September 25, 2015

"Lindsey! Hey, Lindsey!"

She smiled despite herself, wove her way through a veritable minefield of children's toys and lawnchairs to the place where Paul was standing, waving madly at her. There was something sweet about his exuberance, she thought, something foreign but welcoming in his enthusiasm. The word harmless came to mind when she looked at him; he was just a guy, not a cop or a lawyer, not a perp or a pimp, not a soldier or a saint. Just an ordinary man, with an ordinary life, the kind of life she supposed she ought to have, now. Maybe he could show her how to do this. How to be normal.

Paul's house was on the corner of the main street through the subdivision and a sleepy little cul de sac of no more than six houses. The neighbors had blocked off the end of the cul de sac with little orange traffic cones, and taken over the pavement. Someone had dragged a grill into the middle of the road, and a man was posted just in front of it, flipping burgers and laughing gregariously in between generous pulls on a sweaty bottle of beer. There were people clustered all around, women in lawnchairs sipping from plastic cups full of wine and men loitering near the grill, slapping each other on the back, and children running everywhere.

"Come on, I'll introduce you to everybody," Paul said as she drew near. "You can put him down, let him run, everybody here will watch out for him," he added, nodding to Noah, who was perched on her hip, looking around wide-eyed and uncertain.

"He's a little shy," Olivia said. "He'll be happier if I hold him, for a while."

She had no intention of letting her son run loose in the street, traffic cones or no. These people seemed friendly enough but Noah was her whole world, and she didn't trust anyone else with his safekeeping.

"No worries!" Paul said cheerfully. "Come on, let's go."

And off they went. Paul led her from person to person, making introductions - Marcy and Ted, Lorraine and Eddie, Helen and Jimmy, on and on it went. Olivia did her best, tried to remember every name, but there were eight couples there, plus Paul and Olivia, with more than twenty kids between them, and she lost track somewhere along the way.

"So, they just…let you drink in the street?" she asked Paul in a quiet moment. He'd told her the block party was BYOB, but there was no alcohol in her new house - yet - and she was in no mood to drink in front of strangers. She had to stay vigilant; God only knew what might happen if she got tipsy.

"What, are you gonna call the cops?" Paul asked her, grinning. "We're not hurting anybody, it's just a little party."

"It's nice," she said. The smell of fresh burgers on the air, the sound of sprinklers and children's laughter, the warmth of a late autumn evening and the bustle of bodies around her; it was nice. Strange, but nice. Maybe being Lindsey wouldn't be too bad. Maybe she'd be ok.

"So," Kathy said as they stood together at the sink, Elliot washing dishes and passing them off to her to dry. While he'd been busy working she'd been busy setting up their new home, and every box had been unpacked, now, every picture hung, and she'd assigned places for every pot and pan and dish, and he had no idea where any of it went anymore, so she'd taken charge of putting them away.

"Can we talk about last night?"

Eli had run off to the living room, eager for the thirty minutes a night Kathy allotted him on his video game console, but Elliot still looked over his shoulder, checked to make sure their son wasn't in ear shot. This wasn't a conversation he needed to overhear.

"What about last night?" he asked carefully.

Kathy shot him a level look; he knew damn well what about. He'd come home and fucked her on the floor with all the passion of a man half his age last night, and that wasn't something they did, not anymore. Of course she wanted to talk about it. He desperately didn't, though. Didn't want to admit there was anything out of the ordinary about the way he'd made love to his wife yesterday, didn't want to remember all the heavy, troubling thoughts that had swirled through his mind while he did. The thought of it, of what he'd done and why, filled his belly full of shame.

"That wasn't…normal, El."

"Did I…did I hurt you?"

Christ, what if he had? He'd never forgive himself.

"No," she answered at once, blushing just a little. "No, it was…good."

It had been a long, long time since they'd talked to one another about sex, since they'd needed to; they just did it, so familiar with one another that there was hardly anything to talk about, and Kathy was awkward as a schoolgirl about it now. Not that he could blame her; he was wishing the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

"It's just…you haven't been like that for a long time."

"Been like…"

"That," she said pointedly. "The way you used to get when things were bad at work and you didn't want to talk about it."

It shouldn't have surprised him, that she'd recognized that about him, that she'd picked up on the pattern, but it did, just the same. He'd always thought he was better at hiding his emotions than that. Maybe he was a fool.

"And I just wanted to ask…is everything ok?"

No, everything absolutely was not ok, but he couldn't tell her that. Wasn't allowed to, on account of the job, and didn't want to, on account of he was pretty sure that if he told her the truth she'd pack her things and leave him that very minute.

