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When he looks back on his admittedly short life, Eli Stabler can’t help but feel… cheated.
He stopped believing in God before his mom died, but he lost faith in even the very basic concept of a benevolent universe the moment he got the call from Kathleen that something had happened while his parents were in New York.
It only took a few days after that for his entire world to drop away from beneath his feet. The plane ride from Rome to JFK was just a formality. He’d never be home again.
Over the past two years, he’s watched his family fight to recover from the nuclear annihilation of their mother’s death- murder, he corrects. She was murdered. His father spent six months drowning in grief, and then another year running away from himself, his responsibilities, his children. Eli has been passed from adult sibling to adult sibling in a city he doesn’t remember, desperately searching for something that will connect him to this life, this world. He is exhausted, and he is angry.
He’d spent the summer before sophomore year working, mostly. Making overpriced lattes at a coffee shop with exposed piping and a name that involved unnecessary umlauts, trying to save enough money to get him through the fall semester. He catches some pickup soccer matches at the park near the loft, talks to his not-girlfriend Ava (they both agreed that friends-with-benefits was less complicated) and generally tries to avoid reality at all costs.
His dad has been away this summer.
He told all of his kids at a Sunday dinner back in May. It might be a few months, he’d said, but I can call anytime you need me. If there’s an emergency, I can be on the first flight back. I’m not undercover this time. Just working a case with a joint task force out of state. They’d all nodded as if that was going to make a material difference to them. Eli kept his head down and ate his dinner as his sisters worked out his living arrangements.
In the end, it was decided that his siblings and father didn’t want Eli to be uprooted from his home again, so Kathleen would move into the loft for the summer. He shrugged when asked if that “worked for him.” It didn’t really matter, anyway.
It’s been months since then, and Eli tries to be on his way out the door when his sister comes home from work. Enough to see her, but not enough to ever really talk. Like an outdoor cat, he thinks, making an appearance, checking in, never sticking around for real affection. He slinks off into whatever semblance of a life he can hold onto before it’s uprooted again.
In one week.
One week, and he will be back in Colorado where nothing that’s happened in the past two years matters. He is an entirely new person there. No past, no baggage. No mother.
No mother.
His mouth twitches down for a moment, just a moment, when he remembers. When he forgets to be numb.
He’s on his way out the door, earbuds in, when his phone rings. Dad flashes across the screen, and he doesn’t really want to answer it right now, but he doesn’t really have a reason not to. His dad’s been good about checking in this time around.
“Eli, hey, how are you?”
“Hi, dad.”
“Where y’goin’?”
“Ava’s.”
“How was work?”
“Fine.”
“Y’doin’ anything fun this weekend?”
His dad has been doing that lately. Trying to make conversation. Do more than just make sure he’s alive once a week. Eli knows he’s trying to squeeze in quality time where he can with just a phone call at his disposal, but he can’t help but feel resentful that it took his dad this long to give a shit. To want to spend time with him, even if it’s virtual.
Eli loves his dad, he does. But he’d needed this a year ago, or even six months ago. Hell, his whole life. But his mom had always been the one to listen to him, to hug him. To make him feel whole.
So many parts of him feel incomplete these days, even as his friends talk about the greatest years of their lives and how college is this crazy adventure or some other bulllshit.
The alleged greatest years of Eli’s life have been slipping through his fingers. Grainy, like sand, or the old home videos he’s been watching of his family.
He doesn’t know why he chose now to pull them out of storage, but he can’t stop watching them. All of them. The family that existed before him.
His mother is beautiful, his father has hair, and the house is chaotic as a teenage Maureen bounds down the stairs and out the door before their parents can ask where she’s going. Kathleen is sulking in that way she sometimes does even now, when the weight of the world is simply too much. Moreso back then, when she didn’t have the medication or therapy to combat it. The twins are almost always running in and out of frame, Rich- Dickie back then- chasing Liz with a stuffed animal or a Lego or even a live turtle.
The video ends, more often than not, with his father leaving for work. Whether he was called in or it was a scheduled shift doesn’t seem to make a difference. The videos all end the same.
