A/N: Update number two! Mild trigger warning for the aftermath of assault.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

- "In Flanders Fields," John McCrae

Chapter 42.

Between the Crosses

. . .

The colors came to life under Amanda's light but diligent hand. She had played around with drawing in junior and senior high, typically producing nothing more substantial than cute doodles or graffiti-like lettering. According to her art teachers she had an eye, but she hadn't put in the effort to hone it or her pencil. As a result her talent remained a party trick, handed out on cocktail napkins, Post-its, and the backs of DD5s to those who admired it. Picasso she wasn't, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd held a brush or an art tool of any kind.

But here she was, smoothing and forming as if she were working in clay, fingers trailing pigments of brown, purple, green, and in some spots an open-wound red that appeared as blood under the suds and water, but wasn't blood. She swept the veil of lacy white soap away to reveal all the shading and dark smudges she was trying to wash from the canvas. Some of it had come off—glitter-sized flecks that didn't sparkle, an outer film turning to crust, smears in white that ran clear and reds that wept red, an unidentified substance that clung like putty—most didn't. She couldn't undo the previous artists' creation.

That was the intolerable truth the water kept exposing, streaming in rivulets like vines that choked out life, roots that spread all the way to the heart of the matter: she couldn't. Couldn't erase the past or the pain, couldn't heal what was broken, couldn't even wrap her arms around the problem, kiss its back, press her chest against it until their heartbeats synchronized and soothed. None of her old tricks were worth a damn anymore.

The shower was supposed to help refresh Olivia and make her feel more herself, but so far she only stood below the spray like she had forgotten what to do. Head bowed as if she were being deloused. Amanda thought of war footage, skeletal prisoners in internment camps, hooded figures undergoing enhanced interrogation techniques that made the body beneath seem barely human. That's how they stood, waiting on the Zyklon B, the next round of waterboarding. Surrender, it was all that was left to them.

And so Amanda had taken over, soaping Olivia's skin in gentle circles and guiding her beneath the shower head as needed. They danced that way for a while, until Olivia finally took the lead and turned to face the jet. Amanda had hesitated then, hands out at her sides and pearly with Dove—it was the position they often made love in during their more intimate showers, Olivia's palm pressed flat to the wall, Amanda's hand snaking around one shapely hip—uncertain how to continue. The tears were evident in Olivia's shoulders, which shook in precisely the same manner when she laughed. If only it were a laugh.

"Should we stop?" Cautiously Amanda rested her palm at the nape of Olivia's neck. Exposed by the haircut and Olivia's lowered head, the patch of skin looked so vulnerable it pained her to see it. The men's fingers and the belt strap were still visible there, blending in with the NYC skyline tattoo like an ugly smog-and-fire sunset. The city was burning and the people in the buildings were trapped, nowhere to go except out the window and to their deaths. "We can try for longer next time if this is too much . . . "

Olivia shook her head, scraggles of wet dark hair flaring on either side. "It's not," she said, voice clogged by emotion and snot, salt tears and city water. She sounded like she was drowning in it—which one, take your pick. Her ribs rippled each time she moved or shuddered, for the disconcerting effect that something alive and slithery was trapped beneath her skin. Something to be excised and cast out. Or birthed. "Keep going. Just want to get it over with."

Since you forced me into it. She didn't have to say it, maybe didn't even actually think it, but it was what Amanda heard. Heard and deserved. She had pushed her wife into taking a shower for all the reasons she'd said out loud: Olivia would feel better about herself if she were clean; nothing would completely wash away what had happened in the shipping container, but a literal cleansing might in some small way act as a spiritual and mental one; it was basic hygiene and self-care 101; it would help her relax, the heat and spray-intensity easing her sore muscles, her days-long migraine; if nothing else, she needed to avoid infection by keeping her wounds clean. Amanda meant every word of it, she did.

But the part of her she kept under wraps, the selfish, bitchy side who dispensed criticism as if it were wisdom and spoke in a voice identical to her mother's, who had been such an insufferable brat no one back home would babysit "those Rollins girls," even when Mama was laid up from the latest beating, so that the task of caring for her fell on the slight shoulders of her hellcat daughters like the limp straps of their raggy sundresses—that Amanda wanted to scream, the longer Olivia put off bathing. Every moment she failed to get out of bed, curled on her side, just a dark head above some blankets, it was all Amanda could do not to throw on the lights (as counterproductive as it sounded, after three days of constant light inside the torture box, Olivia craved darkness) and drag her to the bathtub.

Wasn't that what women normally did after a rape—showered obsessively and scrubbed their skin raw to get the man (or men) off? Of course, after hers, Amanda had stumbled home and slept for eighteen hours straight, no pharmaceutical or alcoholic assistance necessary. That came later. So maybe Olivia's decision not to slough off as much of the assault as she could wasn't that unusual at all. But it bugged Amanda that she didn't even seem willing to try.

No, not bugged. It fucking terrified her. If she wouldn't even take a shower or get her hair cut, what else was she going to give up on? Amanda? The kids? Fretting about it to Daphne had earned Amanda the reminder that it had only been a few days since the trauma—for both of you, Daphne kept stressing—and Olivia just needed time. But how much, was the question? And time was tricky; if you weren't careful it got away from you, it distorted what you knew, it turned itself against you. It grew fangs.

