Rum Raisin 12: All I Ever Wanted
Title: All I Ever Wanted
Main Story: In The Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: Rum raisin 12 (guide), malt (subluxate's birthday prompt: And when we've gone a million miles/Made true our dreams with sweat and bone/After we've built it up with our bare hands/Made strong a place we can call home - "Sleep", Melissa Etheridge).
Word Count: 2255
Rating: PG-13
Summary: One of the most terrifying things is a dream coming true. Part II.
Notes: All you people complaining about a cliffhanger? I hope this lives up to it. Immediately follows this.
"Olivia," Joanna said, her voice as steady as her face was pale, "I think we need to talk."
It was about then that Olivia decided that someone was crazy, and it probably wasn't her.
One glance at Gina proved that her friend was a clueless as she was. Great. So she was talking to a crazy woman, who wanted to talk to her, specifically. If Olivia hadn't been worried before, she definitely was now.
"Talk about what?" she asked, carefully. If she'd been sitting, she would have edged away. As she was kneeling, she could only lean backwards a little bit, to try and discourage the conversation. Maybe Joanna had a touch of heatstroke? It was August, and it felt like someone had forgotten to turn the air conditioning on.
It had the opposite effect, though; Joanna leaned forward and gripped both of Olivia's hands in hers. "Olivia," she said, urgently. "Olivia, I know where your father is."
And just like that, every other thought fled, every other movement ceased, the world in freeze-frame; her heart stuttered and jumped, then started beating twice as hard. She sat back on her heels, feeling like she'd been slapped.
Daddy?
Behind her, Gina gave a tiny gasp that she only barely heard over a sudden dull roaring in her ears. Her focus narrowed to Joanna's pale, set face. "What?" she whispered.
"I know where your father is," the older woman repeated. "He's here. He's at a conference. Do you want to see him?"
"My father?" she asked, stupidly. Her father? How was that even possible? He hadn't been looking for her. He'd been glad to see her go. He didn't want her back.
Did he?
"Oh my God," she said, and felt as if she'd faint.
Joanna watched her closely, concern on her face. "Are you all right?"
"Oh my God," Olivia said, again. Her hands were shaking in Joanna's grasp. "My father. My father's here."
"He'll want to see you," Joanna said, her voice suddenly uncertain. "I don't... he'll want to see you, if you want to see him. He misses you so much."
Olivia realized that she was shaking her head only when Joanna's brow furrowed. "He doesn’t want me," she said, the words spilling out like water. "He doesn't want me, she said, she told me and he never came looking for me, he never came..."
Joanna squeezed her hands, and the flow of words stopped as if she'd turned off a spigot. "Your father," Joanna said, very gently, "has never stopped looking for you in all the years I have known him. And I have known him a very long time, Olivia. Eleven years."
Eleven years. It had been fourteen years since she'd seen him last. Fourteen years and the last time she'd seen him had been in the middle of a stupid argument. Olivia opened her mouth, found nothing there to say, and wound up shaking her head again, hopelessly.
"Here," Joanna said, and let go of her hands, reached for a blue purse hanging on her chair by its strap. "Here. Ask him yourself." She dug around in the purse for a moment, then pulled out her cell phone and fiddled with the buttons for a moment. Then she held it out, across the palms of both her hands like an offering, her dark eyes fixed on Olivia's face.
For a very long moment, Olivia did not move. She stared at the phone, at her father's name on the screen. She could take it, she could press dial, and she could talk to him again. It was that easy.
It didn't make sense. It couldn't be that easy. Fourteen years said it couldn't be that easy. She would pick it up and it would be the wrong Hugh Marhenke, someone else who had lost their child through some wild, ridiculous coincidence. Or it would be her father, but he would be horrified to hear her voice, horrified and repulsed, because he didn't want her back. How could he want her back? He'd never come looking for her.
He has never stopped looking for you.
She registered a faint movement beside her, and Gina put an arm around her shoulders. "Livvy?" she asked, softly. "Go on."
Daddy.
What else could she do?
She took the phone, pressed dial quickly so as not to give herself time to think, and held the phone to her ear. She was trembling so badly she had to use both hands. Joanna pulled her hands back, but did not take her eyes off Olivia.
It rang and rang, for what seemed like forever, and then...
"Joanna, I'm in the middle of a panel. Can this wait?"
Olivia lost her breath entirely. She hadn't heard her father's voice in fourteen years, and the affection, the slight impatience, the careful way he pronounced each word, everything was precisely the same and suddenly she was thirteen again and asking if she could go to Mimi's party that weekend, and she could not speak.
