When Elliot woke up in the morning, he nearly rolled over his son in a sleepy attempt to give his wife a kiss. "That wasn't there last night," he whispered with a grin.

"Monster under the bed," she explained.

"You should have woken me up; I would have chased it out for him."

"That's okay. I didn't mind having him here to hug for a night. All too soon he's going to be too old for this." Elliot groaned.

"Don't remind me. I've already got two through that stage." He noticed the silence. "Hey, Liv. I know things are…not fun right now, but they can't stay this way forever."

"I always thought that I was really lucky before with your kids. That they didn't blame me for the divorce or resent me for getting together with you. Hell, they set us up. But…I am just the stepmother. There's no rule that they have to get over being angry with me eventually."

"I'll make one," Elliot told her. "We are a family, Liv. Step, half, or whatever. We're still a family."

After a week, the near-silent treatment was starting to wear thin. Kathy was going up to visit her parents since her father wasn't doing too well, so Kathleen had to return home whether she liked it or not. The grounding had been lifted; she had to be home by curfew, but spent most of her time out of the house with her friends.

Olivia had a rare day off (and a Friday, too!), and got to spend some extra time with the younger kids of the house. When Rick and Lizzie got home from school, Olivia and Ben were in the kitchen getting together ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch. Rick happily joined them – cookie dough was a favorite food of all the Stabler kids – but Lizzie hung back, preferring to be alone. Her attitude had changed in the past twenty-four hours, and unfortunately, it wasn't changing for the better.

"Is something going on with Lizzie?" Olivia asked Rick. "Other than what's been going on with everyone?" He shrugged.

"I don't know. I guess she's pissed at everyone now; she was hardly talking to me today."

"Did something happen at school?" Another shrug.

"Hey, Ben, watch this," Rick told his brother. He grabbed a bit of the cookie dough and rolled it between his hands into a near-perfect ball, which he put down on the cookie sheet that was before him. Without warning, he banged his fist over the ball, flattening it. Ben laughed hysterically, but Olivia caught his hand before he could imitate his brother with one of the other cookies on the sheet.

"You guys just love putting ideas in his head, huh?" she asked Rick. He smiled innocently.

Once the cookies were done and had been adequately sampled, the boys headed off to video-game land. Olivia cleaned up the kitchen, and then went looking for Lizzie. She was in the living room, dressed for her dance class and reading a book. "You ready to go?" Olivia asked her.

"Mrs. Rice is picking me up."

"No, she's not. I told her I was home and could take you to class. Come on."

The car ride was mostly quiet, although not for lack of trying. "You know when your recital is yet?" Olivia asked her stepdaughter.

"No."

"Do you know when you'll find out?"

"No."

"Oh. Hopefully your mom can come back to town for it." Nothing. "Do you know what you're doing for the recital yet?"

"No." She finally gave up.

Just before they got to the rec center where Lizzie took lessons, she finally turned to her stepmother. "Olivia? What makes it okay to tell a secret?"

"I told your Dad what happened with Kathleen because I was scared that she was getting herself into trouble. Getting grounded is a whole lot better than winding up with alcohol poisoning or an overdose. Some people don't survive those."

"So…it's okay when not telling the secret might be worse than telling it?"

"Yeah, that's a pretty good rule to follow. Does that make sense to you?" Lizzie nodded.

"Yeah." They had arrived at their destination, and Olivia stopped the car. Lizzie, however, seemed reluctant to get out.

"What's the matter?"

"I've got a secret I think I should tell…but the person's going to get in a lot of trouble."

"Can you tell me who the person is?" Lizzie shook her head. "Can you tell your dad?"

"No!"

"I think you need to tell someone, though…How about you, me, and your dad sit down tonight and we can figure something out, okay?"

"Okay."

"All right, you don't want to be late to class, huh?" Lizzie shook her head.

"No. Madame gets mad if we're late."

"I'll be back to pick you up afterwards."

"Kay. Bye, Olivia."

"Bye, sweetie."

"Is Kathleen home?" Elliot asked Olivia over the phone. She'd called him at the station and told him about her conversation with Lizzie once she'd gotten home.

"No. But I think if one of us finds her, we keep an eye on her. I'll bet a month's salary that Lizzie's secret is about her sister."

"I'll see your month and raise you two." Olivia looked up when Rick came in the room.

"Ben fell asleep playing while I was playing video games," he told his stepmother. "I put him in his bed." She frowned.

"He fell asleep?"

"Yeah, just kinda conked out all of a sudden."

