Chapter Thirty-Nine:
Mother-Son Interlude

FLASHBACK
AUGUST 16TH, 1972

1900 EST
RABB RESIDENCE
LEMON GROVE, CALIFORNIA

He might be only eight and a half years old, but Harmon Rabb Jr. knew a bad person when he saw one. And Frank Burnett was definitely a bad person.

Harm didn't have any definitive proof that Frank was a bad person-well, he did one thing to hold against him. Frank liked to date his mom - that was completely unacceptable.

Frank had started coming around in the late spring. He worked for some car company, Harm couldn't remember which one. (Harm didn't like cars; he liked planes) It didn't even make sense why his mom liked Frank so much. His mom was an art teacher at the high school that was down the block from Harm's elementary school, what did she know about cars? They clearly had nothing in common.

Harm was laying flat on his stomach at the top of the staircase of his home in Lemon Grove, California. It was a balmy night in the middle of August, and Frank was over for dinner. Harm had been allowed to eat with them, but as soon as he finished his mother had sent him straight to bed. This was ridiculous in Harm's opinion, because it was only eight thirty. The sun hadn't even completely set yet! And he was still on summer vacation, so he should be allowed to stay up as late as he wanted…his mother did not agree with him on that.

He was laying down because he was spying. Spying on his mother and Frank. He couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but he could hear his mother laughing a lot. Harm knew her laughing was a good thing, considering she'd done it so little since his dad went away, but he couldn't help but be jealous. Usually he was the only one who could make her laugh -really laugh, not that fake laugh she did when the other ladies in the neighborhood came over, the ones that Harm knew she didn't like but she acted like she did, for some odd reason.

There was the sound of chair legs scraping against hardwood and Harm quickly ducked down as Frank and his mom walked out of the dining room and into the foyer.

"I guess I should be going," Harm overheard Frank say.

"No, why don't you stay?" His mother said. "We could sit out on the porch, watch the sunset."

Harm wrinkled his nose. Who would want to sit and watch the sun set?

"Sure, that sounds lovely."

As soon as Harm heard the front screen door latch shut, he padded down the stairs as fast as he could, tripping on a couple of stairs as he went. They were probably sitting on the porch swing, or at least that was where Harm would choose to sit if he was sitting on the porch. On nice mornings his mom would let him eat his bowl of cereal out there.

Harm scurried into the living room and climbed on to the sofa, making sure to keep his head down. It just so happened that the porch swing was just outside the living room window. Said window happened to be open since it was summer, giving Harm the perfect chance to eavesdrop.

Cautiously, he peeped over the back of the sofa just in time to see Frank warp his arm around his mother's shoulders, and Harm immediately ducked back down.

"No offense, but I don't think your son likes me too much," Frank said and Trish laughed lightly.

"I don't like you," Harm whispered.

"I wouldn't worry," Trish replied. "Harm's well, harmless. He just worships his father, no other man can compare in his book, and he still misses him terribly."

"How long has it been? If you don't mind me asking."

Harm heard his mother sigh, something she did a lot when his father came up in conversation. "It'll be three years in December."

"I'm sorry, Trish."

"Please, don't say you're sorry. That's all everyone's told me for the past three years," there was a noticeable hint of bitterness in her voice.

Harm supposed he was one of those people. Two weeks ago he was throwing a baseball around in the backyard and it ended up breaking a window pane. He'd ended up saying sorry for that more times than he could count.

"What do you want me to say, Trish?" Frank asked gently.

Trish sighed. "I don't know what I want you to say to me. You're-you're the first man I've seen since Harm Sr. went missing, so I'm a little rusty with dating, I'm sorry."

Frank chuckled. "Now you're the one saying I'm sorry."

"I know, I know, I'm a hypocrite aren't I?"

"No you're not Trish, you're beautiful."

"You flatter me, Frank."

Harm was beginning to contemplate going upstairs and playing with his model planes. Adult conversations sure were boring.

"Trish I-I know we've only known each other a few months, but I love you."

Trish didn't speak for a moment, and Harm waited with bated breath for her answer. Please say you don't love him back. Please say you don't love him back. Please say you don't love him back.

"I love you too, Frank."

Harm smacked his palm against his forehead. This was a disaster.

Thankfully for Harm, Trish and Frank said their goodbyes not long after that, so he no longer had to endure overhearing anymore grown-up conversation. Trish walked back inside and was very surprised to see her son perched on the sofa, waiting for her to come in.