"Joanna?" This time there was a faint undertone of concern in her father's voice. "Are you there?"
She found her voice again, somewhere between her heart and her toes.
"Daddy?"
It came out almost a whisper, squeaky and afraid. She tried again, scrubbing at her cheeks and finding dampness on her hand. "Daddy? It's me, Daddy."
Silence on the other end twisted at her stomach, and she began to wonder if Joanna was wrong, if maybe she shouldn't have...
"Olivia?" Her father's voice cracked in the middle of her name, and Olivia began to cry in earnest.
"Daddy," she said, again. It was all she could say.
"Olivia. Oh my God. Where are you?" her father asked, rushing the words out. "Are you all right? How did you get Joanna's phone? Are you..." The words seemed to fail him, then, because he stopped talking, mid-sentence, and then whispered, "Sunny, Sunny. Don't cry, Sunny. Don't..."
That only made her cry harder; she covered her eyes with her hand. "Daddy," she sobbed, then whooped in a quick breath of air and blurted, before she could stop herself, "Daddy, come and get me, please..."
"I will," came the immediate answer. "I will, Sunny, just tell me where you are."
"I..." She looked up, feeling bewildered; she knew where she was, had given the address to cabdrivers at least three times for rehearsals, but simply could not remember it. "I..."
Joanna knelt beside her, then, and touched her arm. "Let me," she said, gently.
Olivia gave her the phone, and rubbed at her eyes with her hands while Joanna gave the address. She couldn't seem to stop crying, tears leaking steadily from the corners of her eyes. She felt off-balance, staggering sideways as the world tottered under her feet. She'd felt like this when her mother had taken her away, all those years ago, and she'd never, ever wanted to feel like this again.
She felt lost. God.
Somewhere in all of that, Joanna had finished her conversation, and now she lightly touched Olivia's arm again. "He's coming," she said. "He'll be here soon."
Her stomach lurched. He told me he never wanted to see you again. "This was a bad idea," she said, frantically, and grabbed at Gina's arm. "This was a bad idea, I shouldn't have done that, I have to get out of here!"
Panic flashed across Joanna's face, but Gina beat her to speaking. "No," Gina said, firmly. "No. You did the right thing, Livvy. You absolutely did the right thing. Come on, let's go outside and wait."
"No, no..." But Gina was hauling her up, inexorably. "No, Gina," she sobbed. "Gina, I can't, he hates me, she said so..."
"She lied about everything else, why the hell would she be telling the truth about that?" Gina asked. "No. Livvy, you heard Joanna. He's been looking for you. He wants you back, darling."
"He does," Joanna said, with another of those light, quick touches on her forearm. "Olivia, losing you, it was killing him when I met him. He's better now, a little, but he has never gotten over it. Never. He never hated you, not ever."
The tears were coming harder now, and faster. "I can't, I can't," she sobbed. "Oh, I can't."
"You can," Gina insisted, then said, "Oh, fuck. Livvy, darling, I need you to go outside with Joanna and wait for your father, all right?"
Olivia looked up and through a haze of tears saw Bonnie heading in their direction, with the purposeful expression of a woman who has seen some wrong being done and is determined to right it. While she appreciated the thought, somewhere under the choking terror, Olivia could not handle it right now. Not now.
"Outside," Joanna said, firmly, took her arm in a gentle grip, and steered her towards the doors, leaving poor Gina behind to head Bonnie off. God bless her, Olivia thought. Either. Both.
Somehow Joanna got her outside the rented hall without anyone else interfering with them. Which, she thought, once she'd gotten more control of herself, was a minor miracle. Most of the Smithies she'd gone to school with had an almost pathological need to comfort someone in tears, and a good chunk of them were here.
Maybe it was because Joanna had her, and Joanna looked competent. She'd never really know.
All she did know was a sudden blast of hot air on her face, then Joanna was urging her to sit down. She did, was pleasantly surprised by the metal seat's temperature, and realized she was sitting in the bus stop just outside the hall rented for the reunion. It was a good place to wait; she just hoped a bus wouldn't come by while they were there.
Oh God. She bit back a hysterical laugh. If the worst thing that happened was a bus stopping when it didn't need to, then she should be thanking God.
You're not his daughter.
He never wants to see you again.
"I can't do this," she told Joanna, and made to get up. "I can't. I'm sorry. I can't."
Joanna touched her forearm; somehow it made her sit back down again. "Why not?" she asked, in the sort of voice Ivy used to comfort frightened animals. There was that time her cat had broken his leg, and she'd taken him to Ivy, terrified, and Ivy had calmed them both down somehow, talking in that soft, smooth voice...
