Time May Give You More
(than your poor bones could ever take)
Max Keenan doesn't really know his daughter any more.
…
Author's Note: This is was going to be a 'five things' story, (five times Max didn't recognise his daughter) but it never really came together that way. So instead, here is a weird snippet-y ficlet.
…
"Dad!"
"Hi honey." Max smiled charmingly at his daughter. "Can I come in?"
Temperance stepped back to let him pass, even as she asked, "I thought you were staying with Russ and Amy."
"I was, I was." Max threw his bag onto the sofa. "But they took the girls on holiday – school break, you know – and I didn't want to intrude. Besides, I thought it was time we caught up." He smiled broadly at her. "You don't mind if I crash on your sofa."
Temperance frowned a little at 'crash,' but shook her head. "Not at all. Although I have a guest room, if you'd prefer."
"A bed! Well, how about that. Now," he continued, rubbing his hands together, "why don't I rustle up some dinner for us? I can make my famous ….. You always begged me to make it when you were a kid."
"I'm a vegetarian," she reminded him.
"Oh right, of course. Well, I'm sure I can find something." He walked through to the kitchen and opened the fridge, smiling as he found neatly organised boxes of food, vegetables lined up in rows, the jars in the door with their labels all facing the same way.
Temperance hovered in the doorway. "You don't have to cook. We could just order in."
Max shook his head and started pulling things out of the fridge before turning to the equally organised cupboards. "No, you go back to whatever you were working on - " her laptop had been on the coffee table, surrounded by files, " - I'll call when it's done."
She hovered for a bit longer before reluctantly slipping away. When he went through to call her for dinner she was deeply engrossed in her work, typing quickly on her computer, pausing to flip through her notes. He was reminded of his daughter as a teenager, when she became so engrossed in her studies that he had to almost physically drag her to the table. He said as much once they were eating.
"Booth always says he has to nag me into eating," she replied. "He does often convince me to leave my work for meals, although he has never had to drag me."
Max smiled at her. "Hey, I was thinking. Maybe you could take tomorrow off, it is Friday after all. We could spend the day together."
"I can't."
"Have you and Booth got a case?"
"Not at the moment, but I have other obligations."
"Come on, Dr Soroyan will manage for one day without you."
She paused, her fork hanging above her plate, he eyes fixed on her food. "I could take the afternoon off, I suppose. But I'm giving a lecture at the university in the morning."
"A lecture! I could come to that."
Temperance's head snapped up to look at him. "Come to my lecture?" She sounded nervous. "It's going to be very dull. I don't think you'd like it."
"I'm sure it won't be dull. And I was a very popular and talented science teacher, I'm sure you recall. I taught you everything you know, remember?" He smiled teasingly.
"No, dad, I went to college."
"I was joking, honey. But I really would like to listen to you lecture."
Temperance twisted her fork into the remains of her spaghetti. "Well, I guess you could come. But I think you'll be bored."
"Never," he declared. "Now that's settled, do you want pudding?"
…
Max arrived early, and took a seat at the back. The students that filed past him were older than he expected and when he spots a few familiar faces – a couple of her interns from the lab – he realises that this is lecture for her post grad students. He's fascinated and awed all over again.
When she begins her lecture he is absorbed. Back in his days as a science teacher he always enjoyed going to the open lectures the local university held, and, as Tempe got older he enjoyed taking her along, just the two of them. So to see her standing at the front of a crowded room it quite a thrill and he realises that he is smiling broadly at her.
She doesn't look at him.
The lecture continues, rapidly descending into technical jargon that an ex-con, ex-science teacher can't easily follow. Without the science for distraction, he simply focuses on her and then, with a jolt, he feels a little disconcerted. He's not sure who this woman is, or how she could possibly be connected to the fifteen year old girl he used to sit next to in lecture rooms, who made long, endless notes filled with questions she wanted to ask him afterwards.
Tempe was a quiet kid: too quiet, some people told him. He remembers all those parent-teacher conferences about her lack of participation in class, about her isolation from her peers, her poorly developed social skills.
The woman standing up there has none of that crippling shyness. Her voice is confident and strong, as she engages a student in a long, deeply involved conversation about some relevant subject that he cannot seem to pick up now his mind has wondered. While she was distracted he slipped out the back.