"What are you doing, young man?" she asked, placing her hands on her hips. "I thought I told you to go to bed."

Harm was off the sofa in a flash, scampering over to his mother and nearly knocking her over with a fierce hug. He looked up at her, giving her the smile he knew won her over all the time, even though she never admitted it.

"I'm not tired, Mama," he said innocently, his grin widening.

Trish laughed, reaching down to run her fingers through her son's messy hair. She would have him get in the habit of brushing his hair everyday sometime before he hit puberty. "You only call me 'Mama' when you know you're in trouble. I'm on to you, mister."

Harm's smile faltered and Trish ruffled his hair. "Harm, I know you heard Frank and me talking out on the porch."

"No I didn't."

Trish raised an eyebrow at her son, and he huffed. "Alright, I was listening," he grumbled, looking down at the floor.

"Harm, darling, can you look at me?"

Harm looked up at his mother who, to his surprise, didn't look as angry as he thought she would look. "Yeah, Mom?"

"I know you miss your father," she said gently, smoothing over the hair she'd ruffled up. "I miss him too. But Frank is a good man, and I care about him a lot."

"I know that," Harm said, squirming a little. He didn't like talking about his dad. Or Frank.

Trish pulled Harm in close, placing a kiss on the top of his head. "Alright, wise guy," she teased. "You know I care about Frank, but did you know that you'll always be my favorite guy?"

"Even if Frank stays?" Harm asked, his voice muffled by his mother's embrace.

"Even if Frank stays," Trish promised with a laugh.

"Mom, you're suffocating me."

Trish sighed and let Harm go. She wished more than anything he'd realize that letting him go was something she never wanted to do. Ever.

"You need to get to bed," she said,

"Mom, I told you I'm not-"

"Hop to it, sailor. That's an order," she said, trying to suppress a laugh at the sight of Harm's posture immediately going stock straight. "If you're in bed in ten minutes I'll take you out for waffles tomorrow morning."

Like any growing boy, Harm's chief motivation for anything was food, so he ran up the stairs with a speed that made Trish's head spin. Harm loved to do everything fast. He'd been like that from day one. From start to finish, Trish had only been in labor with Harm for three hours - and that was the only time she'd been grateful her son rushed through something.

As much as it amused her, Harm's need for speed was also something that worried her greatly.

Once he reached the top of the stairs, Harm turned around and gave his mother another signature grin. "After we get waffles, can I come with you to help you set up your classroom?"

Trish nodded. "Of course, if you want to."

Harm may idolize his father, but he also adored his mother and loved spending time with her. Trish suspected that him wanting to go with her to the high school also had something to do with the fact that Harm would take any excuse to get out of being babysat by Miss Maude, the elderly woman who lived down the street. According to Harm she was "the most boring person on the planet."

"Night, Mom."

Trish smiled up at Harm from the bottom of the staircase. "Good night baby. I love you. I'll see you in the morning."

"Love you too. See you in the morning, too."

That was what they said to each other every night, the same thing. Good night. I love you. I'll see you in the morning. Trish started it after Harm's father went missing and their world turned upside down and was filled with uncertainty. It was her way of giving Harm (and herself) some structure and comfort. There was no uncertainty in the fact that Harm and Trish would see each other every morning. They would both be there, they would both wake up, the sun would rise on another day. She wasn't expecting the saying to stick, but it had.

It was her subtle way of telling Harm she would always be there for him.

Trish opened yet another box filled with artwork from past students that served as decor for her classroom. She didn't understand why the school made teachers pack up their classrooms at the end of each school, as if they were never coming back. School administration claimed that it made summer cleaning easier, and while that may have been true, Trish just saw it as a big inconvenience.

It also didn't help that her helper was not helping.

"Harm."

She looked up from a stack of Dali-inspired artwork to see her son was spinning himself on one the classroom stools.

"Harmon."

Trish marveled at the fact that her son was quite literally always in motion. He could go nonstop for hours on end, with zero interruptions, and then pass out on the couch in the middle of MASH or at the dinner table (that had only been a one time occurrence, and Trish couldn't blame him. She didn't really like pot roast either)

"Harmon James Rabb Junior."

She stopped Harm by reaching out and placing her hands on his shoulders. He looked up at her, startled.

"Honey," Trish told him, "I just swept the floor. It would really drive me up the wall if you threw up on it."

