Author's note: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for waiting for this. There will be one more chapter to come...
The sun is warm on the apple of her cheek as it streams through the living room window. She squints against the appearance of the dappled light.
One of Eli's soft blue baby blankets is draped over her and she thinks her father must have covered her up, because she doesn't even remember settling onto the couch.
She can hear Eli babbling softly from the kitchen behind her, the sound of his little feet bouncing against his high chair.
For a moment, she wonders where everyone is. The house is too quiet and she knows her brother would never be left alone. She wants to sit up and look around, to lift her heavy head from the oversized pillow to check on him when she hears her mother speak.
"I can't believe she went with you."
Kathleen freezes against the cushions. Her parents sit a room away in enough silence to make her believe no one is home.
She hears the unmistakable sound of newspaper pages rustling and in her mind, she can almost see her father's nod over the top of the sports' section.
"You really should've left me a note or something," her mother continues. "If I'd woken up and she was gone, I would've been frantic and -"
Her mother's tone is accusatory and it's not her father's fault.
"She was with me, Kath," he answers simply.
"But how would I have known?"
Kathleen nods her head against the pillow in realization that her mother is right. She has been so desperate to talk to her father that she hadn't considered the consequences of hurriedly leaving for church without telling anyone. She adds this to the growing list of incidents she needs to apologize for.
She hears the rustle of the newspaper again, louder this time as her father folds it up and sets it onto the counter. The sliding of his chair across the floor as he moves to stand.
"You're right. I'm sorry."
Her father shoulders her blame.
Eli chooses this moment to make some babbled small talk into the silence, his little hands tapping persistently against his highchair.
"Dad, Da, Dad, Daddy..."
She hears the faucet turn on and the water runs for a moment before her father speaks again.
"Hang on bud, you're all sticky."
She knows her brother has reached out for their father, syrup-coated hands and all, prompting the clean up and the briefest reprieve of an interruption before-
"Kathleen told me she met with Liv."
A fork clatters against a plate and she winces at the sudden sound.
"What?"
She holds her breath.
Before she had stepped out of the car this morning, her father had reached across the space between them and spoken for the first time since leaving the church.
"I don't want you to worry about talkin' to your Mom."
She had wanted to shake her head, to tell him it was her responsibility, but she couldn't muster the strength for even the smallest movement.
"I'm gonna take care of it," he'd told her assuredly, as if he somehow understood the weight of her exhaustion. Her father had pulled her close, kissed her forehead, and let himself out of the car into the early morning sunshine.
Now, the sharpness of her mother's voice makes her realize she has made such a mistake, handing someone else her tenuous control.
"She met with Liv," her father repeats, his tone deliberately steady and even in this moment.
"She wanted to talk to Olivia 'bout everything that happened and she's gonna go see a new therapist. Somebody Liv knows."
Her father doesn't say Olivia's therapist. He doesn't label it like that and Kathleen wonders if her mother has any idea about the demons that live within the job, in her husband, in her daughter.
Her mother doesn't react. She doesn't say anything and Kathleen knows all at once that her lack of response is worse than any reply because her father can't take the silence.
"Kathy," he attempts, because he has promised he will make an effort for her, for his daughter.
She hears movement then, a chair sliding, dishes being swiftly collected from the table and dropped haphazardly into the sink.
Even her brother is quiet now and she wants nothing more than to go to him, to lift him from his highchair, to hold him to her and let his warm weight ground her while she tries to soothe him in ways she can't soothe herself.
She can't wait any longer.
She pushes herself up from where she is curled on the couch and the room spins before her. She has risen too fast and her head pounds immediately, urging her to lay down again. She resists because suddenly the low timber of her father's voice reaches her ears again. She braces herself against the back of the couch and tries to listen, but she can barely hear.
His voice is deathly quiet as though he is trying to impress upon her mother the seriousness of what he is saying. She can see her father's back from where she stands, her mother's profile over his shoulder as she moves toward the counter.
