Result of my mini-poll on twitter was 44 v 56 percent to either hurry up with this chapter or to take my time to perfect it. I found the middle ground: it's about half of the conversation between Olivia and Kathleen, posted today. Enjoy!

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18. Kathleen

Olivia waited by the door, leaning against it with one shoulder, until she heard footsteps in the hallway. Kathleen Stabler. She hadn't seen the girl or any of her siblings in over five years and she wondered why Kathleen had decided to come to see her now. She must have come over straight from the hospital after visiting her father. Olivia peeked through the peephole and saw the blonde young woman approach her door. She opened the door before Kathleen could knock, and they both froze for an instant when they were finally face to face. Olivia quickly regained her composure and greeted Kathleen formally.

"Hello Kathleen. It's been a long time."

Kathleen stared at her a few moments longer. Then she suddenly stepped forward, wrapping her arms around the older woman, and sighed,

"Olivia ... I'm so sorry!"

Kathleen squeezed her arms tightly around Olivia's waist. Olivia was stunned and it took her a moment to understand that Kathleen was actually very happy to see her, and apparently apologizing for not contacting her sooner. She moved her arms around the younger woman loosely and patted her on the back when Kathleen showed no signs that she was going to let go of her any time soon.

"Ehm ... okay. Kathleen? Why don't you ehm ... come on in, and we can talk," Olivia suggested, trying not to let her nerves take over too much. She was the older of the two after all so she needed to show some semblance of self-control here.

Kathleen finally released her and looked up at her with tears in her eyes.

"I ... okay. It's ... good to see you, Olivia."

Olivia stepped back and told her,

"Please, come in and have a seat. You want something to drink?"

Kathleen nodded and seemed very relieved. She shrugged her coat off and tossed it on Olivia's rack by the door. The gesture reminded Olivia so much of Elliot, that she bit her lip and turned away from Kathleen.

"You want some wine?" she asked while walking towards the kitchen.

"No. No, thank you, I don't drink. Do you have any soda?"

Olivia checked her fridge but she didn't have any soda, just some beer, wine, milk and lemonade.

"I'm sorry, I'm all out. But I could fix you some lemonade?"

"Lemonade?"

Kathleen was surprised. She had sat down on the couch and was looking around. When she spotted some toys in a box in the corner, her eyes lit up.

"You have a baby?"

Olivia placed the bottle of lemonade on the breakfast bar and looked at Elliot's middle daughter on her couch. It was a surreal moment.

"Yes, I have a son. Hence the lemonade."

"Wow ... well, sure. I'll have some of your son's lemonade. What's his name?"

"Noah. He's two."

Olivia busied herself making Kathleen a glass of lemonade. She walked back into the living area and handed the glass to the young woman before picking up her own wine glass from the coffee table and sitting down next to Kathleen.

"Thank you," Kathleen said quietly. "You must be wondering why I'm here after all this time."

When their eyes met, Olivia nodded.

"Yeah. Why don't you tell me."

"I went to visit dad in the hospital, but I guess you know that. And he told me ... he told me that apparently he just ... walked out of your life when he quit his job."

Kathleen was stammering a bit and Olivia wondered where she was going with this.

"I just want you to know, Olivia, that I had no idea."

Kathleen looked at her with despair in her eyes but Olivia wasn't following.

"No idea about what, Kathleen?"

Kathleen jumped up and started pacing and talking very fast, clutching her glass of lemonade with both hands.

"And then he lost his memory and mom told us he was better off not remembering the job and we agreed because we knew it was so tough on him and he was always so stressed out and angry and ... well ... Olivia, I honestly didn't know. None of us did."

She had stopped pacing and looked at Olivia with wide eyes. Olivia stood up as well and approached the frantic woman carefully.

"Honey, why don't you sit down again, and start at the beginning, okay? Because I'm really not following right now."

When she put a hand on Kathleen's arm, Kathleen blinked and nodded, and then walked back to the couch.