Harm nodded. He really wasn't that dizzy, but he didn't say anything. He didn't want to drive his mother up a wall unless it was for a worthy cause.

"I have an idea," Trish said. "A game you could play."

"A game?" Harm immediately straightened up, always eager to play a game.

Trish nodded. "Uh-huh. With this game, you have two options. The first one is you can sit still. The second one is to help."

Helping your mother unpack boxes in her art room wasn't an ideal activity for Harm, but it was better than sitting still. Anything was better than sitting still.

"I'll help."

Harm slid off the stool begrudgingly, and Trish handed him a stack of charcoal sketches. A roll of masking tape was placed squarely on top of the pile.

"You can start with these," she said with a smile.

"Where should I put them?"

"Anywhere you want. This classroom is your oyster."

Trish grabbed a large aqua vase by the handles and heaved it out of its box. It was extremely cumbersome and a little lopsided if you looked at it a certain day, but Trish still brought it back every year. Like 90% of the art she hung up in her classroom every year, it was a gift from one of her former students. She was beloved by her students, even some of the ones who didn't possess that much talent.

She'd left teaching when Harm was born, but had returned four years later after Harm Sr. went to Vietnam. It was a way of a distraction to keep herself from obsessing over her husband's safety. After he went MIA it was the perfect way to allow herself to forget, even if it was only for a few hours, that her husband was never coming home.

Across the room, Harm had chosen a random corner to tape up the charcoal sketches. He didn't exactly have an eye for interior design like his mother had. He was named Harmon Rabb Jr for a reason.

He tore off a piece of tape with his teeth, making sure Trish didn't see so she would go up the wall.

"Do you love Frank?" he asked.

Trish finally finished lugging the vase over to its respective spot near the window where she hung her plants and sat it down with thud.

"What?" she asked, trying to catch her breath. She wasn't twenty anymore, maybe she shouldn't go around carrying forty pound vases.

"Do you love Frank?" Harm repeated, without turning around. He smoothed the first charcoal sketch against the wall, trying to get the masking tape to stay down.

Trish definitely heard him that time. She sighed. She should've known last night wouldn't be the end of their conversation about Frank. Harm was shockingly, alarmingly persistent for an eight-year-old. Every year at Christmastime, he spent every day pestering her for any information about what his presents were and where they were hidden. She was rapidly running out of clever hiding spots.

Trish took a deep breath. "Yes," she said. "Yes I do."

"Okay," Harm said as he ripped off another piece of tape with his teeth.

Okay…Trish thought. "Does that...bother you?"

"No. I don't really care."

Harm's bluntness left Trish to be inclined that he was telling the truth, so she didn't press him to tell her how he really felt. Harm wore his heart on his sleeve, for as much as his tried to be stoic (which was impossible, considering he was still in elementary school), and Trish knew that if something was really troubling him, he'd come to her.

"Do I have to love him?" Harm looked over his shoulder at his mother, eyebrows raised in skepticism.

Trish shrugged. "Not yet, but I hope that if Frank and I stay together, you will."

Harm turned back to the charcoal sketches for a moment, only to turn back around to face Trish.

"Am I gonna have to call him Dad?"

"No honey, of course not. Not if you don't want to."

"Are you gonna marry him?"

"I don't know-"

"Are we gonna have to move?"

Harm's rapid fire questions were making Trish dizzy. He talked as fast as he moved.

"Honey," she started, not really sure how to water down the complications of adult relationships so her son could understand. "I know, you have a lot of questions."

"I don't have a whole lot," Harm corrected. "It's really just those two."

Trish smiled at her son's frankness. "That's alright, but I don't have an answer right now. It's August, honey, I met Frank in March. I know five months feels like an eternity when you're eight, but that's only about thirty seconds in the adult world. Trust me."

"So...when are you gonna know?"

"I don't know, but I promise you will be the first person to know when I do know."

After that, Harm went back to taping up sketches and Trish went back to unloading the boxes (thankfully there were no more large vases). She would've played some music to fill the silence, but she hadn't found the box with the record player in it yet.

Harm held up the last of the charcoal drawings. It was a drawing of a plane, one of the old fashioned ones, like the kind the Wright brothers flew.

"Mom?" he asked.

"Yes dear?"

"I know what I want to do when I grow up."

