A/N: Hey, guys, I'm so sorry I missed yesterday's update. It was a super busy day, and I ended up not being home for most of it. Didn't really get to sit down and relax until almost 11PM. By then I figured it was a little late to post a new chapter, lol. I don't much like posting on show day, but I'll make an exception this time, since I screwed up the schedule. As always, thanks for reading. I'm glad y'all don't hate Meg *too* much after reading her version of events. TBH, I did something I rarely do and changed a major piece of the story, based on the reviews from last chapter. Your feedback is deeply appreciated! Happy SVU Day!
7. On the Sabbath Day
. . .
"I thought if I stayed after that, with her being so jealous and knowing I wanted to protect you, I'd be endangering you more than helping. I was wrong. Please forgive me."
Adrift in her own thoughts, Olivia missed the cue that it was her turn to speak. The sounds of glass crunching and Serena's vicious screams rang in her ears. I'll never let anyone else have you. It had never been just about Daniel, then. Olivia could have had the life she'd dreamed of, night after night, day after day, throughout her entire childhood. But Serena wouldn't let it happen. God forbid her monster-child should find happiness without her. No wonder she hadn't given Olivia up for adoption. Too many chances that her life would be better than Serena's.
They were both looking at her when she returned to the present, Meg anxious and sad, Amanda so concerned she looked about ten years older than usual, her eyes a crying shade of blue. Olivia started to respond, found she had no voice, and cleared her throat to start again. "Of course I forgive you," she said, her throat too dry to swallow. She eyed the trio of ice waters that were sweating in the middle of the table, placed there all at once by a confident waitress when they were first seated. In that moment, Olivia could have pounded all three without batting an eyelash. But thirst made her feel weak and vulnerable; there was strength in self-denial, in telling yourself you couldn't have what you wanted or needed before anyone else took it away from you.
She left the water untouched, focusing on her table mates and the long-awaited apology, which, now that she had it, left her hollow and numb. At one time it would have been everything she could have asked for, and for Meg's sake, she tried to summon that enthusiasm. The gratitude she would have felt at sixteen, or even twenty or thirty, if Meg had just come to her and explained, like she was doing now. Perhaps there was a statute of limitations on forgiveness.
Perhaps Olivia just didn't have it in her anymore.
"Of course," she repeated, allowing Meg to press and chafe her hand as if it were cold. Meg's hands were always warm, she had forgotten about that. The memory brought with it a sad sense of nostalgia—according to Amanda, Olivia was always warm too ("You're like a human Bunsen burner. You're a Benson burner!")—and she blinked back tears she refused to let fall, as stubbornly as she had refused the water. She'd already cried in front of her children recently, she didn't want to have another breakdown like that again. Ever, if it was possible.
It helped to have a distraction, so she made one by guiding the subject away from herself. "I'm so sorry she said those awful things to you. Threatened you like that. I can understand being frightened off by her. She . . . scared me too. I guess she was no better at being a friend than a mother."
She hadn't meant to put it quite so inelegantly, but part of leaving Serena in the past and no longer letting a twenty-year-old ghost control her life was being frank and honest about the kind of person her mother had been. No more lying for her, that was Olivia's promise in the graveyard. After fifty-four years, it would take some getting used to.
"She had her moments," Meg said, smiling distantly. "The drinking changed her. And the— uh, the rape. She was always very driven and expected the most out of people, but she would be there every step of the way to support you, too. I probably wouldn't have made it through grad school without her."
Meg might as well have been talking about a total stranger, not the woman who had shown up drunk to Olivia's Siena College commencement, tripped on a folding chair leg, and split her head open on the wooden frame of another. When Olivia's name was called to walk across the stage and accept her BA in criminal justice, she'd been sitting in the ER, listening to her mother snore, dead asleep on the gurney while blood continued to trickle from her hairline.
"That's not how I remember her," said Olivia, perhaps a bit too grimly. Amanda's grip tightened on her thigh, becoming a rhythmic squeeze that kept time with her heartbeat.
Amanda always knew the way to her heart. Always.
"Do you have any kids, Meg?" Amanda eventually asked, when an awkward silence stretched out in front of them, no end in sight. She was a good mediator, Olivia had noticed, able to settle arguments between the children (usually by eating the last bite of whatever food they were bickering over herself, or confiscating the toy that had started the tug-of-war) with a natural ease and humor Olivia didn't quite possess. Angry confrontations always inspired in her a guilt and fear of rejection so strong that she ended up apologizing, whether or not she was at fault.
"Yes, I have a daughter." Though spoken warmly, Meg seemed hesitant to continue. She cast an uncertain gaze at Olivia, as if trying to determine her receptiveness. "She'll be thirty this year. My wife and I adopted her when she was a week old. Well, I did—then my wife did when we were able to legally marry. I named her Maya. Maya Olivia Hawthorne."