"Yes. Okay. The beginning."

Kathleen sat down, took a deep breath and started over, leaning her elbows on her knees and focusing on the wall behind the television while she spoke. Olivia sat back down next to her.

"Back when dad came home after shooting that girl, he was a mess. He was withdrawn and mom said he was walking around the house in the middle of the night a lot. It got a little better after he'd put his papers in, and he calmed down a bit but he still wasn't the dad we knew. I visited regularly to talk to him but he was very closed off. One day I asked him if he was at least talking to you, because I knew he could always talk to you about anything."

Kathleen had turned her head to look at Olivia when she mentioned her.

"I was really happy that he had you as a partner, you know. He and mom had such completely different lives, that he couldn't talk to her about work stuff at all."

Olivia had been painfully aware of that truth over the years. She'd tried to stay out of the way and not interfere in any way with her partner's marriage, but she knew he didn't talk to his wife enough. She'd told him that too. Told him that he was shutting Kathy out and that he was ruining his marriage. But it had never really changed. He'd wanted to shield his family from the horrors of the job, he'd said. But she knew there had been more to it. He just couldn't really talk to Kathy at all. Not even about ordinary things. The marriage had been strained for as long as she could remember, and probably before that.

She knew Elliot wouldn't have been the easiest person to live with. Talk about strained. But they had tried. They had been committed to their family and she had tried to support them.

"He told me that he didn't want to burden you with his problems," Kathleen continued. "That you needed to go on with your own life. I just assumed that you and he had talked about this because that was what you two did. I thought you had gone your separate ways as friends. I never would have imagined ..."

Kathleen shook her head and Olivia was beginning to understand what she was telling her.

"If I'd known he'd simply walked out on you, I would have kicked his ass Olivia. You gotta believe that."

Olivia wanted to reach out to the young woman but didn't. It was too painful to hear her explain how Elliot had told no one that he'd basically abandoned his partner after the shooting. Of course they hadn't expected it. No one had, least of all Olivia herself. That was exactly what had made the past four years so difficult for her. She'd tried to hate him for leaving her without a word, but she had missed him more than she had hated him, and she'd hated herself for it.

"I'm so sorry he did that," Kathleen said, her voice barely more than a whisper, and Olivia finally reached out to the young woman and put a hand on her back.

"Me too," she replied softly.

"And then he lost his memory and mom talked to all of us. She said that maybe this wasn't such a bad thing, and that our father would finally be able to leave the trauma of the shooting and the horrors of the job behind him."

Kathleen hung her head and sighed, and Olivia could tell that she was fighting back fresh tears.

"And we all agreed."

She took a deep breath and looked up at Olivia again.

"I'm so sorry. We all agreed not to contact his former squad. Mom said that his family and the safe surroundings of our family home should be enough for him, and that we would be there for him as a family as his memories came back to him."

"But they never did," Olivia said, watching Kathleen struggle with how she had handled the situation.

"No. Until he finally met you two nights ago. He told me tonight that he knew the instant he saw you, that he'd met you before. He ... he could have started healing years ago if we'd just called you."

Tears trickled down Kathleen's cheeks now and Olivia continued rubbing her back, as much for Kathleen's comfort as her own.

"You didn't know," she offered but Kathleen shook her head.

"Mom did! Mom knew!"

Kathleen jumped up again and Olivia stood with her.

"Kathleen ..."

"No. No, I'm sure she knew. She's always been jealous of how you could talk to dad when she couldn't. She'd joke about it, but I knew that deep down she was serious."

Kathleen laughed suddenly, a bitter laugh.

"Mom wanted him all to herself. Well, look how that turned out. He'll want nothing to do with her now."

