Chapter 9
Seconds felt like minutes, maybe hours. Time just seemed to have come to a complete stop. The noise from outside filtered through the open window. The sound of distant voices and car horns, the sounds of life in the big city. A cool gust of wind pulled at Olivia's hair, sending a freezing chill down her spine. She felt forlorn.
Fin looked at Olivia. She hadn't moved, just stared at something on the wall. His words broke the silence, bringing her back to harsh reality. "What do you wanna do?"
Olivia let her eyes wander around Amanda's apartment. She had only been here hours earlier. She had kissed Amanda right at the same spot where she stood right now. It felt different right at this moment. Quiet, abandoned and empty. Like any and all life had been erased when she walked out of the door. Slowly she looked back at Fin.
"I can't believe she left," she muttered softly. She couldn't remember ever feeling so lost.
Fin watched the older detective. The despair was etched across her face. He had known Olivia long enough to know and to understand when she felt hurt. He had seen the desolate look in her eyes when Elliot left. That same look filled her eyes again; they swam with tears.
"What happened?" he asked softly.
"We…. back in Atlanta… we had a moment," Olivia whispered. "It was something… the heat of the moment maybe… I don't know… But when we came home, I just.."
"Did you talk to her?"
Olivia shrugged. Tears constricted her voice as she spoke. "We tried, I think. I didn't know what to say and she didn't know either. Or maybe we did and chose not to, I don't know." She pushed a strand of hair out of her face and slowly walked back into the living room. Once she reached the couch, she held still. "I was here last night."
Fin watched her. He watched the way she moved, the way she talked. He heard her, he saw her. He saw what Amanda leaving had done. Whether it was what the younger woman had intended to do, he didn't know but it seemed that the fact she was gone had hurt Olivia deeper than she had imagined.
"Why were you here?"
"To talk, I guess, but we never got very far." Olivia tried to smile through her tears. "I don't know what we were thinking, who we were trying to kid. We brought this on ourselves and we couldn't deal with it. She asked me how I felt and I told her I didn't know…" Her eyes found Fin's. He wasn't normally her first choice to talk to but he was here and he was Amanda's partner. "With Brian and our relationship and…." Her voice faltered. "Shit, I fucked up."
Hearing Olivia Benson swear was something Fin wasn't used to. He had heard her use the odd profanity back in the squad room in the heat of the moment during a case but he had never heard her use this kind of language about her own personal life.
"I'll call the Captain," he said as she reached into his pocket to retrieve his cell phone.
Olivia's weary eyes snapped up. "Why?"
"He needs to now Rollins bailed," Fin answered and then his lips curled up into half a smile. Olivia stared back at him with big, brown eyes. "And I'm sure he can get your ass on the next flight to Atlanta."
"Fin…"
"Listen, Liv, this is really simple," Fin said. He spoke to her like a father would speak to his child. Throughout all of this he had not judged her, had not tried to tell her she had been right or wrong. He had been there, like a partner or a friend would be. "Do you want Amanda to come back to New York?"
"Yes," Olivia admitted. She ached inside knowing Amanda wasn't here and admitting it lifted a weight of her shoulders. In her chest her heart skipped a beat and a nervous feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. The kind that made her feel sick but happy at the same time. Her smile grew a little bit wider. "Yes, I want her to come back."
"Ok. Now, look at it this way; if you came home tonight and found Brian had moved out of your apartment, would you feel the same way?"
"No."
Olivia was surprised by her own answer. The world rolled off her tongue without thinking and with ease. Her mind suddenly seemed to connect the pieces and for a brief moment the world seemed to make perfect sense. The tears in her eyes were slowly replaced by the hint of a smile on her lips and she watched as Fin called Cragen.
She didn't listen to him as he spoke to their captain. Instead she stood by the window and watched New York life pass by outside. She wondered how many times Amanda had stood here doing the same, wondering about what had happened between them, questioning herself the same way Olivia did now.
Ten minutes later Fin hung up, the hint of a smile playing on his lips. "How fast can you get to LaGuardia?"
