AN: Many thanks to everyone who keeps sending feedback and encouragement to me. It means a lot to me. Here's an extra long part to everyone who's been waiting patiently (and unpatiently) for another part.
Part 16Mac closed her eyes and took a deep breath in before she could open them and look at him.
"Me too, Harm." Her voice was just a whisper and it felt like all she could get out were those three little words. She gathered herself and once again said it, this time louder. "Me too." She wondered if she'd ever be able to tell him what he had meant to her back then, what feelings she had had for him.
She slowly walked out of the room. She had to take out the first round of laundry from the machine and put on the second one. There were lots of things she needed to do today, to prepare for the coming week. She tried her best to focus on those things, but it was something she could not possibly succeed in.
Together she and Harm spent most of the morning cleaning, unpacking and doing laundry. Harm called the people who were renting his apartment and decided with them on a day they'd move out.
A few hours after Jack had left the house the phone rang and Mac answered it. Harm tried not to listen in on the conversation, but he couldn't help hearing some things and through that understanding that it was Jack on the other end and that they had decided to meet tomorrow and talk about their fight. A few minutes later Mac came back to the living room where they were sorting socks together in pairs and told him that as well.
By lunchtime they heated up some left-overs that had been in the freezer and after lunch Harm and Mac went grocery shopping leaving Isabelle to play at Sandra's house.
"'Morning," Harm said as he walked into the kitchen the next day. Mac was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
"Hey. Did I wake you? I tried to be quiet so that you and Belle could sleep in."
"You didn't wake me," Harm said and smiled. "It's a nice day," he said and looked out through the open window. A warm breeze came blowing in through it.
"Yeah, it is," Mac said and looked out through the window as well. "There's still coffee in the pot, if you'd like."
"Yeah." Harm walked over to the counter and poured himself a cup, before sitting down at the kitchen table. Mac folded the paper together when Harm joined her at the table.
"So do you have any plans for today?" Mac asked him.
"Not yet. I thought I'd discuss it a little with Belle first."
"I'll leave the car here in case you need it."
"But how are you going to get to work then?"
"I'll ride with one of my colleagues. He lives maybe 10 minutes away from here and said he could come and pick me up."
"OK," Harm said thoughtfully.
Mac looked at her watch. "I better get going now. I'll see you tonight. Will you say 'Good morning' to Belle from me?"
"Yeah, sure I will. Have a nice day!" Harm waved goodbye to her.
"Hello! Belle! Harm,!" Mac shouted into the house when she the same evening finally walked into the house. Like always when she had been away for a while from her office, she had come back to find it in a state of total chaos. It would take a while until she'd get everything back into order.
She was in charge of making sure that the education and training that the marines got from the instructors in her division of the school upheld the good standard that was needed. A big part of her job was to go around and oversee the different classes and also a lot of administrative work, but sometimes she still got to be 'just' an instructor too. That was what she had been when she was first transferred to Quantico and soon she had realized that teaching and instructing the younger marines were something really close to her heart. She had started to really love her job. Her job at JAG had become a dead-end after she had had Isabelle and luckily been allowed to cut down on the excessive traveling. Without the travels and high-profile cases that came with them, there was no way she could advance anymore, the opposite was more likely.
With her change of career she had been able to finally be promoted to a full-bird Colonel two years ago and that was also when she became in charge of her division. When she is now sometimes forced to focus a lot of her time on administrative assignments she misses the teaching, but she still knows she's an important part of those people's education and that makes her feel good about what she is doing. Especially when she sees how much some of the marines develop during their time in the classes.
Mac kicked off her shoes and put them up on the shoe shelf. She realized that there was a scent of food coming from the kitchen and couldn't believe her luck if it meant that dinner was already on the table or at least close to be.
"Hey Mac, we're in the kitchen," Harm shouted back.
Mac came walking into the kitchen and Isabelle ran over to give her a big hug.
"Hey honey. Did you have a nice day?"
"Oh, yeah. We went to the park and I rode my bike and Harm jogged. Harm was really slow and then it sounded like when Mary in my class gets one of her asthma attacks," Isabelle told her and giggled at that.
