What He Offered

by gembones

Booth's Therapy #3: his relationships with women. In this 3rd installment, I attempt to answer the question Booth poses in Daredevil in the Mold: why don't they want what I'm offering? It begins with Marianne Booth and will eventually cover most of B&B's romantic history (at least, that's the plan). Thanks for reading and reviewing.

1. Chapter 1

What He Offered

Chapter one - The letter in the secretary

Temperance "Bones" Brennan stood in the foyer of her house watching the front door swing to a close. She breathed a sigh of relief. They were all gone to the National Zoo: her husband, their two children and their house guests for the week-end, Marianne and Reggie. With travel to and fro, visiting all the exhibits and a stop for ice cream and a souvenir at the museum shop, they figured to be gone a good four hours, maybe more if traffic was heavy. She had work enough to fill every minute of those hours, she knew; it only remained for her to decide where to start.

She had turned toward the living area with the idea of finishing up the article she'd been reading in The Forensic Examiner when her phone pinged: a text from Booth. She knew a moment's disquiet, but quickly realized that, with all the loading of equipment and fastening into car seats that went into preparing two young children for departure, they likely had not yet left the driveway. Had they forgotten something she could bring out to them? Curious, she retrieved the message: "Look in the secretary."

For a moment, she was flummoxed. Look in the secretary? She could certainly use an assistant to help with the paperwork that swamped her desk, but… Ah, it came to her: secretary, as in the piece of furniture that currently stood against the wall opposite the breakfast bar. She stepped over to it, and pulled down the lid, exposing against a background of cubbyholes filled with invoices, bank slips, receipts, and assorted small notebooks a large crisp manila envelope with the words Bones, please read now written in Booth's hand across its middle. Intrigued, she picked up the envelope, settled into the rolling desk chair, lifted the flap, and extracted a sheaf of papers held together by a large metal clip.

Her phone pinged again. Booth had better not be texting and driving. "Got it?"

She pressed the thumbs up icon and "send." She waited to see if there would be a follow-up message but mercifully her answer seemed to have satisfied him.

She returned to the sheaf of papers. The top sheet appeared to be a cover letter type-written on heavy-weight paper. The letterhead read: Dr. Phillip Cameron, PhD. Galvanized, Brennan scanned down to the body of the letter, and read:

Dear Dr. Brennan,

It will, no doubt, seem unorthodox (if not somewhat unethical) of me to address you directly in this letter, but I assure you that I do so with Mr. Booth's concurrence, indeed at his request. I feel no compunction in telling you that, over the months that he and I have worked together in therapy, I have come to feel that your husband is not only a patient but a friend. He has asked for my help in this matter, and I am only too glad to be of assistance.

As Mr. Booth is a man of his word, he has wanted to keep his promise to you to recount what he has learned about himself and his relationship to women, beginning with his mother up to and including the other great love of his life, who is, of course, yourself. As you know, he does not have a great deal of confidence in his ability to express himself intelligibly off the cuff, (an insecurity which I have repeatedly assured him is unfounded, by the way), and so, I suggested that he write down the thoughts he wanted to communicate in essay form, as a sort of rehearsal, if you like.

You may imagine my surprise when, at our next session, Mr. Booth presented me not with an essay but a short story, an allegory to be precise, representing the history of his relationships. The time and thought that went into creating this document were immediately apparent and impressive. Upon reading, I found that his efforts had been amply rewarded: his tale was cogent, well-structured, and, to my mind, moving. Most importantly, the insights we had arrived at together during therapy were reflected accurately.

Having as his intended reader a best-selling novelist, Mr. Booth was understandably concerned about the quality of his writing, and inquired if I would be willing to act as his editor. I have had extensive experience editing scholarly articles and so, was happy to undertake the task. I have taken the liberty of making a number of changes in vocabulary selection, sentence structure and, of course, psychological content, always keeping as my guiding principle the maintenance of Mr. Booth's tone and personal style. He has read my edited version, and given it his approval.

I expect that you will have questions or observations that you will want to share with your husband once you have completed your reading, and to aid you in recalling them, I have had the story printed out double-spaced and with wide margins so that you can pencil, or indeed ink, any comments that might occur to you. Mr. Booth has a copy of the text on his lap top, so you must feel free to mark the pages up as much as you like.

In closing, Dr. Brennan, may I say that I am a great fan of your novels, and am looking forward eagerly to your next release.

Yours, most sincerely,

Phillip Cameron

P.S. You will notice that while "Rebecca" is named in the story, the son Mr. Booth shares with her is not. This is not an oversight on his part. He had included some paragraphs about Parker, but as the focus of the piece is on adult women, I thought those passages extraneous and convinced him to omit them.

Bones was too excited about the remaining contents of the envelope to give much thought to Dr. Cameron's letter, other than to hope he had not translated Booth's words into his own florid language. She put the letter to one side, and took up the first page of the story.