"Our daughter is trying," he tells her and Kathleen feels the prickle of emotion wash over her nose, her cheeks, her welling eyes.
"I'm grateful," her mother replies finally. "I'm grateful she felt like she could talk to someone."
Kathleen exhales a breath she didn't realize she has been holding. Her mother's acceptance means so much. She steps across the room, slipping silently toward the kitchen in the moment before -
"I just wish she felt like she could talk to me, but then again, I'm not your partner."
All hell breaks loose.
"Fuck's sake, Kath! C'mon-"
"Mom!"
Both her parents startle at her appearance. Her mother bumps a cup from the counter so that it clatters loudly into the sink and Eli starts to cry at the loud sound. Her father's anger abates for an instant as he turns toward Kathleen to meet her gaze.
"You okay?" He rasps.
She presses her hand to his arm and neglects to respond right away. She can't answer truthfully because she doesn't know whether she is all right. All she knows is that she has made another mistake and she has to take responsibility.
She has to make this right.
It was never her father's place to tell her mother about any of this, never her father's job to talk about her mental health, her struggles, the trust she puts in Olivia. She has forgotten about her mother's almost automatic response to anything connected with her father's partner. She thought whatever demons linger there might have been exorcised in the accident that nearly took all of their lives, but she is wrong once more.
"Mom, it's not like that. Olivia is my friend, she's helping me…" She explains, justifies while her mother hurriedly scoops the baby from his chair and her father steps out onto the back porch.
I need some air.
She wishes she could breathe at all.
"Mom," Kathleen tries again, moving forward and grasping her mother's arm. "Dad had nothing to do with this. Olivia didn't either. This is all me. It's all-"
It's not your fault.
"I asked Olivia for help because she knows about what I went through. She's my friend," Kathleen repeats helplessly as her mother continues to ignore her, gathering Eli and moving about the kitchen as if she isn't even there.
Maybe it would be better if she weren't...The thought grabs at her throat.
"Mom, please!" She cries. Her voice is strangled and her mother stops suddenly to look at her.
"Kathleen," she says her name softly, but the storm in her eyes betrays the dubious calm of her voice. "I'm happy for you, sweetie. I really am. It's just-"
Eli reaches out to capture Kathleen's ponytail in his chubby little fist. "Een..." His quiet attempt at her name.
Her mother rocks him from side to side as she speaks. She seems to choose her words carefully as if her meticulousness will take away their bite.
"It's just that I owe Olivia my life and Eli's. I owe her your father and now you, too." She reaches across the chasm between them and brushes an errant strand of Kathleen's hair behind her ear.
"You think I'd be used to being indebted to her by now."
Her mother squeezes her shoulder as she moves swiftly past her and up the stairs without a second glance.
The house is silent once more and when Kathleen opens her eyes, she realizes she is bleeding. Her right hand is seeping blood into the gully of her open palm. Four perfect crescent moons of her short fingernails have embedded into her flesh and she hadn't even felt the sting.
She stands alone in the middle of the kitchen, in the middle of the day, in the middle of her parents' fractured relationship and she starts to shake.
She is so aware, so painfully present in this moment that she finds herself inwardly searching frantically for relief. She is dizzy with the realization that despite all of her steps forward in this moment she is grasping for something...for pills, for alcohol, for anything, a distraction to take away the hurt.
If this is the price of sobriety, of sanity, she doesn't want it. She doesn't.
She wants to scream.
The sound of her father's cell phone ringing on the counter makes her jump at the same moment it gives her a purpose.
Saves her.
She grabs it with her left hand and pulls the back door open, forcing herself out into the chilly morning air.
"Dad."
Her father looks up immediately, stepping toward her from where he leans up against the porch railing.
"Hon..."
"Your phone." She ignores the way his expression changes from frustration to alarm when he sees her reddened palm.
He takes the phone from her, but he doesn't answer the call. Instead, he reaches for her right wrist and holds onto her, keeping her close as if he knows how much she wants to leave, to run away.
