A/N: I am loving all the reviews from the last couple chapters. I think I broke some of you, and I feel bad about it, but it's also kind of awesome (that people are so invested in the story, that is)? Please address all your therapy bills to Wolf Entertainment, though, because I am a penniless fanfic writer. Hope I didn't scare anybody away with how dark things have gotten between our girls. They're endgame for me, that's all I'm sayin'. Doesn't mean I can't invite other 'ships over to play once in a while...

Then He took the child by the hand, and said to her, "Talitha cumi," which means,
"Little girl, I say to you, arise."

- Mark 5:41

CHAPTER 23: Talitha Cumi

. . .

The suitcase could wait until morning to be unpacked. Her clothes were probably already in a heap—albeit a freshly dry-cleaned heap of cashmeres, silks, and bespoke footwear—after being tossed around luggage compartments like the rocks she'd tried transforming into gems as a kid, with the tumbler her parents got her for Christmas.

She had been thinking about her mother and father a lot lately, and missing them so much it hurt to breathe. This time of year was meant to be spent with family, but hers was all dead. It afforded her a certain freedom, financially and geographically. When her father had passed away three years ago, he left the family home and fortune to her in his will, as expected; she sold the former and used much of the latter to aid in relocating victims of domestic violence. As it turned out, there was still much to go around. Her father had been a very wealthy man. She would have traded every last penny to have him back, to have her mother, who gave the best advice, made the most delicious hot cocoa you ever tasted, and who died not knowing where her only daughter lived—if that life could even be called living.

Most of it she had spent pining for the city she loved, the career she lost, and the woman she couldn't get out of her head. She'd always been attracted to women, from the time she donned her first tutu at the age of six—looking like a baby giraffe in a pink leotard—and fell madly in love with the ballet instructor, to the day twenty-odd years later when she met an equally long-limbed, exceptionally pretty brunette with a pixie haircut and a gun. In all her days of attending the finest private schools, the most prestigious law programs, and the swankiest parties in town, she had never before met anyone like Olivia Benson. Intelligent and sophisticated, but grounded, real, and tougher than all the hotshot attorneys in Manhattan. Olivia wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and had she been, she would have spat it out and demanded justice in its stead.

Not to mention that body, good God. It was phenomenal at thirty, intimidating even, compared to a flat chest and a willowy frame; at fifty, still confident, but now unconcerned with outside opinion, it was breathtaking. Then a lieutenant, Olivia had looked incredible the last time they were together, and it was so, so hard to leave her again.

In all her travels since those early years—and she had been around the world more than once—she still hadn't met anyone who lived up to Captain Olivia Benson. Soon to become Olivia Rollins-Benson. Hearing that news had been somewhat akin to getting shot in the shoulder again. She didn't handle it well. Accusing Amanda Rollins of being abusive, Olivia of not recognizing abuse, hadn't been her finest moment. Then she'd sent the earrings on a whim, or what she believed was a whim at the time (could spending two grand on a gift even be called such a thing?), not to mention drunk dialing Olivia shortly before Christmas and practically begging her to agree to this visit.

"Oh God," she groaned at the memory, and rolled onto her back to stare up at the bright coffered ceiling. Now, here she was alone in an oversized, overpriced hotel suite in the city, the night before New Year's Eve, and too exhausted to get up and turn out the damn lights. She hadn't the slightest idea what she'd been thinking, coming back here like this. Did she hope to just ride in on a white horse and steal Olivia away from that little blonde trollop with the hayseed accent?

(Kind of, yeah.)

It was a terrible, haphazard plan and she would never go through with it, just like the million other times she hadn't found the courage to tell Olivia her true feelings. Something had always seemed to get in the way: Elliot Stabler, assassination attempts, witness protection, career changes, the Congo, underground operations. Even through all that, Olivia had always been there, truer than the North Star, the lost and lonesome traveler's guide home. But now that star shone for someone else, and she didn't think she could ever get it back. She had run too far and too long.

If only her mother were there to bring her a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies, lie down beside her with their heads on the same pillow, and explain exactly how and why it would all work out. If only.

