

"It scares the hell out of me. Of course it does. But she's smart and she's good. I'm the one who got shot, remember. Not her."

"She was with you that night."

"That wasn't her fault," Alex snapped. "There's nothing she could do."

"I wasn't saying that, Alex. Not at all. I was merely observing that you've both learned to live with a lot of fear and uncertainty. What would life be like if you both had 'normal' jobs and more regular schedules?"

"I have no idea. I think she'd be bored."

"Okay. How about you? Would you be bored?"

"I could do without the middle-of-the-night call-outs she gets. I can never sleep afterward-I worry until she calls or comes home. This trip to San Francisco-I didn't even see her before she left. I got a call and came home to an empty house, and a note on the kitchen counter."

"Is that difficult for you?"

"She's so damn good at what she does. Everything that makes her a good cop is what made me fall in love with her, even before I knew I was. I can't imagine Liv without the job-I'm not sure she can either. She's been even busier than usual lately, though. I feel guilty for complaining about that when I know that what she does is so important, but it leaves me with a lot of hours to fill. That's not what I need right now."

9:30 pm

Olivia had flown to San Francisco Thursday evening-it wasn't the last flight out, but the nonstops were booked and she'd taken the long way with a layover at DFW that stretched out longer than expected thanks to a thunderstorm in the area. She was exhausted. The plane from Dallas had finally landed at 1 a.m. Pacific time and she hadn't even bothered to go to the hotel, opting instead to take a cab to the Richmond station house on 6th Avenue, introduce herself to the overnight desk sergeant and grab about four hours of sleep in the rack room there. She'd met up with Kris at the SFPD's 6 a.m. briefing, and since then they'd met with Agent Cullen, toured the crime scene, reviewed case notes and tagged along on interviews with Kelly and Park, the detectives working the case.

San Francisco was a beautiful city, but Olivia would have been hard pressed to bear witness to its many virtues. All she had to go on were her memories of a visit 20 years ago, because this trip had been all business. The only sight she'd seen had been the Golden Gate Bridge—it loomed in the background as the detectives walked the crime scene late in the afternoon. She and Kris finally left the precinct a little after 8 o'clock, checked into the hotel and had a delicious dinner at Cafe Bunn Mi.

The day had taken its toll-Olivia didn't know if she'd flown out here hoping that their guy had committed this murder, or that he hadn't, but now she knew it was him, and the implications of that knowledge settled over her mood like the fog on the Bay. Kris wasn't feeling any better, and a couple of drinks back at the hotel bar had them both in a dark mood.

"Middle age is a bitch, Olivia. It just is. If you're living any kind of respectable life, you're not out at all hours drinking and sleeping around. Your kids might be grown, or they're at least off on their own, finding some independence, if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, they're off with their other parent and you never see them. Suddenly you have all this damn time to consider what is, what was, what could have been and what is never, ever going to be. Women like us, in our 40s, we're coming face-to-face with a lot of shit-the doors you opened, the doors you closed, and the price you paid for both. Every decision you've made comes home to roost. It either bites you in the ass or it's okay, you know, but it's never really great, is it?"

"There are great parts," Olivia offered half-heartedly. "Great pieces. But I know what you mean. With no kids, it's just me, Alex and our work, and that's either profoundly intimate or incredibly lonely, depending on what day of the week it is. Doesn't seem to be a middle ground."

"I know I'm a misanthrope. Believe me, you wouldn't be the first to point it out. But I'm looking at things holistically. Women have a fundamental choice to make in life that men simply don't ever face. Will I have children or will I have a career? Obviously there's a third option-to do both-but no one I know feels like that's really having it all."

"Me neither, to be honest," admitted Olivia. "They feel like they're not doing either thing quite as well as they'd like."

"You chose, right? Or the choice was made for you, because that's the other thing: we are on the clock from the time we hit puberty. If we don't have our ducks in a row by a certain point, our options become very limited. You and Alex have obviously made peace with your decisions, but I'll bet it wasn't easy for either of you."

"No, it wasn't," Olivia conceded. "I never knew for sure what I wanted to do, but suddenly it seemed too late. We have careers that we love, and we have each other, and that's enough. But what about you? You have a career and you have kids."

"Kids I never see, Benson. You haven't heard the whole story."

Olivia looked at her, and knew she wanted to talk. Lots of people have that sense, when there's something that needs to be said, something that just needs to be drawn out. Detectives have it in spades, but even the guy half in the bag at the far end of the bar would have known that Kris had a burden she needed to unload. She signaled to the bartender to bring them each one more, and then simply nodded at Kris. I'm ready.

