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The last time she’d spent more than a day without Elliot was when he was on tour in Desert Storm. Ever since then, not a day had gone by without them seeing one another. She knew he had long hours; she always did her best to be understanding—and with her, he could do no wrong. It was a different story with the kids. At first, it was perfectly excusable; he was working more and on tougher cases; of course he’d be away from home. It never bothered her until today.
“You know, Ms. Stabler,” started Sister Mary Elizabeth, there’s a group for single mothers that meets here on—”
“Oh, I’m married—uh—Elliot, he just… he works a lot. He’s a detective in Manhattan.” Kathy’s smile was tight as she took Lizzie and Dickie from the school playground. “Say goodbye, you two.”
The well-intentioned words of the sister began to swirl in her mind. Had she really given the impression that she was a single parent? Elliot certainly wasn’t jumping at the chance to pick the kids up from school… but it wasn’t his fault. Elliot’s absences and failings—if Kathy even deemed them as such—had become more frequent. Maureen’s college application fees; the twins’ birthday; Kathleen’s piano recital—and that was just the kids. They’d been married for the better part of twenty years, but they certainly hadn’t been acting like it.
Her mind drifted back to the memories of their wedding. They were a couple of kids trying to hurry along the inevitable. She’d tearfully confessed her pregnancy over the phone only a week prior. They worked together tirelessly to give their kids the future they deserved, not once stopping to consider one another. It was that good old fashioned Catholic guilt that had been drilled into them from the very beginning; this was their penance to pay for their reckless teenage decisions at that fateful college party back in 1984. He was the reason she wasn’t disowned by her father; he was the reason she was able to stay afloat despite becoming a mother well before her 20th birthday.
She would take Maureen to the park, and the nannies and au pairs would ask about the little girl’s father. “Oh, he’s just working,” Kathy would chirp back, initially unaware of the pitying stares she’d garnered as the only teen mother at the playground. It was always “he’s working,” never “here he is; this is my husband.” Eventually, she and Maureen went to a different park when the looks and offers of brothers’, cousins’, or sons’ phone numbers became too much to bear.
“Mommy, are you crying?” Lizzie asked from the backseat, a frown on her usually sunny face. “What’s wrong?”
Kathy blinked, realizing she’d worked herself up to the point of tears. “Oh—sweetheart, Mommy’s fine,” she said, sighing as she settled back into the driver’s seat. “Did you do anything fun at school today?”
Dickie piped up, “Oh! Oh, Mommy, I played four square at recess and I beat Michael! And Joel, too!”
Lizzie scoffed at her twin’s sudden outburst. “Well, I played tea party with Sarah and Jess.”
“Tea parties are lame!” Dickie retorted.
Lizzie crossed her arms and turned to her brother. “Four square is lame!”
Kathy sighed and shook her head, letting the trivial squabble of her youngest two bring her back down to Earth. The house was already buzzing with activity as they arrived home—Kathleen was working on homework in the kitchen; Maureen had arrived home to spend the weekend with her family… Having the kids in the house was a welcome distraction; they created a flurry of activity between homework questions and dinner preparations. Just another way to fill the vacancy left by Elliot.