"Hey Siri, turn off the lights?" she tried, heaving a dejected sigh when the recessed lighting overhead and the wall sconces didn't respond. It appeared she would have to drag her jet-lagged ass out of bed and over to the light switch, after all. Fine, she needed to put on pajamas anyway; but she wasn't showering until morning, damn it.

Just as she sat up, her cell phone began to buzz on the nightstand. She gave it a suspicious look, wondering who on earth would be calling her at 10:00 PM on a Wednesday night. Her associates knew she was out of town for personal reasons. They wouldn't contact her unless it was an emergency, and in her line of work, emergencies were often life or death. But when she turned the phone over, the name displayed on the screen made her heart pound even faster than one of those late night crisis calls:

Liv.

Taking a deep breath to compose herself, she answered on the third buzz, assuming the calm, confident tone she'd perfected in the courtroom, during even the most difficult trials. "Hey, Liv."

For several moments there was no reply, and she held the phone away from her ear to check that the call hadn't dropped. The picture of Olivia, cheeks aglow from the wine and the table lamp—snapped during their last dinner out together—was still on the screen. (If the ringer had been on when the call came through, the hotel room would have trilled with "Barcarolle," the light and prancing female duet from Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann. It wasn't an opera they had attended together, but the lyrics reminded her so of her dear, longtime friend.)

Then a confused and groggy voice asked, "Alex?"

Her heart sank. It sounded like Olivia had dialed her by mistake, possibly while half asleep. "Yeah, it's me. Are you in bed already? The Benson I knew kept ungodly hours."

It was meant as a joke, a lighthearted reference to the good old days when they were younger and far better at handling sleep deprivation, but it fell flat, as did most of Alex's attempts at humor. In fact, the only person who had ever seemed to find her amusing was the one breathing into the opposite end of the phone. She thought Olivia might have gone back to sleep, until she heard the sniffling, the deep, stuttering breaths. Those weren't sleeping sounds. Olivia was crying.

"Liv honey, what's wrong?" Alex asked, sitting forward at the edge of the bed like she was leaning in to speak to a trauma victim. Everything she knew about compassion, empathy, and fighting for another person—not just a case—she had learned from Olivia Benson.

"I, um . . . are you in the city yet?" The question was vaguely slurred, but it might have been from the emotion clogging Olivia's voice. Despite her appreciation of a fine red wine, she wasn't a heavy drinker, or at least she never had been before. Alex had only seen her tipsy once or twice, and she'd been too far over her own limit to pass any judgment at the time. If Olivia was drunk dialing her, something was very wrong.

"I just got in about an hour ago. Checked into my hotel room thirty minutes after that." Alex glanced at the clock on the nightstand, confirming her account. She realized she was wide awake now, though not five minutes earlier she had been fully prepared to sleep like the dead. "Why? What do you need?"

Several moments passed in silence, save for the breathy sounds on the other end of the line. When Olivia did speak again, it was with such childlike vulnerability, Alex felt it as keenly as a dagger in the heart. "Do you— do you think you could come over, maybe? I can't leave them. They're asleep, and I can't . . . the kids, I mean."

She was definitely drinking. But what startled Alex most was hearing her ask for something. Olivia did not ask for things. Warrants, at one time; occasionally the last potsticker, although she was more apt to snatch it up with her chopsticks and a devilish grin; and once, she had asked Alex to zip up the back of a dress she easily could have reached herself. But when it came to the real necessities, the things she had to open herself up in order to receive, she relied on no one else. Trusted no one else.

"You want me to come to your apartment?" Alex asked, trying not to sound as surprised as she felt. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd been in Olivia's home. There was one night when she thought an invite would be extended—an invite that would lead to many more—but they had both let it slip by. "Where's Amanda? She's not there with you?"

"No." It came out as a whisper, a sigh. Olivia turned away from the phone to muffle another noise, and when she returned, her voice was so strained and thin she was almost inaudible. "She left. We had a— a fight. Bad one. I need to talk to someone. If it's too late, I can—"

"It's not." Alex rose from the bed and went to the suitcase she hadn't planned to unpack till the following morning. "Give me your address. I'll be there as soon as I can."