His phone stops ringing between them and so she stays with him in the quiet.
"Dad, I'm so sorry -" she starts, her voice is wobbly, but he interrupts before she can finish.
"You're not the one who should be apologizing," he says. His voice is low as he examines her palm tucked into his own.
"Kathleen..."
"Dad, it's my fault."
"No, it's not," he tells her, shaking his head vehemently. "You didn't do anything wrong."
She wonders if he can give himself the same absolution.
His phone rings again and Kathleen startles at the sound, but he neglects to answer right away. She doesn't understand until he explains.
"I don't have to go. I can stay if you need me."
She almost laughs aloud in mirthless surprise and gapes up at him with wide eyes. She is sure her disbelief must transfer into her expression because her father pulls her in and presses a kiss to the top of her head.
She knows what it takes from him to offer to stay with her. The job he is invested in, the duty he shoulders, the oath he has taken, the partner he -
"Love you," he tells her, pulling back to meet her gaze as if to impress upon her what she means to him.
She reaches for the phone he holds in reply.
"Go Dad. I'm fine."
He hesitates for an instant more before he takes her for her word and answers on a sure Liv without even checking his caller ID, as if there is no other person in the world who would be on the other end of the line.
She wonders what it would be like to have that brand of certainty about anyone, about anything.
Kathleen pulls herself up to perch on the wooden railing of the porch while she listens to her father's voice, one side of his conversation with Olivia. She misses the details of the address he relays, but catches the way he reaches out to steady her should she lose her balance, as if she were a little girl again.
She rolls her eyes at him in affectionate annoyance at his protective predictability then she hears him pause to listen closely to something Olivia has said.
She knows the job is grueling, but sometimes she wonders if it's easier being on the clock than it is being home amidst the chaos of their family. She wonders if the black and white nature of her father's career is a refuge against the multicolored mess of hues with which she paints her canvas and if it's simply a bonus that his best friend's back is the one he has been tasked with guarding as if it were his own.
Her father gives her one last glance, a final silent question to her before he ducks inside.
He holds his partner's voice to his ear, but he is waiting for her, his daughter, to answer.
She nods because she is all right. She will be. The last five minutes out here with him in the morning air have somehow soothed her, slowed her pounding heart, calmed her whirling mind. The dramatic fight is draining out of her and all that's left is this tentative presence she is striving to hold onto, this moment. She cradles the broken skin of her right palm in her lap, tracing the drying blood lightly with her cold fingertips. She feels almost detached, nearly dizzy from the whiplash of the last ten minutes.
The back door opens and Kathleen looks up at the sound.
Her sister steps out onto the deck. The puffy white parka she wears contrasts sharply with her bare feet. Lizzie presses Kathleen's own coat into her lap before she settles onto the bench opposite her, pulling her flannel pajama-clad legs up toward her chest and resting her chin on her knees.
Lizzie gives her the barest hint of a smile, but the sentiment doesn't meet her blue eyes.
"Are you okay?" she asks groggily and Kathleen realizes Lizzie's sleep is just another casualty of her parents' heavy contentious exchange in the kitchen.
She wants to reach for her little sister, to protect her, watch over her. Lizzie is always trying to take care of her and that's not her job. She's not old enough to-
"I'm sixteen, Kathleen," Lizzie gently reminds her. Not for the first time, Kathleen has the distinct impression they have the ability to read each other's minds.
They sit together in the quiet of the early morning. Lizzie doesn't say anything and Kathleen can tell that she isn't waiting on her to speak. It's as if her sister somehow understands she doesn't have anything left to say.
She is simultaneously shaken and spent.
She wonders what comes next, after the kind of splintering she just witnessed dividing her parents' relationship. She knows the rift has always been there, but she hasn't been around to watch it grow.
She is distracted by watching her sister reach into the pocket of her coat and pulling out something small.
"I found this on the floor in the hall," she starts, reaching across the space between them to press the business card into Kathleen's open palm.
