Disclaimer: Don't own JAG
A/N: This was a story idea that woke me up at 4:30 a.m. one morning from a very sound sleep. The first two paragraphs were just sitting there demanding to be set "on paper". This story just had to be written.
Spoilers: The opening scene in this story takes place towards the end of the time Harm was working for the CIA—and he never went back to the Navy/JAG after that six-month period. There is no "Mattie", no unorthodox living arrangements with Petty Officer Coates, either. For purposes of this story, there was a change in JAGS, according to the "cannon". There was no medical crisis with endometriosis and Mac was involved with Clay.
A/N: Sometimes, there are no happy "fairy-tale live-happily ever-after" endings in real life. I think this premise has been handled before—but with a different ending.
"Child of Mine"
He came, he saw, he conquered—and he left.
He had knocked on her door that late Friday night and she had answered it. When she opened the door, he came barreling in without an invitation, not that he had needed one. That should have been her first tip off something wasn't right with the situation, with him. If she had had a chance to see the expression on his face, the glint in his eyes, she would have seen concentration, focus, and desperation. He had headed quite purposefully to the entry of the hallway to her bedroom and stopped abruptly. He cocked an index finger at her, and said, "Come with me." She had done just that—and the fireworks had started.
It wasn't rape; it wasn't even a simple assault—she had given as much as she had taken and she had consented—at least as much as possible under the circumstances.. But it wasn't soft, gentle, loving, either. There was anger, frustration, lust, greed, desperation, and a certain degree of violence involved—she had the bruises and marks to prove it. She suspected he did too—her fingernails weren't that short and she had really raked his back in her passion. He had "taken her" with force, conviction, roughly, without consideration and with finality—he was definitely in command, as if to prove her right one final time—that it was all about control and "who wanted to be on top". It was a side of him she had never seen before, hadn't known even existed. She was stunned by his parting words, whispered in a fierce and overwhelming embrace after he had gotten dressed without a word, "See what you've missed out on over the last six years!"
She had thought he would have called after a week or so. When he didn't, she tried calling him—only to discover his telephone service had been disconnected. She had tried calling his cell phone, to discover the same results. She had even gone to his apartment and found it bare and empty—and a new owner preparing to move in. When she discovered she was pregnant, she had called her contacts in the CIA to see if they knew where he had disappeared to with the same nowhere results. She had convinced Clay to try to contact him, as well, albeit Clay was understandably reluctant—and had gotten nothing. She had called her Russian friends and his half-brother—no results there, either. She had then called Bobbi Latham, who then had tried to pull every political level she knew to extract whatever information any government office might have had on his location—including the IRS--all for exactly nothing. Naval Records were of no help—he hadn't left a forwarding address, not even a Post Office Box, for paperwork to be forwarded.
Her discussion with the Admiral wasn't all that easy, either. She had had to tell him because of her pregnancy, which didn't help at all with the atmosphere at the office. He had lost all confidence in his staff, and to tell him his Chief of Staff had to cut back on her duties because of an unplanned pregnancy hadn't sat well with him at all. But he had done his part to finding Rabb through his contacts—and had come away with a big fat zero, as well. After the results of the search, it seemed to have calmed him down a bit, replacing anger with puzzlement.
"This whole thing is so out of character for him," she exclaimed.
He had sighed. "I know." His eyebrows went down in a frown. "And you say his apartment is bare?"
"Yes, sir." She blinked back tears. "The one thing I haven't done yet is call his mom." She threw her hands up in an uncharacteristic motion of helplessness. "I can't think of anything else to do."
The admiral leaned back and folded his hands in his lap and looked at her. "There's more, isn't there?"
She leaned back in her chair and stared at her folded hands in her lap. She couldn't meet his eyes. "You know what I'm most scared of, Admiral?"
"What?"
"Suicide."
The Admiral's eyebrows shot up. "What makes you think he might have committed suicide? That seems so remarkably out of character for him."
She shivered. "So were his actions that night he more-or-less barged into my apartment." She shot back. Her eyelids lowered themselves to half-mast and she glared at him. "Sir, do you know the signs of someone who's thinking about attempting suicide?"