"I used to think that every loss was just a loss, the same for everyone, in every situation. That grief was just grief, no matter what," Kris said. "But I realized that some losses are so profound that your whole life is divided very clearly into before and after. That they'll be indelibly written on your soul, and for the rest of your life, any loss becomes every loss, and every loss becomes that loss, all over again. It's like you're living that moment fresh: what was said, where you were. What clothes you were wearing, for fuck's sake. However many years you have ahead of you, you live them knowing you will suffer that loss over and over. The best you can wish for another person is that they never experience that kind of pain."

"I can't imagine the trauma of losing your brother the way you did," Olivia said. She'd suffered her own pain, and seen plenty more, but imagining her worst moment she knew it wouldn't compare to the murder of a child.

"I was so young," Kris said. "It didn't really impact me as deeply then. My parents worked hard to channel their rage, and to shield me from it. I knew my brother had died, obviously, and that's bad enough. But would it shock you to know that I didn't know the details until I read the case file myself?"

"Not really," Olivia said. "I'll bet your dad never talked about it."

"He never did," Kris agreed. "He knew how much it would scare me as a kid, even to know the most basic framework of what happened to Kent. And by the time I was old enough to understand, he just refused to discuss it. He'd buried it as deeply as he could, and covered it in quicklime."

"Before, and after," Liv mused. "He was never the same."

"No, he wasn't. My brother's murder changed all of our lives. But it wasn't the dividing line in my life."

"No?" Olivia couldn't imagine what grief her friend must have endured that was any worse.

"It was my father's death," Kris answered. "When my dad killed himself, my kids were 1 and 3, just babies really. I hadn't wanted children, Liv. After what happened to my brother, you know, it was really hard for me to think about being responsible for these small, defenseless pieces of my heart. But Lauren really wanted kids, and I wanted her to have everything that she wanted."

"That's a big thing to compromise on."

"Is it, really? If Alex had wanted kids, and you were on the fence, what would you do?"

Olivia hesitated, and Kris misinterpreted her silence as anger.

"I'm sorry, Olivia. I don't know your situation, and I don't know your wife. Forgive me if that's a touchy subject."

"No, it's not. We were in agreement on that. If things had worked out differently for us, if we'd gotten together sooner, maybe…" Olivia explained. "But you're right. If she'd wanted it more than anything, I'd have given in, without a doubt."

"We get so few chances in life to make someone's dreams come true," Kris said. "So we had kids-we used a donor, so the kids are full siblings. And they were beautiful babies, and Lauren was ecstatic. She had been right-she was born to be a mom."

"What about you?"

"I was happy that she was happy. I changed the diapers, sang the lullabies, played peek-a-boo. But I was phoning it in. Don't get me wrong, Liv. I loved them very much, the moment I saw them. Before I saw them, really. But it was almost too intense, and I worked pretty hard to keep some distance. I know that sounds awful."

That was a confession that most parents wouldn't make, but Olivia felt she understood exactly what Kris meant. It was something she'd worried about herself, afraid that if she had kids she'd be either too much or not enough somehow. She waved away Kris's self-flagellation.

"This is me you're talking to, Kris. We are a lot alike." And it was true-they hadn't known one another long, but there was a deep , unspoken understanding between them. "Was Lauren okay with that?"

"She didn't love it," Kris admitted. "But I think she knew I was trying as hard as I could, and she was remarkably patient with me. She's an amazing parent, so she took up a lot of slack."

"What changed?"

"Before, and after," Kris said. "My dad killed himself, and it turned my life upside down. By then I'd read the case files on my brother, but I really hadn't fully grasped how much he had struggled, and how much pain he'd been in every single day since Kent died. Finding out he'd been watching the guy who killed his son, biding his own time until he knew that monster wouldn't hurt another kid-that asshole's death was my dad's release from all that. Pulling the trigger to kill himself was just the last thing he had to do."

"I can't imagine the effect that had on you."