If she sat back and let it swallow Olivia up in the name of healing, of more-time, how would that be any different from letting her be taken away by the men? What if sleep went from eighteen hours to eighteen years, and one day she woke up to find a thing with fangs, vicious and rapacious, where Olivia had once been? Or just blood. Red lines between the bathroom tiles, following the grout like the straight lines you could only draw with an Etch A Sketch, not circles. You never came full circle, just dropped straight off. Maybe that was why Mama had tried to kill herself—that sheer drop. And now Olivia was in free fall too.

So Amanda had pushed a little more for the shower than she would have when her wife was grounded, secure, capable of making her own decisions. She'd forced it and made Olivia cry, which was all she seemed able to do now, when she herself wasn't crying. Together, the past couple of days, they had probably shed as many tears as there were drops of water in this shower. Was it ever going to stop, she wondered, but couldn't ask. Or would they just go on breaking down at the slightest word, the softest touch?

She soaped and rinsed Olivia's back and buttocks as thoroughly as she dared, pausing every few seconds, every few inches, to secure consent. There was a ruddiness at the inside curve of both cheeks that she tried not to see, afraid it was blood, more afraid that it wasn't. By some minor miracle the STD results had all been negative—though the HIV test would have to be readministered after the appropriate window period—but who knew what kind of havoc another infection could wreak in that area? She still felt guilty enough about what Olivia had lost in the first operation.

They weren't talking about it. The missing parts Amanda let them take away after the men had already taken so much. She almost wondered if Olivia had forgotten about it, until she mentioned not being able to take a bath yet. Amanda should have known her wife would never forget a thing like that, even while taking heavy painkillers, even while in shock, traumatized beyond belief. Olivia Benson remembered every one of the violations she endured, and Amanda's position on the list had risen significantly. It probably ranked up there with Serena's forced gynecological exam.

Shampooing the choppy hair was the worst part. Not because of its diminished length, although that was bad and Amanda's heart ached with each strand that slipped too soon from the comb of her fingers—but worse than that was the texture, coarse and so stiff in some places it felt like petrified gum. Blood, come, powdered sugar, and sweat created a paste that didn't wash out on its own and had to be firmly massaged to loosen it enough for separating piece by piece. Amanda's fingers still caught and tugged, and she cursed herself for not bringing an actual comb into the shower. Something to be blamed besides her own unskilled hands.

Detangling hair was Olivia's job. She had years of practice from Noah's fat, stubborn boy-curls and Tilly's finer, springier ginger ones. The kids sought Amanda out for braids and cool styles, but even stick-straight Jesse went to Olivia when she just needed a gentle touch and generously dispensed kisses to smooth her unruly pigtails. The texture of baby Sammie's hair had yet to be determined, beyond the obvious—thick as undercoat—but curly, straight, or in between, she would need her mommy's magic touch and unwavering patience to get it right.

That was the fairy story Amanda had told herself up until last Saturday anyway. Back when she still believed they were going to get their happy ending. Back before she was washing bloody semen from Olivia's hair and down her back, clenching teeth at the check marks she had only just now realized were partial P's (as in Parker, the owner of the belt that stamped the letters into Olivia's skin), and wishing the torture she'd thought would cleanse the torture were over too.

She could barely look down at her own unblemished flesh, save for the fading fanglike burns from the stun gun and a few minor bruises, after comparing it to the ravaged body in front of her. Initially, she'd debated whether or not to step into the tub nude, or remain clothed, standing outside the tub to assist. Neither seemed like a good option—naked she implied sex; covered and watching she was just another voyeur—but in the end she had undressed, making herself as vulnerable as Olivia. At least that was the objective. Seeing all the bruises, cuts, bite marks, burns, and scars up close, rinsed clean and vivid, like she was bringing them to life with her bare hands, also brought to Amanda's mind's eye the image of how each one was put there.

Maybe Olivia had the right idea postponing the shower for so long. Given more time to heal, the marks might not have evoked such strong memories. As it was, she and Amanda were lost in them, reliving their own separate versions of the experience, the nightmare, which had kept them apart for days and now kept them a million miles apart in their minds. If Amanda had secretly hoped, so deep down she didn't even know it, that their connection would be restored by the intimate setting and contact, she was mistaken. She was a fool.

As the shampoo was being washed away, she decided to skip the conditioner. Olivia didn't use it every time, and her scalp was so tender now, the less fussing with her hair, the better. She had hissed at the Pantene, the water pressure, but kept telling Amanda to continue through gritted teeth. Don't stop, she beseeched, splaying a hand against the shower wall beside her for support. Don't stop, she repeated after every wincing sound and shying bunch of her shoulders. Don't stop, she whimpered as Amanda lightly swept suds from her skin with the flat of her palm.