"Go on."
She shivered. "They give away prized possessions. They act out of character."
"There's been no note found."
"Sir, in the research I've done, most suicides don't leave notes."
It was only then the Admiral let loose with a shiver. "Do you really think he would consider that an option?"
She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "I don't know. I would like to think I know him better than that. But look at what happened to him after we got back from Paraguay. Look at what happened to him before—the murder thing. Coming back and not being allowed back into the Navy—something that's been so foundational to his life. And that's not to mention my own behavior—I really lashed out at him down there. Then losing his job at the CIA after that spectacular stunt landing the C-140 on the carrier." She leaned forward in a desperate move. "Think about how that must have seemed to him. He had lost his life's purpose—and was being called on the carpet for doing what he does best—flying!"
"But where's the body?"
Her words had been bitter. "Just because he was acting out uncharacteristically if he decided to live, he wasn't acting out uncharacteristically if he decided to die. Think about it. He would have tried to arrange things so nobody else would have to clean up his mess."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know. I think it's premature to assume anything at this point—it's only been three months. If we could get anything out of the CIA—which I've been unable to do—he might be on a long-term assignment, for all we know. He might have moved to another country—although it doesn't look like Russia was country of choice—he doesn't know the language—and there's Sergei—he wouldn't have wanted him to worry about him. Oh, I don't know."
For the very first time, she understood his driving obsession over finding out what had happened to his father. The insight that struck her just then was literally breathtaking. Would she ever know what had happened to him? How could she live without knowing?
She had had one more difficult conversation, this time with the Roberts. It had started with a girl-to-girl chat with Harriet with Bud joining in after he came home from the office.
"Harriet, I can count on you to not say a word about this, right?"
The blonde nodded, holding her forkful of salad half ways between her mouth and her plate, her eyebrows raised in curiosity but not saying a word. The kids were at their maternal grandmother's for the weekend giving Bud and Harriet a real break. Mac was just sorry she had had to intrude on their time together like this.
"There's no way to say this except outright—I'm pregnant."
Harriet's eyes got wide with shock and then a big smile lit up her face. "Congratulations, Colonel! When are you and Clay going to get married?"
Just then, Bud joined them. Mac was so tempted to "clam up" and then reconsidered. Bud, after all, next to Sturgis, had known Harm the longest, and she had, after all, been somewhat instrumental in getting the two of them together. She turned to Bud as he sat down at the table. "Bud, not a word of this to anybody, understand?"
Her eyes fell to her lap and then glanced up at Harriet's. She had a napkin in her hands and she twisted it into shreds. "This is so hard—yet, I need to say it." She took a deep breath. "We're not. Harriet." She bit her lower lip. "I know how this makes me look—but I'm not sure who the father really is."
Harriet sat in shock, and then put her fork down. "What happened, Sarah? Was it rape?"
Mac's laugh verged on the border of hysteria. "Oh, I wish it were. It would make things a whole lot simpler in some ways." Bud's eyes only got a little wide and then he just gazed at Mac, as if to tell her without words, no matter what, he wouldn't think any less of her. "What happened?"
"Harm. That's what happened." Sweet, succinct. Seeing the look on their faces, she knew she had to explain. "You know how much of an 'Officer and Gentleman ' Harm prides himself being?"
They nodded their heads. She snorted. "That night, he was anything but an 'officer and a gentleman'."
She knew she was inflicting some serious dents in their images of their mutual "friend" when she told them that, but at the moment, she didn't really give a damn. She was so furious at him, so hurt she didn't care. Then her sense of fairness took hold and she didn't quite take it back. "That sounds worse than it really is, actually. He just simple took control. He didn't 'take' what hadn't been offered before, I guess. And now he's completely disappeared!"
That they hadn't known. That's when she told them about the lack of telephone service, the bare, empty apartment, the lack of CIA knowledge as to his whereabouts. Their shock turned into real concern.