"I just can't," she said, ducking her head and letting her hair cover her face, so she didn't have to look at anything but her own hands. That voice had calmed her a little, though, so she managed to speak steadily. "I... I'm afraid, and if... if he doesn't..." She inhaled sharply, tried not to start crying again.
Joanna was quiet for a moment, an encouraging sort of silence, before she spoke. "If he doesn't?"
Olivia clenched her hands together in her lap, felt her nails cut into her palm. "If he doesn't love me," she said, "then I don't know what I'll do."
"You would rather live with the uncertainty than know," Joanna said-- stated, more.
Olivia nodded, but did not look up.
They sat in silence for a moment. Olivia could already feel sweat beginning to trickle down the back of her neck, and longed for a breeze, for any movement of air, but the oppressive stillness did not lift.
"I don't know what I can say," Joanna said finally. "I don't think that you will really believe that your father loves you until he comes. All I can say is this, and I hope you will believe me when I say it: it hurt him very badly to lose you, then, so badly he still carries that wound. To lose you a second time... I think it would kill him."
Olivia looked up, a sudden suspicion catching at her mind. She lost it again immediately when a taxi pulled up and her father got out.
He looked older; that was her first thought. It was such a stupid first thought to have. It had been fourteen years, and she'd grown from a leggy teenager into an adult. But her father... he'd always been unchangeable in her mind, holding her hand, pushing her on the swing. She'd somehow thought he'd be the same.
He still had the tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the ones that deepened when he smiled, but they were more obvious now, accompanied by more lines in his face. His hair was graying at the temples now. He looked thinner, too, more worried. More unhappy.
Her chest tightened. He looked so much older. So much frailer.
Before she knew it, she was standing up, holding her hands out. "Daddy?"
"Olivia," he breathed, and opened his arms, and the next thing she knew she'd crossed the sidewalk and thrown her arms around him. Her father wrapped his arms around her and tucked her under his chin, just like he'd done when she was a girl, and she clung to his shirt and burst into tears, or she would have if she'd ever really stopped crying.
"I've got you, darling," he murmured, rocking her a little. "I've got you. Shh, shh, I'm here. We're here. We're both here. Oh, Sunny."
Dampness began to soak through her hair, and she realized her father was crying too.
Main Story: In The Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: Rum raisin 12 (guide), malt (subluxate's birthday prompt: And when we've gone a million miles/Made true our dreams with sweat and bone/After we've built it up with our bare hands/Made strong a place we can call home - "Sleep", Melissa Etheridge).
Word Count: 2255
Rating: PG-13
Summary: One of the most terrifying things is a dream coming true. Part II.
Notes: All you people complaining about a cliffhanger? I hope this lives up to it. Immediately follows this.
"Olivia," Joanna said, her voice as steady as her face was pale, "I think we need to talk."
It was about then that Olivia decided that someone was crazy, and it probably wasn't her.
One glance at Gina proved that her friend was a clueless as she was. Great. So she was talking to a crazy woman, who wanted to talk to her, specifically. If Olivia hadn't been worried before, she definitely was now.
"Talk about what?" she asked, carefully. If she'd been sitting, she would have edged away. As she was kneeling, she could only lean backwards a little bit, to try and discourage the conversation. Maybe Joanna had a touch of heatstroke? It was August, and it felt like someone had forgotten to turn the air conditioning on.
It had the opposite effect, though; Joanna leaned forward and gripped both of Olivia's hands in hers. "Olivia," she said, urgently. "Olivia, I know where your father is."
And just like that, every other thought fled, every other movement ceased, the world in freeze-frame; her heart stuttered and jumped, then started beating twice as hard. She sat back on her heels, feeling like she'd been slapped.
Daddy?
Behind her, Gina gave a tiny gasp that she only barely heard over a sudden dull roaring in her ears. Her focus narrowed to Joanna's pale, set face. "What?" she whispered.
"I know where your father is," the older woman repeated. "He's here. He's at a conference. Do you want to see him?"
"My father?" she asked, stupidly. Her father? How was that even possible? He hadn't been looking for her. He'd been glad to see her go. He didn't want her back.
Did he?
"Oh my God," she said, and felt as if she'd faint.
Joanna watched her closely, concern on her face. "Are you all right?"
"Oh my God," Olivia said, again. Her hands were shaking in Joanna's grasp. "My father. My father's here."
"He'll want to see you," Joanna said, her voice suddenly uncertain. "I don't... he'll want to see you, if you want to see him. He misses you so much."