When the water that ran down Olivia's back was just water, no more soapy residue or rivers of pink blood, Amanda habitually went on stroking, as she always did near shower's end. Drawing out the contact for as long as possible. Incorrigible little thing, Olivia would call her (now, nothing), an affectionate hum to her voice as she revealed her stunning profile, the crescent moon curve of jaw and chin, the kittenish tip of well-defined nose. Her muscle and bone, the tendons weaving them together, were fluid in those moments; clay on the wheel, and Amanda the potter. Thighs, hips, belly, breasts—she molded them all with the love of an artist for her life's work and magnum opus.

Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop. And then, so suddenly Amanda broke from her reverie of love and only love, conveyed from the palms of her hands and surely going straight to Olivia's heart, with a jerk because the don't disappeared, leaving a single weak cry on its own: stop. Olivia was sobbing and asking her to stop. She covered her face with both hands, hiding profile and all, and hung her head under the spray, water jumping off the macabre sunset on the back of her neck, drowning the city, and her red shoulders—they looked sunburnt from rough handling—like grease popping in a hot frying pan.

"Oh my Lord, I'm sorry. What did I do?" Amanda held up her hands as if she were staring down the barrel of a gun, not at the hunched neck and shoulders of her shattered wife. There was nothing sexual in the touch, she knew that without question, but she still felt like she'd gotten caught committing a crime. Her killing hands had been found out after all. "Liv, what'd I do? Are you hurt, do I need to . . . "

Stupid questions. Of course she was hurt. Of course Amanda needed to do something. "The hose," Olivia was saying, from what Amanda could decipher of the laments muffled by skin and flowing water. "Stop . . . the hose . . . . So cold. Thirst— make it stop. I'm so c-cold."

Despite the hot stream from the nozzle overhead, Olivia was indeed shivering, her ransacked flesh prickling with goosebumps. Her ransacked brain reliving a harrowing moment from the shipping container—they were all harrowing—so vividly her body reacted as if it were happening in real-time. Amanda had seen it before with too many victims to count, including Olivia herself, although her flashbacks were almost exclusively reserved for sleep. At least the re-enactments that left her huddled and crying. And that time at the hotel.

Had either of them used the safe word since then? Amanda couldn't remember, just that it was church and it was useless. In every sense. Everything was so goddamn useless.

"Aw, baby." It seemed like the only thing to say, and Amanda kept repeating it as she reached around Olivia and turned off the water. They were left standing in the dripping, draining tub, inches apart but not touching. An invisible barrier had gone up between them, and Amanda dreaded trying to cross it, only to be rejected. Neither could she just stand there watching Olivia fall apart.

Carefully she placed a hand on her back, in the center of her shoulder blades, and when that wasn't shrugged off or shrank from—reacted to at all, really—she rested the other on a shoulder. It was an unnatural pose, not at all like their normal physicality, which was so in sync and effortless they practically moved as one at times, automatically aware of where a hand should go, a step, a kiss. But it was something, and Olivia didn't pull away but sank into Amanda's arms when they turned and enveloped her. She dropped her forehead on Amanda's shoulder, heaving, gasping.

"What, baby? Can't understand ya," Amanda murmured, scooping aside the heavy black tendrils that hung across Olivia's face. Seaweed looked unnervingly like hair—dense and dark—when they fished corpses out of the Long Island Sound. The skin was pale like that too, pocked by things that nibbled away at flesh, exposing the bone underneath. None of Olivia's bones were showing, thank Christ, but that didn't stop Amanda from imagining the nicks and cracks they now contained. "Tell me again."

Olivia shook her head back and forth, grinding into the slope of Amanda's shoulder like a pestle. At the bottom of the mortar lay pain, sadness, hopeless despair, all the miserable herbs that couldn't be crushed. "Why'd it have to happen?" More distinct, but slurred by emotion. Merlot did that to her too on the rare occasions she overindulged. "Wha's wrong with me? All these years, fought so hard not to let them . . . not to let anyone do that to me. Too happy. Shoulda known it wouldn't lass— last. Never should've been born. Wish she'd killed me when she had the chance."

For one awful moment Amanda thought she was talking about Sondra Vaughn and her heart gave a wild kick. Then she realized the "she" Olivia wished had killed her was Serena Benson, whose failure to end her daughter's life—more than once—was not for lack of trying. Ultimately, she had chosen the more destructive and insidious route, by planting that seed in Olivia's brain, the one that grew day by day and told her how unworthy she was—of love, happiness, a family—how bad, how tainted. Killing her over and over for the rest of her days.

It didn't lessen Amanda's guilt any, to hear Olivia connecting the attack back to her mother. Not because she felt any sort of chivalry towards Serena or a need to uphold her memory. Blaming the dead woman was essentially just another way for Olivia to blame herself, since she believed she'd ruined her mother's life by even existing. That tore Amanda up inside. Partly because she was the one at fault, the tainted one, but also because she couldn't tell that to Olivia. Not right now. She was on the verge of hyperventilation, taking great gasping breaths, gasping again at the knife in her ribs, half-gagging on the air she heaved back out, unable to match Amanda's deep guiding respiration.