"Mac," Bud cleared his throat as if to say something difficult, "there's something you need to know." He glanced at Harriet and Mac saw Harriet nod just slightly. He got up, went to the desk in their den, and came back with an envelope. "We got this in the mail approximately a month ago. We were floored, but there wasn't anything we could do about it." He handed her the envelope and she took it from him in a questioning manner. He just nodded. "Just take a look at it."
She opened it up and found papers indicating a trust fund for the Roberts' children, present and future, had been set up, with $100,000 as a base. "Wow!" She glanced up at them. "Any idea where this money came from—wait! It could be proceeds from the sale of his apartment." Her mind was spinning. Both Roberts' shook their heads. Bud leaned over and pointed to a couple of items on the first page. "You'll note there's no indication of source of funding. We checked—the money's there—and, according to bank officials, it was paid for in cash."
Mac drew in a sharp breath. "The admiral's tried pulling strings of his own. This is an addition source of information neither he nor I have had access to—which gives me another idea—we recontact the Internal Revenue Service. They might have some idea of how to contact him, if nothing else. In addition, we could look at real estate records—there might be some clue there." She looked at them. "Would you mind if I shared this with the Admiral?"
"Of course not. Especially if it helps find Harm."
"You do know what I'm really bothered by, don't you?"
Again, the Roberts glanced at each other. It was Harriet who spoke first, "Suicide—you really think. . .?"
Mac was bordering on tears. "I don't know. I don't want to think it—yet all the evidence points in that direction. But I have no idea where he would go to do something like that, nor do I know the method—probably a gun, most direct, most immediate results—but I don't know. The CIA isn't saying anything—Bobbi Latham hasn't been able to turn up anything—although she didn't know about this—even his Russian friends have no idea where he is."
There was a consider silence at the table, as Harriet and Bud tried to absorb this latest little bit of information. It was Bud who broke the silence while Mac struggled with her emotions.
"You know, Harriet and I will always be there for you—and the baby, no matter who the father is, don't you?"
It was then, Mac broke down and cried as though she would never stop. She felt the overwhelming love and concern and support of the Roberts and, oddly, instead of being a comfort, that fact in and of itself, was very painful—at least in the short term. Later on, as the end of her pregnancy drew closer, that fact was a real comfort. But that was to come later.
Nothing came of what little information there was to be gained from the trust fund papers. Real estate records had turned up nothing. One banker told her, "If all the transactions had cash involved, if someone thought there was anything amiss, the numbers on the cash might have been registered and traced, but I've seen nothing in all of this to indicate that had been done." As her pregnancy advanced, she had called his parents, partly to find out if they had heard anything from Harm, and partly to let them know they might just possibly have a grandchild on the way. There was no way of knowing, for sure, without DNA or blood donations, whether Harm had fathered the child since he wasn't available, but she suspected it was his and she wanted their child to have grandparents. Trish and Frank Burnett had been—and continued to be—very supportive, both in terms of cash assistance and emotionally, to the extent she made a point of going to California at least once a year. For once in her career, she had a place to go to on vacation and holidays, albeit all the way across the country—and a family of sorts. In year three after his disappearance, she began to recognize that as a kind of farewell gift, as "permanent" a legacy of their years "together"—such as they were—as she was going to get. Upon reflection, she had decided it really wasn't a bad "farewell" gift. After her baby was born—a boy with her complexion and temperament but his blue-green eyes, smile, hair, and body type—lean and lanky—which had left no doubt as to which man had indeed fathered the child, she had even filed a claim for child support against his retirement account in hopes they would be able to contact him and tell him he had a son—with exactly no response, no results.
She was utterly stumped and stunned. It was like he had disappeared without a trace off the face of the earth. If it hadn't been for photos and the existence of his son, it was like he had existed only as the collective figment of everyone's imagination.
