Author's note: I did not expect this kind of reception to this long-lost little story. Thank you for still loving it as I do. Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling.
She submerges her hands deep into the soapy tepid water once more.
The dishes have been clean for an hour, but she can't tear herself away from the task until she is sure her son is asleep.
She has to wait.
She glances up at the glowing green numbers of the digital clock on the stove to see that it is just after nine.
By the time they arrived home earlier this evening, Noah had been exhausted and starving. She didn't think she could eat if someone paid her to, but she is a mother and her son's needs will always come before her own.
She has to wait.
Her son hadn't slept on the hour and a half flight home. Instead he sat up beside her and surveyed her with curious concern filling his light eyes.
"What happened, Mom?" He asked her over and over, but she'd shaken her head, assured him she was fine and forced herself to breathe through the takeoff by imagining Elliot's hand clutching her own, more clearly than she has in a dozen years. She thinks that's saying something because she hasn't forgotten him, not for a single moment.
She has had to wait.
A bowl of macaroni and cheese and a shower had been enough to send her son to his room without complaint. She isn't sure he is asleep just yet and she has to wait until he is.
She has been waiting for a dozen years so she figures a few more minutes isn't going to kill her.
If she is honest, she is using the time to buy herself more of it.
She tries to take a slow steadying breath, but the air fills her lungs fast and the sound of the inhale is sharper than she intends.
She turns on the faucet once more and lets the hot water warm the slowly chilling dishes in the soapy sink. She plants her palms on the solid floor of the sink and the water rises, lapping at her forearms. She feels goosebumps race over her skin despite the temperature. She closes her eyes against the urge to shiver, to shudder when she hears the softest thump issue from Noah's bedroom.
She reaches for the dish towel and dries her hands, her arms before slipping down the hallway toward her son's room.
She pushes the door open ever so slightly to find Noah fast asleep. His dim bedside lamp is on and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban lies open and facedown on the floor beside his bed, as if it has just slipped from his slack grasp and settled on the hardwood. She moves forward and bends to pick it up, turning it over in her hands, and smoothing the ruffled pages.
A page from the end of the story is bent at an odd angle and she turns the pages until she finds the one she is looking for. She straightens it and reads: "Hasn't your experience with the Time-Turner taught you anything, Harry?"
She smiles because just last night they were browsing Diagon Alley. Noah had picked up a delicate golden keychain with celestial designs and an hourglass set in the middle of two revolving spheres, a Time-Turner.
He placed it into her hand before something else caught his eye. She gazed at the shimmering sand inside the hourglass and turned the delicate little knob with her fingers six times, seven...the hourglass spinning in her palm, eight, nine, ten, eleven...
She reads on: "The consequences of our actions are so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed…"
Even in her wildest dreams, she has never imagined a moment where her future could hold the possibility of this. She shakes her head, fleetingly wondering if the Time-Turner really did work its magic. She remembers turning it about a dozen times after all…
She tucks Harry Potter back onto Noah's bookshelf, right between the Chamber of Secrets and the Goblet of Fire. She turns out her son's light and closes his door before she makes her way back down the hall.
She goes through her nightly routine of checking to make sure the front door and the windows are all securely locked once and then she does it a second time, for good measure. She turns the security system on and turns the lights off as she goes.
She stands in the darkened living room for a moment trying to catch her breath.
She glances down the hall toward her bedroom. She has been avoiding it all night because she knows that once she starts to look, she won't be able to stop, and she is afraid of what she may or may not find.
She has no idea where it is. The envelope. The last tangible thing he gave to her. She hasn't seen it in years and half of her mind is terrified that she accidentally threw it away or lost it in the move. The other half of her mind is certain, without a doubt, that it's here somewhere waiting for her to find it.
She can't wait anymore.
She closes her bedroom door with the softest snap and turns on her own bedside lamp before she perches on the side of the bed.
She doesn't know where to start, but she has to begin somewhere so she reaches for the handle of her nightstand drawer and pulls it out. She knows it's not in here, but she has to look. She shuffles over tissues, Band-Aids, and her paperback Mary Oliver collection of poems before she closes the drawer and starts again.
She kneels beside the bed, pulling the storage box from beneath its depths. There are Noah's school records, address labels, tax returns, batteries, miscellaneous craft items like yarn, and glue sticks, and a container of hardened green playdough she forgot to throw away.
She pushes the box back beneath the bed and tries again.