It only takes her a moment to realize...Olivia's therapist.
The tiny precious card must have slipped from her own pocket this morning when she'd discarded her coat at the front door.
Kathleen runs her fingers over the tiny raised letters, the indent of Olivia's pen on the back.
Lizzie fiddles with the scrunchy tied around her dark French braid.
"You haven't been going to therapy, have you?" she asks hesitantly. Kathleen can feel the way her embarrassment and defensiveness mix together and start to rear their ugly head at Lizzie's words. Her voice is hushed and non-judgmental however, and Kathleen feels like she is splitting hairs with her sister because while she has quit her court-appointed therapist, she has also gained a confidant, a mentor, a friend in her father's partner.
She could use a friend.
She wonders if she can tell her sister any of this, but she is trying for the truth so she does. Kathleen shakes her head.
"I went to see Olivia."
"Dad's Olivia?" Lizzie asks and Kathleen almost smiles because it's not even ten in the morning and she has already heard that question twice. She nods, watching her sister closely for any signs of discomfort at the information she has just been given.
Kathleen finds none and so she continues.
"Liv's the only person I can really talk to and she hooked me up with her therapist."
Kathleen taps the business card with her finger.
"What happened with yours?" Lizzie asks curiously.
She doesn't expect her steady sister to understand, but she has to try and explain herself.
"I just need a fresh start. I want to talk to somebody different who doesn't know..." She wants to say anything because it's true. She wants to meet with someone who doesn't know a damn thing about her so she doesn't have to be anyone special or play any role.
She doesn't want to talk to someone who knows her as a cop's daughter, a bi-polar mess, a screw-up of a student, a junkie, a-
She glances at Lizzie and catches the furrow of her brow. She isn't sure if it's the reflection of the gray sky or if her sister's light eyes are full to the brim.
"You can talk to me, you know," she states, her voice thick with emotion and Kathleen is shaking her head before Lizzie is finished.
"Liz, I can't," Kathleen asserts. Her sister bleeds empathy. She is the most sensitive soul Kathleen has ever known and she won't let her sister shoulder her weight.
"I don't want to get you in trouble. I don't want to bring you into this."
This tempest, the wreckage she believes exists inside of her.
Lizzie stands up and moves across the cold wood of the deck until she is close to Kathleen. She pulls herself up to perch onto the railing beside her. Her sister leans to rest her head against her shoulder.
Reaching out instead of running away.
It reminds Kathleen of when they were small, falling asleep in the car on the way home from her grandparents' home.
"I'm your sister," Lizzie says softly, brushing her dark hair away from her cheek in the slight breeze. "I'll help you with anything."
"I know you will, I just-" She can't handle her sister's tenderness and she fleetingly wonders what it means that she finds acceptance so jarring.
"Kathleen, this isn't your fault."
She takes a breath without realizing how starved her lungs have been for air. This is the third time she has heard those words in the last forty-eight hours.
Olivia, her father, and now her sister.
They are all offering her pardon, exempting her from responsibility. She has lived within the confines of the whirling confusion, the burden of her own mind for so long that she can scarcely imagine who she would be without it.
But three for three is hardly a coincidence.
The snow has finally melted. The sun is warm, but the shadows are cool and the neighborhood is alive with activity.
People are washing their cars and walking their dogs. Children are bundled up and playing in their yards. Her sister had persuaded her out of the suffocating silence of the house and out into the open air of the late afternoon. She laughs as she watches Lizzie hopscotch her way across an elaborate sidewalk chalk masterpiece, much to the delight of the two young girls she occasionally babysits.
When her sister returns to her side and falls into step beside her, Kathleen reaches for her arm.
"Remember when we used to do that kinda stuff?" Lizzie asks, glancing over her shoulder to watch the girls fondly.