She had thought he would have come out of the woodworks for a son—whom she named David Harmon Rabb, both to honor him and his father, noble and generous men both, and to honor what she thought his own wishes about a name would be—she knew, from hints thrown out through the years, he would have never given his son his own first name because of all the ridicule he had taken through the years about such an unusual first name. By the time David was born, she had worked out most of the anger and denial surrounding the fact he was missing. When David was born, it had been Bud, Harriet, and Sturgis there to help. She smiled in memory. Although Harriet had been in the delivery room with her, this child certainly didn't lack for male role models. Neither would he be lacking in socialization skills either; Bud and Harriet had simply extended their family to make sure it included the one sole MacKenzie-Rabb child within the JAG group. As a result, as the child had grown older and able to play with other children, David was spending a lot of time at the Roberts—so much so, David would grow up as close to those children as if they were his siblings.
She had requested a transfer to the judiciary. As a single mother, field investigations were out of the question now. She found that mildly ironic, since it was a field investigation sponsored by the CIA that ultimately put her in this "fix" in the first place. There was some degree of satisfaction in knowing Admiral Chegwidden when he was the JAG, Commander Turner, filling in temporarily until a new JAG was appointed, and now General Cresswell would never approve of CIA-sponsored missions again. That was part of the fallout from the disastrous Paraguay mission, just one of many. That hadn't eliminated the possibility of internal JAGman investigations however—only a transfer to the judiciary would have/could have done that. Not that Mac necessarily minded that—she was getting a little bit too old for those kinds of adventures anyway. And she truly did enjoy being on the bench. She had built up, over the years since then, a reputation for being tough, but fair—and knowledgeable. What had he said? ". . .You know the law—and I hate you for it."
The first year without his presence in her life in some fashion had been difficult—the not-knowing combined with the pregnancy and the conflicts with Clay and his unstableness. Clay hadn't been too happy upon learning of her pregnancy but had assumed it was his—until David was born, when it was patently obvious it wasn't. Since then, he had dropped her like a hot potato, never giving her a chance to explain just exactly what happened. There had been periods of rage and anger, mixed with feelings of despair and hopelessness, despite the presence of the growing life in her. Looking back, she remembered the role the Admiral had played in getting her through the first stages of grief—she had learned something about the grief process from her psychologist, something the Admiral had insisted on once he learned about what had happened. She remembered one conversation in particular.
These conversations had been held in her counselor's office, part of the process of getting through that first year.
"Do you think he's really gone? Dead?" This was the Admiral's question.
"I don't know. I don't 'feel' his death—but I don't 'feel' his life, either." She ran a hand through her hair. "I know we had a 'bond' while he was here—" this was in reference to her finding him in the Atlantic on the eve of her wedding to Brumby—"but that ability seems to have disappeared once he left JAG." She turned to face her commanding officer. "Admiral, I have to know. Just what did you say to him when he resigned?"
There was an uncharacteristic pause in Chegwidden's manner as he thought through that particularly unpleasant confrontation. "Among other things, I asked him what he was going to do to keep you once he brought you back." There was a pause. It was his turn to look at the woman sitting in the chair by the desk of the counselor's office. The counselor remained quiet; it was her job to monitor, to make sure the conversations between these two didn't completely get out of hand nor inflict any more damage than had already been done. "What happened down there, anyway? I would have thought you two would have worked things out."
She twisted the handkerchief between her two hands. (She had learned to start bringing at least a handkerchief, if not a box of Kleenex, to these sessions as they had gotten deeper into the myriad of issues she was confronting.) "I'm not sure—except he saw me kissing Webb—and we had a terrible fight."
"Oh, lordy!" The admiral pursed his lips.
"What else did you say?" She really wanted to know.
The admiral sighed. "I told him he wasn't a team player, that he wasn't seriously committed to the Navy, and that he had a 'superman' complex."
This took her back. Pieces of a puzzle started falling into place. The admiral saw the look. He asked, "Just what did you say to him?"
She looked down at her hands, playing with the ever-present now-tattered Kleenex in her hand. "I told him there was never going to be an 'us'; that both of us wanted 'to be on top' and that was a physical and emotional impossibility." The tears started coming. "I refused to compromise—or even consider the possibility of compromising." She tossed her head back, fully revealing the wells of tears in her eyes. "I don't think I was ever so wrong in my entire life."