. . .

Almost half an hour passed between the time Olivia called Alex, and the arrival knock at the door. Just enough time for Olivia to begin to regret asking her old friend over—or she would have, at least, had she been more sober. She had the vague sense that she should be embarrassed about calling Alex up in the middle of the night because she needed a shoulder to cry on, but the wine dulled that, too. She'd had two glasses after hearing the front door open and close, and checking the bedroom to find Amanda gone. Then she had three more, one after each of the phone calls Amanda didn't answer. Then she called Alex.

It was sad and desperate. She should have just waited until they met for lunch tomorrow, and unloaded then. But God, that argument had been ugly. The worst one she'd ever had with Amanda; perhaps the worst she ever had with any of her lovers. The things they said to each other . . . the things they had done . . .

Olivia wasn't naïve. She knew about angry sex—how it was supposedly a healthy form of expression in a relationship, and all the women who wrote in to magazines such as Cosmo or Allure claimed it was the best sex ever—and she had engaged in some milder versions, once with her first serious boyfriend after Daniel, then a few times with Brian Cassidy. She was always the aggressor. The pain of being used and discarded by the first boy (first person, really) she had thought loved her led to that initial trial. She hated it. And she hated it even more with Cassidy, those times after Lewis, when she had needed to dominate, to release the rage that squatted inside of her like an imp, red-eyed and whispering horrors.

(He raped you, you just don't remember it—all those drugs, the vodka, no food, no water, no sleep. Four days alone with him, you know he did more than talk, look, touch. He knew your body by the end. The reactions it would give him. You played dead, but his hands brought you back to life, didn't they, Detective? Talitha cumi. And you did. You did.)

The moment Amanda had squeezed her breasts and undone her belt from behind, Olivia had barely been inside her own body. Truth be told, she hadn't felt entirely present since Christmas Day, when those long-buried memories of her mother came hurtling back with a literal slap across the face. She'd thought she was doing better for a while, but it was probably just the Merlot. The wine made it easier to ignore those images of Serena on top of her, hands around her throat; it made the ever-widening gap between herself and her fiancée more bearable; and it lessened the shame she felt each time she poured another glass, sometimes even in front of her children.

Then Amanda had touched her the way he touched her, and no amount of wine could erase that thought.

She dissociated through most of it. She watched as Captain Benson and her detective played their dangerous little game, daring each other to be the one who went too far. In the end, they both did. Amanda's behavior had frightened her, not because she feared the younger woman, but because she saw something in those angry blue eyes that she had seen so often in her mother's eyes—how lacking she was, how wrong. How easy it was to stop loving her, even for those who promised they never would.

And because it felt normal. Being trapped, being goaded into fighting back. She knew Amanda hadn't done it for the enjoyment of watching her struggle, that it had been a test to see what her limits were, but her body wasn't aware of that. And still it reacted. To the groping from behind, to being pinned against the dresser, to the hair pulling; all things she disliked, all major triggers, but she'd allowed them. She got off on them. She had found pleasure in the pain. Complicit, as always. Talitha cumi.

So, maybe it was sad and desperate to call Alex Cabot, but Olivia felt pretty damn sad and desperate. She couldn't call Dr. Lindstrom for an emergency session at 10 PM—and besides, he already lectured her enough about the difficulty of two repeat-trauma survivors, both with addiction in their histories, having a healthy, functioning relationship. She didn't need to hear "I told you so" right then. The only other person she shared intimate details with was Amanda, and the detective had made it clear she wasn't in the mood to talk it out. Consulting an old friend who gave good advice had seemed like a better option than finishing another bottle of wine and crying herself to sleep. (Although she might still do that too.)

Overheated from the sweater and the Merlot, Olivia paused to adjust her turtleneck before opening the door. She was probably as red as the knitted collar, but an earlier glance in the mirror to check her mascara—she'd looked like a member of KISS—revealed that her eye makeup wasn't the only thing smudged. A daisy chain of hickeys encircled her neck as if she wore them on a choker. She hadn't had a hickey since college, and she was even more mortified by them now than she'd been back then. They reminded her of the petechiae frequently found on corpses and abuse victims.

