“You don’t have to fire me,” Olive said. “I’m quitting.”
Lucy froze with her hand on the doorknob. Like she was about most things that had happened the past couple weeks, she was surprised to hear it. She was surprised to hear that Olive and her son broke up in the first place. (And heartbroken and disappointed, of course, but surprised first and foremost.) She was also surprised that Olive showed up to her shift this morning, and now she was surprised that Olive was so keen to remove her nametag and her apron before the two of them even reached the office, let alone had a conversation. She stared at the girl for a moment and then closed the door behind them with as warm of a smile as she could manage. “That’s not why I wanted to talk to you.”
But wasn’t it?
Seven hadn’t left the house - Lucy’s house - since the party. Holed up in his childhood bedroom, he barely touched the food she left on his bedside table and had only just started to respond when she spoke. He had been so angry when he came home that night, so angry that it almost scared her, especially coming from her softhearted boy, her sensitive son. He didn’t sound like himself; he didn’t even look like himself when she caught flashes of his face as he stalked around the living room. The next day, the anger abated into miserable silence, and while she didn’t know which one was worse, she did know that should’ve hated the person who did that to him. She knew that should’ve been the end of it.
At the same time, she knew that there was more than one side to the story, that Olive must’ve had her reasons for doing whatever it was that he was so mad about, because Olive was not a careless individual - in fact, she cared more about most things than anyone else Lucy had ever met. Not to mention that she saw Olive as her daughter. A few months ago, when Lucy and Seven were out shopping at the mall, he’d lingered in front of the ring display of a jewelry store when he thought Lucy wasn’t looking. She assumed that, soon enough, Olive would be considered her daughter by law.
And now Olive was taking her hair out of her clip and fiddling with the buttons of her uniform and clearly making plans to never step foot in the diner or talk to Lucy ever again.
(...)
Lucy smoothed her palm over Olive’s head, ran her fingers through the blonde silk of her hair, rocking her back and forth like she was her baby, because Olive was her baby. How many breakfasts and dinners had Olive eaten at her house? How many Christmases and New Years did she celebrate with the Ducksteins? That morning, as she walked downstairs, Lucy counted five framed photos on the wall of the staircase with Olive’s freckled face in them. That wasn’t taking into consideration the rest of the pictures, nor all the ornaments she’d helped decorate, the vintage lamps she’d bought from the antique store and gifted to Lucy for her birthday, the height chart on the inside of the pantry where her heights from age 11 to 23 had been tracked meticulously, even though she stopped growing at 18. She’d stopped growing at the perfect height for Lucy to be able to tuck her under her chin, and now they were never going to hug again.
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