Eli thinks about that now, as he leaves his home without a single soul to notice. His father’s loft is empty and quiet compared to the old house in Queens that he barely remembers. He feels like the epilogue in his own family sometimes. Just the idea of a future after the real story. After the glory days.
The one constant is his father’s sporadic presence.
“I was gonna try to pick up an extra shift at work. Why?”
“No plans for your last weekend at home?”
“Not really.” It’s still not home, anyway. “Are you getting any closer to solving the case?” Because he really does miss his dad, sometimes.
“Getting there. Might be a little longer before we can start making arrests, but I promise I’ll let you know as soon as I’m done. Maybe I can come out to Colorado and visit, huh?”
“Yeah, that sounds good, Dad.”
“Good, good. Ill, uh, I’ll let you go then. I’ll call sometime before you leave for school, okay? You got your flight and everything?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Alright. Love you, kid. Have fun at Ava’s.”
“Love you, too.”
He hangs up and makes his way to the door.
Eli is not going to Ava’s.
He puts his phone on airplane mode so his dad can’t track it and takes the subway into Manhattan. This is likely his last chance to see her before he’s gone until Thanksgiving, and he wants to get it right. Wants to understand. Because a few days ago Eli found a home video that confused him, and he needs to get to the bottom of it before he leaves for Colorado again.
When he asks the desk sergeant downstairs if Captain Benson is in, the guy barely looks at him twice before pointing to the elevators. His fingers flex on the shoulder strap of his backpack as he waits.
When he steps off the elevator into the sleek, cold 16th precinct, he scans the room for a familiar face. The only other person he’d recognize is Sergeant Tutuola, but Eli doesn’t see him. The door to Olivia’s office is open, though.
He shuffles over before he can lose his nerve, and taps hesitantly on the doorframe before sticking his head in.
“Eli,” she says, surprised. She’s sitting behind her desk, reading glasses perched on top of her head and dark circles under her eyes. He still doesn’t know her very well, but she gets this soft look on her face when she looks at him, and even if he doesn’t know much about her he gets the feeling he should. Like they were meant to be more than the strangers they essentially are.
“Hi, Captain Benson.”
“Please, it’s Olivia. Come in, sweetheart. Is everything okay?” She asks as she stands, waving him in to take a seat across from her desk. She shuts the door to her office as she does, then takes the guest chair right next to him.
“Yeah, everything’s fine.”
“Your siblings okay? Your grandma? Your dad?”
“Everyone’s okay.”
“Okay, good. So, um, what can I do for you?”
He reaches for his backpack and pulls out a VHS tape. Olivia wordlessly takes it from his outstretched hand, notices the sharpie written on the side.
Eli - November 2007
“Dad has a box of old home videos, so I’ve been watching them this summer,” he explains. “I thought maybe I could get them digitized or something, I don’t know. Most of them are from before I was born, but this one’s different.”
And she knows. She knows because November 2007 will be burned into her memory forever. The sheer terror she felt as she climbed in and out of that wrecked car to save Kathy and her son rivals almost nothing else she’s ever experienced. Almost. Her exhale is soft as she stares at the tape.
“I think I have a VHS player somewhere…” she says, trying to remember where the old rolling box TVs are stored. Surely one of those still has a working VHS player-
“It’s okay. Not much happens in the video, it’s just my mom and dad holding me while Liz films. I just… my mom always told me my birth was kinda crazy, but she didn’t explain everything. She looks injured in the video. I didn’t… I didn’t know she was hurt, you know?”
“Eli…”
“And so I, I just wanted to come here to ask you about it because I know you were there, Kathleen told me, and I know you won’t avoid the question like Dad would and I don’t wanna ask him over the phone anyway and-“
“Eli, hey. Look at me, okay?”
He does.
“You want me to tell you about the day you were born?”
He hesitates.
“I, um. I don’t know if I want to know. But I also think I need to know? Does that make sense?”
“That does make sense, sweetheart. Absolutely.”
“Okay. Good,” he nods, mostly to himself.
“Would you like to come back to my apartment for some dinner? My son is away this week, so you would have complete privacy and we could talk about it there.”