Year Three after his disappearance, she caught herself laughing wholeheartedly for the first time. It was her son's second Christmas, specifically, and she had been watching David play with the airplane his grandparents had gotten him. All of a sudden, she had still another insight. For the first time, she fully understood Annie Pendry's fears. David was all she had of Harm, and she had found herself at a momentary loss when Trish had asked her if she minded if they got David the plane. Given the Rabb family history/tradition, it wouldn't have surprised her if David had wanted to go into the Navy and become an aviator. She had not given any thought to what her son might have wanted to be when he grew up—and she remembered just how much she feared for Harm's life when he went flying the mighty war birds. By the time David would get to that point, the birds would no longer be F-14s, but their function/purpose and risk of danger and loss of life would still be the same. When Trish had asked her, she had felt like the breath had been knocked out of her and it took her a moment to respond. For the first time, she understood "neurotic Annie's" obsession to keep Josh out of naval aviation and a strong desire to steer Josh towards a less glamorous, safer civilian career. It had taken a long walk on the beach by the Burnetts' house to begin to come to terms with all of that.
Nevertheless, aviation was part of the Rabb tradition, and she decided it wouldn't be fair to deprive him of that opportunity/exposure to that part of his heritage. Although the Marines and the law were part of it, too—and she would make sure he got full exposure to that part, too. She supposed, surrounded by the military men in his life, there would almost be no question of him going into the service, given those circumstances, but she was going to make damn sure he got exposed to other options as well. Still, it was fun to watch her son as he zoomed around the cluttered living room of the Burnetts with the airplane. And her heart skipped a beat or two when the two and a half year old's grin show up on the face—it wasn't a full "flyboy" grin—yet—but the promise was there, along with the twinkle.
It was now Year Seven and coming up on the anniversary of David's conception, it was decided it would be a good idea to officially have him declared "deceased". Mac refused to consider the possibility of having the memorial service on David's birthday—she did not want to "ruin" his birthday. Given there had been no body, no word on exactly what had happened, there had been no funeral or memorial service—just a long, drawn-out, and painful waiting period. Now Bud was going to court on her and the Burnetts' behalf to make it official—a "gift" of sorts, he said, to honor his long-lost mentor. "I think Harm would approve," Bud had said in making the offer, "despite what he went through when his Mom did the same thing with his dad. I think he would want you and his mom to have 'closure' of some type." When Mac had questioned whether David might go through the same emotion wringer Harm had, Bud had shook his head in the negative. "For one thing, David has never known his father. That, by itself, makes a big difference."
She had thought about it and then consented. There had been Trish to think about too, as well. She needed closure as much as anyone, although having experienced this before, Trish had been more prepared than she herself had. By this time, General Cresswell had gained enough stature, along with Bud and Sturgis, along with a change in political administrations (towards a more moderate, if conservative point of view) where strings were pulled and arrangements for a full military funeral with complete honors was arranged, which meant the fly-over came with the package. Watching the children play in the Roberts' backyard after the service (an empty coffin was, even as they were speaking, being placed in the ground at Arlington—a man who had earned not just one, but two DFCs, deserved no less), she had turned to Trish with the comment that had hit her watching the flyover.
"I suppose, in some ways, it was a good thing we waited so long to have this."
Trish got a thoughtful look on her face and then nodded. Trish understood. Harriet did not. "Why?"
"You know how much flying meant to Harm. If we had done this seven years ago, it just would have been too painful." Mac shrugged her shoulders. "As it was, it was a nice reminder of the kind of person he was." She sighed, fingering the tri-folded flag in her lap. Trish had given it to her—since she and Harm had never officially been a "couple" the flag had gone to his mother. When Trish had handed it over to her, her only comment was, "It belongs to David, really." And Mac had accepted it in the spirit which it had been given.
Flash forward to 21 years later: David was resplendent in his dress whites, and the flyboy grin and twinkle in the sea-green-blue eyes was there in full force. Mac and Trish exchanged a glance: David was a carbon copy of his father—only with a darker complexion. David was also headed for flight school. Surprise, surprise.