If Amanda set the record straight right now, it would, ironically, only be to assuage the horrible crushing guilt she'd been bottling up for days. How could she put that on her wife in the middle of a breakdown? How could she ever? "Breathe, baby, breathe. Breathe. You gotta calm down or you'll make yourself sick."

"I c-can— can't." Olivia, who seldom liked to admit she was incapable of doing anything, could not catch her breath. The air whistled in her windpipe as she sucked it down, coughed it up. Her back shuddered like a rickety shelter about to give way at any moment, no longer able to withstand the storm raging inside and out. Jesus, she even felt broken. "Cuh-can't bre— bre—"

"Shit. Okay. Um." Amanda's own breath came quicker as she listened to her wife fighting to fill her lungs. She had to remind herself it wasn't like the livestream, when she'd been helpless to intervene. For the better part of her career—of her life, honestly—she had helped women through the after-effects of violent assault. Women she cared about. Women who weren't nearly as strong and courageous as her captain.

The toilet was too far away and they would have to step over the lip of the tub to get out. "Here," Amanda said, and eased Olivia back enough to fit an arm around her waist and guide her to the bottom of the tub. A non-slip gel mat cushioned the hard seat, making it just tolerable on the knees and tailbone. "Let's sit for a minute. You good? Okay, now, I want you to cover your mouth like this. Can you do that for me, darlin'?"

When Olivia's hand was cupped over her mouth, forcing her to breathe through the nose, Amanda demonstrated pressing one nostril shut. "Do this and inhale through the other side, nice 'n slow. Then switch—hold the left and breathe through the right. There you go, baby. Keep doing that until you can take normal breaths." She rubbed Olivia's back in a squeaky circle a few times before standing.

"Wh-where?" Olivia panted. "Where . . . "

"Just right over there to the medicine cabinet." Amanda pointed to her destination even as she headed for it, taking care not to hurry and slip in the wet spots she made, but not waiting to be held back either. "I'm gettin' the Valium. I know you don't like relying on pills, but baby, you need 'em right now. No arguments, okay? This is what the doctor prescribed them for, to get you through the rough spots."

Persuading Olivia to take the tablets was surprisingly easy—no persuasion was necessary. In fact, she plucked the little blue disks from Amanda's open palm and pressed them to her tongue so readily she probably would have accepted any dosage given, high or low. Amanda stuck to the recommended amount, of course, though one extra wouldn't have hurt, as worked up as Olivia had become. But that type of thinking was a slippery slope, and Amanda was no Dr. Lindstrom.

She did consider popping one of the pills herself and might have done, if not for the kids. They needed at least one mother who could drive them to the hospital in case of an emergency. Just the thought of returning to that place made her want to crawl out of her own skin, but she would if she had to; she'd do whatever it took to hold her family together.

With that in mind, she knelt beside the bathtub and rubbed Olivia's back until the Valium was down, and the hungry gulps of water Olivia took from Noah's rinse cup. The biggest of the plastic cups used by the kids for nightly brushing, it was still too small to quench the thirst Olivia was trying to slake. Her mouth always got so dry when she was upset, stressed, scared. Amanda could have turned on the tub faucet, and she would probably drink straight from it like a woman lost and wandering the desert. And wasn't that kind of what she was now, lost and wandering? They both were.

Amanda returned from the sink with another cupful of water and helped Olivia sip it this time, encouraging her to go slow, take deep breaths in between, and exhale steadily until her lungs were empty. When they found a rhythm, only interrupted by a few hitches here and there, she pulled one of the heavy bath towels down from the rack and crawled back into the tub. She wrapped the towel around Olivia's dewy shoulders, patting them dry with the terry cloth. Rubbing caused dryness and flaking, a fact she had learned from her wife, whose velvety freckled skin she practically worshipped, and who treated hers with the same reverence.

She hadn't really started taking care of herself, she realized, until Olivia showed her how.

"Wanna go back in on the bed?" she asked once the trembling and sniffing had subsided. Or seemed to have. Olivia took a sharp, preparatory breath as Amanda used the corner of the towel to gently, gently, gently blot her damp forehead and cheeks—one side vaguely resembled the hedge apples Amanda used to kick while cutting through backyards on her way to school—the dark crescents under both eyes, the little bobbin of nose swollen by tears and pressure from hands and rutting bodies.

But the anticipated nod turned out to be a barely perceptible shake of the head. "Can we just stay here for a while?" whispered Olivia. She sounded like a little kid in church, asking her mother for a stick of gum while the preacher waxed fire and brimstone. Her head slanted toward Amanda's shoulder as if it were too heavy to hold up. "Can you hold me?"

"Sure. Sure, darlin'. Put your head right here." And though Amanda didn't know how to make it work in the tight, concave space, she helped Olivia to settle against her side, under the gable of her arm, and twisted her own body accordingly. It was uncomfortable as hell and she would be stiff in the joints later, but her heart beat double-time at the small, hopeful sign that she was wanted, needed. She would have contorted herself into damn near any shape asked of her. "There we go. It's, uh, kinda cozy, I reckon. You okay, baby? I can . . . "

"No, don't." Olivia turned her face to Amanda's neck, discouraging movement in the shoulder below. In the aftermath of writhing, raging, bone-crushing violence she craved stillness. Calm. Not in a bed full of memories, more destructive than healing now, but in a cold hard cradle that promised safety, arms that held without expectation. And almost no chance of being observed. "Stay. Like this."