Olivia realized that she was shaking her head only when Joanna's brow furrowed. "He doesn’t want me," she said, the words spilling out like water. "He doesn't want me, she said, she told me and he never came looking for me, he never came..."
Joanna squeezed her hands, and the flow of words stopped as if she'd turned off a spigot. "Your father," Joanna said, very gently, "has never stopped looking for you in all the years I have known him. And I have known him a very long time, Olivia. Eleven years."
Eleven years. It had been fourteen years since she'd seen him last. Fourteen years and the last time she'd seen him had been in the middle of a stupid argument. Olivia opened her mouth, found nothing there to say, and wound up shaking her head again, hopelessly.
"Here," Joanna said, and let go of her hands, reached for a blue purse hanging on her chair by its strap. "Here. Ask him yourself." She dug around in the purse for a moment, then pulled out her cell phone and fiddled with the buttons for a moment. Then she held it out, across the palms of both her hands like an offering, her dark eyes fixed on Olivia's face.
For a very long moment, Olivia did not move. She stared at the phone, at her father's name on the screen. She could take it, she could press dial, and she could talk to him again. It was that easy.
It didn't make sense. It couldn't be that easy. Fourteen years said it couldn't be that easy. She would pick it up and it would be the wrong Hugh Marhenke, someone else who had lost their child through some wild, ridiculous coincidence. Or it would be her father, but he would be horrified to hear her voice, horrified and repulsed, because he didn't want her back. How could he want her back? He'd never come looking for her.
He has never stopped looking for you.
She registered a faint movement beside her, and Gina put an arm around her shoulders. "Livvy?" she asked, softly. "Go on."
Daddy.
What else could she do?
She took the phone, pressed dial quickly so as not to give herself time to think, and held the phone to her ear. She was trembling so badly she had to use both hands. Joanna pulled her hands back, but did not take her eyes off Olivia.
It rang and rang, for what seemed like forever, and then...
"Joanna, I'm in the middle of a panel. Can this wait?"
Olivia lost her breath entirely. She hadn't heard her father's voice in fourteen years, and the affection, the slight impatience, the careful way he pronounced each word, everything was precisely the same and suddenly she was thirteen again and asking if she could go to Mimi's party that weekend, and she could not speak.
"Joanna?" This time there was a faint undertone of concern in her father's voice. "Are you there?"
She found her voice again, somewhere between her heart and her toes.
"Daddy?"
It came out almost a whisper, squeaky and afraid. She tried again, scrubbing at her cheeks and finding dampness on her hand. "Daddy? It's me, Daddy."
Silence on the other end twisted at her stomach, and she began to wonder if Joanna was wrong, if maybe she shouldn't have...
"Olivia?" Her father's voice cracked in the middle of her name, and Olivia began to cry in earnest.
"Daddy," she said, again. It was all she could say.
"Olivia. Oh my God. Where are you?" her father asked, rushing the words out. "Are you all right? How did you get Joanna's phone? Are you..." The words seemed to fail him, then, because he stopped talking, mid-sentence, and then whispered, "Sunny, Sunny. Don't cry, Sunny. Don't..."
That only made her cry harder; she covered her eyes with her hand. "Daddy," she sobbed, then whooped in a quick breath of air and blurted, before she could stop herself, "Daddy, come and get me, please..."
"I will," came the immediate answer. "I will, Sunny, just tell me where you are."
"I..." She looked up, feeling bewildered; she knew where she was, had given the address to cabdrivers at least three times for rehearsals, but simply could not remember it. "I..."
Joanna knelt beside her, then, and touched her arm. "Let me," she said, gently.
Olivia gave her the phone, and rubbed at her eyes with her hands while Joanna gave the address. She couldn't seem to stop crying, tears leaking steadily from the corners of her eyes. She felt off-balance, staggering sideways as the world tottered under her feet. She'd felt like this when her mother had taken her away, all those years ago, and she'd never, ever wanted to feel like this again.
She felt lost. God.
Somewhere in all of that, Joanna had finished her conversation, and now she lightly touched Olivia's arm again. "He's coming," she said. "He'll be here soon."
Her stomach lurched. He told me he never wanted to see you again. "This was a bad idea," she said, frantically, and grabbed at Gina's arm. "This was a bad idea, I shouldn't have done that, I have to get out of here!"
Panic flashed across Joanna's face, but Gina beat her to speaking. "No," Gina said, firmly. "No. You did the right thing, Livvy. You absolutely did the right thing. Come on, let's go outside and wait."
