(After 'The Shot in the Dark')
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Brennan was home and Max had moved in to help with Christine while his daughter was still recovering from surgery. Brennan wasn't allowed to pick up anything that weighed over five pounds and his darling granddaughter happened to weigh 19 pounds. While she recovered, Max took it upon himself to be her nurse and Christine's babysitter.
Seeing that it was futile to protest, Brennan had allowed her father to move in on a temporary basis and once she saw how useful he was, she appreciated that he had offered his services. She had planned to take care of her baby during the day while Booth was at work but moving the toddler from room to room would have been a problem. "I concede that you were right, Dad. I wouldn't have been able to take care of Christine properly and leaving her in Day Care would have made her unhappy."
"Yeah, she really missed you while you were in the hospital." Max was folding the clothes he had removed from the dryer while Brennan made herself some hot tea. "With me here, she gets her mama and you get to enjoy her company without endangering your recovery."
Settling on one of the bar stools at the kitchen island, Brennan placed he cup of tea down and waited for the hot liquid to cool a little bit. "When I was in the hospital . . . this is going to sound strange, but do you remember when I told you that Mom knew that the first gift you ever gave her was stolen? She told me."
"I always assumed she didn't know that." Max paused and stared at his daughter. "Until you told me that in the hospital, I assumed I was the only one that knew that. I sure didn't know she had told you about it."
"This is the strange sounding part . . . she told me while I was in the hospital." Brennan didn't look at her father. She wasn't sure why she was bringing this up, but she had thought about her dreams with her mother and they still confused her.
Not sure what she meant, Max sat down and stared at Brennan. "Honey . . . what do you mean she told you in the hospital?"
After taking a sip of her tea, she placed the cup down on the counter and turned her gaze upon her father. "While I was unconscious, I had dreams . . . dreams about Mom. We were in the house in Illinois . . . she talked to me and I talked to her . . . She told me about the gift and how she knew you had stolen it. You were poor and you didn't have any extra money, but you wanted to impress her so you stole the gift to show her how much you liked her . . . She was impressed but not like you think. She wasn't impressed with the gift but the fact that you had stolen it and hadn't got caught. Apparently stealing and getting away with it fascinated her." She knew her parents were con artists, but she had never thought about the mindset behind it. She abhorred thievery and lawlessness and her mother had found both things fascinating.
"You talked to your mother." Max didn't really believe in an afterlife, so he wasn't sure how to react. "It's natural to dream when you're unconscious Honey. It's a way to relieve stress . . . your mother is dead and you miss her. It's natural."
"I'm inclined to believe the same thing you do, but she did tell me about the gift." Brennan sighed. "I told Booth about the dreams and he thinks I was in communication with my dead mother. He believes in heaven and he thinks I talked to her . . . I don't believe in an afterlife but the gift . . . I didn't know about that gift Dad until I had the dreams. I'm sure there is a practical explanation, but at the moment, I don't know what that is."
Max felt a shudder run through his body. He wanted to believe that Christine had talked to his daughter from Heaven, but it seemed too unlikely. After collecting his thoughts, he responded. "Honey, maybe she mentioned it to you when you were a child and you simply forgot. You've told me in the past that you have few memories of your childhood . . . and that might have been a way to cope with what was happening to you back then, but the memories are there and they're probably coming to the surface now that you're an adult and you're safe . . . You're living with someone that loves you and you feel safe."
"When I saw her last, she was leaving for work . . . in my dream . . . in my dream I told her I was never going to see her again and she said . . . she said we will see each other again. She was so certain." Brennan sighed. She missed her mother so much.
"Maybe you will, Tempe. I mean no one really knows what happens when we die, not really." Max reached out and rested his hand over her hand. "I'd love to think that I'll get to see your mother again. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about her. Not one day."
Brennan gripped her father's hand and smiled. "What was the gift that you stole for Mom?"
"Oh, it was a little dolphin statue. It was leaping in water and it was made of porcelain." Max thought of the little gray dolphin leaping in the blue and white foams of water and smiled. "It didn't cost a lot, but I just didn't have the money to buy it. I was pretty poor back then and I really wanted her to have it . . . She kissed me . . . I gave her the present and she kissed me and I wanted to give her more gifts so I could get more kisses . . . She was so young and pretty . . . we were both young, but we knew that we were meant for each other, like you and Booth. We should have had a lifetime together . . . but we didn't." His voice trailed off and he closed his eyes picturing his wife, young and vibrant. "She didn't want to go, she wanted to stay with me . . . McVicar hit her harder than we both thought and by the time we knew something was wrong, she was dying . . . I held her while she died in my arms and her last thoughts were of you and Russ. She wanted to see you both one more time, but she was dead in minutes . . . I didn't really have time to say goodbye to her either. She said her head was hurting and she was crying . . . I cried while she asked me to help her see you and Russ and then she was dead . . . It was awful, Tempe. It was the worst day of my life."
The tears on her face matching Max's tears, Brennan wept for her mother and for her father. She knew what it was like to love someone so intensely. She knew that if she ever lost Booth, it would rip her apart and she would only continue because of her daughter. She knew that you really couldn't recover from a loss like that. "She loved you."
"Yeah and I loved her." Max stood up and finished folding the laundry while Brennan sipped her now cool tea. Once the clothes were folded, he placed them in a basket and turned to face his daughter. "Thank you for telling me what your mother said. Even if it was a dream, it was nice."
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