Olivia's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Why?"
"Your flight leaves in ninety minutes."
~()~
She knew Atlanta like the back of her head. Born and raised she had lived on the streets and worked these streets for most of her life. Known as the city in the forest because of the many trees, something that was rare in many other cities and one thing Amanda missed the most about living in New York. Beyond the high rise skyline, the city view gives way to endless stretches of trees. Surroundings the city's three high-rise district of Downtown, Midtown and Buckhead were the smaller neighbourhoods.
The city's east side with its streetcar suburbs was popular with the upper middle-class whereas the west side had the art galleries and the old factories converted into housing. Northwest Atlanta was marked by the poorest and most crime ridden neighbourhoods. In some of those neighbourhoods she had worked her undercover operations.
Amanda drove her way through the city without even having to think about where she was going. She found her way through the suburbs easily, manoeuvring her car through the early afternoon traffic. When she reached the small cul-du-sac she noticed most of the driveways were empty apart from one. Her lips curled up into a smile as she pulled her truck up behind the black SUV parked on the driveway and got out.
She walked up the path to the front door, peered behind the statue in the shape of a dog and found the small house key hidden behind it. She stuck the key in the lock and stepped into the house. The first thing that greeted her was the smell of freshly washed linen. The next thing she noticed was the sound of the TV playing in the other room.
"Joanne, is that you?" a woman's voice called from the other room and footsteps quickly approached. "I thought we were meetin' up at three and…"
Amanda watched as the woman who appeared from the living room almost dropped the glass of orange juice she held in her hand. Blonde hair was bound back in a ponytail and a pair of blue eyes looked at the unexpected visitor. Dressed in a pair of black jeans and a simple white shirt, the woman was an older version of Amanda herself.
"Amanda?"
"Hi, Momma."
"Manda, what are you doin' here?" Mary Rollins asked as she walked up to her daughter and wrapped her arms around her. She hugged her so tight Amanda felt the air being squeezed out of her lungs. "Why didn't you call?!"
"Surprise," Amanda whispered into her mother's ear. She took a step back when her mother let go of her and sized her up. "Sorry I didn't call."
Mary's eyes narrowed. "What's goin' on? Why are you here? Is it Kim? Have you finally found her? What did she do this time?"
"Enough with the questions, already," Amanda interjected. "No, it's not about Kim. I don't know where she is and it seems nobody else does either. When they find her I'll be the first to know." She paused. "Can't I just turn up and surprise you?"
Mary studied her daughter's face. "You don't ever come home unannounced, Amanda. In fact, you don't ever come home at all."
Amanda didn't miss the jibe. Her mother was right. She never came home. She couldn't remember the last time she had visited. She tried to avoid it, even during Christmas or Thanksgiving. Going back to Atlanta, to her family, wasn't something she did lightly and she had long since gotten used to her mother's comments about never coming home. Family time was complicated.
"What's really goin' on?" Mary wanted to know.
"I just needed a break," Amanda avoided the question. "I was kinda hopin' I could stay here."
"Of course you can," her mother answered. She glanced at her watch. "I gotta go out at three but you know where everythin' is so help yourself."
Amanda flashed a smile. "Thanks."
"Guest room is free upstairs if you wanna take a shower or anythin'."
She accepted the offer and climbed her way up the stairs. The faint hint of a paint smell pointed out that her mother had the place redecorated not too long ago. All the walls and woodwork had been repainted and the house looked fresh and clean. She walked across the landing to the bedroom a the far end and softly opened the door.
The double bed was made up with flora sheets and white pillows. The window was ajar, inviting in the sweet smell of rain that would soon be coming. A small lamp stood on the bedside table and two pictures of Atlanta parks adorned the walls. A simple white wardrobe on the wall would provide her with enough space for the clothes she had brought with her.