Olivia was trembling. She was overwhelmed with different feelings and emotions. Part of her shared Kathleen's outrage that Kathy had kept her and the squad away intentionally. Another part was more relieved than she'd expected to know that there was no resentment at all between her and Kathleen. And she shared Kathleen's pain over her father's suffering. Because he had suffered from the amnesia. His restless dreams were proof of that. He may not have been haunted by memories of rape victims and crime scenes, but he'd been haunted in a different way. He'd been searching day and night, without knowing what he was looking for. Or whom. Kathleen and Elliot had butted heads many times but Olivia had always known that deep down, they had a very special bond.

Kathleen's love for her father was very visible now. She loved her father so much that she'd been happy that he had his partner to support him in a way her mother couldn't. It was an amazing kind of loyalty to her father, that Olivia knew was very rare. Not all children could look at things the way Kathleen obviously could.

"Do your brothers and sisters know that Elliot was in an accident? And that he's regained a few memories?" she asked Kathleen.

Kathleen was still shaking her head at the whole situation and walked towards the box with Noah's toys. She picked up one of his toy cars, a police car, and studied it while she spoke again.

"Not yet. Neither does mom. Or grandma."

Grandma. Elliot's mother. Another person in the Stabler family that Olivia thought she'd had a good rapport with.

"Grandma's really happy with the new Elliot Stabler, you know," Kathleen said bitterly. "He adores her and she revels in the attention he gives her now. She won't accept that this isn't really who dad is. He is the son she always wanted now, so she won't be too happy if he does get all of his memories back."

Olivia blew out a breath slowly. Could she really blame Bernie? The woman had been desperate for Elliot's love, and the effects of her bipolar disorder combined with Elliot's sense of responsibility and his temper, had destroyed so much between mother and son. Of course she'd be happy to have the loving son she'd always wanted him to be. She couldn't blame the woman. So she didn't. She asked about Kathleen's brothers and sisters instead.

"How are Maureen and the twins handling your dad's amnesia?"

Kathleen was still studying the small police car in her hand and didn't look up when she smiled wryly.

"Maureen ... she was already doing her own thing when it happened. Had a boyfriend she was really serious about and she was focused on law school. She tried to stay out of it the whole time. I think she knows more about mom and dad's argument at his surprise birthday party, but she won't talk about it. She got married two years ago and moved to LA. She's not really close to mom or dad. The only one of us she talks to regularly is Elizabeth."

Olivia knew what it was like to distance oneself from one's parents. Or parent, in her case. And she couldn't blame Maureen either. Kids shouldn't be burdened with their parents' problems and should live their own lives. As Maureen grew up after surviving puberty, she had always struck Olivia as a balanced person who had no trouble making sensible choices for herself. Choosing not to interfere with her parents' problems or her father's memory loss was a choice for herself, not against anyone else. Olivia couldn't and wouldn't take it personally.

Kathleen put the police car back in the box and took a long draw from her glass of lemonade. Olivia invited her to sit down again but Kathleen was too restless.

"I can't believe he is actually remembering stuff now," she said, moving back to the couch but not sitting down. "I kind of lost hope that this would happen but now ..."

"I'm not sure why I'm the one who seems to have jogged his memory," Olivia said, sitting down and picking up her glass of wine. "It should have been one of you, his family."

Kathleen chuckled.

"You're not sure why you're the one? Well, that makes one of you then."

Olivia's eyebrows shot up.

"What do you mean?"

"It pretty obvious that dad is in love with you, Olivia," Kathleen said bluntly, almost sounding annoyed that Olivia wouldn't understand that. "Looking back now, I think he's always been in love with you. And don't tell me you didn't know that!"

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Dun dun :)

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I wasn't sure if the entire conversation between and Olivia and Kathleen would fit into one chapter. As it turns out, it doesn't. I try not to skim over the emotions that go with conversations, so that's why this chapter is longer than the previous ones. The next one probably will be as well and this looked like a suitable place to cut it in half. I'd love to hear what you think of Kathleen so far, while I write the second part of this. And how about Bernie and Maureen?