…Till Death Does Us Part Chapter II – Part 26/26
Disclaimer - See part one for all important informationMonday July 19
Harm's Apartment
6:03 PM
Harm whistled as he walked into his apartment. It had been a good day, of course that was because of the good night.
After he finished being in awe of the baby, he and Mac had talked. They really talked, for the first time in a long time. They both decided they needed a while to find their way back to the friendship they once had. They knew it wouldn't be easy, but they also knew their friendship could survive anything. The past had proven that there was nothing Mac, Harm, and for sure nothing Webb could do, to destroy their friendship. And now, with the baby in the picture, it would help them find the right way to keep that friendship.
Also, they decided to tell the admiral he was the father, and to start getting things in order for their records. Then Mac told him about the pregnancy and showed him the pictures of the baby. Harm fell in love with his child as he viewed the black and white photos. They also talked about some other things, such as work and what he was doing while he was with the CIA. He left when Mac was getting sleepily, but promised to cook her dinner at his place tonight.
First thing they did that morning was talk to the admiral. AJ took the news with mild surprise. Somehow they got the feeling he already knew who the father of his godchild was. They told him the baby was a product of a moment, and never mentioned to AJ that at the time of the baby's conception, that they were married. Since this chapter was already closed, there was no need to tell him about something that would just make him think Harm and Mac were completely insane. AJ said he would look into everything, but didn't think there would be a problem.
The rest of the morning and the afternoon were fine for him. As long as he didn't count when he found out he did lose the case to Mac and Sturgis, but his client was guilty as sin so it didn't bother him.
He now moved through the apartment towards his bedroom to change out of his uniform and into something casual. Mac would be there at seven for dinner and she had asked for homemade Italian. She actually told him the baby wanted Italian and he agreed.
After he changed, he went into the kitchen and started to cook dinner. Twenty minutes later he placed the lasagna into the over and remembered a new salad he wanted to try. He walked over to his desk and opened the center drawer to find the recipe of the dressing for it. He had read it in a health magazine, cut it out and placed it in the drawer. His fingers felt around and finally he found it, and something else.
He pulled both things out and looked at them. He placed the recipe on top of the desk as he looked at the tore corner of the envelope. He flipped it over and saw Mac's handwriting. His mind went back eight months to the night when he got the letter. He sat down in his chair and stared at it.
He took a breath and opened it, prepared to read the words of anger Mac wrote him. However, as he unfolded the thick paper, there were no angry words from Mac staring back at him, just a legal document. 'Annulment of Marriage' stared back at him, his eyes moved down to the bottom of the page where he saw his signatures and Mac's.
His fingers moved across a note and his heart stopped as he read it. 'Harm- I'm going out of the country for, at most, a year. I don't have time to take care of this. You need to do it by December 7th. I'm sure if it's a few day's late the courts will still process it due to extending circumstances. -Mac.'
The small note crumpled in his hands as his mind focused on one thought. He looked at the papers again; they were signed and dated. He flipped to the back of the group of papers and saw the marriage license from the Little Lost Love Chapel of Las Vegas. The papers fell to the floor.
"We're still married," he whispered. The words fell around him as the reality of the situation hit him too. "I'm still married to Mac."
He picked the papers up from the floor and looked at them again.
"We're still married."
He stared at the paper for a few more seconds, in shock and something more, until a knock came from the door interrupting his thoughts. He shook his head and looked at his watch. She was early.
THE END at least for now (please read the note below)
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Dear Readers-
Before we start with our message we would like to take the time to thank all of the readers who were kind enough to leave supportive messages and comments about the FF. We truly do appreciate this.
We know this FF is not the 'norm', when there actually is a norm, and understand that some people could not handle the ideas and concepts in it. It is their lost, in our opinion. For those of you who've read and enjoyed it, we are truly sorry for the next part of this statement.
As we were posting Chapter II, we had the idea and had started writing Chapter III of the story. As we started writing the ideas and forming the next storyline, RL stepped in. Since the posting of Chapter I, Carol's Grandmother died, her Grandfather has been diagnosed with cancer and has been in and out of the hospital and nursing home, one of her Aunts was in ICU for two weeks, a dear friend was assaulted and raped, another dear friend's mother died of lung cancer, and then there were the daily demands of RL on her. It is extremely hard to write a co-authored FF when half of the team can't handle life at the moment and is depressed. Michi had and has to handle a few situations in RL at the moment. Her grandparents, to whom she takes care of at home, are fighting against some health problems.
Needless to say that the negative responses to the story did not help any part of our situations in life. Some of the posting and comments have caused both of us to wonder about the kindness of people. The majority of the negative comments only inflamed certain situations causing both authors to want to give up and forget about the whole thing, at least for a while. The sad thing is that even so the positive feedback is awesome and phenomenal; the sometimes really nasty comments didn't help to get us out of the funk.
Especially one post at the Voy board gave us the final kick, to think about what's really important in life: To enjoy everything outside of RL, just like reading and writing FF. And the keyword is 'enjoy'. We did not enjoy that post at all. With that post, whoever wrote it and thought it was funny, made it clear that a few people actually enjoy destroying other people's work. Good job and we hope you are happy now. But on the other side we are glad that we post on other places where people have not fully personally attacked us.
At this time we are unsure if there will be a Chapter III or not. With everything that was said in Chapter II, we are concerned about what people might say about Chapter III. We know exactly what we want in Chapter III and we know what we want the storyline to be. In fact right now it sits on our computers half way done. It will remain like that until we can decide what to do and as long RL has so much power over us as well.
If you would like to express your opinion or thoughts on what we should do about Chapter III, please email us. But if you are going to tell us to not write it because our story sucks or you don't like what we have done, don't waste your time. We have had enough of these unkind and rude comments. Our parents and grandparents raised us with the Golden Rule and we will stand by it, until we lose all hope in human kind.
Thank you again to all of the positive readers.
Michi and Carol
Carol at Writestories315@yahoo.com and
Michi at catherinebellfan@gmx.de or mp111275@yahoo.de