“Um, yeah. Yeah, okay.”
And so they go. It’s the end of the day anyway, Olivia reasoned, and no one seemed particularly bothered by her departure. The car ride to her apartment is a little awkward, mostly because the presence of the VHS tape lingers in their minds. He tells her his father calls about once a week and that he’s been pretty consistent about checking in. She‘s wearing a pendant in the shape of a compass, and she fidgets with it as she drives, listening to his updates on his father and siblings.
“I’m so glad he’s been better about staying in touch, Eli. I think he’s really trying this time around.”
“Have you heard from him?” Eli asks.
“Ah… he’s called a few times. Just to let me know how everything’s going.” He nods, processing.
“I think he’s homesick.”
“What makes you say that?”
Eli shrugs.
“His heart just doesn’t seem to be in it the way it normally is. He’s usually fully absorbed in this shi- stuff. This time around he seems like he really does just want to come home.”
She sighs.
“I hope you’re right, kid.”
They pull into her building’s garage and take the elevator up to her quiet, fancy new apartment. He was never in the old place, but he remembers his dad mentioning that she’d moved at some point in the last year or so. This place is full of sleek new appliances and has a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline. It’s beautiful, and silent, and it makes his skin itch.
“So,” she says, setting her bag on a barstool. “I believe I only have dino nuggets in my fridge, so we can either eat that or I can order us some really good stuff from DiCarlo’s. What do you think?”
He shrugs. “I don’t wanna impose, really.”
“I promise you’re not. You’re doing me a favor, actually. Saving me from another night of boredom without my son to inundate me with his one-man production of Dear Evan Hanson,” she laughs.
He doesn’t smile, exactly, but his lips twitch into something that doesn’t quite resemble a grimace.
“Okay.”
“Alright, I’m making the executive decision to order DiCarlo’s. You like cacio e pepe?”
She orders their food, and they take a seat on her couch as Eli fidgets with the edge of the tape. He wants to know. He doesn’t.
“What do you know about your birth, Eli?”
He hesitates.
“I know… I know I was early, and unexpected, and that my mom gave birth to me in the back of ambulance. And I know you were there because my dad was busy.” He can’t really be mad nearly two decades after the fact, but he kind of is. His father missed his own birth for work . His father’s partner somehow didn’t.
“That’s all true. It sounds like the part you’re missing is why you came so early in the first place.”
“There was a reason? Like a known reason?”
“Eli,” she pauses, “Your mom and I were in a car accident. I was driving her to a doctor’s appointment, and a drunk driver came out of nowhere and t-boned us. I was okay, but your mom’s legs were pinned underneath the dashboard.”
“Oh.”
“We ended up getting her out, but her water broke because of all the distress she was in. It was… god, the thought of you being hurt on top of everything else… I was terrified. I know she was, too.”
“I never knew. Any of it.”
“I’m sure she was just trying to protect you from it, sweetie.”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah. So, we got her into the ambulance, and she just… she knew she couldn’t wait any longer. You were coming whether we were ready or not. So I sat behind your mom to give her something to push against and you came into the world kicking and screaming in the back of that ambulance. Your mom was so happy. We were both crying and laughing hysterically. And you were so beautiful.”
Olivia is looking at him with that softness again, that glow of pride he’s only ever seen in his own parents. He realizes, then, why she looks at him like that. She literally helped him come into the world, and he barely knows her. Panic wells in his chest. God, he can’t believe he never knew this. How could he have never known this?
“Then, your mom’s heart rate dropped. She was holding you to her chest, and she just kind of… slumped over. I picked you up and held you the rest of the way to the hospital while the paramedics worked on your mom. You were so small, but I could tell you were a fighter. Just like she was.”
“Was she… I mean I know she survived obviously, but what was wrong with her?”
“We never really figured that out. The best the doctors could guess was the stress of the whole thing just caught up to her and she passed out. She was fine once they got her blood pressure up, and you both spent a couple days in the hospital just to be sure everything was good. And you were. You were so good, Eli. Your parents were just so happy you were okay.”