"Overdoing it a bit?" Mac looked at Harm with laughter in her eyes that soon spread to her mouth. She did that sometimes too, ran beside Isabelle when she was riding her bike. The problem was, Isabelle liked to go as fast as she possibly could and after a while it was hard to keep up with. Mac could only imagine what it would be like for Harm, who hadn't been able to work out in a really long while.
"Do you two want dinner or not?" Harm said and looked at them both with a look that could kill.
Both Mac and Isabelle stopped laughing at once and at that Harm couldn't keep his smile hidden. Together they carried the food out to the table on the porch, which Isabelle had already set. Harm asked Mac about her day and she told him about it, Harm and Isabelle told her about theirs.
When they were finished with dinner and had cleaned up, Mac turned to Isabelle.
"I think we better get back to our evening-routine," she said.
"Oh, Mom. Can't we have vacation a few more days?"
"No, we can't keep putting it off, you know. Will you go and get the books?"
"Yeah, yeah," Isabelle said sounding not at all happy.
"What's that about?" Harm asked Mac.
"Belle isn't doing so well in school," Mac started.
"But she seems so …" Harm protested
"I know and she is really smart. It's just reading and writing that causes her some problems. It's not enough for her to be held back a class, but her teacher thought it would be good if we worked with it during the summer so that she doesn't fall further behind."
"Oh, OK, you'll let me know if there's anything I can do, won't you?"
"Sure," Mac said and turned to Isabelle who had returned downstairs. "You want to sit in the living room?" Isabelle nodded "Go ahead and I'll be right there. I just need to talk to Harm about something."
Isabelle went into the living room and Mac started talking quietly once the door was closed.
"I met with Jack today," Mac said, but Harm of course already knew about that.
"How did it go?"
"It went well. We talked about things. Just so you know he's perfectly fine with you living here. I apologized to him for not having cleared that with him at first and I'm sorry that I put you in an awkward situation as well," Mac said truly apologetic.
"It's OK, Mac. Besides I was there when it happened, so I know it was a really spontaneous decision to offer me to move in here."
"I guess it just felt right," Mac said and smiled warmly at him "Anyway Jack asked if Isabelle could come over to his apartment on Wednesday. He finishes work early then and she could spend the afternoon there and have dinner, before he drives her back here. I think it sounds like a good idea. It would be good for her to see where he lives now and that he isn't completely out of her life, but I also realize that you and me need to make those decisions together now," Mac paused and thought about how strange and at the same time how good it felt to be able to discuss things like these with Harm "So what do you think about that?"
Harm thought for a while. He realized that this wasn't just about this Wednesday, it was about Mac inviting him in to take a full part as a parent to his daughter and he didn't want to seem like he took it lightly. "I don't see any reason why I should have anything against it," he then said.
"Good," Mac smiled glad that they had agreed. When it came to Isabelle, she was used to deciding everything herself, but it felt really good to be able to talk to Harm and make decisions together with him. "Then I need to go and see if we'll get any further with that book."
Mac went into the living room where Isabelle had already started to write down the 10 words that she was going to learn how to spell this day. Harm followed her into the room and sat down on the armchair beside the couch where Isabelle and Mac sat together and picked up a magazine and started looking through it, although most of his focus was on what was going on around Isabelle's school books.
"Mom, you know what," Isabelle looked up a Mac "I wish I was really bad at drawing so that Mrs. Patrick had told you I had to practice that instead of this," she made a motion to the books.
"You mean you'd want to take all of those beautiful drawings that you've given me away," Mac said and looked seriously at her.
"No, but … I just wish that I was bad at something that I really liked so that it would be fun to work extra hard on those things."
"I guess that's a way to look at it," Mac paused "But let's get this over with."
They went back to looking at the books. Even though Isabelle was often rather unwilling to get to the work, Mac made the learning of new words a lot more fun and easier by creating games to do it and picked books that Isabelle loved for them to read together.
An hour or so later after having finished the next chapter of the book, Mac and Isabelle were done with the schoolwork for the day. Mac then told Isabelle that she could go and spend the afternoon the day after tomorrow together with Jack if she wanted to. Of course Isabelle was thrilled and she went to call Jack and make up a time where he'd come and pick her up.
