Chapter Eleven: Flashback of the Reason Why

"Rhonda!" exclaimed Olivia, checking if she had a pulse. "Elliot, there's no pulse."

Both Olivia and Elliot could see tons of bottles of vodka scattered all over her bed and floor, and there were at least twenty of them.

"It looks like Rhonda couldn't stand the consequences that she was going to pay," said Elliot, "so she kills herself with dozen bottles of vodka."

Olivia opened the door to Kelly's hospital room, for the third time in one day.

"Hi. What brings you here this time?" asked Kelly, completely unaware of what she was about to hear.

"Kelly, there's something I need to tell you."

"Yeah?"

"This is going to be hard to say, but, I am so sorry, Kelly, your mother- your mother died. I am so sorry."

Kelly didn't shed a tear or show a sign of grief, which Olivia didn't expect coming. Even though she told her that she felt sorry for her, she knew, from past experiences, that Kelly wouldn't be too sad that her mother's life ended. When Olivia received the news from her Captain, Donald Cragen, that her mother had died from falling down the stairs near a subway, drunk, she may have cried, but deep inside it was the only time she felt free. Right now Olivia knew that Kelly was feeling the same way that she had.

"And, when we found her, we know that she must have killed herself from drinking too much of vodka. There were bottles of it all over the place."

"I knew it."

"What did you know, Kelly?"

"That some day, sooner or later, this was going to happen. Every night she'd drink too much, and I knew that her alcohol level had to have been over the legal limit. I knew that some day she'd end up killing herself."

"Well, I know this may not be hard to ask, but do you know why she would want to do such a thing?"

At first, Kelly was incapable of answering the question, but then it came to her; why her own mother would do something like that.

Kelly Como was sound asleep in her comfortable bed, when she was awoke by the sound of an opening door, coming all the way from the kitchen. She glanced at her clock that shone 3:25 with a green light and she knew that her mother had just come home from the bar, drunk. Kelly could then hear her mother marching up the stairs and she opened the door to her bedroom.

"Hi, Mommy." said Kelly, who was seven at the time. "Would you like me to do anything for you?" she kindly offered, which was a repeated line every early morning to her mother.

"Yes. I'm starving."

"But you just came from- oh, never mind. What would you like?"

"Anything that would fill me up; now get your ass moving."

Kelly quickly jumped out of bed, and although she was still in her polka-dotted pajamas, she was already prepared to cook her mother a meal. Even though she was a young child of seven, she was capable of doing many tasks that even teenagers hadn't yet mastered in life.

"Mommy?" she shouted from down stairs, trying to get her mother's attention.

"What the hell do you want now?"

"Would you like me to cook some chicken strips for you? We have some left in the freezer."

"I told you, I don't give a shit what you cook as long as you cook me something. Sure, chicken's fine, I guess."

"Okay."

Kelly started reading the instructions on the back side of the chicken strip box, and preheated the oven to 400 degrees, which was what the instructions told her to do. After six minutes, when it was done preheating, Kelly carefully put the chicken strips in, avoiding touching the inside of the oven. Then 16 minutes later, they were all done, and Little Kelly used her mother's oven mitts to take out the pan filled with lots of the chicken strips. She then let them cool down for three minutes.

"Mommy?" she called down from downstairs

"What?"

"They're done."

"They better not be burnt."
"No, they're not, Mommy."

Rhonda slowly came down the stairs, smelling the air, inspecting to smell something burnt, even though her daughter told her she didn't burn anything.

"Put them on a plate, now. I'm starving like hell."

"Okay." Kelly went into one of the cabinets that had plates and bowls stored in it, although in not an organized matter. Any outsider would walk into the Como's house, and they would have a hard time finding anything neatly put away or organized.

"Here you go. I made sure they were perfect."

"Why, did you try one?"

"No."

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Although Kelly wasn't looking at her mother in any way that would show a look of hatred and betrayal, her mother always liked to start a fight with her innocent daughter.

"What look?"

"That look; you know! That nasty smirk you just spread across your face!" For the countless time in her life, Rhonda threw another one of her "fits". Kelly could see all the anger the drinking was causing, and could sense that something bad was going to happen.

"I didn't make a look, Mommy, I promise! I didn't!"

"Oh, yes you did!" Rhonda then took the plate and threw it on the floor, and it shattered into a thousand pieces, and the chicken strips went all over the place as well.

"Mommy, I spent a lot of time cooking those!"

"I don't give a damn if you cooked them or not! You know what, Kelly? I've had enough of you and your little "attitude" and I can't take it any more! You should have never been born, because then I wouldn't have had to deal with all this nonsense! And I also wouldn't have to look back at you everyday and remember what a horrible thing that man did to me! That rapist gave me you- something I never wanted! I can't get rid of you Kelly, because if I did, there would be a price to pay, and I wouldn't want to go to prison or even on the death row just because I killed you! So, you know what, my dear? I should kill myself. I should kill myself so that I won't have to live with this anymore, EVER!"

Kelly was so afraid that her mother was going to go any further with her anger, so she just ran up the stairs, crying.

"Kelly, what's the matter?" questioned Olivia, after Kelly seemed to be out of it for the past couple of minutes.

"Oh nothing, it's just that I was remembering something from when I was a little kid."

"It had to do with your mom, right?" Olivia's question sounded more like a statement.

"Yeah. I know why she would kill herself with all those bottles."

"Can you tell me?"

"It's because she said, ever since I was a toddler, that she got sick of looking at me and remembering that my father was a rapist and gave her me, which she said was something she never wanted. So she had told me that she'd be better off dead than living with me."

"Kelly, let me tell you something. It's not your fault that your mother did such a horrible thing. I am so sorry that you lost your mother, and I know that it must have been very tough for you to live with the fact that she was a drunk."

At that moment, Olivia felt like what she just said had sounded like a talk with Dr. George Huang.

"Olivia, I loved my mother. And I know she loved me, but she just didn't show it because of her alcoholism. I know that deep inside there was a loving and caring person, but as long as I had lived with her, she wasn't a mother. She was some sort of completely different person.

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