"Breathe," she whispered to herself (It's just Alex, she added silently), and opened the door perhaps a tad too slowly. Alex peeked around it, an apprehensive look on her pretty, aristocratic features. She hadn't aged a day since the last time Olivia saw her, and she'd looked better than ever back then. Her hair was still long, her glasses a bit too bold for her delicate face. Still Alex, in spite of everything else that had changed.

"Oh, thank God." Alex splayed a hand on the lapels of her lavender trench coat, a chic double-breasted that cinched at the waist and flared like a skirt at the bottom. Leave it to the former attorney to show up dressed to kill. "I wasn't sure I had the right apartment."

"You do," Olivia said, summoning a vague smile. She was exhausted and her face felt puffy and numb, but she could at least give the impression of being happy to see the woman she had once considered her closest friend. "I haven't aged that much, have I?"

Alex shook her head, lightly chuckling under her breath. "No. You haven't aged a bit. It's kind of annoying, actually. You're making the rest of us mere mortals look bad." As she spoke, she stepped forward and embraced Olivia, holding her extra tight for a moment, palms firm against her back. It was a good hug—genuine—and Olivia realized it was exactly what she'd needed. She didn't let it linger, but she didn't rush through it, either. "So good to see you, Liv. I'm glad you called me."

Returning the sentiment didn't feel right, not after what it had cost Olivia to get Alex here. (Just her engagement, that's all. Just the one person, other than her children, who had ever made her feel truly loved.) She thought about asking Alex to leave then, only she couldn't do it with that fond and gentle gaze directed at her.

"Come on in," she said, backing up against the door and ushering the taller woman inside. She hadn't bothered with shoes, not while she was sulking around the apartment in an oversized sweater and leggings, and her socked feet made her feel short for once, standing near Alex in those heels. She pointed to the lavender coat. "I can hang that up for you."

The dogs had padded over to greet their new visitor, tails wagging in unison like a pair of high speed windshield wipers. Always the more gregarious of the two, Frannie took the lead in earning pats on the head, while Gigi waited patiently to be noticed. The golden could be shy with strangers—mostly men, and Olivia didn't like to think about why—but she quickly took to Alex, sitting at her feet and gazing up with tongue-wagging adoration.

"Let me guess," said Alex, clapping Frannie on the rump a few times, as much to steer the pit bull away from her clothing as to assuage the wiggly butt. "This pushy little thing must be Frannie. And the one with ladylike manners and prettier blonde hair than mine is Gigi?"

"Mm-hmm." Olivia allowed the dogs a few more moments to revel in the attention, then hiked a thumb towards the living room, signaling for them to resume dozing around the Christmas tree (the kids kept begging to leave the artificial pine up for "one more day," and she hadn't the heart to tell them no just yet).

Though reluctant, both animals obeyed, a dust devil of golden fur following in their wake. Olivia fanned it away apologetically as she accepted Alex's coat, careful not to let the dander settle on the pretty fabric. During one of their long, meandering conversations years ago, she had learned that Alex only owned miniature poodles growing up, because they didn't shed and her mother was allergic to most other breeds. Why she had retained that information, she couldn't say, but it made her self-conscious about the amount of dog hair floating around the apartment. She quickly hung the coat in the closet, trying not to think about the empty hanger she used—the one Amanda's coat belonged on.

When she turned back around, Alex was watching her with a keen eye that made her feel uncomfortably exposed. She fussed with her turtleneck and gave her hair a few absent strokes, wishing she had brushed it again before Alex arrived. She'd run the brush through it immediately after her argument with Amanda, pulling so hard at the snags that her scalp prickled. The same thing had happened when Amanda tugged on her hair. Now, it was probably mussed once again by all the crying, drinking, and her own hands unconsciously toying with it.