At first, Olivia didn't even register her own name. She was busy calculating how long Meg had waited to adopt a different child after abandoning her. Approximately nine years. Would it have been worse if it were shorter? Or longer? Did it mean that Meg had taken nine years to forget about her, or just hadn't wanted her enough to devote any of that time to her? Or maybe Meg had tried to adopt right away, swapping out one kid for the next like she was replacing a dead pet with an exact replica, but got denied for years. Olivia had waited six or seven years for her son.
"That's real pretty," said Amanda. "Don't you think so, darlin'?" She ducked down to catch Olivia's eye, giving her a small, encouraging smile that belied the sympathetic strokes under the table. "I'm especially partial to the middle name."
"Hm? Oh, yes." Olivia straightened her posture, donning the most captainly pose she could muster. Sit up straight, Olivia Margaret, you look like the lab assistant from Frankenstein. If you hunch up that way, your tits will sag down to your knees. That was bullshit, of course, just as most of Serena's advice had been to her young daughter. Although, it had probably contributed to Olivia's tough demeanor. No one liked a slouchy policewoman. "Yes, it's lovely. Carrying on the tradition, I suppose. We named our youngest Samantha Grace. Like Serena Grace."
God, why did she sound so stiff and idiotic? She sounded like a first-grader during Show and Tell, no idea how to conduct herself in front of an audience. It was worse than CompStat. Worse than the interview segment she'd done for Luna Prasada's wellness company, we B well. She had accepted the invitation to speak at the conference on a dare from Amanda, who wanted to see her baby "putting Prasada's bony ass to shame up on that stage." It had actually been kind of fun, though Luna was a tad manic and awfully handsy. The entrepreneur sent Olivia home with a swag bag full of goodies, including some bee-themed sex toys she and Amanda put to very good use on a regular basis.
"You're just a bee charmer, Olivia Benson. That's what you are—a bee charmer," Amanda liked to quote, purring as Olivia ducked between her legs, yellow and black striped vibrator in hand.
"Oh." Meg clasped her hands together beneath her chin as if she were looking down at Samantha in her crib, enchanted. "Oh, how sweet. How many do you have?"
Feeling a strange sort of disconnect, like she wasn't really part of what was happening around her, Olivia listened as Amanda stepped in, listing their children's names and ages while swiping through the photo album on her phone. Each displayed picture drew enthusiastic praise and adoration from Meg, though she fawned over Sammie Grace the most, declaring her the spitting image of Olivia as a baby. It was the best compliment Olivia could have asked for, but coming from the woman she had once wanted so desperately to resemble in any way possible, it just made her sad. She didn't remember anyone ever telling her how much she looked like Serena.
"They're all so beautiful," Meg said, when Amanda finally concluded the bragging session and put away her phone. The gloss of tears shone in Meg's deep brown eyes, and for a second, it was impossible to determine if pride or sentimentality had brought on the emotion. Perhaps a little of both. She beamed at Olivia through the teary haze. "I'm so happy to see you with such a big, beautiful family. It's what you deserve. I'd never be at peace if I found out you had anything less."
Olivia put on a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. She longed to return Meg's obvious efforts to make amends, but a cup of coffee and some exchanged pleasantries couldn't undo all the years of hurt and confusion. Meg had been the first person to prove to her that Serena's favorite axiom was true: Everyone leaves.
She held Amanda's hand tightly in her lap.
"I never forgot you, Olivia. Please believe that." Meg's voice was beseeching again as she leaned forward, using the old body-language trick to draw someone in physically, as well as verbally. Olivia tried to resist, but to her dismay, she found that Meg's sway over her was still incredibly strong. Her heart ached, seeing the need for forgiveness that stitched itself through each one of Meg's striking features like fine, intricate thread. "It was wrong of me not to contact you sooner. I was just so afraid you'd look at me the way you are now."
What way that was, Olivia couldn't say. She honestly had no idea what her face was doing right then, the feeling of detachment extending to her outward expressions as well, it seemed. She schooled her features as best she could, which was a bit like writing with a numb hand or picking up an item in virtual reality when the program was lagging.
And just like she didn't know what was coming out of her face, she didn't know what words would come from her mouth until she heard them: "Is that why you tried to run away when you saw me in the cemetery? You're still afraid of me?"
"No. No, not afraid of you, sweet girl. There's never been anything to fear about you." Meg smiled sadly, the way you tried to cheer up a kid you were sending back into a horrible home life, but whose fate was out of your hands. It was a paltry attempt at comfort, and sometimes, Olivia knew from experience, it was all you could give. "Just afraid of finding out how much I let you down. That was my excuse for a long time, anyway. Then I heard you'd become a police officer, and I would see your name in the paper once in a while, and it was like you were telling me you were all right, you'd made it without me. And it felt like too much time had passed by that point. I didn't want to intrude on the life you'd made for yourself."
