For a second he just stood there, looking at the door. He'd put in the work to reach this place, lying to his sisters and dodging his brother's questions, navigating the subway by himself - he had grown accustomed to a certain degree of freedom in Rome but in New York everybody wanted to treat him like a baby again and sometimes it made him feel like he was going to explode. But then he thought of his dad, thought of the fist-sized hole in the drywall back at his apartment, and the anger just vanished, and left him feeling scared again. He was afraid, and he was tired, and his family was no help at all, and so he had made this choice himself, this choice to go in search of answers. It was nice to be out on his own, to have a few minutes without his family staring at him with those smothering expressions, but he still wasn't sure it was a good idea.
He didn't know her. The first time he ever saw her she was standing on the edge of the funeral, dark hair, dark coat, dark eyes, well away from the fresh dug earth and the box they'd put his mother in. The sky was grey behind her and she was all black like something out of a horror movie, and it had scared him, a little. She was standing there, calm, quiet, like she belonged there, an angel of death hovering on the edge of mourning, and Lizzie had whispered Olivia like it meant something, like just seeing that woman's face knocked the breath straight out of her. Maybe it did. Dad had seen her, too; he'd stopped right where he was, looking at her, and for a minute Eli had thought maybe he was about to yell, had hoped that at least he might tell her to leave, but then she caught his eye, and nodded, and dad nodded back, and then he was moving again.
Maureen had told him later; she was dad's partner for a long time. Her voice had been heavy, knowing, like that was supposed to mean something to him. It didn't. He knew some cops had partners but his dad had never been that close with anyone he worked with in Rome; Eli had never met even one of his father's colleagues. But Dickie and the girls, they knew this Olivia, knew her well. Let her hug them, let her slip her card into their hands, nodded when she said if you need anything, anytime, you call me. Dad was falling to pieces and the girls kept exchanging worried glances and Kathleen had called Olivia, brought her into their apartment. Apparently everyone knew she was coming but Eli; he'd asked them, when she turned up - what's she doing here? - but no one had answered. She'd taken up so much space in that living room, and his siblings had seemed so grateful to see her, but dad…
The way his father looked at her made Eli's stomach turn inside out. He started talking about the job, about private conversations they'd had, and a little voice in the back of Eli's mind was screaming because really, what was his father doing talking to this woman when he should have just been at home with his family? With Eli? It just kept getting worse; he'd watched his father twitch, angry, watched him on the verge of snapping like Eli had never seen him before, and then…
I love you.
Three little words, said so calmly, so evenly, like he meant them. She'd barely even reacted, that stranger his father loved; she didn't gasp, or let her mouth hang open in shock, or shake her head, or say anything. She just looked at him, and then away, and then Eli's dad was coming unglued. The weirdest thing, though, was that Dickie and the girls, they didn't freak out either. They didn't say anything. They just...they just accepted it. Their father told some woman that he loved her and they didn't seem angry or scared or anything. It was like...it was like they knew that already.
He'd always felt a little disconnected from them. Maureen had graduated college by the time he was born, and his earliest memories were of a house with just his parents, his siblings all moved on, moved away. Maureen was more like an aunt to him than a sister, and he barely knew Lizzie, and he'd only just gotten to the point where he could have a real conversation with Dickie - Dickie had always been a little lost around kids, like he didn't know what to say to them. Kathleen was great but she was Kathleen the therapist, the one who always pushed everybody else to talk. The way they talked about their father sometimes, Eli almost felt like they were remembering someone else, like they'd had a different set of parents entirely. He'd never met that man, the one who was never around but was always angry when he was, the one with the hair trigger temper, the one who tried so hard to keep them locked away from the world. Well, he'd never met him until mom died. That was when the old dad came back, and Dickie and the girls knew how to handle him but Eli didn't know him, and he couldn't trust him, any more, and it scared the shit out of him..
That was why he'd come here. He didn't want to talk to Maureen about it because she would just baby him, treat him like one of her kids, hide the truth. Kathleen would want to talk to him about how he was feeling and not about how their father was spiralling out. Dickie would just shove his hands in his pockets and tell him something about how it was all going to be ok, and Lizzie...God only knew what Lizzie would say. If he was going to get the truth he was going to have to ask someone else, someone who knew, someone who wasn't trying to protect him.