Meanwhile, Alex looked as though she had just stepped out of a 1940's country club, where she probably summered with the likes of Hepburn and Bacall. Her dark, wide-legged trousers appeared freshly pressed, and her black satin blouse with the bishop sleeves and the loose tie neck was patterned in dainty purple flowers that perfectly matched her coat. The toe of a purple suede heel peeped out from under a pant leg, completing the look. Olivia found herself wondering if the other woman ever just loafed around in jeans and a hoodie, like most people. Probably not. Alex Cabot had never been like most people.

"We can sit at the couch or on the table," Olivia said, hating how stilted and awkward she felt as she gestured back and forth between the two options. The wine should have loosened her up considerably more than this. She should have poured larger servings—and would have, if she hadn't been alone at home with the children.

Alex raised one slender, ash-colored eyebrow, a wry little quirk about her lips, though not quite a full smile. "How much have you had to drink tonight, Liv?" she asked in her prosecutorial tone.

"What?" Olivia sensed that it was a question she would normally be offended by, but now it caught her off guard and made her want to hide the truth. No, not just to hide it—to lie outright, something she seldom did. "Why?" she asked, stalling until she could think up an answer.

"Because you just asked me if I wanted to sit at the couch or on the table."

"Oh." Well. Perhaps she had poured large enough servings, after all. It would explain why the room felt so off kilter and why Alex, put-together and polished as she was, looked a bit hazy around the edges. "You know what I mean," Olivia said, taking the easy out and glossing over her friend's question. "On the couch, at the table. Table has less fur."

Leaning forward at the waist, Alex glanced into the living room offset to her right, then straight ahead at the dining room table, as if she needed a preview of the furniture to which she was committing. "Couch is good," she said, lifting her hand in that direction, like Olivia might have forgotten the way. "I have a cat, so I'm used to the fur. Everything I own looks like it's made of mohair now."

Olivia wondered if her cat allergy had ever come up in any of their conversations, but she couldn't recall. Ten minutes in close proximity with a feline, and she was a red-eyed, stuffy-nosed, blotchy mess. She decided not to mention it. Unless she came into direct contact with the cat itself, she should be fine. She already had red eyes and a stuffed up nose anyway. Blotches too, she thought, pinching at her collar.

"You didn't tell me you had pets," she said, trailing behind Alex into the living room and lingering back while she sat down. It felt odd having the other woman in her home, after all those times Olivia had wanted to invite her up for a nightcap, but lost the courage. Now, here she was, and Olivia longed for a different blonde entirely. She took a seat across from Alex on the couch, keeping some distance between them.

"I've only had her for a couple of months," Alex said, the implications clear even to Olivia's dulled perception. She hadn't mentioned the cat because they had barely spoken to each other in the past few months, save for a handful of hasty texts and phone calls. "Her name's Clover. I got her for the companionship mostly, which is ironic since she pretends I don't exist half the time. But you didn't ask me here to talk about my cat."

The final comment was such a subtle segue, it took a moment for Olivia to register the shift—and that it was her turn to pick up the slack. More than ever she regretted calling Alex and dragging her out in the middle of the night, just for her to come over, and what? Listen to Olivia whine around about her relationship problems? Pity the poor engaged captain who had children, dogs, and a wife-to-be (as far as she still knew), while some people only had a flighty cat to return home to? It seemed ridiculous now, and she was ashamed of the weakness it showed. No wonder Amanda had walked out on her. Amanda hated weakness.

"You want a drink?" Olivia asked, gesturing to her empty wine glass on the end table. She had selected a clean one from the cupboard after picking the other up off the bedroom carpet—that stain would probably never come out, whether she tended to it that very minute or left it for later—and now it too was clouded by red rings in an ombré pattern, each darker than the last. They could be counted like the rings inside a tree trunk, determining the inebriation of the drinker. She was approximately three-fourths of the way to being properly drunk. (Her mother had gotten trashed on far less, she noted with some smugness. Then again, Serena had always preferred the hard stuff.)

"I opened a Nero d'Avola earlier," she added as enticement. Alex was more of a white wine type of girl, but Olivia had never known her to turn down a full-bodied red with the dark undertones of the Nero. It tasted like warm blackberry jam straight from the jar. "Just letting it breathe."