"Your father would have been so proud of you today," Mac whispered to her son, standing on tip toe to kiss him on the cheek. David had had to lean down a little so she could reach it—he, too, was a tall 6'4". Mac, in the intervening years, had learned first hand just how hard it had been to keep him in clothes that fit half ways decently—and at a reasonable cost. A thought just hit her. Looking up into those eyes that daily reminded her of Harm—sometimes painfully so, she held onto his elbow. "Did I ever tell you what your name actually means?"
He nodded, a puzzled look on his face. "No, I mean your full name. I know I explained 'David' means 'beloved', but 'Harmon'?" He shook his head. "Your 'Aunt Harriet' told me a long time ago, I think, but it means 'soldier'. 'Beloved soldier'." There was that flyboy grin again and Mac felt an intense emotion shoot through her body, a jolt of joy so intense it was painful.
"Really appropriate, don't you think?" She had made damn sure he knew he was well loved, even when and sometimes if it alienated her temporarily from her adult friends. Then, with the impatience of youth, he shook off his mother's hand and waved to the crowd behind them. "Mom, there's someone I want you to meet."
Coming towards them was an attractive, slender strawberry-blonde (an old and brief stab of jealousy stabbed Mac in the chest—was it also a Rabb tradition to be attracted to blonds? How much hell had she given Harm for that, anyway?) blue-eyed beauty bordering, but not quite, on the "tall" side. There was a tenuous but joyful smile on her face as it glowed, her eyes seeking the eyes of the young man. "Mom, this is Rebecca Sue Webb."
Mac's heart contracted and then resumed it's normal beating. Her eyebrows shot up. "Webb?" Her palm was sweaty as she looked away and tried to brush away a perceived bit of dust on her dress blues Marine general uniform.
The young lady moved to join David at his side. "Yes, maam." There was a slight pause. "My father is Clayton Webb—you may know him?" Mac looked into the face of the young lady.
"I should think I know him." She looked around. "Is he here?"
The young lady waved and, sure enough, there came Clay, older, hair a lot—almost completely gray, but distinguished looking, as always. He came up to them, with an attractive silver-haired woman hanging onto his arm.
"Mac?" There was a hesitation in his voice. "Is that you?"
"Well, who else would it be?" She was a trifle annoyed, and then, for David's sake, erased the annoyed tone from her voice. She felt him survey her from top to bottom and back to the top again.
"You're looking really good."
She returned the favor. "So are you—no, actually, I think you're looking better with age, I think." She laughed, totally at ease once again. "Someone told me a very long time ago, women reach the peak of their beauty in the mid-20s, whereas men continue to improve over time." There was a pause. "You certainly have."
Clay chuckled. "I don't know about that—but, Mac, you're looking just as beautiful as ever." Seeing her rank, his eyebrows raised. "Doing well professionally, too, I see." Then he shook himself. "What am I doing, forgetting my manners?" He brought forward the woman by his side. "My wife, Jewell."
Mac had the sensation of being weighed and measured as she reached for the other woman's extended hand. "I'm glad to meet you."
The other woman's handshake was firm and secure and had a bemused smirk on her face. "General, I've heard a lot about you."
"Oh, God."
"All good, I assure you." She turned to her daughter and the tall young man beside her. "This is your son, I assume?"
Mac nodded and did the honors. "David, this is Clayton Webb and his wife, Jewell. Clay is someone that your father and I used to work with relatively closely with lo those many years ago. Clay, David Harmon Rabb."
Clay's eyes squinted as he surveyed the young man. "Definitely Rabb height, yep. The blue eyes are the same, too." He turned to Mac. "Does he have the same charm?"
Mac laughed. "I think you'd have to ask your daughter that. Don't expect a mother to answer that one honestly."
Mac saw the look pass between David and Rebecca and caught her breath short. It was the same kind of non-verbal communications she and Harm used to do all the time—which drove their respective significant others wild. So, Webb's daughter might end up being her daughter-in-law. As she thought about the implications of that, she snorted. It was the kind of irony Harm would have found very amusing. She caught a glimpse of Clay's face—and oddly enough, it was almost like he had read her mind. He winced. Suddenly, Mac moved on impulse.