He raised his hand, and knocked on the door. A few seconds passed, and then she was just there, right in front of him and Eli just looked at her, realizing too late that he hadn't thought about what he might say when he saw her.
She was pretty. As old as his dad, but pretty, still. And she was different from his mother, in every way. She was taller, broader through the shoulders and the hips, dark hair instead of blonde, eyes brown instead of blue. And she moved like his dad, who had been a Marine and a cop, moved like she was strong, like she was in control of every room she stepped into, like she always had a gun at her hip, even when she didn't. If he hadn't been so angry and so confused she might have terrified him.
"Eli," she said, sighing, not as surprised as he thought she might be. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah," he answered. Her eyes flicked over his shoulder, like she was searching the hallway to see who else might be with him. "It's just me. I wanted to talk to you."
"Of course."
Olivia stepped back, gestured for him to come inside, and so he did.
It was a nice apartment. Brighter than the one he'd shared with his father. He looked around for a second but then his breath caught because there were toys everywhere, and there on the floor, sitting in front of the coffee table, was a curly-haired little boy with a crayon in his hand, looking up at Eli curiously. No one had told him that, that she had a kid. Maybe they didn't know, or maybe they just thought it didn't matter. It made him anxious, though; somehow he hadn't been expecting that. She was a cop, and there was no ring on her finger, and she'd come to that stupid intervention late at night, and it had just never occurred to him to wonder if she had a family of her own.
"Noah," she said to the little boy, "this is my friend Eli. Eli, this is my son, Noah."
"Hi," the kid said. He was cute. He had a sweet little face, and his eyes were blue, not dark like hers. Blue like-
"Hi," Eli said.
"Do you want to color?"
The question was clearly meant for Eli, but Olivia answered for him.
"Maybe later, baby," she told him, and then she turned to Eli. "You want something to drink?"
It was an excuse to step away from that kid and his blue eyes and his crayons and Eli jumped on it at once.
"Yeah," he said.
She led him back to the kitchen, motioned for him to have a seat on one of the stools by the bar. Went to the fridge, pulled out two bottles of water, handed one to him. Easy, comfortable in her own home, in her casual clothes, in her bare feet. If Eli's sudden appearance at her front door had rattled her, she wasn't showing it.
"Does your dad know you're here?" she asked him softly. She could still see her son from where she was standing, but he was focused on his coloring book, and her voice didn't carry much past Eli's ears.
"I haven't talked to him in days." Not since he'd moved in with Maureen, still hearing his father's voice saying I love you to someone else echoing in his mind.
"Where's his dad?" he asked, motioning over his shoulder towards Noah before she could suggest that he tell someone where he was. There was a part of him that wanted to see if he could make her angry, wanted to make her feel as uncomfortable as she'd made him, and he did want to know where that kid had come from, whether someone else was lurking in that apartment. He wanted to know everything about her, where she'd come from and why his siblings trusted her so much and why his father loved her and why no one had spoken her name in his hearing until his mother was killed.
She didn't flinch when he asked his question, didn't look startled or afraid. Those dark eyes just watched him, unnervingly calm. If he'd been there Dickie would have reminded him that she was a cop, that nothing would phaze her. Somehow he kept forgetting that.
"He's dead," she said, very quietly. The weird thing was, she didn't seem too sad about it.
Eli's heart clenched, though. He looked back over his shoulder at that little boy, furiously scribbling with his crayons. That kid had lost a parent, just like Eli. They had that in common, but Noah was so little, and he didn't have anybody else. Just her. The thought of being left alone with just his dad, without Dickie or Lizzie or Kathleen or Maureen to help him, was horrible, and unnerving. He'd always loved his father, always wanted to be just like him, and now he couldn't stand to look at him. This kid, though, he seemed happy with just his mom.
I would be, too, Eli thought, not for the first time. Sometimes late at night he thought he'd be better off if his father had died instead, and cried into his pillow feeling like he must be the worst person alive for even considering it.