"No, no..." But Gina was hauling her up, inexorably. "No, Gina," she sobbed. "Gina, I can't, he hates me, she said so..."
"She lied about everything else, why the hell would she be telling the truth about that?" Gina asked. "No. Livvy, you heard Joanna. He's been looking for you. He wants you back, darling."
"He does," Joanna said, with another of those light, quick touches on her forearm. "Olivia, losing you, it was killing him when I met him. He's better now, a little, but he has never gotten over it. Never. He never hated you, not ever."
The tears were coming harder now, and faster. "I can't, I can't," she sobbed. "Oh, I can't."
"You can," Gina insisted, then said, "Oh, fuck. Livvy, darling, I need you to go outside with Joanna and wait for your father, all right?"
Olivia looked up and through a haze of tears saw Bonnie heading in their direction, with the purposeful expression of a woman who has seen some wrong being done and is determined to right it. While she appreciated the thought, somewhere under the choking terror, Olivia could not handle it right now. Not now.
"Outside," Joanna said, firmly, took her arm in a gentle grip, and steered her towards the doors, leaving poor Gina behind to head Bonnie off. God bless her, Olivia thought. Either. Both.
Somehow Joanna got her outside the rented hall without anyone else interfering with them. Which, she thought, once she'd gotten more control of herself, was a minor miracle. Most of the Smithies she'd gone to school with had an almost pathological need to comfort someone in tears, and a good chunk of them were here.
Maybe it was because Joanna had her, and Joanna looked competent. She'd never really know.
All she did know was a sudden blast of hot air on her face, then Joanna was urging her to sit down. She did, was pleasantly surprised by the metal seat's temperature, and realized she was sitting in the bus stop just outside the hall rented for the reunion. It was a good place to wait; she just hoped a bus wouldn't come by while they were there.
Oh God. She bit back a hysterical laugh. If the worst thing that happened was a bus stopping when it didn't need to, then she should be thanking God.
You're not his daughter.
He never wants to see you again.
"I can't do this," she told Joanna, and made to get up. "I can't. I'm sorry. I can't."
Joanna touched her forearm; somehow it made her sit back down again. "Why not?" she asked, in the sort of voice Ivy used to comfort frightened animals. There was that time her cat had broken his leg, and she'd taken him to Ivy, terrified, and Ivy had calmed them both down somehow, talking in that soft, smooth voice...
"I just can't," she said, ducking her head and letting her hair cover her face, so she didn't have to look at anything but her own hands. That voice had calmed her a little, though, so she managed to speak steadily. "I... I'm afraid, and if... if he doesn't..." She inhaled sharply, tried not to start crying again.
Joanna was quiet for a moment, an encouraging sort of silence, before she spoke. "If he doesn't?"
Olivia clenched her hands together in her lap, felt her nails cut into her palm. "If he doesn't love me," she said, "then I don't know what I'll do."
"You would rather live with the uncertainty than know," Joanna said-- stated, more.
Olivia nodded, but did not look up.
They sat in silence for a moment. Olivia could already feel sweat beginning to trickle down the back of her neck, and longed for a breeze, for any movement of air, but the oppressive stillness did not lift.
"I don't know what I can say," Joanna said finally. "I don't think that you will really believe that your father loves you until he comes. All I can say is this, and I hope you will believe me when I say it: it hurt him very badly to lose you, then, so badly he still carries that wound. To lose you a second time... I think it would kill him."
Olivia looked up, a sudden suspicion catching at her mind. She lost it again immediately when a taxi pulled up and her father got out.
He looked older; that was her first thought. It was such a stupid first thought to have. It had been fourteen years, and she'd grown from a leggy teenager into an adult. But her father... he'd always been unchangeable in her mind, holding her hand, pushing her on the swing. She'd somehow thought he'd be the same.
He still had the tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the ones that deepened when he smiled, but they were more obvious now, accompanied by more lines in his face. His hair was graying at the temples now. He looked thinner, too, more worried. More unhappy.
Her chest tightened. He looked so much older. So much frailer.
Before she knew it, she was standing up, holding her hands out. "Daddy?"
"Olivia," he breathed, and opened his arms, and the next thing she knew she'd crossed the sidewalk and thrown her arms around him. Her father wrapped his arms around her and tucked her under his chin, just like he'd done when she was a girl, and she clung to his shirt and burst into tears, or she would have if she'd ever really stopped crying.
"I've got you, darling," he murmured, rocking her a little. "I've got you. Shh, shh, I'm here. We're here. We're both here. Oh, Sunny."
Dampness began to soak through her hair, and she realized her father was crying too.