Hurtful as it was to hear, knowing how much she had still needed Meg's guidance and advice in those early years of adulthood, Olivia understood that reasoning. She'd made the same mistake with Calvin Arliss and Amelia Cole, and almost hadn't lived to tell the tale. But she had gotten her daughter out of it, and maybe that was forgiveness enough. Maybe it was grace. She couldn't withhold that from Meg, especially since she knew what it was to have a child you loved taken away by a jealous, angry mother—and the consequences of not following up with that child as they matured.
You assumed they were doing well without you; that no news was good news; that the dwindling contact meant they were happy and busy living their lives; that you were just standing in the way of them adjusting to their new and improved circumstances. So much better off than they were with you.
"I understand, Meg," she finally said, managing a tone only slightly robotic. The warmth was returning slowly to her voice, the dissociation beginning to lift with the same gradual unfurling as one of her migraines. It rose above her like a ghost or a tendril of smoke, and then it was gone. "But may I ask . . . why now? Was this really all just a chance meeting?"
Olivia could feel her facial expressions again, and the one she wore now was tentative, but hopeful. Perhaps thirty-eight years could be undone if the explanation was good enough. Perhaps it wasn't too late to recapture a friendship once thought lost forever.
"You always were the most perceptive little thing I ever knew." Meg shook her head as if she were marveling at a precocious child, rather than a fifty-four-year-old policewoman who had been solving crimes and putting people behind bars for roughly three decades.
"Still is," Amanda chimed in, her pretty porcelain features alight with love and pride when she looked to Olivia, addressing her more than Meg.
Actually, Olivia was beginning to suspect that one Miss Jesse Eileen was the most perceptive little thing around, but she returned her wife's loving expression and tucked the observation away for later. They bragged to each other about their little ones on a regular basis, so it was bound to come up again soon. The Rollins-Benson children were in no danger of being overlooked or neglected—ever.
"I have to admit, I hoped you would be there today. At the cemetery." Eyes lowered, Meg appeared to be speaking to the coffee dregs in her cup. If it had been tea, she might have passed it off as an attempt to read the leaves. She had told Olivia's fortune that way once, so many years ago the prophecy itself was forgotten. Something about a dark and mysterious stranger. Perhaps it had been a curse, not a fortune. "I've seen you there other times. From a distance. Mother's Day, a couple years ago. And a few times on Serena's birthday. I . . . always felt like I should give you your space."
"Until today," Olivia ventured, as though continuing the narrative. Honestly, she'd never had a clue Meg was watching from afar during those visits to her mother's grave, and she wasn't sure what made today any different, except that she'd had Amanda with her. So, maybe Meg was more afraid of her than she cared to admit. "Why?"
The sadness in Meg's eyes when she finally looked up was so profound, Olivia's eyes teared in response. She was struck by a feeling of dread that made her want to plug her ears and refuse to listen to whatever awful thing was about to come. Indeed, she had always been highly perceptive, sometimes far too much for her own good.
"I'm not well," Meg said, after an eternity. "I have a rare form of breast cancer called Paget's disease. Nothing to do with the bone disease of the same name, but . . . " She smoothed her napkin on the table as she spoke, then tore it into long, even strips, crisscrossing them over each other like she was weaving a basket. "I had a partial mastectomy several years ago. The odds of developing the same type of cancer in the other breast were so low, I thought I was home free. But now. I'm not responding to the radiation treatments, and chemo is being discussed. Well, I saw what that did to my mother, my aunts, my sister. I'm not convinced I have a lot of time left, you see. Then when I saw you today . . . "
"Oh." Olivia breathed the word into existence, drawing it right back in with a small gasp. "Oh, Meg. I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Oh my God, I'm— I'm so sorry."
"How could you possibly know, sweetheart? I wasn't there to tell you." Meg tipped her head, her smile fond, but quavering. Voice, too. "Don't you go blaming yourself for this one. It's my own damn fault for not contacting you sooner. I thought I was being respectful, but it turns out I was just a coward. I almost lost my nerve again when I saw you today. That's why I tried to run. What right do I have to come back into your life now, and drop this into your lap, when it's too damn late? I'm the one who's sorry, Olivia. If I could go back and change it all, I would. I'd take you away from her and raise you and make sure you heard every day how special you are. How loved. I needed to tell you that before I'm gone."
Olivia made several attempts before recovering her voice. "You told that to Maya every day, right?" she asked, a bit hoarse, a bit desperate to hear that one child had been loved and cherished.
"Oh yes. Every day for the past twenty-nine years."
"Then that's enough," Olivia said, reaching out her hand to the mother she'd always wanted and never got to call her own.
. . .