"I'm sorry," he said, because he felt like he had to. People kept saying that to him, too. I'm sorry. Like it mattered, like it made a difference.
"What's going on, Eli?" she asked him gently. Apparently she didn't want to talk about her dead husband any more than Eli wanted to.
What's going on? What was going on was that his father had lost his mind, turned into an impulsive, reckless, rage filled monster, and yet looked at this woman, this stranger, and told her he loved her, and Eli needed to know why. He needed to know what she knew, who she was, and whether she held the key to bringing his father back the way Kathleen thought she did, or if she was only going to make things worse. He needed to know if he could trust her, or if she was a danger to his family.
He needed to know if his father loved her more than his mother.
Before he could figure out which question to ask her cell phone rang, and she reached for it instinctively.
"No work, mommy!" Noah called out sharply from the living room. Like she left him behind for work all the time and he hated it. Eli could understand that.
"I'm not leaving, I promise," she told him, and then she answered the phone.
"Benson," she said, and it was only then Eli realized he didn't know her last name. Hadn't known her name, or known about her son, didn't know about her past or what she meant to his father or anything, but he was learning, now. Now he knew her name; Olivia Benson.
"Can you handle it?" she asked the person on the other end after a minute, running her fingers absently along the countertop. She was quiet again, listening, and then she sighed.
"I can't leave, Fin. Eli is here."
That surprised him. He didn't know anybody named Fin - and he was certain he would have remembered that - but she dropped his name like whoever Fin was would know what it meant. Would understand, with just those few words, why she absolutely could not do whatever it was they were asking her to do. But how could somebody know him, if he didn't know them? How many people were out there, lurking, tangential to his family, carrying pieces of his own history he didn't even know?
"Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow." And then she hung up the phone.
"Who was that?" Eli asked her. Maybe it was stupid; he didn't have a right to know who she was talking to, but he wanted to know.
Olivia looked at him for a second, thoughtful.
"My Sergeant. He's an old friend of your dad's. We all worked together, a long time ago."
People kept saying that to him. His family left New York a long time ago. Olivia worked with his dad a long time ago. They'd worked together for a long time. It had been a long time since anyone had seen her. If he heard those words one more time he was certain he was going to scream.
"Why did my dad leave the NYPD?"
If he had all these friends, and the house in Queens, and a job that meant so much to him, why had he left? How could he have left, and never looked back, never thought of them - never thought of her - again?
That question seemed to rattle her. Nothing else had so far, but she looked away from him, hid her gaze from his and flattened her palm against the counter like that was the only way to stop herself from making a fist. And he wondered about that, too. Wondered if she'd ever put her fist through a wall, if that anger was something she shared with his father. Wondered if he was safe with her, or if he'd made a huge mistake coming here.
"You'll have to ask him that."
"You don't know."
He said it as a challenge and she took it as one, looked up at him levelly, and he was the first to break eye contact because there was something terrifying about looking into her dark eyes for too long. Like she was looking straight through him, like she could read every thought in his head.
"It's not my story to tell. Something bad happened. It was a long time ago."
His fist clenched around the water bottle.
"How come he never talked about you?"
Would it hurt her, he wondered, to know for a fact that after his parents left New York they never mentioned her again? If she had known his father so well, if they had been such good friends - if the old man loved her - would it hurt to know he'd spent their years apart not thinking about her at all? A part of him wanted it to hurt, wanted to hurt her the way her sudden appearance in his life had hurt him. But then there was the little boy in the living room and his dead dad, and maybe, Eli thought, she hadn't spoken his father's name in ten years, either.
The corner of her mouth twitched, like she had something to say but thought better of it at the last second.
"Your parents needed a fresh start. They needed to put what happened here behind them."
Eli's stomach dropped. It sounded, he thought, an awful lot like an admission. Something bad happened...they needed to put it behind them.
Something like what? He asked himself. Something like this woman, who was beautiful and strong and confident and everything his mother wasn't, something like his father loving her when he wasn't supposed to?
