Here we are: the sixth story in "The Polygamy Project" series with the story that you guys wanted to see next - the Booth family! This is Dr. Brennan's POV. Enjoy!:)
"Hey."
Dr. Temperance Brennan glanced away from the photos of remains that she was examining and up at Dr. Sweets as he came into her office. "Good morning."
"I saw that Ms. Stinton's and Ms. Burley's cars were gone by the time we left the lane this morning for work."
Temperance nodded. "They left, yes."
Dr. Sweets paused a couple of feet away from her desk, elaborating, "But you and Booth haven't."
She kept her eyes trained on the photos as she answered, "No, we're staying behind for a little while longer… so that further research can be conducted first-hand in the polygamy project."
"That means that Dr. Saroyan stayed in the house too then, doesn't it?"
"Yes, she did."
"Do you want to talk about that?"
Temperance's unease at the conversation turned to aggravation as she answered calmly, "No."
"That must be hard though. Booth was so against the project to begin with; something pretty big must be keeping him there if he's willing to stay any longer than he had to, after all, today does mark the end of the mandatory two week period."
Temperance sighed, finally giving up and looking the psychologist in the eye as she asked irritably, "Is there something you need, Dr. Sweets?"
"Just to check on you. I know what it's like to want to tear your hair out over this project; Lillian Josephs drove me up the wall, you know."
"But she got you with Daisy, didn't she?"
"In her own, roundabout way, yes."
Temperance sighed again, going back to her photos as she told Sweets, "I'm not going to tear my hair out over something that I suggested doing to begin with, nor am I being driven up the wall. I'm fine."
"Alright," Sweets said carefully. "But just know that you're not the only one who's noticed how close Booth and Cam have gotten these past couple of weeks while she's been pretending to be his second wife."
"I knew what I was doing when I assigned Dr. Saroyan to our house; I knew what could happen, and I'm fine with the fact that it has."
She was lying straight through her teeth – she wasn't always very fine with her husband having a second wife now that it had become a new part of her reality – and Sweets knew that as well as she did.
"Good… because you realize that you've got something really special in 11 Federal Lane – something that virtually no one else doing this project has."
"And what's that?"
"You managed to make the three adults and three kids become a real family."
"What do you mean?" Temperance asked. "There have been a lot of people staying behind to continue being a plural family."
"Yes, but which wife besides you has the child of her husband's other wife coming up and calling her 'mom'?"
"Michelle only did that a couple of times this past week," Temperance objected, refusing to show that she realized what a big deal that could potentially be.
"Yes, but isn't it interesting that she did it at all? I've read about the nightly routine that you've written about in your research journal, Dr. Brennan. For two weeks you've been the one to help Michelle with her homework while Cam puts Christine to bed and Booth spends time with Parker. That's making a habit of functioning as a real family would, making a stable, healthy environment for those kids. And it does only take two weeks to form a habit, right?"
With that, Dr. Sweets turned and walked out, apparently considering his work with her done for the day. Temperance just bit her lip absently and watched him go; pondering the thought that he might very well have a good point.
Later that night, once she was back at her duplex home with Booth, Cam, and the kids, she paid special attention to what went on. Truth be told, although Rebecca and Hannah had left the house only that morning they hadn't really contributed anything while there for the past two weeks and subsequently weren't really missed. Parker was happy to have time with his "other mom, Bones," Christine couldn't really tell the difference, and the others were just glad that the house was a little quieter and had a lot less tension flowing through the air. Rebecca had tried hard to make life horrible for the other women in the home, which had drastically affected the mood of the place most nights. With her gone, so was the stress, and it was genuinely nice for the six of them to hang out in this atmosphere.
Dr. Sweets had been right; if she let herself think that way, Temperance really saw them as being one happy family. They all helped make supper that evening, punctuated by lots of laughter and wisecracks, along with a couple of harmless spills. While eating at the table – again as a family – they spoke more freely then they had before, and Temperance found that by the time the meal was being put away, she had learned something about each and every one of the people she was living with. She even learned that Christine had a special affinity for Cam's version of green beans thanks to the extra seasonings that had been added. Parker had made a new friend at school that day, and Michelle had caught the eye of a junior football player at the high school.
"Excuse me?" Booth asked, looking every ounce somebody's father as his eyebrows rose and he looked across the table at the teenager.
"Dad, stop; it's fine. Mama's already met this guy." She turned to Cam, asking, "You remember Gavin, right? You talked to his parents a lot at the last PTA."
Temperance tuned out on the conversation so that she could concentrate on the look on her husband's face. He had been blindsided – she thought this might be the third time that it had happened – when Michelle called him "Dad." As much as both the man and the teenager had been against taking part in this project to begin with, they had seemed to slide easily enough into it once they got started.
She had known on the first day when she had seen the expression on Booth's face upon his accidentally kissing Cam that something big was going to happen during the project's duration, but she hadn't dared hope that it would work this well. Sure it wasn't easy – not on any of them, really – but sometimes the best things in life were the things that were hardest to obtain. They were getting there, and it was a nice journey to be on, surrounded by these people.
Michelle broke through her thoughts with a loud, "Oh! Speaking of school: guess what I did today, Mom."
Temperance blinked, turning to answer the demand with a simple, "What?"
"Guess who made an 'A' on that monster of a science test that you've been helping me study for." Michelle grinned broadly.
Temperance was in a really good mood, so she decided to answer with a smirk, "Gavin?"
"Me!"
She laughed; giving the teenager the high-five that Michelle held her hand up for. "Good job, Michelle. Was it as hard as we thought it was going to be?"
"Yeah… but I worked hard and I still aced it, which is totally what makes it so nice."
"Absolutely," Temperance nodded her head as she glanced at Booth and Cam. "I completely understand that."
Polygamy was hard, and she wasn't sure that she was exactly "acing it" yet, but they were definitely working hard at it, and she realized that was enough to make it truly "nice" for all of them, no matter the struggles that they were going through.
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