A/N: Thanks to MHFever for suggesting this chapter. I hope you all like it! Sorry again about my screw up with the last chapter!
I blame Olivia for a lot of our family's problems.
I don't know tons about her. All of us know her, I guess…she picked us up and drove us to work to see my dad a few times. She came over for dinner every once in a while. That's what I couldn't stand. She got my dad all day, every day, and then she would be there when he was home too.
Anyway, none of us know for sure what happened to Olivia when she was little...all we know is that she gets really tense whenever someone makes an offhand comment about her mom or dad. So I guess her relationships with them aren't great, but that doesn't mean she has to try and adopt our family as hers.
No one else but me seemed to mind. Maureen loves Olivia, and so do Lizzie and Dickie. They're glad she's my dad's partner, and they don't hold her responsible for the divorce. I don't see why not. What other explanation is there? Olivia took my mom's place. Of course it's her fault.
I have a horrible relationship with my dad now. He tries to take me out to eat to force interaction and make everything 'the way it used to be'. I have no idea what he means by that, because we haven't been close for a long time. He knows nothing about me, and I wish he would just stop trying. I'm sick of the pointless conversations we have that mostly involve me updating his ten-year-old conceptions of who I am. I've changed, he missed it, and it's not worth my time to give him a breakdown of the last however many years of my life. He should have been there. I shouldn't have to explain.
I don't see Olivia much, so I can't direct any of my anger constructively at her. So my dad gets most of it. It's his fault too, of course, but if Olivia had never become his partner…maybe things would have turned out differently. He never stayed at work so much before she came to SVU. I doubt that the cases all of a sudden became more intense and stayed that way for eight or whatever years. I know there are crime waves, but a decade is too long a period. He wanted to be with her.
Even though I hate her, I have to admit to myself that she didn't make any of this happen on purpose. In fact, I know she fought to keep it from happening. One time after she ate with us, I was talking to Maureen and she said she thought Olivia was in love with our dad. I had been thinking the same thing. You could just tell. I think my mom noticed too, but she probably tried to ignore it. But anyway, that was years ago. If she really was in love with him then, but they didn't act on anything until after my mom left him, then I know she didn't want to break up our family.
But she did. Couldn't she see what her presence did to my mom? I watched my mom worry about my dad night after night, and then he would come home and blow off her questions because he already talked through it all with Olivia. When he was upset he would do the dramatic hugging-all-the-kids thing, and then he would mope until Olivia called. Then he would open up and when he got off the phone, or back from getting coffee, or whatever, he would finally be better.
Little by little, we all lost the power to make him happy. Olivia was the only one with that ability. And I know after she worked her magic, she would send him home to be with us, but I always still resented her for having that effect on him. Maybe if she hadn't been so understanding, he would have had to confide in my mom. There wouldn't have been an alternative. He'd have to work out his problems at home, and face us all, not run away with Olivia so she could fix him and then triumphantly return him. He never let us see past his exterior, so we didn't know him…and she took away our possibility of knowing him.
I'm pretty sure Olivia knows how I feel about her. I've never been one to fake enthusiasm, and my response to seeing her is much colder than Maureen's or Lizzie's or Dickie's. Lots of times, when Olivia sees my interactions with my dad or when I stand off as everyone else is talking excitedly to her, I think she wants to take me aside and talk to me. To make everything better, because that's what she does with the Stablers. She 'fixes' us…but she actually wrecks us. Or at least, she wrecked my mom and me.
Part of me does want to sit down and have it all out with her. I want to yell at her for being there for my dad because it made him not need us anymore, for being the thing that makes my dad keep going back to a job that is tearing him apart, for making him love her…for everything.
And yet, I know she's saved his life over and over. I should be thankful. But I'm not.