"What's going on?" Elliot asked through the phone.

"Ben fell asleep."

"You didn't put him down for a nap today?"

"No, I did."

"He was all hyper," Rick reported. "He almost broke my controller."

"I need to go check on him," Olivia told Elliot. "I'll call you back about dinner."

"Okay." She hung up and followed Rick upstairs.

"Did you give him anything to eat while I was gone? More cookies or something?"

"Nope. We just played hide and seek. He's so silly; he never found me, and I was just sitting in the bathroom."

"What was he doing?"

"I don't know. I found him poking around in Kathleen's room. But don't tell her we were in there. It's the 'off-limits by punishment of death' area."

"How long was he by himself?"

"Not that long. After I couldn't hear him anymore in the hall, I went looking for him." They got up to the boys' room, and Olivia knelt by her son's bed.

"Hey, Ben, wake up, buddy. It's gonna be dinnertime soon. You can sleep after you eat…Ben?" However, he wasn't waking up. And she suddenly realized how warm he was. "How long has he had a fever?"

"Um…I don't know. I didn't know he was sick."

"No sniffles or coughing or anything?"

"No." Olivia tried one more time to wake her little boy up, but he was out cold.

"Go get my cell and call your dad," she told Rick. "Tell him to get Lizzie and meet us at the hospital."

Lizzie was packing up her bag at the end of her dance class when she saw her father come inside. "Hey, where's Olivia?" she asked him.

"We're going to go see her now. Come on." They headed out to his car.

"Are we going to dinner?" Lizzie asked.

"No. We've got to go over to the hospital." Her face instantly turned fearful.

"Why? Is it Kathleen?"

"No, Ben."

"What happened to him?"

"We don't know."

By the time that Elliot and Lizzie got to the hospital, Rick was nervously waiting in the waiting room while Olivia stayed with Ben. "What happened?" Elliot asked his son.

"He wouldn't wake up. I didn't know anything was wrong with him, Dad, honest." He nodded.

"I know. Where are they?" Rick pointed to one of the curtained off areas. "You guys stay here."

Olivia looked up when Elliot joined her. "Hey."

"How's he doing?"

"He's still not awake."

"Do we know what happened?"

"He and Rick were playing. He was alone in Kathleen's room for a bit. He had to have eaten or drank something in there. I don't know what she would have had in her room, though, that he could get into."

"Are they doing bloodwork?"

"Yeah. He had a temperature of a hundred and four when we got here."

"Jeez."

"How's Rick?" Olivia asked after a moment's silence.

"Okay, I think. I left him and Lizzie together."

"I know he's thinking it's his fault. I tried to tell him, but…I guess we all keep thinking that now that Ben's older, we don't have to watch him as much. He can understand that he's not supposed to eat soap or drink bottles under a sink. I don't get how this happened." Elliot brushed a stray lock of Ben's hair from his face. He'd been planning on taking both of his boys to the barber shop the next day; they were starting to look like sheepdogs. Now, he was just hoping he'd see his youngest's eyes by the next day – they could leave their hair as long as they wanted.

"Maybe he's not quite as much of a big kid as we all thought."

By the time the doctor came back, Ben was slowly waking up and Lizzie and Rick had joined them in the examining room. "May I speak to you?" the woman asked Olivia and Elliot, indicating that she meant in the hallway. Olivia reassured Ben that they would be back and managed to pull her fingers from the little boy's grasp.

"What's going on?" Elliot asked once they were outside. "What did his bloodwork show?"

"Your wife said you had four children?" she answered his question with a question. He nodded.

"Five total. Those three, an eighteen-year-old that lives with us as well, and then a twenty-three-year-old in Connecticut."

"Is the eighteen-year-old's room where Ben was alone?"

"Yes," Olivia told her. "What's going on?"

"Your son had a cocaine overdose. For a child his age and size, it wouldn't take much."

"Is he going to be okay?"

"I want to take him now for some scans to make sure there hasn't been any brain hemorrhaging. Other than that, we'll keep him under observation for a couple days. He seems to be a very lucky boy." The doctor went in to get Ben ready. Olivia turned to Elliot in shock.

"If Rick hadn't come downstairs and told me when Ben passed out…" Elliot didn't answer, just brushed past her towards the door. "Elliot, where are you going?" His face was an absolute mask, and she was almost afraid of what he was trying to keep buried.

"To find my daughter," he tightly replied.

"El, wait…We need you here more. Your son needs you holding his hand, and I need you holding mine." He looked torn for a long moment, but finally nodded.

TBC...