For the next twenty or so minutes they huddled together as if sheltering in place for a tornado. Amanda had plenty of experience: you didn't grow up in Dixie Alley trailer parks without hunkering down in your share of bathtubs. Usually while Mama screamed for Daddy to get his fool-ass inside before he blew away to Kalamazoo or somewheres. Loves his truck more than his family, she would inform her daughters over the winds that pummeled their single-wide on its cinder blocks like monstrous fists. Who would have thought the monster would come home thirty years later?

Amanda was considering a watered-down version of the story to break the silence—Olivia always loved to hear her reminisce about childhood, fascinated by the kid's-eye view of a real live family and unaware of the ugly parts being left out—when a small knock, made by a small fist, drummed at the door. Expecting Olivia to startle at the sound, she cupped a hand over the ear not pressed to her shoulder. When no reaction came she glanced down to see a pair of deep brown eyes drooping heavily, a pair of fissured lips gently parted. Valium made quick work of her wife.

Good. That was good.

"What, Jess?" she called softly when the knock sounded again. Only one of her children was that impatient. And that persistent.

"Are you and Mommy 'bout done? I got something to show you. And Noah's gotta pee."

A static of furious whispers followed, confirming that Noah was indeed standing outside the door with his sister, but it was debatable how badly he needed to relieve himself. "You were supposed to say Tilly has to pee, not me," he hissed, always a bit modest about his time in the bathroom. Olivia sometimes fretted that he had too few male influences in his life, growing up in an all-female household, but Amanda was pretty sure his behavior was that of a normal eight-year-old boy. All their kids were normal, happy. Good kids who were not going to look back on their childhoods remembering only fear and strife.

"Give us another minute, okay? Y'all work out which one of you actually has to pee while we . . . " Amanda sighed as she gazed around the room, from her discarded t-shirt and jeans, scrounged from the clothes hamper that morning because she hadn't time for laundry these days, and Olivia's hospital-issue sweats to the damp footprints on the tile to her drowsy wife half-asleep on her shoulder. There were cloudy streaks of blood that hadn't quite washed away from the gutters of the tub. She'd wanted to change the sheets before putting Olivia back in bed too. "While we pull ourselves together."

"Can you hurry up? You're taking forever and I wanna—"

"Jesse Eileen."

Jesse heaved an even bigger sigh than Amanda's. "Yes, ma'am."

Five minutes later they emerged from the bathroom into an empty hallway with an eerily quiet living room beyond. It didn't sit quite right with Amanda, the stillness that she had sought moments ago for Olivia's sake, but she chalked it up to boredom—whatever scheme her wild child had cooked up must have lost its appeal, and that's why the kids wandered off. Probably in the living room watching Star Wars for the umpteenth time with their headphones. Jesse thought she was Han Solo, of all characters to latch onto.

Amanda stripped the bed like a madwoman while Olivia sat in the armchair across from her, watching dazedly, still wrapped in nothing but a towel, hair falling in dark squiggles around her cheeks and shoulders. Wet like that it was harder to detect the asymmetrical strands. She looked almost like her old self sitting there. Except for all the bruises and the vacant stare, the uninhabitedness of her body. Not the old Liv after all, but a mistreated rag doll bearing an uncanny resemblance. It pained Amanda to think such things, and she snapped the clean fitted sheet from their closet onto the last corner of mattress as if that was her final word on the matter.

She spread the flat sheet and quilt with equal haste, skipping the hospital corners Olivia preferred. Those could be done later, and the quilt was just a spare from the storage bench at the foot of the bed; once she got the comforter dry cleaned, then she'd worry about tidying the rest. As for now, she needed to get Olivia into something warm but gentle on her harsh skin. She selected a pair of lightweight pajamas, long sleeves and long pants, that were a Christmas gift last year, chosen for their irresistible softness. Back when permission to touch was granted freely and almost always without reservation.

It was she who hesitated with the pajamas in her hand, afraid of their connotations. Olivia had laughed and accused her of buying them for her own enjoyment when she couldn't stop petting the plush material, on or off the warm body that filled them out so nicely (though on was highly preferred for tactile purposes), trailing her fingers over the skin below it, inching the top up, the bottoms down, tickling, toying, teasing. Loving. What if Olivia thought that was expected every time she wore the damn things? That she had to be a constant fulfillment of Amanda's overactive fantasy life?

One glance at her wife, shivering and glass-eyed, S's of hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks in a long dark hiss, Amanda put the worries aside. Neither of them had sex on their minds right then, and if Olivia started to fret about needing to please her anytime soon, Amanda would make it indisputably clear that she expected nothing they weren't both ready and willing to give. Whenever that might be.

