Prompt: One of the McCord children tells Elizabeth they wish she were dead, not knowing that it's the worst thing they could have said to her.
Elizabeth sighed as Stevie stormed into the living room. Her feisty 10 year old was angry about... something. Elizabeth had missed the actual problem.
"I just wanna go! It's not like it's gonna be a big deal! Please?!" Stevie whined.
"Stevie, I told you. You need to be here tonight and that's the end of it."
"I hate you! Dad would let me! I wish you were dead!" With that, Stevie turned and bolted up the stairs, slamming the door to her room.
Elizabeth stood there, dumbfounded. Tears started to prick her eyes, but she knew it was stupid to cry over a childish throwaway comment from a 10 year old. But... she just couldn't help herself.
She found herself remembering when she'd... she'd done the exact same thing that Stevie did. She'd been trying to do something, she'd been frustrated and tired. And her mother, her good kind mother, had just been trying to help, when she'd yelled. Her mother had looked stricken, but later when Elizabeth had apologized, she'd wrapped her in a safe, warm embrace that assured her that there were no hard feelings. And then...
Elizabeth put her head in her hands and sank into the couch behind her. She sobbed for a while until she felt small hands on her shoulder.
"Mama?" Ali's sweet voice rang out and half pulled Elizabeth back to reality. She sniffed and sat up.
"Hey Noodle."
"Why are you sad?"
Half tempted to lie, Elizabeth sighed. "It's nothing, baby. Why don't you go play, okay?"
Alison nodded, but instead of going to her room with her bright toys, she found her father.
Henry was sitting in his study, reading, but when his youngest daughter walked in, he took off his glasses and smiled at her.
"Hey Noodle!"
"Mama's sad."
Henry nodded and sent his daughter to play and went to find his wife. She was sitting on the couch, her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
"Babe?"
She jumped and looked at him with glassy eyes.
"Henry."
"Did something happen?" He asked settling beside her and pulling her close.
"It's" she sniffled, "so stupid!"
"Can't be. What's wrong?"
She sniffles again and told him the whole story. She half turned so she could see Henry's face when she repeated what Stevie said that broke her heart. Henry had been listening patiently, but when those words left his wife's mouth and he took in her nearly broken demeanor, his eyes hardened. His little girl had crossed a very grown up line.
"Henry..." Elizabeth said placing a hand on his chest. "Don't be mad at her. She doesn't know."
And that was true. They'd felt that their kids needed to be a certain age before they stopped dancing around the topic of Elizabeth's parents. But now? No, they needed to tell them. Henry wanted to make sure that her parents' deaths were never used against Elizabeth while their kids were in the throes of hormonal teenage angst.
"We need to tell them," he said and felt his wife nod against him.
"You're right."
Together they climbed off the couch and headed to their girls' room.