Phone call stirs memories 2

"Hello?!" An abrupt, forceful answer.

"Cam?"

"Ugh, sorry… Hello?" This time in a recognizable, and more civil, voice.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yeah… Yeah. I was just coming in the door when the phone rang, and my shirt got caught in ...," Rebecca heard the other woman stop herself with a growl, take a breath and let it out. "Rebecca?"

"Um-Hmm"

Before Rebecca could gather her thoughts to continue, Camille spoke.

"What was Parker calling me about on Monday? The only thing he actually asked about was Michelle, but he was after something else."

Rebecca was surprised momentarily, but it made sense.

"Dr. Brennan. He's trying to figure out… I don't actually know what, but… " She sighed. "He's been looking for information on Dr. Brennan's death, and some other stuff about her. About the work Seeley did with her"

"Oh." Cam processed this. "What have you told him?"

"That's just it, Cam, he hasn't asked me. I Just found a bunch of notes about her in his room, he's been reading about her online. " She hesitated, the reason for a big part of her trepidation suddenly clear to herself, "And he spent almost the whole weekend with his dad." Once she started talking the words kept coming. "I asked Seeley to take Parker to practice this evening, I knew something was up, but not what. I found all these note cards in Parkers room. I saw them talking when Seeley dropped him off. Parker didn't say anything when he came in, but Seeley sat in his car for forty minutes before he drove away."

"Ah." That, Camille thought, was definitely a bad sign. Seeley's response to Brennan's death had been disturbing, so much so that she had truly been afraid for him. "Did Seeley… I mean he wouldn't confuse the boy like that…" Cam heard the uncertainty in her voice, and forcefully reined it in. "What did Seeley tell him?"

"Cam I just don't know. I mean, it's hard to believe he wouldn't tell Parker anything that would... But then it was hard to believe the way he acted after the accident. I still find it hard to believe he would just give up and let them end his career and ruin his reputation like that." Rebecca wasn't the sort of woman to become hysterical, but she was upset enough that she had to focus on remaining calm. "What on earth should I tell Parker? I can try to pretend I didn't see any of that, but I need to know what Seeley is telling him"

Cam caught the meaning behind Rebecca's disjointed words. "We don't actually know what happened at the FBI, Becca. Officially there was never anything to report. Booth's transfer was just a transfer"

But she knew better. They both did. After being under review for over a month, three weeks into which he had packed up and left DC, Booth had been reassigned to a desk job in a Massachusetts field office. The question of being cleared for field work was deemed irrelevant, and conveniently never resolved. To the best of Cam's knowledge Booth was not even cleared to carry a weapon. The official reason given to the Jeffersonian was that it was a bureaucratic matter internal to the FBI. Unofficially the scuttlebutt said Booth had lost it, and he was being quietly reassigned to spare his reputation, so that no one he put away could use mental instability on the part of the arresting officer as grounds for appeal or retrial.

The fact that he had never appealed or in any other way contested this had at one time nearly made Cam cry with frustration. Her feelings toward her old friend had fluctuated between worry and anger. Anger that this intense, unyielding, vital man would simply give up and stop fighting, stop living. She could understand why the FBI would not clear Booth for field work. She did not believe that he was actually insane, just acting out with a bizarrely placed stubbornness.

There was no doubt in Cam's mind that Booth believed Brennan was dead. He had made no more than the barest token attempt to get her death treated as a disappearance. He had started to fight for the Micro-legal lab to verify the identity of her remains, but when he was told, by Cam as well as others, that that would lead to conflict of interest, he let it go. Camille could more easily believe that Booth would give up on himself than give up on anyone he cared for if there was any hope whatsoever. And least of all Brennan.

Yet Booth had absolutely and unrelentingly refused to acknowledge her death.

He never said he believed she was alive. He never argued, never rebutted. He seemed to do his best to simply refrain from saying anything at all on the subject, but if pressed he would quietly insist that he did not know. It was so completely uncharacteristic for him that many of his friends believed he must know something. But if pressed he would deny that he knew anything that contradicted the accepted facts.

