Chapter 29 Telephone

'g93kd7fekwka7f729101-028dgsuis8a73893903' "What the heck?" Seeley Booth wondered, trying to decipher the text from Brennan which had dinged on his phone as he pulled into their driveway.

"'Lucy, I'm home!' ... Hey, Bones, where are you guys?" Booth asked as he walked in the front door at 8 pm? "Something smells really good!"

"Upstairs reading to Christine," Brennan responded as she came downstairs holding their daughter. "I made vegetable soup and corn muffins for dinner. I knew it would keep well and be easy to reheat for you."

"I'm sorry my meeting with Cullen and Hacker ran so long I missed dinner, but we're trying to schedule all the probationary agents for an observational day with Gibbs' people at NCIS to improve our effectiveness at working together. Since we can't go out on each other's cases, I realized it's going to take several months for everyone to cycle through the program. It took me 30 minutes of discussion with Hacker to convince him I wasn't trying to delay its completion. It was his idea, and for once, he had a brilliant proposal. But he always thinks I'm gunning for his job and blocks my comments without even listening. Boy, am I glad to be out of there. I don't know how Cullen keeps his patience with that guy."

"Bones, what is this gibberish text message you sent me while I was driving home? Is your phone malfunctioning? It says '4e9oi7fkfmr38es90sd9weujq2hwe0.' Did Angela crack some alien code I'm not aware of from green Martians or are you learning Swahili?"

Brennan chuckled and pointed to Christine, who was busy crushing an animal cracker on her high chair tray. "My phone fell out of my messenger bag when we got home and your daughter got ahold of it before I realized it. She had a great time pressing random keys until I retrieved it from her busy little fingers. The only word I know in Swahili is 'skull.' And Booth, there is no such thing as green Martian alien code."

"My daughter? You're the one with the superb manual dexterity from handling bones all these years and learning to discern what those little bumps and grooves and ridges mean!" Booth sputtered and broke into a grin. 'You know, when I was a kid, Jared had a Chatter Phone pull toy that looked like Pops' old rotary dial Western Electric desk phone, but now kids wouldn't even recognize that as a phone. They think that phones are flat miniature TV screens."

"That's true of most children, Booth, but Christine won't be ignorant of historic telephone technology. Your vintage bakelite telephone will be perfect to acquaint her with how phone calls were made when we were children."

"Maybe when she is a teenager, Bones, but she's not touching my bakelite phone for a long time! That's my pride and joy, and no grubby little kid hands are going to break it. Parker knows very well not to touch it. It's off limits to anyone under age 15! You have no idea how much that meant to me when I saw it sitting on my table! It was one of the nicest things you've ever done for me."

"Booth, I didn't give you that phone, Hannah did."

"Nope, Bones, I know better! Hannah may have turned me down, but she wasn't a mean person, and one of the things she told me after you left that night was that it was you who gave her the idea to buy it for me as a gift! You were the one who knew me so well, you knew what the perfect gift would be, and you were thoughtful enough to let her know about it. She thought that was a very kind thing of you to do. When she told me what you'd done, I knew you were the best friend I'd ever have."

"Oh, Booth!" Brennan sighed with tears in her eyes. 'Who knew a phone could become so significant?"

He opened his arms and hugged her as she buried her face in his shoulder. "Me, Bones, lucky me." he answered softly, kissing her.