Alaskan Nights (A Law and Order: SVU fanfic)

Ch.23

"Hey, Dad...I'm not exactly sure why I'm leaving this message because I know that you don't listen to voicemails but I just..." she sighs. "I called this morning like I said I would and I took my lunch break early to call again and I...just call me? Please? Okay. I love you. Bye."

Message deleted.

"Elliot. Hey. You told me that you'd call once you got there but I haven't heard anything...Maureen called me. She tried to hide it but she's a little worried... you know how she gets. I just wanna know that you're okay. So give me a call...or call your daughter. Call your daughter."

Message deleted.

He closes his phone and slides the plastic shell across the table. The wind circles around him, stealing his heat and the heat of the untouched coffee cup that is perched on the table before him. The weather drastically changed in the last ten minutes or so and while most of the outdoor patrons had moved inside, or abandoned their meals altogether, the drizzle did not seem to bother Elliot in the same way. After all, a little rain couldn't hold a torch to the rainstorm that he'd been through in the last 24 hours.

He stares at the remaining wisps of heat as they leave the brown liquid and ponders how he'd ever thought that he could keep anything down. The hunger that had brought him here in the first place was long gone, replaced by nausea and a sickening pit where the grumbling once was in his stomach.

What the hell was he going to do? What the hell was he going to say? He couldn't leave Maureen in the dark for long because he does know that she worries about him, but he also couldn't form the words needed to tell her anything at all.

"Hey, Maur... sorry I missed your calls. Just calling to let you know that you've got a baby brother out here that even I knew nothing about. Also, his mom—who just so happens to be Olivia—is dying from heart failure. Oh! I almost forgot that his twin sister died at birth." Every single scenario that popped into his head seemed more ludicrous than the last. He isn't ready for the hard questions that would come from all of the women in his life or the answers that he definitely did not have to give them. He especially did not know how to tell his AA sponsor that after 6 months of staunch sobriety he was so close to losing it all and that at the second-lowest point of his sobriety that there was nothing that she could do for him.

Five months. Five months. Five months. Five months.

The two words run through his thoughts on an endless loop breaking up and distorting any coherent moments that he tries to have—thoughts of ex-wives and custody arrangements and sobriety and daughters and sons and...

They were so inconsequential now, the problems that he faced in New York, and so far away from the massive importance and relevance that he had placed on them just days ago.

Death, he was bitterly reminded, took precedence over all of life's issues.

Up ahead, the clouds begin to thin and he is rewarded for his patience as the drizzle begins to still against the overhead umbrella. He pulls his hoodie down and sits back, letting the remaining moisture fall upon his head. To his left, the entrance to the indoor dining area creaks open and through it walks Rebecca, now donning a sports jacket and a grey cap with her hair pulled neatly into a single braid.

"That seat taken?" she asks as the door closes behind her.

Elliot shakes his head no and gestures for her to sit as she approaches the chair. Before she does, she unzips and shrugs off her jacket and places it on the wet plastic. The silence returns as she lowers herself down to the seat, and remains between them as the last of the raindrops bounce off of the rim of her hat and litter her shirt with small darkened dots.