Her dresser this time. Her drawers.
Her socks, her bras and underwear, her pajamas, her sweatshirts. The top drawers contain trinkets; nearly empty perfume bottles she can't bear to part with, bobbie pins, a lone green army man of Noah's, and a few loose earrings missing their mates.
The picture is there, too. The one Noah found three weeks ago when he jokingly asked her if the man in the photo was her long-lost husband.
She'd given him half of a laugh and shaken her head and she does the same now even though there's no one here to see. She told her son the truth. Elliot had been her partner at work for a long time. He'd been her best friend in the whole world and the only person she ever trusted enough to let herself truly love until you came along, she explained.
Her son had rolled his eyes and tossed her a whatever, Mom expression. She laughed, ruffled his curls, and taken the picture from his hands to hold in her own the same way she does in this moment.
She looks at it now, really looks at it, for the first time in years.
It was taken during their first year as partners when they were young, and fresh, and courageous. She had been green and he had been golden and they clicked from moment go. Her hair was longer and darker and straight. She had pinned the bulk of it back, but her bangs had fallen forward into her face and she remembers him reaching for her and brushing the short errant strands behind her ear that night. It had been a casual after work get-together at a neutral after work gathering spot, but they'd claimed each other from the moment they walked in.
As always.
Gravitating toward each other.
He was wearing white while she wore black. He had a few days of stubble on his cheeks and chin and she remembers playfully teasing him about the last time he showered and shaved. She knew exactly how long it had been for him because it had been the same for her.
They'd been working a case non-stop. A grueling, exhausting case of a nine year old girl gone missing and a hunt for a serial rapist that led them all over the city, until Bronx detectives found the girl stashed alive, but unscathed in a storage unit.
They all needed a moment to breathe, to blow off some steam. It had been Munch's idea and they all met at some little hole in the wall cop bar that she isn't sure exists anymore. She remembers Monique carrying her new camera around her neck and capturing candid shots of them all throughout the night. She snapped this one after they had both looked up at the sound of Elliot's name being called.
"Pretend you're friends!" Monique had joked.
Elliot had pulled her close without hesitation. She remembers his cheek bumping her temple and they both smiled. He said something corny to make her laugh and she hadn't given the photo a second thought. She had forgotten all about it until a random afternoon a few weeks later when she found a small white envelope on her desk with two copies of the photo inside.
She remembers the feeling of his gaze on her face, watching curiously from across their desks.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" He asked, his voice low and tired from another late night, another early morning. She turned the photo around so he could see and he grinned.
"Been waiting for a picture to show Kathy, so she doesn't think I made you up."
She had rolled her eyes affectionately at him and given half of a laugh before passing a copy of the picture into his proffered hand.
She watched him take the photo in. His blue eyes skimmed the image of them, the way they looked together in the beginning.
"Maybe this isn't the best one to show her, huh?" He said quietly, cryptically almost as though he thought she couldn't hear, but she privately agreed.
Even way back when, they were a little too comfortable together. They stood just a little too close, lit up a little too brightly, laughed just a little too loud to be just anything.
Just friends.
Just partners.
Just
She slips the photo back into the drawer and closes it with a soft snap.
They were partners, in nearly every sense of the word. if she were another woman and he were another man, she thinks they would have been partners in every sense, but they aren't and they weren't.
She has heard it said that all of the cells in your body turn over every decade, so up until a few hours ago, she had been living in a body he had never touched.
But now, now...
She knows it has to be here. It has to. She wouldn't have thrown it away. She remembers wanting to on more than one desperately righteous angry occasion, but the thought of discarding something he had given to her stopped her.
Liv
She can almost hear him. The way he said her name this afternoon almost makes her believe it's been minutes since they were last together instead of her son's entire lifetime.
She moves into her closet and reaches above her head for the box she keeps on the top shelf. It's heavy and she lowers it down slowly to rest upon her knee. She carries it to the bed and opens it up, turning it onto its side and tipping the contents out onto her bed.
There's her birth certificate, her medical records, paperwork from her time in the academy. There's a paper she wrote in college, a copy of her transcript, her diploma. Her senior photo, an ID badge, a book from her mother. There are pictures, receipts, and documents she hasn't looked at in years...she sits on her bed in the midst of all the memories and she tries to remember...back to a time she doesn't let herself think about.
It hits her.
There is another box.