"It's not like that," she said quickly, like she'd read his horrified thoughts in his eyes. "Your father and I, it was never...inappropriate. He was my best friend. We were partners. We did a hard job, and that brings people together. But that's it. We never..."
She said it like she meant it, and Eli believed her. Maybe he just wanted to, wanted to pretend there was no way his father had ever been unfaithful, wanted to pretend his parents had always been happy and in love with each other. The way his father had shattered after her death, Eli had to believe he loved his mother. But Olivia was right there, and his father loved her, too.
"There are a lot of different kinds of love, Eli," she told him softly. "I love my son. I love your brother and your sisters. I love Fin, I love my squad. Your dad and I, we went through a lot together. We were close. But not like that. I respected your mother, we were friends."
"Were you?" he asked before he could stop himself. He couldn't see it, somehow. Olivia was tough, in a way, looked like she could throw a punch and make it hurt, and her eyes were so tired, and she was a cop, and his mother had been warm, and, and...she'd been a mom. Olivia was, too, had a little boy she called baby and clearly loved, but she was different. What would they have even talked about? His dad? The criminals she'd caught that day? How the twins were doing at school? It didn't make any sense.
"I wanna show you something," she said. "Wait right there."
She didn't wait for him to answer, just turned and walked out of the kitchen, down the short hallway leading to the bedrooms. There was some cartoon playing on the tv behind him, white noise to keep Noah occupied while he colored, and Eli turned on his stool, watched that little kid with his head bent low over his coloring book. Just a quiet, normal kid, at home with his mom, watching cartoons. Had that kid ever been afraid of his mother, the way Eli was scared of his own father now? Did he have any idea what was happening in her life, the way her best friend had come back after a decade and fallen to pieces? Maybe she was better at keeping the halves of her life separate than dad was; dad had covered the wall behind their kitchen table with evidence photos of the explosion, but the pictures in this apartment were all in neat little frames, pictures of Olivia and her son, Olivia and her friends. No burned out cars in sight.
He could hear her footsteps returning and so he turned back around, and then she was stepping into the kitchen, holding out a photograph to him.
"Here," she said.
He took it, stared at it. It was a picture of Olivia; she was years younger, and she looked lighter, somehow, with her hair cut short and a bright, brilliant smile on her face. In her arms she held a baby. It looked like the photo had been taken in a hospital, and the baby was wrapped up snug in a white blanket. It meant absolutely nothing to Eli.
"That's you," she said. "The day you were born."
The last thing she'd told him, before she went to get the picture, was that she had been friends with his mom, and now she was showing him this. This evidence of her connection to his family, this proof that whether he'd known her name or not she had been part of his life from the very beginning. Eli still didn't quite understand what she was trying to tell him.
"Did they ever tell you about it? The day you were born?"
He didn't look up at her; he was just staring at that picture. Staring at her face, her smile. There was a dark brown stain on her sweater that looked suspiciously like blood, he realized, but everything else about that picture just looked...normal. Ordinary.
"My mom was in a car accident," he said. That much he knew. Some asshole had slammed into her car and she'd been hurt and his dad had been out of his mind with worry, but they'd both been all right in the end, Eli and his mom. She'd survived, that time.
Olivia hummed in agreement.
"She was. I was the one driving."
He did look up at her then, sharply. That wasn't something he'd ever heard before; he'd always thought his mom was driving herself. He'd known his father hadn't been with her, but no one had ever told him there was someone else in the car. While he stared at her Olivia stared right back, her eyes tired but full of understanding. Like she knew already what he knew, and what he didn't.
"Your mom had a doctor's appointment, but her car was in the shop. Your dad had to go somewhere for work. So I took her. The light turned green, and I pulled ahead, and a drunk driver blew through a red light and slammed into your mom's side of the car."
It was true then, he realized. She must have been friendly with his mother, if she'd been entrusted with this task, if she'd accepted it. Friendly enough to take her to the doctor. But no one had ever told him any of this, and he didn't know how to feel about it, couldn't find the words to say. It didn't seem to matter to Olivia, though; she had more to tell him.
"I couldn't get my door open so I broke the window and crawled out of the car."