Kathleen nods. She remembers the way the sidewalk in front of their house growing up always seemed to be covered in pretty pastels. She remembers hopscotch, tic-tac-toe, multi-colored abstract flower gardens, and drawing roads for their Barbie dolls to travel to Rome for an Italian get-away and home again.
She remembers crying like a baby when the rain came and washed all of their hard work away, only to rise early the next sunny morning and start all over again.
She wonders about the resilience she had as a little girl and whether she can ever recapture that particular brand of blind faith that nothing is ever lost and everything can be fixed in one way or another.
She wonders what her seven year old self would think about the rift in her parents' relationship. She wonders if it's been there since before she turned double-digits and she simply never knew...
"Do you want to talk about what happened this morning?" Lizzie asks softly.
Kathleen takes a deep breath. Her sister is the tactful one, while she, herself, isn't known for beating around the bush. For Lizzie to be the one to bring this up means it is important to discuss.
"It's my fault they woke you up," Kathleen starts. She catches the way Lizzie rolls her eyes in annoyance.
"Does everything have to be your fault?" She asks sarcastically, pulling on Kathleen's arm to make her stop walking.
"I was awake," Lizzie says pointedly. "I didn't mean to listen, but I was on my way to the bathroom. I saw your door was open and you weren't in bed so…" she shrugs and Kathleen surmises the rest.
She knows her sister stood silently at the top of the stairs and eavesdropped on their parents, the same way she did from the couch in the living room.
She starts to walk again, bringing Lizzie with her. She feels like she can think more clearly when her feet are moving.
She replays their conversion in her mind...from tentatively tense to full-blown detonation. Her father had become defensive at her mother's flippant remarks and their damning underlying implications…
It's been the elephant in the room for far too long.
The possibility, the potential, the suspicion without an ounce of hard evidence. It's the family taboo, only dredged up in the midst of the ugliest fights between the four of them, the kids.
For their parents, it's never even given the chance to sink too far below the surface.
The four of them are equally divided on the subject. Split in half. Fifty-fifty. She and Liz against Dickie and Maureen. Eli needs a good decade before he can even be considered for the role of tie-breaker.
The million dollar question: Is their father sleeping with his partner?
Kathleen's stomach rolls at the thought, but for the first time it's not for the usual reason. She clings tighter to Lizzie's arm.
The two of them have discussed it together, late at night in quiet moments away from the melee of heated sibling arguments and come to the same conclusion:
It has never happened.
Maureen claims it happened early on, during their first year as partners and it's been happening off and on ever since.
Dickie believes it occurs when the cases get too grueling, the nights away from home too long, and their father's temper too short.
It. The unspoken uncertainty.
The infidelity. The adultery. The affair.
Don't go there.
Lizzie shakes her head as if she has been thinking the same thing and is trying to rid her mind of the idea. Her dark ponytail tousles in the wind.
"You and I both know," she says, reassuring against the existence of the vaguest indefinite.
Kathleen nods, grateful for her sister's warm weight against her side. They cross an empty intersection to make their way back onto their street.
"It's like One Direction always says," Lizzie announces after an interminable amount of silence between them. Kathleen is smiling before her sister has even hit the punchline.
"Mom's insecure, don't know what for," she sings, letting go of Kathleen's hand and launching into a full One Direction concert as she climbs the steps of their front porch…
Kathleen fleetingly corrects her sister in her head because she has now spent enough time in Olivia's presence to know exactly what for, but Lizzie is singing and she won't interrupt.
"Everyone else in the room can see it, everyone else but you! Baby, you light up my world nobody else. The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed. But when you smile at the ground it ain't heard to tell, you don't know - Oh! Oh! You don't know you're beautiful!"
Kathleen laughs harder than she has in forever. Her sister is no dancer and her choreography leaves more than a little something to be desired, but she is hilarious and enthusiastic and uninhibited.
Lizzie slips into the house with a shout of "I'll be right back!" leaving Kathleen alone on the front porch. She settles onto a step and laughs again at her sister's silliness.
For all of Lizzie's antics, Kathleen knows she has a point.