"That's a girl," she said as every limb fitted into the pajamas with her assistance. The pants were the hardest, requiring Olivia to stand and hold onto Amanda's shoulder for balance as she skimmed them up her legs. A cinch to Amanda, whose joints weren't yet feeling the effects of the bathtub, but Olivia winced at any movement below the waist. And above, for that matter. Knowing the nature and severity of her injuries just made it worse. Amanda kept imagining the pain, until she nearly felt it in her own body: the dead space between her legs, the split-openness of abdomen, the metal-scraping-concrete sensation of broken bones, the rotten apple where a head should be. The psychic pain that hummed beneath it all.

She was glad of the opportunity to let the tears fall when she stood behind Olivia, seated on the bed, and combed the last of the knots from her hair. Muscle memory compelled her to braid it so it didn't dampen the pillow as much and cause Olivia discomfort while she slept, but after pulling her wife's severed braid from an envelope the other day—the braid she had plaited lovingly, alongside their daughters' shiny little-girl hair, laughing and chattering; the same one she had watched being hacked off by an evil, unfeeling man while Olivia wept and pleaded—she couldn't bring herself to do it. Probably would have tugged too much at the scalp, anyway, and she wasn't sure the hair even had enough length for a proper braid.

Of the hair in the envelope, Amanda said nothing to Olivia. She did not need to know about that, or how Amanda had almost vomited when she picked up the dingy clump she'd initially thought was a dead rat. Bound with string and pinched at arm's length, it more closely resembled a smudge stick for cleansing negative energy. Burning it would indeed have been better than what she did do, but something prevented her from hunting for matches and making the trek up to the roof of their building. (Afraid she'd get the urge to jump, perhaps?) Lighting it up inside the apartment was not an option either; the smell of burnt hair was impossible to get rid of, both in reality and sense memory, and a major trigger to herself and Olivia. Daphne had offered to dispose of the hank, an apprehensive look on her face the entire time, but that wasn't a responsibility Amanda could entrust to anyone else, even her best friend.

The responsibility for all this was hers alone.

Just as she was pulling the covers up beneath Olivia's chin, guiding her into sleep with gentle strokes to the brow, gentle words whispered like prayer—sweet baby instead of Heavenly Father, I love you replacing Amen—there was a knock at the door. In the interim between bathroom and bedroom, minutes counted in tears, she had forgotten Jesse's request to show her whatever was so important it couldn't wait another second. She sighed and stood back from the bed, reluctant to leave Olivia, though she was balancing on the edge of consciousness, drifting further and further away like an ebbing tide.

"Okay, Jesse. Jesus," she muttered, turning quickly at the second, louder knock. They needed to have a serious talk about patience, she and Jesse Eileen, but the only sound out of her mouth when she pulled open the door was a horror-stricken gasp.

"Wha's wrong? Manda?" Olivia's head raised from the pillow and she struggled to sit up, the weight of sleep, Valium, and bone-deep exhaustion holding her down as effectively as an assailant. Even attempting to widen her eyes proved too much, and she squinted in the direction of the gasp.

"None— nothing, baby," Amanda said in the levelest tone she could muster. It took all of her strength not to push her children back into the hall, away from the open doorway and the possibility of being seen by Olivia, and start whaling on their behinds. She was against spanking her kids, she was; but in that moment, as they stood there grinning ear to ear like they were presenting her with a bouquet of Mother's Day flowers, she could have turned every last one of them over her knee. "Go on to sleep now. Here's Gigi. I'll be back to check on you in a bit."

Sending the golden retriever into their room with a swat on the rump, Amanda backed out and shut the door slowly, cautiously, as if trying to avoid a tripwire.

But the wire was inside her, and the moment the door closed, it was sprung. She caught Noah's arm in one hand, Jesse's and Tilly's in the other, and marched all three into the living room, out of earshot. "What have you done?" she fumed, spittle sparking from the pronounced whisper. "What the hell have you done?" Each word was accompanied by an insistent shake of their slender arms that vibrated up and across their shoulders like they were doing a hip hop wave. Locks of hair, some curly and some the color of corn silk, flitted off their t-shirts and onto the floor.

On the coffee table lay evidence of the crime: a pair of shears from the kitchen, used with equal opportunity for cutting frozen pizzas, snack bags, clothing labels and school art projects; and a small mound of hair like autumn leaves, buttery yellow, golden brown, and cinnamon red. It was ironically tidy, no other signs of the clandestine haircuts except what was on the children's heads. Or rather, what wasn't.

Noah and Matilda at least had the good sense to look remorseful—and startled by their mother's vehemence—but Jesse cranked loose from Amanda's grip and planted both hands on her hips. "It was my idea," she said proudly, still unaware she had done anything wrong. Or pretending to be, in hopes of staying out of trouble. She was a willful child who seemed to have inherited Amanda's motto of asking forgiveness instead of permission, though Dean Rollins wasn't around to teach it to her as he had his young daughters. Sometimes it scared Amanda how much of herself she saw in the six-year-old. It's what made her so careful not to repeat her parents' mistakes.