Jesus, he thought. He didn't know what he would have done in her shoes, if it would have occurred to him to do that. But she was a cop, must have been trained to handle a crisis. Must have been cool under pressure, must have been strong.
"But your mom's door wouldn't open, either. EMS got there, and they couldn't get to her without hurting her, she was wedged in so tight. So I got back in the car with her. Her airbag didn't deploy, that probably saved both of your lives. But she'd gone into labor, and they still couldn't get her out. So I had to help them. They told me what to do while they worked on the car, and I held her hand and called your dad so he could talk to her. They had to cut the roof off the car. I had to hold a jacket over both our heads to keep the glass off us."
She went quiet for a minute, remembering. Eli was trying to imagine it, how scared they must have been, alone in that car, with help just outside it, just a little too far away to reach them. How this woman, who was partners with his dad - best friends with his dad - had to be the one to look after his mother in such a terrible moment. What must that have been like for her? And how scared must his mother have been? He'd never heard the story in this much detail, had never realized that the car accident wasn't just a little fender-bender, but was instead a horrible, grueling ordeal. What else had they kept from him?
"They got her out, and we got into the ambulance, but you were in a hurry. The EMT delivered you right there. When he put you on your mother's chest," she covered her own heart with her hand, "she was so happy...she loved you so much, Eli. But she was in a bad way, and her heart started to fail. So I took you. You were just a few minutes old, and I was holding you in the back of that ambulance, just...just praying that your mom would be ok. That you would get the chance to know her. I think that was the scariest moment of my life up to that point."
Eli looked back at the photograph, with a lump in the back of his throat. The blood on her sweater, it must have belonged to his mother. This woman, with her close cropped hair and her bright smile, had been the first one to hold him, while his mother nearly died right in front of her. And he'd thought she was no more than a stranger.
"Thank you," he said, very softly, holding the photo out to her. Olivia took it back, and looked at it one last time, a smile pulling at the corner of her lips.
"It's a long story," she said. "Your dad, and your mom, and me. But I want to tell you-"
A sharp knock on the front door echoed loud as gunfire through the apartment, and they both jumped.
"Someone's here, mommy!" Noah called out. Eli had almost forgotten about the kid, listening to her story.
"Let's see who it is," she murmured, mostly to herself.
They were in her own home but she still approached the door warily, paused to look through the peephole. When she did Eli heard her sigh from across the room, saw the way her shoulders slumped. For a second she rested her forehead against the door, like she didn't even want to open it, but then she gathered herself, and turned the knob.
And when the door opened Eli saw him, his father, with a wild look on his face, towering over Olivia - who wasn't exactly small - filling up every inch of space in the doorway.
"Is he here?" dad asked in a terrible, too-loud voice, looking over Olivia's shoulder.
"Elliot," she answered, her voice heavy with warning, but he'd found what he was looking for.
"Eli!" he pushed past Olivia, moved into the apartment, making a beeline for the place where Eli sat, immobile and terrified. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Your sister's worried sick about you! You can't just-"
"Elliot!" Olivia cut across him sharply, stepping right up in front of him, and Eli held his breath. His father was so angry, and there was no predicting what he might do, and all Eli could think was how badly he wanted to run away, to hide from this man he hardly knew anymore. Olivia, though, Olivia had thrown herself into his path, without hesitation.
"This is my home and you will not act this way in front of my son," she hissed at him.
That caught his attention; his eyes darted to the place where Noah sat frozen on the floor, and his whole body shuddered like he'd just been struck by lightning.
"You're right," he said through clenched teeth. "Come on, Eli, we're leaving."
"No," Olivia told him. "I'll call Maureen, she can come get him."
"You really don't want to come between me and my son, Liv," he warned her, his voice almost a growl, looming over her now, looking somehow even larger than he normally did, like anger had turned him into a giant. Would she be afraid of him, too? Eli wondered. Standing that close to him, her little boy a few feet away, knowing how out of control he was, would she be scared of the man she'd once thought of as her best friend? Would she be terrified of the man who'd told her he loved her?
"I'm not letting him leave here with you, Elliot. And you know exactly why."