"Why don't we let these young people 'do their thing' and we'll caught lunch?"
Clay looked at his wife and daughter, caught the silent signals, and nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me. Where do you want to go?"
"Willard's in Washington sounds like a good place to me." All of a sudden, surrounded by squids, Mac, in her Marine dress blues, wanted out of Annapolis and military surroundings. "I'll go home and change and meet you there at 1800 hr—sorry, 6:00 p.m., okay?"
Clay grinned—and Mac had a very brief flashback—"Mac, that's not lunch, and you know it. But that's okay."
Mac had the good grace to blush and turned to her son. "We'll see you later, okay?"
"Sure, Mom. Have a good time." And he led Rebecca off to whatever and wherever naval academy graduates do after the ceremony. Mac hadn't asked—although she was curious—but she respected her son's privacy too much to inquire.
"He really does look like Harm, doesn't he?" Clay was gazing after the young couple. Mac decided she couldn't resist teasing him a little.
"Yeah—and how do you feel about becoming 'family', Clay?"
That shook him up. He glanced at Mac. "Are you kidding? Damn it, anyway." Curiosity got the better of him. "How do you feel about it?"
Mac was quiet. "As long as he's happy—and doesn't take too long about it." A fierce tone came into her voice. "I will be damned if I let him do what his father did and wait until it was way too late." To lighten the moment up, she grinned. "Unless you're not telling me something, Clay, she's not in the military—which removed one very big obstacle."
"No. Would you believe she's an aspiring actress? She was thinking about moving out to California, but I think I've talked her into staying in New York—Broadway, you know." He turned serious and turned to face Mac. "Seriously, Mac. How are you?"
Mac shrugged her shoulders and looked into his eyes, risking a much-too intimate moment, considering the circumstances. "Clay, I'm happy. I'm really, truly, happy."
"No man in your life?"
She shrugged. "Depends on how you want to define that phrase, Clay." She smiled. "I don't have a lover, if that's what you mean. You never did let me explain what happened. It was one night—and, looking back, I'm not sure I really had much choice in the matter." She heard his sudden intake of breath—she knew he would interpret that as a close accusation of "rape", but she really didn't care what he thought—hadn't cared in a very long time. "That one night was enough to 'spoil' me for any other man. But I definitely have male friends—and there is that one specific, very special young man that just left me."
He studied her and then commented. "I think you are happy. What brought that about?"
She gathered up her regulation-issued purse, made sure her cover was on correctly, and shrugged her shoulders. "You know, about year five after Harm's disappearance, I bounced back into AA—the nagging longing, the intense pain was getting to be too much. I had David to think about—so suicide wasn't an option—and neither was resorting to the bottle. I had forgotten about one very little important saying they have in AA—and, boy, if I had remembered it or known about it in the first place, a lot of things that happened wouldn't have happened."
Clay's eyebrows rose in a question-mark look.
"It's a 'just-for-today' saying. Goes something like this: 'Just for today, I will try to be happy, realizing my happiness does not depend on what happens around me. Happiness is a result of being at peace with myself." She looked straight at him. "I'm at peace with myself. It would be nice to know what happened to Harm—but not necessary. It took years for me to get to that point; meanwhile, David helped—along with everybody else."
It seemed like to Mac, Clay really relaxed for the first time since their respective children had reintroduced them to each other. Just for a very brief second, she thought she saw the much-younger Clay in the brilliant smile he gave her.
"That's good, Mac. That's really good."
With that, they broke off and went to their respective cars on their way to reestablish what looked like to be a rich and rewarding friendship for all of them.
The End
A/N: The challenge to anyone out there who's willing to take it up: What in the world was Harm thinking when he barged into Mac's apartment that night? And what happen to him? Did he move to another country, was he killed on a CIA mission, did he commit suicide? The Challenge to anyone who chooses to accept it is to write a version of this story, if that's at all possible, from Harm's point of view—that fits within this set of parameters.