"Everything's fine," he said.

She didn't believe him for a second; he knew it, could read her suspicion on her face.

"How's your new partner?" she asked, her eyes narrowing. "What's her name again?"

"Jackie."

"Jackie," Kathy repeated in a tone of voice that set him on edge.

What is she thinking? He wondered. What was running through his wife's head just now, and why had she felt the need to bring Jackie up? Was it just that he'd been partnered with another woman? Kathy never seemed to mind it when he was working with Jo, but Liv's name had come up so often in his fights with his wife that he couldn't help but wonder if maybe he'd destroyed all her goodwill, if maybe she didn't trust him with this woman because she hadn't been able to trust him with the last one.

"She's…uh, she's good. You know, she…bats for the other team."

"Jesus, Elliot," Kathy laughed. "I don't think anybody says that anymore."

She sounded relieved, though.

"You know what I mean, though. She dates women."

"Can't say I blame her," Kathy said wryly. "Why don't you invite her for dinner some time?"

"Maybe I will."

This can work, he thought, scrubbing furiously at the pan in his hands. He could hold Kathy and have Jackie over for dinner, and do his goddamn job, and not spend every night parked in front of Liv's house. He could keep his regrets to himself and give Liv the space she needed to find her feet, and maybe one day he wouldn't spend every waking moment thinking about her, wondering where she was, what she was doing, rehearsing all the things he wanted to say to her. Maybe they'd be ok.

Wouldn't they?

"Poor little guy's all tuckered out," Lorraine said, flopping into the empty lawnchair to Olivia's right and smiling fondly at Noah, fast asleep on his mother's lap.

"I am, too," Olivia answered. The last few hours were a blur of gentle chatter and good food, and the sun had sunk low on the horizon, and she was thinking about making her way home. Not that there was anything waiting for her there; just an empty bed, and a string of long, empty days ahead.

"It's always hard, getting used to a new place," Lorraine said wisely. "But it helps to have someone nice to show you the ropes." She shot a meaningful look at Paul, who had spent most of the evening glued to Olivia's side, smoothing the way whenever she stumbled, keeping the conversation going every time she ran out of things to say.

"He's been great," Olivia said honestly. "It's nice to have such a good neighbor."

"He's the best one on the block." There was a twinkle of something like mischief in Lorraine's eye when she spoke. "It's a wonder he's still single."

Olivia didn't really know what to say to that, she just hummed and looked away before Paul caught her staring at him.

The thing was, Paul was a nice guy. Maybe one of the nicest guys she'd ever met. But Olivia had never really gone in for nice guys. They always made her feel like she was doing something wrong, somehow, because Olivia had never been particularly nice herself. The kind of men she wanted were always bulldogs, big enough, mean enough to stand up to her demons, gentle enough to hold her better angels. Nice wasn't exactly the kinda thing people said about Brian Cassidy; it damn sure wasn't how anyone described Ed Tucker, and those were the last two men who'd shared her bed. And Elliot…yeah, no one ever called Elliot nice.

But she wasn't supposed to want Elliot. Had never been allowed to, before, and damn sure wasn't now, because they weren't on the job together any more but he was still married and she was still fucking pissed at him. He hadn't been back since that night he'd caught her smoking on the back steps, and she wasn't sure he'd ever come back again. Why should he? She was handling her shit, settling into her new life, and there was no reason for him not to do the same. He could go right on pretending she was back in New York, a world away from him. He could leave her behind, just like he'd done the first time.

"What's that look?" Lorraine asked curiously, and Olivia gave her head a little shake, a little embarrassed at having been caught with her thoughts wandering to Elliot.

"I was thinking about my husband," she lied. "He…uh…he passed away, not too long ago."

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, honey."

"It's ok," Olivia said. "I was just thinking…he wasn't very nice."

Lorraine's face darkened and Olivia realized her mistake too late; Jackie had told her not to give too many details about her life before Omaha, told her to keep it simple and keep her lies straight, and she'd just gone and painted an unpleasant picture of her marriage for Lorraine. It felt wrong, somehow, to just let Lorraine go on thinking she'd been abused; nothing like that had happened to Olivia, and she didn't want to co-opt the stories of the victims she used to fight for.

"Not like that," she said quickly. "He…he was a good man. But a complicated one. That's all."

"Well," Lorraine said, leaning back in her chair, appeased. "Maybe a little nice is just what you need."

Olivia's eyes drifted over to Paul, laughing with a few of the other husbands.

"Yeah," she said. "Maybe it is."