Alarmed by the sight of Noah's delicately muscled bicep and Matilda's dainty wrist, not much bigger than baby Samantha's, gripped firmly in her fists, Amanda released them with the abruptness of a jumper letting go of the ledge. But instead of the weightless, time-suspending fall that ended in a bone-crunch on pavement, organs liquified, brains splattered like overturned gelatin, the screams of eyewitnesses and the blare of car horns, all she saw was the dismay on her children's faces as they rubbed their arms and stared at her with big, wondering eyes. All she heard was her own heaving breaths.

"We wanted Mommy not to be scared about getting her hair fixed," Jesse said. She scrubbed a hand through her hair, once a ribbon of yellow silk, now more closely resembling a windblown haystack, and shed a number of strands that hadn't had the heart to let go the first time. She looked like a molting goose. "So I cut ours to show how easy and not scary it is. If Tilly can do it, Mommy can too."

Tilly had fared a little better than her sister; the only sign that she had participated was a couple of spots where curls stood out like broken jack-in-the-box springs, and those could be disguised by more curls. Noah, however, had taken the brunt of Jesse's snipping, his enviable mop of buoyant brown curls reduced to patchy spirals interspersed with the hedgehog spikes of newly shorn locks. Not quite a buzz cut, but no longer the full and lustrous ringlets that inspired all the little girls in his dance class to squeal with delight. Amanda and Olivia too. They played with his hair as often as he'd let them.

Used to. Amanda's present was turning into her past more quickly than she could keep up with. Soon, there would be nothing left. She was already on the verge of ruining her relationship with her kids, becoming the bully her daddy had raised her to be. It was as if the center of her life had dropped out when the men took Olivia away, her Liv. She was the center of their family, their everything. None of this made sense without her.

"Y'all got no business playing with the scissors like that," Amanda said, though it was so dull no one would be chastised by it, not even sensitive Tilly, who only needed the inflection of a warning to grab her attention. She started to reach down and muss the girl's hair, but her hand wouldn't complete the task and fell back lifelessly at her side. Kneeling was easier, all that weight pressing down on her shoulders, and she lifted Tilly's arm the way you handle a newborn kitten. A kiss to the wrist, on the warm inside, was the best apology she had in her right then. Anything else felt artificial.

Jesse gave an indignant huff. "We weren't playing with them, Mama, aren't you listening? We did it to help, and I was very careful. Like playing Operation careful. I didn't cut anyone's skin or anything, and I didn't go near Sammie with them 'cause they're too sharp. That's good, ain't it?"

Amanda's insides dropped at the mention of the baby—she hadn't even thought to check for locks of chestnut hair, darker and finer than all the others, amid the scraps on the coffee table—but she managed to hold her composure this time, instead of flying off the handle and racing over to the bouncy seat, where she could see Samantha sleeping peacefully. Nonetheless, the release of adrenaline and subsequent flood of relief left her lightheaded. She sank down onto the table, next to the puddle of hair, and took a steadying breath. "Um, yeah, that's, uh . . . that's good. Good thinkin', buddy. Glad you remembered that."

All three children were looking at her strangely, not that she could blame them. She felt strange and detached from her surroundings, her self, and she wondered if this was the dissociation Olivia often experienced but rarely admitted to. True, the captain was skilled at hiding it and functioning more or less as normal, but when her color drained or she became winded for no reason and glanced around like she was reorienting to a place, though she hadn't left it, Amanda could tell her brain and body were not in harmony.

Sometimes life did that—knocked the needle from its groove and set the record to skipping and scratching, until it was put right. She didn't know how to put it right when the needle was her own, though; she didn't know how to finish the song.

"C'mere," she said to the kids, spreading her arms for them to step into. They hung back just long enough to make her heart ache, but Tilly, God love her, could never resist affection, given or received. She came forward first, wrapping both arms around Amanda's waist as far as they would go and nuzzling into her abdomen. The older two joined in a moment later, Noah giving in before recalcitrant Jesse, always the last to come around. They stood in the small huddle looking apprehensive, as if Amanda might still put them over her knee.

For the rest of her life she never forgot those expressions. Her children waiting to be beaten.

"Lemme see what you got going on here." She sniffed, and surveyed each child's head as if she were reading the fine print on a pill bottle, turning them in circles for a 360-degree inspection. Lord, they looked awful. Like puppies with mange. She expected to be heartbroken—and it was sad to note that Jesse's long hair, which hadn't been cut a day in her entire six and a half years on earth, could not be salvaged—but in the grand scheme of things, this was really nothing more than a hiccup. There were so many worse things that could have happened to her children; that might have happened if Sondra Vaughn had gotten her way. Their hair would grow back, but not their innocence. Once that was taken away it never returned.

Releasing a low whistle, Amanda feigned being heartily impressed. It wasn't a total lie—the absence of blood and lacerations in spite of Jesse's free-for-all technique was truly miraculous. Edward Scissorhands himself couldn't have doled out a more unique and painless crop than the three in front of her. "Hoo boy, those are really something. Y'all are gonna turn heads, that's for sure."

"You're not mad?" Noah asked, a tad suspicious, but mostly surprised. If ever there was a time for him to play the "you're not my real mom" card and reject Amanda's attempts to patch things up between them, it would be now. But he hadn't used that against her since before the wedding, and seemed to have accepted her as a fully integrated part of the family. His Ma. She almost wished he would call her out for bad behavior as he had in the past, instead of hoping to appease her.