Their mother isn't anxious about too many things, but touchy doesn't begin to cover it when it comes to the mention of Olivia. She and Lizzie have both heard her talking with their grandmother, during her brief visits over the years, about their father's relationship with his partner. The last conversation Kathleen knows about, right after Eli was born, left their mother in tears.
She can hear Lizzie's footsteps coming toward the front door and before she can look around, her sister is beside her once more, standing before her. Lizzie presses Kathleen's cell phone into her left hand and the now infamous business card into the right.
"Make an appointment," she instructs. Her blue eyes match the color of the sky overhead.
"Liz, it's Sunday," Kathleen reminds her, but Lizzie just shrugs.
"So leave a message, you never know. She might have a cancellation or a last minute opening or something…"
She has forgotten how persuasive her little sister can be when she sets her mind to something. Lizzie bends and presses a quick kiss to Kathleen's forehead before she leaves her alone once more.
"I'll be right inside if you need me."
It takes her exactly twenty-two minutes in the strong grip of anxiety before she finds the courage to pick up the phone and dial. She hangs up three times before she feels disgusted enough with herself to lets it ring through to the voicemail.
She waits, with shaking hands and an unsteady voice that she barely registers as her own, she leaves both a message and her uneasiness outside on the porch.
Her hair is still damp from her shower.
She sits on her bed listening to her sister playing the piano in the living room. It's a gentle melody she knows by heart, a favorite from The Phantom of the Opera, but she can't bring herself to accompany her. She can't sing...not yet.
She settles herself into bed, knowing that her father will be sleeping in the guestroom tonight.
It is just after nine.
Her mother has barely said a word to anyone except Liz all evening and though her father has only just returned from work, she will bet he isn't in a talkative mood, either.
So he surprises her when she hears his light knock on her door.
"It's open!"
"Hey, just checkin' on you," he says, leaning heavily against the door frame. His tie is askew and the unbuttoned sleeves of his cobalt dress shirt are wrinkled as if he has rolled them up and down more than once today. He looks as tired as she feels. His blue eyes are rimmed red with exhaustion as though the day has finally caught up with him.
"You all right?" He asks, taking her in. His voice is low and quiet so as not to wake the baby next door. Kathleen nods and sends the question right back. Her father gives her the barest hint of a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. She knows he won't lie to her, so his silence is better than deceit.
"Don't worry 'bout me," he tells her, stepping into her room and bending to press a quick kiss to the top of her wet head as she sits in bed.
"Don't worry 'bout anything."
Easier said than done, she thinks and the way he holds onto her, cradles her cheek in his palm makes her think he knows this all too well.
"I love you," he mutters quietly and she reaches for him before he can move away. She hugs him around his abdomen, her head rests squarely on his chest, the same way she did when she was so small and he seemed so tall and she makes him laugh for the briefest moment.
He leans back from her and lingers a moment longer before he speaks again and surprises her once more.
"You know anything 'bout Vincent Van Gogh?" He asks, his dark brow is furrowed with tiredness, but for some unfathomable reason her father has decided it is imperative that he talk to her right now about an 18th century painter and she has to try and follow.
"Starry Night," she says slowly. Regrettably, that's all she knows. She thinks he may be the one who cut off his ear in a fit of madness, but she is sure her father doesn't want to talk about that.
He nods. "Starry Night," he repeats with a small smile. "It's his most famous one, but did you know he made more than 800 paintings?"
She leans back against her pillows and surveys him with a soft incredulous laugh.
"Dad, what are you talking-?"
Her father shakes his head. "I'll explain it to you 'nother time," he promises and she believes him.
He closes her door when he leaves and she is left by herself once more. The piano has stopped and the shower has started, so she knows her sister has come upstairs, too. She wants to talk to her, to run one or two of the whirling thoughts inside of her head by her, but she knows Lizzie's school-night bedtime routine is regimented and she doesn't want to disturb her so she turns out the light and tucks herself beneath her comforter.