"You sure that's a wise idea?" Alex regarded the wine glass and Olivia with equal skepticism. She knew some of the stories about Serena—not the worst, which belonged to her daughter alone—but much of the knowledge was general and vague: alcoholic, unwilling mother, died from a drunken fall. The only time she had ever questioned Olivia's drinking was before any of that came to light, when they still saw each other only as counselor and detective, rather than friends. It felt like a low blow then, just as it did now. "Don't you have to work tomorrow?"

Olivia was indeed scheduled to work bright and early the next morning, but for the first time since making captain, she was considering taking a sick day. It wouldn't be that far from the truth; she had never been so heartsick in all her life. "Great, you sound just like my fiancée," she said in a flat tone. "Next you'll be telling me what I can and can't wear."

"What?" Alex put her hands down hard on either side of the couch cushion, bracing her arms like she was on a carnival ride that had taken a sudden dip. She turned and sat forward in Olivia's direction. "Amanda tries to control how you dress?"

"No, that's not—" Olivia pressed her lips tightly together, shaking her head far longer than necessary. She had not meant to say that out loud, at least not in those exact words. The argument about wearing the earrings was much more complicated than that, and she couldn't tell Alex about it since her gift had been the cause. And if Olivia mentioned the turtleneck, then she had to explain why Amanda wanted her to wear it—and why she'd complied. Neither of those options appealed to her at the moment. "It was just an example, Alex. Do you want the drink, or not?"

Eyes narrowed behind the rectangular lenses of her glasses, Alex studied Olivia in silence for several moments, almost as if she could discern the heat creeping up Olivia's neck from the sweater and the afterburn of Amanda's stinging kisses. "Fine," she said in a clipped tone that sounded more like the old Alex, who mouthed off to judges in their own courtrooms and sometimes thought she ran the NYPD right along with the rest of the brass. The new Alex considered herself above the law too, though in a very different way. "I will have one glass. You might think about making that your limit as well."

"Yeah. I might." Olivia caught the rim of the wine glass with her middle finger as she passed the end table on her way to the kitchen. She rinsed the bowl out thoroughly there, but the telltale rings were dried to the crystal, leaving behind a crusty red residue that reminded her of blood-stained sheets, the stubborn brown outline surviving the spin cycle. She turned the glass upside down on the top rack of the dishwasher, beside her first glass of the evening, and brought down two more clean ones from the cupboard.

Pouring a generous serving each from the sleek bottle of Nero d'Avola—she liked the black frosted glass and the embossed label, with its dark red calligraphy she couldn't read without her eyeglasses, almost as much as she liked the wine itself—she cradled both goblets in one hand, the stems wedged between her fingers. In her other hand, she carried the wine bottle. Just in case Alex changed her mind about a refill, it would save Olivia the trouble of traipsing back and forth from room to room.

"Frannie Mae Rollins," Olivia groaned, returning to the living room to find the pit bull rolling on her back in the warmth Alex had left on the couch. The former attorney was standing in front of the lit Christmas tree, examining each of the ornaments that populated its branches. When her mother died, Olivia had inherited a small box of tattered and mismatched ornaments from her childhood, most of them secondhand from Serena's own girlhood home.

As a kid, Olivia had tried to get a sense of what her grandparents must have been like by studying those ornaments—the wooden toy soldiers and rocking horses, the faded aluminum bells and indented baubles in shiny candy colors. She'd concluded they were a sweet old couple: Grandpa was a veteran of some war or another, liked model trains, and would have carved tiny figurines out of soaps and wood for his granddaughter, had he ever met her; Grandma looked like Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show, spent her days baking and tending garden, and always had a pocketful of treats for her little angel Olivia.

Sometimes, if Olivia wasn't careful, she still missed the fictional pair. Less so, now that she had a real family. Or did have a while ago, at least.

Combined with the decorations Amanda had pilfered from her mother's basement—mostly characters from 1980's Disney cartoons, of which there seemed to be an abundance of mice dressed like humans—under the guise of a visit home from college one winter break, and the trinkets collected so far by each of their children, the tree was filled out nicely.