Amanda sank down on the bed and cradled her head in her hand. When she got on the plane to Atlanta she didn't know where she would go when she reached Georgia and when she walked out of the airport she had come to the frightening conclusion that she had nowhere to go. The only place she could think of was the one place she said she wasn't going to come back to but here she was, in her mother's house. She hadn't been here since walking out years earlier after another one of Kim's crazy outbursts and her mother's inability to see that her youngest daughter needed help.
Life at the Rollins' household had never been easy, for as long as Amanda could remember. When she was little her dad had a better relationship with the bottle than he did with his fanily and he used to beat her mother. Until the night she aimed the shot gun at him, telling him that this was the end. He walked out, leaving them to fend for themselves. Money was tight and her mother tried holding down the crappiest jobs but life was unkind.
Kim's issues kept landing her into trouble with the cops and what little they money they had she stole and spent on drugs or her mother would use it to bail her out of yet another prison cell. Where her mother took her medication to control her bipolar disorder, Kim didn't. She seemed to enjoy wreaking havoc and destroying everybody else, oblivious to what it was she was doing. Kim had become a household name back at the precinct in Downtown Atlanta she worked for by the time she had worked her way up into Vice. Kim had more prostitution charges on her record than Amanda had made collars.
After the incident on the job that destroyed her faith in Atlanta PD, Amanda left. She never told her mother or her sister. By the time they discovered her empty apartment she had been living in New York for almost six months. Her mother had been so focused on Kim that she forgot she had another child. It was the story of her life; always the forgotten one, the one that could stand on her own two feet. Nobody had ever realised that the only reason she was able to do that was because nobody had ever given her a damn choice.
It was no surprise she turned to gambling. An undercover job gone too far. It had started off as a job but then it became a habit. A couple of baseball games, then a few football ones. Things moved from there; NFL, Super Bowl, any other league she could think of. The odd poker game although cards weren't really her thing. She was losing more than she was winning and by the time she left Atlanta for New York she knew that what she was leaving behind was a demon that would always find her. After just a week in the Big Apple, she had lost herself once again. It seemed that getting lost was a family trait; the Rollins curse.
She heaved a sigh as she stood up and walked to the bathroom. There Amanda stripped off and stepped into the shower. The warm water helped relax her tired and aching muscles. She washed her hair and remained under the hot flowing water until it began to run cold. Then she got out, picked up one of the towels and dried herself off before walking back to the bedroom. There she slipped into a pair of worn out jeans and her favourite Braves jersey before making her way down the stairs.
She found the house empty and remembered her mother telling her she was going out. Amanda padded into the kitchen, checked the fridge and grabbed one of the bottles of water from the bottom shelf. She took a couple of pieces of fruit and walked back to the living room. As she walked past the large windows overlooking the back yard she came she fully realised what she had done: She ran away from New York. She turned her back on her job and her life because of Olivia. It wasn't New York she ran from; it was Olivia she had tried to leave behind.
The memory of the brunette made her heart ache and Amanda tried to fight the images back to the darker corners of her mind. She didn't know if Atlanta was the kind of place where she could make a new start. New York had seemed like that place but now it had just become another nightmare. Atlanta already was a nightmare. It always had been. Maybe she could make it better.
She fell down on the couch and took her cell phone from her pocket. She scrolled through her contacts until stumbling across a name from her past. She hesitated before pressing the 'call' button and waited for someone to answer on the other side. Only a few seconds later a familiar voice spoke and she smiled.
"Hey, Lieutenant," she said as she brushed the wet hair out of her eyes and put her feet up on the coffee table. The hurt she felt inside slowly began to ease off, slipping back into the depths of her heart she had learned to close off so well. "Remember that promise you made me 'bout comin' back to Atlanta? How 'bout keepin' true to your words? Got a place for me?"
There was a pause and then she grinned. "Cool. I'll be in first thing tomorrow." Her eyes drifted around the room. "And not a word to anyone 'bout this, okay? I don't need everyone else knowin' I'm back in town this yet. Better keep the trouble away for as long as it lasts."
She hung up and heaved a sigh as she leaned back into the couch, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. This was Atlanta. This was her version of hell. And she was voluntarily throwing herself right back into it.