Timing in Everything: Chapter 25

Bahrain, 1700 (1400 Zulu), Sunday

In her time with Mossad, including the years she liaised with NCIS, Ziva David had faced murderers, terrorists, bombers, the bombs they made, her father, and many other challenges. She hadn't felt this kind of trepidation with any of those.

This was the feeling that was reserved for when she dealt with the widows and mothers and fiancees and girlfriends and other grieving females.

She steeled herself with a deep breath, then knocked on the door to the hotel room. It opened immediately, revealing one of NCIS's junior analysts, whose name was completely escaping Ziva's memory. "Officer David?" the analyst asked, making Ziva feel even worse for forgetting her name. "Ms. Mehler is inside, but first, can I see some ID?"

"Of course," Ziva asked, showing the ID card that gave her access to NCIS's building. The analyst studied it for a time longer than seemed necessary, given that she had already identified Ziva as someone she knew, before nodding and stepping aside.

"Right this way, Office David," she said, leading into the room.

Cynthia Mehler was exactly as one would expect of a captain's wife. Or ex-wife. Her already light hair was frosted to help hide the gray, her back straight as she sat up in a chair at the room's desk. She would have looked much more at place at the Army-Navy Club than government billeting in Bahrain; if it wasn't for the quick ponytail her hair was in or the box of Kleenex's at her elbow, there would be little indication that all was not well. "Mrs. Mehler," Ziva greeted. "I am Officer Ziva David. I am working with NCIS on finding your son."

"It's 'Ms.'," the captain's ex-wife replied. "Actually, it's Cynthia. That's a lot easier." She twisted the tissue she held in her hands and tucked an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear. "What can I do for you?"

Ziva took the other seat at the table without being invited, figuring social niceties could be suspended when speaking to a mother who was coming to terms with the idea that she would never see her five-year-old son again. "I need to ask you some questions about your divorce."

"My…" Cynthia Mehler began, then nodded. "My divorce. I figured when Wyatt was still missing that someone would be coming by to ask about that." She pulled another tissue from the box and briefly dabbed her eyes before twisting it in her hands as she had the previous one. "Truth is, it really was an amicable divorce."

"When?"

"Um, I guess it would be, well, a year and a half ago now," Cynthia replied with a frown. She began tearing at the tissue. "It was when he accepted command of the Truman." The twisting and tearing continued, small pieces of white tissue falling to the plain carpet under the chair. "I…I don't know how to explain…"

"How a marriage fell apart."

Cynthia nodded. She seemed to be collecting her thoughts for a few long minutes. "Do…do you have children?"

Now it was Ziva's turn to look down and began twisting something with her own fingers, in her case the new set of rings on her left ring finger. "No," she finally said. "We have only been married a few weeks." That wasn't something she would normally volunteer to a woman she had just met; talking to the distraught mothers always threw her off her game.

But the captain's ex-wife didn't seem to notice, or maybe just didn't care. "Barry and I met at USF," she said, and although Ziva didn't know what this had to do with the divorce or where their son might be, she decided to see where the woman was going with the story. "I studied early childhood education and Barry was in the NROTC program. We met in the sailing club our freshman year. I was always sailing growing up, and I think Barry joined because he was in the Navy." She smiled slightly. "And he was terrible at it. But he learned." Again, she seemed to collect her thoughts and figure out where she was in the story. "We got married right before our senior year, and then after graduation, we went off for his first assignment, and I was fully committed to being a Navy wife. The excitement of moving around every couple of years, the overseas assignments…" Her voice trailed off, her eyes far away as she remembered that time. "We didn't really think about having kids. He was busy with the Navy, I had my odd teaching jobs, we were moving around all the time, we were enjoying our social life, but as we got older, more and more of our friends were having kids, and, well, you know how that goes." Ziva didn't really know how that went; maybe she just always surrounded herself with people like her, who hadn't put much thought into the whole married-with-kids thing. But she nodded anyway, wondering if Cynthia Mehler would be getting to the point soon.

"Well, when he hit lieutenant commander, things were slowing down with the frequent moves, we were in Pensacola, which is a good place for kids, and we decided that maybe it was time." She choked up again, grabbing another tissue. A few deep breaths later, she continued. "All the right plans don't make it happen, though, and month after month…nothing. I thought maybe I had been on birth control too long, or something was wrong… We went to some doctors, and they said everything looks okay, but nothing was happening. So after two years of trying," she shrugged, "we stopped trying."

"And then?"

"And then Wyatt came three years later." Her smile was thin and her eyes again filled with tears. "Having a baby when for so long you didn't think you wanted a baby, and then thought you wanted one but couldn't have one… Especially later in life…" Later in life? She was only in her early forties, and having had her son five years before would have put her close to Ziva's age when Wyatt was born. As it was, Ziva was already older than she ever thought she would be and often had to deal with subtle jokes about her age from Cohen; she really didn't need the extra help in feeling past the hill.

But they had moved pretty far from the information Ziva came here for. "Did Captain Mehler not want a child?"

"Oh, no," Cynthia said quickly, taking a quick swipe at her eyes with a fresh tissue. "No, Barry loved Wyatt. More than he thought he would. He didn't know if he wanted kids at all; I think I had to talk him into it. But after Wyatt was here, there was not a second of hesitation." She began the twisting and tearing technique with the new tissue. "It broke Barry's heart to move out here away from Wyatt."

"Why did you divorce?"

"Life," Cynthia replied with a shrug. "I don't know what it was, really. We grew apart. We held onto our childhoods for so long that we didn't really grow up. And then Wyatt was born and we started to see things the way they should have been." She sniffed once. "I'll always love Barry, in a way, but living with him, being married to him… Those days are over."

"So there were not other women?"

Cynthia gave a short laugh. "No," she said, sounding quite certain of that fact. "No, philandering was never Barry's thing. Always too serious, too committed, to the Navy, if nothing else. Adultery is a UCMJ violation, and there was no way he would risk his career by having an affair." She shook her head slightly. "That sounds so cold. It's true, but also… Barry would never hurt me like that. He's too good of a man for that."

This whole conversation was making Ziva's head hurt. The woman obviously still loved her ex-husband, and it sounded like the man had no ill will toward his ex-wife, but yet one was visiting from Norfolk and the other commanded an aircraft carrier in the Fifth Fleet. She knew people grew apart, but there was usually some animosity associated with it. "What about your custody arrangement?"

"What about it?" Cynthia asked with another sniff.

"How did Captain Mehler feel about it?"

The captain's ex-wife shrugged. "He agreed with it," she replied. "It wouldn't have made sense for him not to, not with him moving to Bahrain and us in the process of divorcing. It was hard for him, I know that, but he said he saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He's retiring from the Navy in another eighteen months and planning on moving back to Norfolk, maybe working as a contractor on base so he could be close to Wyatt. He was always talking about that when he talked to Wyatt on Skype, that it wouldn't be too much longer until they would see each other all the time." She smiled thinly and shakily. "And they were both always so excited about that. Wyatt misses his father so much. That's why I agreed when Barry asked if I could bring him out here for the Family Weekend. I thought it would be so good of them…" Her voice trailed off, her body shaking in silent sobs as she thought about what that decision had cost her.

Ziva didn't know how long she sat there, awkwardly trying to think of something reassuring that she could say to a mother who would probably never hold her son again. She finally just patted Cynthia Mehler on the shoulder as she stood to leave, leaving the sobbing mother in the care of the NCIS analyst whose name was still escaping Ziva's memory.

Dealing with the mothers was one thing. Trying to figure out what to do about the crying was another altogether.