She stands quickly and a folder of papers falls from her lap and scatters across the floor. She steps over them on her way back to the closet. She knows it's here. It has to be. She hasn't touched it, hasn't moved it in years. She pushes her slacks aside, her blazers, her dresses she hardly ever wears. There.
She slides the box out from beneath a flowy skirt she wore to Noah's school assembly two years ago and pulls it toward herself. She slides it out across the floor before she settles down beside it.
On top, there is a mailing label she hasn't seen in years, written in her own handwriting.
Elliot Stabler
7212 Castleside Street
Glen Oaks, Queens
And the large red Return To Sender label that broke her heart.
No Known Recipient.
She remembers driving to Queens herself in a fit of frustration and exhaustion and banging her fist on the door until her knuckles ached.
She jumped when someone opened it.
A little girl no older than ten, who called for her father, who came running when she announced there was a police officer at the door.
She hadn't introduced herself, but the little girl had seen her badge and understood. She'd asked in so many words about the family who lived here...before, before two weeks ago.
The man hadn't known.
He and his wife were ex-military and only just moved in three days before. As far as he knew, the house had gone up for sale only six days ago. He and his wife had been desperately searching for a home closer to her family in Westbury and purchased the place, via a realtor, sight unseen and fallen in love with its charm.
She remembers the man must have thought her insane for all her questions, but he was the only one giving her any answers.
She tears the tape from the top of the box. She knows it isn't sealed because she had opened it at least once when it was returned to her at the precinct to make sure the contents were still intact.
The contents of his desk. She brought it home and shoved it into the back of her closet and tried to forget it existed until the envelope came…
The cardboard is dusty from all the years of hiding in her closet. She holds her breath in the moment before she lifts the flaps to peer inside.
If it isn't here…
It's here, she hears him assuring her in her mind.
She reaches in, though she knows there is little inside. For the more than dozen years of life they lived together, this box should be much bigger, but it isn't. It's small, contained, and its contents are sparse. She thinks it contrasts sharply with how enormous his presence was beside her.
Inside, there is the picture he used to keep on his desk. The one where he is smiling and holding Eli in the snow. There are two file folders, some sticky notes and pens, a cheap coffee mug she gave him as a gag gift for his birthday early on, a hand-drawn construction paper creation of Lizzie's from 3rd grade, and a yellow bubble wrap envelope.
She tries to take a deep breath, but the air doesn't reach her lungs. She reaches for it as she settles onto the floor to examine it. The material of the envelope is smooth beneath her fingers. The black permanent marker has faded ever so slightly over the years and she thinks it's ironic because nothing lasts forever. She traces his messy scrawl with her fingers. She knows his handwriting well enough to know that he was unsteady when he wrote her name.
Twelve years later, she is shaking as she holds it in her hands.
Det. Olivia Benson
NYPD 16th Precinct
Manhattan SVU
She slips her thumb beneath the flap and turns the envelope over so that she can look inside. She doesn't know what she expects to find that wasn't there a dozen years ago, but her heart is pounding uncomfortably in her chest and she has to take a deep breath to get enough air. She peers inside and finds the little folded sheet of stationary his miniature badge was taped to.
She doesn't have it anymore.
She lifts the tiny note out of the envelope and reads his Semper Fi. His handwriting is blurring before her now because she doesn't understand. He has given her his always faithful and yet…
She sticks her hand deep into the envelope, but it's empty.
It's empty.
There is nothing here.
She turns it over and shakes it like a petulant little kid on Christmas morning who didn't get the gift she wanted. She has been hoping and wishing and praying and waiting for some kind of a miracle in the form of an answer and…
Her welling eyes snap open at a soft tinkling sound against the hardwood of her floor.
Her frantic hands gloss over the mess of memories to reach for it.
The tiny golden key.
She can't help the way she is shaking. There is a miniscule note taped to the key and she has to blindly fumble for her glasses on the night table to help her stinging eyes to be able to read, to be able to see.
P.O. Box 118
217 East 70th St
It's real.
He had been telling her the truth. It's real and she has to go. Now. Soon. She glances at the late hour on the clock and resigns herself...tomorrow.
She clutches the tiny precious key in her hands and lifts herself up to sit down on the bed. She reaches into the pocket of her jeans for the business card he pressed into her palm hours ago.
Clay Quinn
630-194-1284
Search and Rescue Unit 11
Rochester Washington, 98579
She doesn't know who this man is, but she wants to believe she still knows Elliot Stabler.
To be continued...