He nearly ran into Booth on the steps outside.
"Max!" Booth looked at him uneasily. "Are you meeting Bones?"
"Oh, I just popped in to hear her lecture. Proud dad, and all that." He forced a wide smile. "She's quite the speaker," he added
Booth laughed. "She is. Though she hates it, you know."
"She does?"
"Well, not this so much," Booth amended, gesturing at the university buildings. "She knows her stuff here. But when she's got to talk to people about her book, or give acceptance speeches? She hates that."
"That sounds like Tempe," Max said. "She was shy as anything as a kid."
"She's mentioned," Booth said, smiling back.
Max suddenly wants to talk abut something - anything – else. "Do you two have a case?"
"Hmm? Oh, no. I was just going to see if she wanted lunch. But if you two have plans - "
"You should join us," Max interrupted. "I'm sure Tempe would be glad to see you."
"Sure," Booth replied, after a pause. "If Bones doesn't mind."
…
When he spotted her first book in a book store window he came to sudden halt and ignored the people behind him who cursed and pushed past on the busy street. He shook his head and moved on. It's not her, it cannot be. It's an unusual name, but it's not impossible for there to be two 'Temperance Brennan's in the world. His Tempe wasn't a writer.
After three days he stepped into a book shop. The book was stacked up high on a nearby table and he picked up the nearest cover and turned it over.
It's her.
"She'll be signing here next week," a voice nearby piped up. A young shop assistant smiled brightly. "Have you read it? It's really good."
Max turned the book back around and looked at the front. "Uh, no."
He bought the book, but he didn't read it at first. He's got other photos of her – he has his resources, and he always kept track of his kids – but he can't stop looking at the photo on the back cover. Lab coat, skull. He read the author bio over and over.
It's definitely her.
He read the book all at once, in a rush, and surprised himself by liking it. He never read much fiction, and he certainly didn't have any interest in crime fiction – he had too much real life experience to find it appealing. But she's funny, and the twists of the plot are just complicated enough to keep the story interesting, but simple enough that the reader can follow it. The violent and gory bits are suitably violent and gory, which makes him worry about how much she's seen. He skims over the sex scenes, because while he can theoretically grasp that his fifteen year old Tempe is now an adult, he's not quite ready to face that reality.
He carries on buying all her books, but he never talks about them with her. He wants to know why she started writing and when, because it was something Tempe never showed any interest in – while she went above and beyond the requirements for her science and maths classes, she never did more than the basic requirements for English - just enough to get an A and no more.
Was it a way to let off the stress from her job? Or did she start in college, was there a class she picked up to fill her schedule that got her interested? Or earlier – perhaps a foster parents who encouraged her to be creative, to explore that other side of herself?
He's full of questions. He kept track of her for all those years, he knows every job she's ever had, every country she's every visited, every place she's ever lived. But always knowing where she was didn't stop her from leaving him behind.
...
There's a long white scar that wraps around her right calf. She has a tattoo on her hip – he glimpses the dark edge of it along the leg of her (sensible, one piece) swimsuit. They are sitting in two deck chairs watching Booth and Parker swimming in her pool. When she leant away to pick something up he sees a small, slightly uneven scar on her right shoulder, next to the strap. He found himself reaching out to touch it without thinking.
Tempe jerked away from the touch and turned back to frown at him.
"What happened?" he asked, before she could say anything. She twisted her neck to look at the place he touched, though he's not sure if she's able to see it. "When - " he started to add, thinking of those suddenly-long three years she was someone else's responsibility.
"I was in college," she said. "My room mate knocked a pan of water off the stove. The kitchen was small – narrow - " she demonstrated with her hands. "I was getting something from a cupboard and the water burnt my shoulder." She twisted again to look briefly at the mark and then settled back into her chair with the anthropology journal she had reached over to get.
College, room mate, scars. Questions pile up behind his lips.
It will always be like this, he realises. He will always be turning over new pieces of her life from those fifteen years when he watched from a distance. He was so confident that if he knew the important things about her – where she lived, where she worked, who she know and where she was – that he would still know his daughter. But there are all these moments, small, private momentsthat he's missed and most of them haven't left scars, but they've changed her just the same.