"God damn it, Liv," he breathed, his eyes flashing at her, but she refused to back down. If she was afraid, she wasn't showing it.
"Noah, honey, why don't you go play in your room for a while, ok?"
The kid moved slowly, like he didn't want to leave her but he didn't want to stay, either, and they waited for him to disappear down the hallway, Olivia and his father, so close their chests were almost touching, both of them breathing hard, like they were gearing up for the fight of their lives.
"Liv, I swear to God," dad started to say once the little boy was out of earshot, but she didn't let him finish.
"You think you're hiding it, Elliot, but you're not. The nightmares, the flashbacks, the triggers, the shakes - you think I don't know what this looks like? You don't have any fucking idea," her voice was low and fierce and Eli just watched, spellbound, while she seemed to grow taller with every breath, while his father seemed to shrink back in on himself, watching her in horror.
"I stood right here, on this very spot, and pulled a gun on Brian Cassidy in our own home because I got so lost in my own head I thought he was...it doesn't matter. I would have shot him. You think I'm gonna let you do that to a kid? To your kid? You think he deserves that? Until you get your head right it isn't safe for him to be alone with you. And I know it because for a while there it wasn't safe to be around me, either."
Silence fell, heavy and tense and terrible, in the wake of her fevered words. Dad was just staring at her like he'd never seen her before, heartbreak and horror in his eyes, and Eli could hardly breathe. What she'd described were the symptoms of the PTSD everybody said his father had, but she was talking about herself, talking about how she'd gone through the same thing. And what could possibly have happened to her, he wondered, to mess her up that bad? He knew what his father had seen, knew what his nightmares were about, but what were hers? Did dad even know, or was he as shocked as Eli to discover she'd gone through the same struggle?
Dad's jaw was working like he wanted to speak but couldn't find the words. Olivia just stayed quiet, letting him find his way through the tangle of his own thoughts, and in the end he did.
"You were living with Brian Cassidy?" he croaked.
"Jesus, Elliot," she said, exasperated, not that Eli could blame her. Out of all the things she'd just told him, his dad appeared to have latched on to the least relevant part of her story.
"What the hell happened to you?" he asked her, and his voice was softer, now, his eyes no longer full of anger but instead just worried, darting across her face.
"That's not the point-"
"Liv, did someone hurt you?"
"El-"
"Jesus Christ." He ran his hand over his face, and even from a distance Eli could see that he was shaking. "I never should have left. I never should have left you. If I'd just stayed you wouldn't have gotten hurt and Kathy wouldn't have died. It's my fault, my fault…"
Hysteria had begun to creep into his voice while he spoke, and by the time he lost his breath he was actually crying. Like Eli had never seen him. Shoulders shaking, gasping, tears rolling down his cheeks, his father was sobbing, and that was somehow scarier than anything else Eli had ever seen him do. He just...broke, right there by the sofa, just fell to pieces, and in the next breath he had collapsed against Olivia, and she just let him, wrapped her arms around him and cradled his head against her neck while he wept. It was the most terrible sound Eli had ever heard in his life, but she stood there, strong, steady, holding him up, this man who must have been so heavy in her arms. She never faltered. Eli couldn't see her face, but after a minute or two she started to talk.
"It isn't your fault," she told him, and her voice was thick with tears, too. "None of it. It's not your fault."
"I'm just so tired," he choked out, his words muffled against her skin.
"I know," she answered gently, running her hand over his head. "Come on. Come here."
Slowly, very slowly she turned, looped one of her arms around his waist, and then she began to move, leading him carefully through the apartment. Dad just leaned on her, his eyes half closed, tears glistening on his cheeks, looking strangely numb, strangely vacant, as if he wasn't there at all. They passed right by the place where Eli sat but neither of them so much as looked at him. He slipped off his stool, and followed them.
He'd known his father hadn't been sleeping. When he'd been living at home, he'd known his dad was passing his nights on the sofa in front of the tv, and the only times he ever managed to sleep he'd wake up screaming, more exhausted than when he laid down. Kathleen said that sleep deprivation could drive people out of their minds, make them as dangerous as a drunk behind the wheel. Maybe that was all he needed, just a chance to sleep. Just to rest, and let someone else worry about things for a while.