"I'm . . . not happy. If you guys wanted to get haircuts, you should have asked me first. I would've taken you to a salon for a haircut by a professional." Amanda turned a pointed look on Jesse. "It's not okay to go sneaking around behind my back, even if you think it's for a good reason. But I'm not mad. Just, uh, caught me off guard for a minute there."

A disinterested nod from Jesse and a round of, "Sorry, Mama" from her and her siblings was probably the best Amanda was going to get. That, and the question she'd hoped to avoid above all others.

"Can we show Mommy?" Jesse, of course, wanting to exhibit her handiwork. The bangs she had carved out for herself looked like a row of uneven teeth against her prominent forehead. Thank the Lord her hair grew exceptionally fast. It was one of the few advantages passed down through the Rollins' dodgy gene pool—yards and yards of blond hair—along with blue eyes and a propensity for devilment.

"Not right now, monkey."

"Okay, but when?"

"Jess." The name included enough warning for all three children and discouraged any further requests to bother Olivia. She would find out soon enough, and Amanda was in no rush to speed the process along. Maybe this was what she got for being so gung-ho to set up a salon appointment for her wife. She wondered if Daphne's stylist worked on kids too.

"I asked for a high-top fade like Lil Nas X's," said Noah, in all seriousness, when the mood threatened to turn dark again. He smoothed his fingers along the sides of his weed-whacker curls as if they were the essence of precision. There were no mirrors in the living room, poor little guy. "Does it look as good as his?"

"I wanted-ed Annie," Matilda said, shaking her puff-cloud of red curls. That one was actually pretty accurate.

Jesse fluffed her brother's and sister's hair with the satisfaction and confidence of a licensed beautician. "And mine's like Taylor Swift, with the short pieces in the front." She scrubbed her fingers into her toothy new bangs, which she didn't even know the proper term for, and flashed an equally crooked-toothed grin. "Cool, huh?"

"Practically twins," Amanda agreed. She felt something bubbling up inside her as she ruffled their hair in turn—Taylor's, Annie's and Lil Nas's—but not until it came spilling out of her did she recognize what it was: laughter. Light and effervescent at first, it rolled out of her throat in contagious peals that made the children hold their jiggling bellies and double-up as if being tickled. It rang through the apartment, stirring Frannie Mae from her doggy dreams and Samantha from her baby ones, so even they seemed to join in the shouts of mirth—cooing, squawking, yawning, stretching. It rocked the whole sixth floor, their building, the city beyond that didn't sleep, nor slowed down for you to mourn the life you lost to it.

And when it turned hard and uncontrollable, Amanda's stomach convulsing as if she were having labor contractions, only silence coming from a mouth opened like a scream, the kids were unaware that their mama's spontaneous eruption of laughter had become a flood of helpless tears.

. . .

Where the cigar box had come from, she didn't recall. Maybe it had belonged to Granddaddy at one time, or it was a castoff of her daddy Dean's, from some failed experiment at taking up King Edwards instead of Marlboros. It was one of the rare mementos from her childhood that hadn't been lost in a move, destroyed in a trailer-park-leveling natural disaster, pawned by her younger sister, or simply tossed out as so much garbage. And the irony was, Amanda had no specific memories attached to the damn thing. She just liked how it looked and the faint whiff of cigar tobacco that waited under the cardboard lid.

Now it was a graveyard, the memories it did hold dead and restless as ghosts with unfinished business. In it she had laid to rest the cut-off braid she received in the mail, her final gift from Gus Sandberg, the sandman bringing a dream. Bought and paid for with Olivia's blood, her integrity, her humanity. Twined around the braid like a prisoner's transport restraints, the chain of the St. Jude medal Amanda stole off Riva kept the loose hair intact. No, not stole. If Native Americans could take the name of an enemy they had slaughtered—conquered—essentially owning that enemy's soul, then she could take the religion of her foe. Not to practice or respect it, but to possess it and know she had left him with nothing in the afterlife. Just the hellfire and damnation he so justly deserved.

To her small but growing collection, she added the locks of hair she had sifted from the kids' beauty parlor experiment and tied with three skinny ribbons from the girls' conglomeration of hair accessories. They looked like flower petals, the colorful trio of tendrils, like something you would see scattered down the aisle at a wedding, on the bed in a bridal suite, or fluttering between headstones, a la "In Flanders Fields": the slender, trumpetlike white lily; ruffle-headed marigolds in shades of russet; and the ubiquitous poppy, redder than the reddest rose. They would fade in the box, the same way Olivia's hair had lost its luster when hacked from her head, but they wouldn't whither or blow away like real petals.

They would always be there for Amanda to return to.

Quietly she closed the box and rearranged her sweaters on top, then eased the drawer shut and peered at Olivia through the darkness, confirming she was still asleep. Right now it was the best place for her. Soon enough she would have to rejoin the world outside their door, where sicko rapists wore saints around their necks and children sacrificed parts of themselves to a deaf, unfeeling god.

. . .