"It was unfathomable," Kris said. "Reading his suicide note, I realized that seeing my son get older just exacerbated my dad's pain. My mom's death didn't seem to be a knockout punch, but I guess it sent him reeling. Grief is like an opportunistic infection, you know? It's just there, waiting until something lays you low, and then it just overruns every cell in your body. When Dad died, it all finally washed over me: my brother, my mom, all the shit I'd seen on the job. I had all of that on my mind, and then I worked a case. Murdered kid, it was just too much. I did a 180 at home. I went from being standoffish, to being obsessive and overprotective. I was convinced the kids would be hurt or killed somehow. I questioned every decision Lauren made, and I could hardly bear to let Milo and Liza out of my sight. I was unhinged and it affected them. They went from being happy-go-lucky kids-adventurous and inquisitive-to being clingy and afraid. My paranoia was ruining their lives. I couldn't bear to let them live in the present, but I couldn't think about the future, either."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing," Kris said. "I self-medicated, but I'm not even very good at that. I refused to see a therapist, alone or with Lauren. I worked like a fiend, and every minute I wasn't working, I was driving everyone in my family crazy. Lauren would just scream at me: Why can't you just let them be kids? I'd tell her, because I've seen what can happen, and that I was living in the real world, not in some art gallery. Finally, she told me to get help or she was leaving."

"When was that?"

"Eighteen months ago," Kris said. "So you can guess how that turned out."

"She left anyway."

"She really didn't have much choice, I guess. I went to therapy, but my heart wasn't in it. I was phoning it in, and she kept her end of the deal at first. She stayed, but something between us was just being choked off. It's an age-old story: She met someone who was more emotionally available. She left me for an artist she was repping at the gallery. Her stuff was shit, so I should've known something was up. Lauren has excellent taste and an eye for talent."

"Doesn't seem like she tried very hard," Olivia said. Kris's silence spoke volumes. "I'm sorry, Kris. I just can't believe she left you for that."

"Lives have been built on less, Olivia, and torn apart for no reason at all."

They were both quiet for a moment, sipping their drinks, before Olivia asked, "Where is she now?"

"They live in Chicago, Lauren's hometown. She always hated St. Louis. I told you she's an art dealer, I think."

"Yeah, you did," Olivia affirmed.

"She does well for herself, way better than I'll ever do on a cop's salary, I'll say that," Kris said. "Now Lauren runs a thriving gallery in Wicker Park and this woman, this piece-of-shit human being who used her art as a ruse to sleep with my wife, is now staying home to raise my children. She gave me the car, the house, and everything in it, lock, stock and barrel."

"But she took your kids," Olivia said evenly.

"Well, she giveth, and she taketh away." Kris's laugh was acidic. "The new girlfriend-sorry, wife now-is a Scientologist. And I, my friend, am what is known as a merchant of chaos."

"I'm sorry, a what?"

"Exactly. It's her way of saying I'm fucked up, I guess. Lauren's attorney used a different phrase: unfit parent."

"That's ridiculous," Olivia said.

"You'd think so. But money talks and bullshit walks, isn't that what they say, Benson? I had the house, but there was a covenant restriction in the deed that prevented me from selling or mortgaging it for money to fight her. So she put my kids through a bunch of shit in another state-court-ordered psychiatric evaluations and all that crap-and she brought up everything and the kitchen sink. She talked about my job, my unhealthy reaction to my father's death, my so-called obsession with my brother's murder. She even used letters I'd written her to prove that I had failed to properly bond with the kids in infancy."

"Oh, Kris, my god. I'm so sorry."

"Thanks," Kris said. "The long and short of it is, I can see my kids now on supervised visits, once a month. I am there every minute I'm allowed to be, but that's all I've got right now. Six hours on Saturday, four hours on Sunday, the last weekend of every month. I write them letters, but I have no idea if they get them or not. Lauren won't let me Skype or FaceTime them between visits, and she doesn't have to tell me shit about their lives. I have no decision making power at all."

"Can you fight this?"

"I used what my dad had left me to get a real estate attorney to work on the deed restrictions-that house is the only chance I have to get enough cash to go toe-to-toe with her in court. He thinks he's found a loophole, but even if it works, I have to then decide how much more pain I'm willing to put my kids through. Because she won't roll over. If I get one good attorney, she'll get two or three, and she will drag them into it all over again. They're getting older now, Olivia. My son is almost 7. He's going to know what it means when she has someone read those letters where I said I wasn't sure I was cut out to be a mother."

Olivia shook her head. She didn't know what to say. There was no justice in this, but the system favors those with money. She'd known that all her life. "How do you handle it, Kris?"

"Well, I do go to therapy," she laughed. "Willingly, and often. Other than that, I putter around that giant empty house, and every time I think about losing my kids, I somehow lose my dad, and my mom, and my brother, all over again. I wake up every day knowing that there will be at least one moment when I feel like I've been punched in the gut, and I will want to double over in pain. So I work every minute that I can, and every minute I know it won't be enough. It won't make me happy, and it won't help anybody. But what else am I gonna do?"

Eats flesh and bone away

It eats the brittle bone by night

And the soft flesh by day

It eats the flesh and bones by turns

But it eats the heart away

-Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

1898