Olivia had led him to her bedroom, and neither of them noticed Eli leaning in the doorway, watching them. Olivia sat dad down on the bed, and bent to slip off his shoes while he ran his hands over his face, compliant now, as if despite his size he was just a child, and she the mother looking after him.
"Liv, I shouldn't-"
"Just get some sleep," she told him, straightening up and pushing her hands against his shoulders, encouraging him to lie down. "Let me worry about Eli. You just sleep."
He stretched out on the bed, and a long, low sigh escaped him. There was a blanket neatly folded at the end of the bed, and Olivia reached for it, shook it out and then draped it carefully over him. For a second she just stood there, looking at him, but even from the doorway Eli could see his dad was already asleep, sinking back against the pillows, like their brief fight had taken everything out of him, and he couldn't find the strength to keep his eyes open another second longer. Olivia let her hand settle on his chest, let it rise and fall in time to his deep breaths, and then she bent, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
I love you...I never should have left you…
Eli turned and walked away, grief like a fist clenched tight in his gut. Maybe Olivia was right, and maybe none of it was his father's fault. Maybe his father was right, and his mother would still be alive if not for him. Maybe he should hate Olivia, but she had been so kind to him, and he had just watched her do the one thing he'd thought no one could - she'd faced down his father, and she'd won.
As he walked away from her bedroom one of the other doors opened, and Noah peeked his head out anxiously. He caught sight of Eli, and his bottom lip trembled.
"Mommy?" he asked.
"It's ok," Eli told him. "It's over. Your mommy will come back in a second. You wanna watch tv?"
Noah glanced back towards his mother's bedroom, and so Eli did, too, just in time to see Olivia walking towards them, quietly closing the door behind her.
"Mommy, is the bad man gone?"
The expression on Olivia's face was tortured, and Eli could understand it. Whatever was between them, whatever it meant, she cared about his dad, and it must have hurt her to know that her son was afraid of him. But Eli was afraid of him, too.
"He's not a bad man," she said. "He's just had a very hard day. Come here, baby."
She walked up to Noah, and grabbed his little hand, and then she reached for Eli, let her free hand curl hard around his shoulder. They stood like that for a moment, Olivia holding on to both of them; her touch was warm, and reassuring, and tears gathered in the corners of Eli's eyes, because when she touched him he couldn't help but think how much he missed his own mother, how unfair it was that they were all left picking up the pieces without her. He looked into her eyes, those big eyes, dark and sad, and he knew that she saw it, saw his grief, and his fear, and his pain.
"It won't always be like this," she told him gently.
Eli did start to cry then; he couldn't help it, and she moved quickly, slid her hand from her shoulder down his back and pulled him against her, looped her arm around him and held on to him while he clung to her. Hugging her wasn't like hugging his sisters; it was almost - not quite, not fully, not ever, but almost - like hugging his mom, and he sank against her, and found comfort there.
She let him cry, waited until he caught his breath, and then she kissed his temple, and nudged him with her hip.
"Come on," she said. "Who wants spaghetti?"
Eli nodded, scrubbed the tears from his cheeks, and Noah did, too, and so she led them both to the living room, let them settle on the couch in front of the cartoons. She watched them for a moment, as if reassuring herself that they were both all right, and then she sighed, and went to the kitchen to get started on dinner.
It was hard for Eli to say whether it had helped, his coming here. He knew more about Olivia now than he had known before, and he did trust her now, the way Dickie and the girls did. He understood, now, why they cared for her so much; she had been kind, and she had been brave, and it was hard not to be impressed by her. But she had secrets of her own, dark shadows hiding in her past, and Eli still didn't know, not really, what his father had meant when he'd told her that he loved her. There were so many questions left to ask, but the sofa was comfortable, and it was nice to sit with Noah, listening to the sounds of dinner being made, nice to be with a family, nice to feel, for once, like someone was taking care of him. He was tired, and he was still a little scared, but for the moment he felt safe. He figured that would have to be enough.