The first work-week had past very fast for Mac. She had finally caught up with work at the office, much thanks to Harm being at the house and helping out with a lot of things. After he had learned about Isabelle's difficulties in school, he had taken over doing the assignments with her during the day. Mac missed sharing those hours with her daughter and hoped that it didn't have to mean that Harm had taken over that forever, but most of all she appreciated Harm wanting to do so much with Isabelle. Jack had often preferred to stay away from the tough parts of being a parent, like taking conflicts with her and making rules for her. He had never tried to undermine Mac's authority in doing it, but he had never taken an active part in it.
Harm had also helped her out a lot with everything else that had to be done around the house, so now instead of doing those chores, she'd been able to get some work done after Isabelle had gone to bed. She had thanked him for all of the help endless of times during the week and Harm was starting to get embarrassed about it thinking he hadn't really done all that much..
On Tuesday Sturgis had called and invited all three of them to come over for dinner the same Friday. They had accepted the invitation and now they were getting ready to go over there. Isabelle loved her uncle Sturgis and aunt Bobbie and was very excited about going over there.
The three of them got into the car and drove over. Harm had told Mac that he wanted to go and look at a new car for himself. He had yet to decide whether he was going to keep his Corvette. Mac had been surprised when she found out that he was even considering selling it.
They had only knocked once before the door to the large apartment in the middle of DC was opened. Sturgis greeted them and told them that Bobbie was cooking, but she had said that she was almost done and would join them in just a few minutes. They walked into the living room and Harm was rather surprised to see where Sturgis was now living. It was very different from where he had lived eight years ago.
"So did you enjoy your holiday?" Sturgis asked mostly Harm and Isabelle since he had already gotten Mac's version of it.
"Yes, it was nice to get away and I think we had a wonderful time together," Harm said and looked at Mac and Isabelle for confirmation. They both nodded in agreement.
"I wanted to stay there longer," Isabelle stated.
"I know you always do," Sturgis said and smiled. Sturgis had been up at the farm together with Mac, Isabelle and sometimes Jack several times before and knew first hand how much Isabelle enjoyed life up there.
"So is it true what I hear? Is Harmon Rabb back in town?" Bobbie's voice came from the door to the kitchen. Harm turned around and saw her rolling into the room. Even though he had known about Bobbie's accident, it was still in some ways a shock to see her in a wheelchair. "Don't I get a hug?" Bobbie asked.
"Of course you do," Harm was woken from his thoughts and walked over and bent down to hug her, before he let completely go of her she took the opportunity and kissed his cheek.
"It's good to have you back, you know," she said.
They continued to talk and laugh as they waited for the dinner to get ready in the oven. Harm realized that he thought less and less about the fact that Bobbie was now in a wheelchair. She was still very much her energetic pit bull-self. Bobbie and Sturgis seemed very happy together even though they weren't a very obvious couple. Maybe they were so good together simply because they didn't have that much in common on the surface.
After dinner Sturgis and Harm went into the very impressive kitchen, Harm stood in aw for several seconds just watching before he could get to work. They were going to fix some things for the dessert. Mac, Bobbie and Isabelle stayed in the living room and played a couple of games of cards.
"So you and Mac seem to get along well? I don't think I ever saw you get along this well for so long during the whole time I knew you together," Sturgis commented.
"Well, that was an unusual couple of months. There was so much going on and … well we weren't always like that."
"No, Mac's tried to explain that to me too," Sturgis said.
"You've talked about Mac's and my relationship with her?"
"Yeah," Sturgis said and shrugged. He didn't really want to get into that with Harm.
"It's a good think she had someone to talk to. She doesn't confide in other people that easily." Harm said and then he realized that Sturgis by now had known Mac longer than he had before he had gone missing and probably knew those things about Mac. It was strange considering the last time he had talked to Sturgis, Sturgis had been asking him for advice on how to handle Mac. Now it was more likely to be the other way around. "Most of all though I'm glad that Mac knew that I loved her even though I never said so," Harm said and sighed.
"What makes you think that?"
"That I was in love with her?"
"No … that she knows." Sturgis was quite surprised that Harm admitted to not just loving her, but also being in love with her as easily as that. If only Harm could have told Mac that before he went missing.
"Well, she said … that she knew that I would have been there for her and Belle and that she thought that we could have talked, worked things out between us and we could have been a family."
"You know that isn't exactly saying that she knew that you were in love with her," Sturgis said and since he was standing with his back towards the door, he didn't know that Mac had just been standing in the doorway to the kitchen.
TBC