So what had he told Parker?

With all this running through her head, Cam could think of nothing helpful to offer her friend.

As far as she could ever tell, Booth had never acknowledged Brennan's death. He had never allowed himself to mourn. But Parker had accepted "Dr. Bones's" death as children do. It was simply the way it was. At least that was what Cam had always believed.

"Rebecca do you remember When Parker first heard she was dead?" Do you know how he reacted?"

There was a pause on the other end.

Cam was admittedly taken aback as the voice on the other end of the line took a deep breath and admitted that she had not considered that Dr. Brennan had a role in her son's life. She had never spoken to him about her death. Not ever. She asked Camille if she know how close Parker and Dr. Brennan had been.

Cam thought about it, but was forced to concede that she really did not know how much time Brennan had spent with the Younger Booth.

She and Rebecca had talked at length, during the months Seeley spent camped in Rebecca's living room. They had spoken about the intense and hard to qualify relationship between the partners. Cam had told Rebecca about Brennan's apparently abandoned plan to have a child with Booth, and his uneasy acquiescence, they had both actually laughed at how they imagined the look on his face, then sobered as they wondered what the loss of that might mean to him. Cam Had come to visit a couple times a month then, and occasionally thereafter. The drive wasn't too long and Parker liked seeing his "babysitter" Michelle, who claimed to only tolerate him. Hodgins had even come with them once.

Looking back, Cam could remember eavesdropping on a conversation between the then teen and the then 9 year old on the subject of death. She didn't remember all the details, but she remembered enough to reassure Rebecca that Parker had at least known that Brennan died in a car accident.

"Cam, will you talk to Seeley for me? I dont think he wants anything in his life here to reming him of her."

Cam agreed to try.

"So what should I tell Parker if he calls me again?" Cam asked, feeling the need to wrap up the conversation.

"Just answer his questions honestly I guess." Rebecca sounded resigned. "It is nearly inevitable at this point that Parker will find out what people say about his dad. When he was younger I tried to keep it from him, but it's a bit late for that now. Looking at the amount of research he has done I wouldn't be surprised if he knows more about what happened than I ever did."

"Hmm. " Cam was thoughtful, "You know I think Hodgins was the one pushing most for more investigation. Poking his nose into everything, spouting outlandish theories. He had collected his own set of evidence and notes, and was frustrated when Booth not only wouldn't push for more investigation, but couldnt even hear about it Hodgins' evidence without getting all distant and still. Hodgins eventually backed off, but I wonder if he still has his notes? If they're not too outlandish maybe it would help Parker to see them."

"I'm not sure, but its worth looking into. Are you still in touch wit him?"

"I talk to him sometimes, he still has a workstation in the Micro-Legal lab for when he is in town. I'll see if I can talk to him tomorrow."

"Thanks Cam, that could be helpful. "

"You're welcome. Keep in touch."

The conversation ended, and Camille went through her nightly routine. Once she was in bed she pushed away all the messy details of that summer, and focused on were she was. She imagined that she had company there. In reality she could have, she had had dinner out with her current boyfriend that night, which was the reason she was just getting home when Rebecca called at almost 10, but she had not invited him home with her that night. She was glad. She liked him, and had begun to believe he was worth keeping around, but that night she wanted to just lay there and remember.

Like her memories could remind the universe of how alive Seeley Booth had once been.

She had not loved Seeley in a romantic sense, but she loved the relationship they had. There was something so satisfying about having a man so ardent and full of life look at you the way he sometimes had when they were together. It had made her feel that she was as alive as he was.

She wondered, not for the first time, if Brennan had known that feeling. She was suddenly enthralled by her own mind, and the image took on an almost painful intensity as she imagined what power there would have been between the pair. Brennan, though less overt about it, had been just as alive as Booth, would have radiated that power, that vitality back to Booth as he offered it to her.

In that moment Cam believed she understood what Booth felt, what drove him to refuse her death for so long. In that moment, Cam understood that such a power could simply not be gone.

Let me know if there is something needing fixing please. And let me know what you think.