The darkness that engulfs her is soothing. Her bedroom window is open just a crack and a chilly breeze lulls her from outside.
She rearranges her pillows, fiddles her blankets until she is perfectly comfortable enough to let herself sink...down to the depths where the unspoken uncertainty lies buried in her consciousness.
Things she doesn't give life to in the light of day can reign free in the dark.
The prospect of the affair. Her mother's insecurity. Olivia and her father.
She shakes her head against her pillow and her damp hair musses on the silk.
She has been to church with her father only this morning, not twenty-four hours ago though it feels like a lifetime.
She wonders about things like faith and fidelity.
The intangible.
Olivia is a good woman and her father is a good man.
The concrete.
She wonders about things like partnership and responsibility, oaths and vows, to protect and to serve.
She has realized something over the last few days, being with Olivia and being with her father. She wants to tell her sister about how she knows now that they've been right all along.
They aren't having an affair (at least not one that is physical.)
They aren't having an affair because affairs are secret and her father has never been anything but honest about Olivia.
They aren't having an affair because if her father were with Olivia, he would be with Olivia.
If he were with Olivia, he would never come home.
This she knows for certain and she wishes she could point it out to her siblings the next time someone carelessly throws the accusation into the mix. She wishes she could say it without sounding like an asshole, but she can't, so she won't.
Her father is a good man, with a quick temper and protective streak a mile wide. When she was little, she used to believe he was angry. Now she knows better. He isn't angry. He is trying, the same way she is.
He is trying to make sense of a world where his heart beats on his sleeve and the range of injustice he sees makes his skin crawl. A world where when control slips through his fingers like sand, he turns to his strong moral compass. His partner points true north.
He is a man of faith, who takes his promises seriously, who doesn't make commitments lightly.
He is a man tasked with the life of a woman other than his wife. The life of his best friend, the one he spends countless hours beside learning from, sparring with, listening to, and loving.
She doesn't think he could help it if he tried.
It's not an affair. It's love.
Her mother is a good woman, too. Sometimes, Kathleen wonders if her mother forgets that her husband is a good man.
She loves them both desperately, but she is old enough to see things for what they are, not how she wants them to be.
There are ghosts that haunt her parents' relationship, for as long as she can remember and for reasons she may never know. There is marred history, heavy baggage, and skepticism that divides them more often than brings them together.
When they are together, it is only a matter of time.
It ranges from a vague disquiet to an agonizing strain that dissipates as soon as her father goes to work or their mother takes the baby out for a walk, but returns with them both at the end of the day.
She doesn't know how they stand it, but she does know that they have tried.
Again and again and once more when Eli...
She loves her brother more than anything, but she can't help wonder.
Something tells her there is a wearing out coming. She has seen it more and more often lately. Her parents married young, too young, her mother always reminds her.
Kathleen knows they have only stayed married for the sake of their children, not for the sake of each other.
She wonders about that. She wonders about Olivia. She wonders who has loved her and if she has ever been close to getting married. She wonders if the love Olivia feels for her father is so blinding that she can't see anyone beyond him.
Olivia loves her father.
This she knows.
She has heard it in the tenderness of her voice, seen it reflected in her dark eyes, and in her unwavering care of her, of his daughter.
Her father has always tried to do the right thing, make the right choice to mitigate any impact. He chose their family this last time and she hopes someday he will feel free enough to make another choice.
She wonders if they fell in love slowly or if it they tumbled into it. Was it from the start or was it a gradual comfort, a confidence, a carrying, and a caring? She tries not to cry, but the tears slip down her cheeks before they fall onto her sky blue pillowcase.
It breaks her heart at the same moment it gives her faith in something; in soulmates, in best friends, and magic found when you are least likely to look for it. It makes her believe in folklore, in fairytales, and invisible strings that tie people together. She wonders about intersecting paths and choices people make, miracles and fate.
She falls asleep easily for the first time in a long time.