He nods. Staring at his shoes while the woman who helped save him- twice now- sits across from him.
“Olivia, I’m-“
And then her phone rings.
She looks at it briefly- he understands her job as captain doesn’t really allow for her to miss calls- and seems startled when she sees the caller ID.
“Eli, does Kathleen know you’re here?”
“…Shit. Sorry, I-“
She holds a finger up as she answers.
“Hi, Kathleen…. Sweetie, try to calm down, okay? He’s with me…. I’m so sorry you were worried. I would have called if I’d known he didn’t tell you…. No, no, everything’s fine. We’re just in my apartment catching up. We’re about to gorge ourselves on DiCarlo’s if you’d like to join us…. Oh no, no worries. I’m happy to take him home as soon as we’re done. I’m so sorry you were worried, sweetie…. I’ll text you when we’re on our way, okay?… Okay. Yeah, bye, Katie.”
“Olivia, I’m so sorry. I figured she’d assume I was at my- at a friend’s house before she freaked out and started making calls.”
“It’s okay. I totally get it, but why didn’t you just tell her you were coming to see me?”
“I, um. I kind of wanted to talk to you without the rest of my family knowing. I just, they all seem to know you, and I don’t. Not really. Not like they do. And after everything you’ve done for me I wanted to… I wanted to understand. I wanted to feel like I know you the way you seem to know me.”
She takes his hand as she speaks.
“Eli, you can talk to me whenever you need to, okay? I would love to get to know you better. I guess it feels like I know you even though you don’t know me, but the truth is, I knew you when you were very very little. And I loved baby Eli. I didn’t have a child of my own back then, and your dad would bring you by the station and you’d just fall asleep in my lap while we did paperwork. And the way you were born, I just… I felt so close to you for the brief time we had together back then. But you’re an adult now, and the truth is I don’t know who you’ve become. But I really would love to. If that’s something you’re interested in.”
“I… yes. I want to know you, too.”
Her smile is tremulous and watery, but so genuine. He hasn’t felt warmth like this in so long it almost hurts. She squeezes his hands, and he squeezes back, and they both flinch when her buzzer sounds to announce the food delivery. She laughs, and he smiles.
Dinner is easier with the weight of the earlier conversation lifted, and they work together to dish out food. They shift easily between comfortable silence and easy conversation, school and his hopes to keep his soccer scholarship. He can’t believe this woman was a part of his family’s life for a decade before he even existed. He can’t believe she wasn’t for another decade after that. It isn’t a topic he feels comfortable breaching at the moment, but he still can’t help but wonder how his father could go no contact with someone who helped deliver his son. It just makes no sense.
They finish up with dinner and he grabs his backpack as she digs through her bag for her car keys. He wants to call an Uber to save her the trip- college saving be damned- but she insists.
“Your father would never forgive me if I let you take an Uber this late.”
They both know this probably isn’t true, but he suspects she wants to do it, so he doesn’t push too hard. Sometimes, he’s realized, adults helping you out is more about them than you.
“Olivia?”
“Hmm?”
“I, um, I’m flying back to Colorado next Wednesday.”
“Oh, yeah, I think your dad mentioned that. You need a ride to the airport?”
“No, no, I just… can we maybe… Can I see you one more time before I leave?” Why does this feel so humiliating?
She drops her bag and turns to him.
“Of course, sweetheart. Tell you what, Noah’s going to be back from camp on Saturday, and I’m sure he’s going to be bouncing off the walls for two hours before he crashes for the rest of the day. Would you like to hang out with us on Sunday? I usually cook some objectively mediocre spaghetti that my son seems to think is gourmet, and then we watch a movie or something. I know you might already get your kid fill with Seamus and Kieran, but-“
“No, that sounds… that sounds great, actually. It’s been kinda quiet around my house lately. I miss the kid energy sometimes.”
She smiles.
“You might regret saying that, but we would love to have you. Anytime, Eli. I mean that.”
“Thank you.“
As they make their way to the door, she hesitates.
“Eli?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I give you a hug?”
It’s the best offer he’s had all summer.