"She's fine," Alex said, glancing over her shoulder to laugh at Frannie, who wasn't a bit remorseful for her unladylike wallowing, then back at the pink unicorn that commemorated Matilda's first Christmas in the Benson household and since birth. She tapped the mythical creature with a slender finger, watching it bob erratically on its rocker feet.

"She's a hooligan." Olivia set the wine bottle down on the end table, gave Frannie's head an affectionate scratch before leading her off the couch by the collar, then joined Alex in front of the tree, offering the fuller glass. "But sweet."

Alex took one look at the serving size and rolled her eyes, but she accepted it nonetheless, expertly scooping up the bowl without uncrossing her arms. She gestured with the glass at the triangle of photos that were balanced on the front branches: Noah in his first recital costume, Jesse with crooked pigtails on school picture day, and ultra photogenic Matilda looking like a Ralph Lauren child model in a studio portrait from shortly after her second birthday.

"Speaking of sweet. Your kids are darling," she said, twirling the wine a few times before finally sampling it. She couldn't hide the spark of delight in her eyes when the bold flavor reached her palate, lips folding around the dark liquid as if she had a secret. "I can't get over this littlest one. She could be in the next Annie revival."

"Bite your tongue," Olivia said around the brim of her glass, and took a delicate sip. More to savor the tartness, the rush of ripe and succulent berries, than out of moderation. "One performer in the family is all I can handle."

"Noah's taking the diva ballerina thing too seriously?"

"I was talking about Jesse. The world's a stage to that child." Olivia smiled at the picture of the mischievously grinning little girl and her whopper-jawed pigtails. She looked so much like Amanda, it was uncanny. If Olivia allowed herself, she could easily become envious of that undeniable connection, which she would never share with any of her children; so, she didn't allow it. "Amanda says she has middle child syndrome, but I think Miss Jesse is just very much her own person. Although, she's definitely got her mama's—"

Spunk. Olivia thought it, but the word stuck in her throat and she swallowed thickly. She tried washing it down with a healthy gulp of wine, and when that didn't work either, she abandoned the conclusion and wandered over to sit on the couch. Gazing into the deep red contents of her glass, she waited for Alex to reclaim a seat, vaguely noting from her peripheral vision the slender form settling much closer beside her on the couch cushion this time. For a long while, she didn't look up, just went on sipping her drink at opposite intervals with Alex, until she noticed the pattern and simply held the base of the glass in her palm, swishing the contents.

In the end, it was Alex who rescued them from the uncomfortable silence that might otherwise have stretched on forever—or at least another five to ten minutes. "What happened with you two, Liv?" she asked softly, tilting her head forward to try and get a look at Olivia's face.

From the corner of Olivia's eye, that long blonde hair hanging down, its owner concerned and sympathetic, so distinctly resembled Amanda, her breath caught. She pushed it out with a low, shaky whoosh and made several false starts before she could respond without her voice breaking. "She's just so angry," she said in a wavering tone, forcing herself to meet Alex's gaze. The tears were less likely to come if she was looking someone in the eye. That was the theory, anyway. "And I don't know how to help her, because she won't talk to me about it. All she wants to do is . . . "

At the last second, Olivia realized she was about to share more than she should, and instead gestured lamely to herself. She let the same hand drop into her lap, heavy as a brick. All at once, she was so tired and weary, she longed to curl up on the couch and fall asleep. "All she'll ever talk about are my problems. Sometimes I think that if I were okay, she wouldn't want me anymore."

No, that wasn't true. It had to be the wine talking. She knew Amanda had a vested interest in her well-being, and the detective would do just about anything to keep her happy. Any fears she had otherwise were her own insecurities coming to light—she was deeply afraid her traumas were too many, too significant; that she would never recover and learn to be truly happy; that her needs were so all-encompassing, Amanda's got pushed aside; that one day it would all be too much, and Amanda would walk away.

It hit Olivia then, with such stark, swift clarity, she almost spilled the Nero d'Avola into her lap. She had become her mother, right down to the drink in her hand, the slur in her speech, the alcohol on her breath, and the irresistible desire for just one more. She was everything she'd sworn never to be, and Amanda was right to leave her. To hate her.

. . .