"And what is that?" Trish looked up from an oil painting she was holding, hoping that he wasn't about say-

"Flying," Harm told her. "I wanna fly."

PRESENT DAY

WEEK 25-PART ONE
NOVEMBER 18TH, 2001

0800 EST
APARTMENT OF SARAH MACKENZIE
GEORGETOWN

"Do you wanna fly?"

Mac looked up from her cup of coffee and crossword puzzle. She raised her eyebrows. "I doubt we can find any available flights the weekend before Thanksgiving. Unless you were thinking about flying Sarah all the way to Bellville."

Harm smirked. "Now that's an idea."

"It'll be a little cold, don't you think?" Mac asked dryly, sipping from her mug. "Plus, I don't think flying in a biplane is advisable for someone nearing the third trimester."

"Good point."

"Plus, Bellville is only a three hour drive from here. If we leave early enough to beat the traffic, it won't be that bad."

Harm nodded, sitting down a plate of waffles. Mac had been craving those a little extra lately. "Yeah, that'll work."

"If we get up at about 0230 and leave at 0300, we should get there at about 0700," Mac said, sliding a waffle onto her plate and reaching for the syrup. Harm shook his head and disbelief.

"Do you have an itinerary?"

"No, but I could make one."

"Mac-"

"Do you want me to make one?"

Harm smirked. "No, that's fine. I've driven there before, I think I can manage."

"Okay," Mac smeared some butter onto her waffle. "I'm thinking about packing today, so I won't have to worry about it while I'm wrapping up things at work."

As Mac cut up her waffle, Harm watched her with amusement. "You know this is supposed to be a vacation, right?"

"Yeah," Mac answered through a mouthful. "Why?"

"You're planning for this like it's a court case," Harm said.

"I just like to be prepared."

"Believe me, I know," Harm took a sip of his coffee.

It was Sunday, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, to be exact. Harm and Mac would be leaving Tuesday night (technically very early on Wednesday morning-if they went by Mac's plan) and driving up to Harm's grandmother's farm in Pennsylvania.

Usually they spent Thanksgiving at Bud and Harriet's, but Trish and Frank wanted to see Mac and get a chance to properly meet her before the baby came, and they were booked through Christmas with gallery-related activities. Plus, Mac and Harriet were still on the outs, so Mac figured there would be no love lost if her and Harm were no-shows that year. Harm had given them a week's notice, so it hadn't been that rude. Mac doubted Harriet would be that upset, anyway, judging by the cold shoulder she'd been giving Mac at work lately.

Mac was excited to see the farm, after all that Harm had told her about it, but she was also nervous. Trish was a very nice woman, but that was back when Mac was just Harm's coworker. Now, Mac was Harm's pregnant girlfriend, so the dynamic would be decidedly different.

Harm watched the worry cloud Mac's expression, and immediately took action. "Don't worry," he told her. "They'll love you."

She only nodded. Little did Harm know, Mac had a rather abysmal track record when it came to being introduced to the parents and family of significant others. Chris' parents thought she was a slut, her college boyfriend Mark's parents immediately turned their noses up at her, and Mic-Mic had never 'found the time' to introduce Mac to his father and older sister, and Mac still didn't know what to make of that.

"I'm just a little jittery, that's all." What if they think I'm slut like Harriet? And Chris' parents? And my dad? And Lt. Singer? And everyone else apparently.

"Mac," Harm chuckled. "My mom probably sees you as my saving grace. If anything, she'll be more concerned with me, instead of you."

I'm back! My trip was lovely, but I'm very glad to be home! I missed my bed and my dogs very much. I'm still rather jet-lagged, but I'm coherent enough to post these two chapters.

Even though this isn't technically the halfway point in the story, I personally consider it to be the halfway point. While I was re-reading some parts, I noticed that there was distinct shift in tone after Mic left. It was completely unintentional, but something that I noticed nonetheless. I don't really know how to describe it without giving away too much, so I'll just leave it for you guys to notice. Things don't necessarily become angsty, but rather...more serious?

One of my favorite parts of writing is developing characters, and while the JAG characters already existed and were developed before I got ahold of them, there are certain aspects of them that I wanted to focus on more. For this section of the story, as you can probably already tell, I decided to focus on Trish and Harm's relationship as mother and son. The show spent so much time focusing on Harm and his father (rightfully so, of course) that I was often left wondering what Harm's relationship was like with his mother, beyond what little we saw of it on the show. She was basically raising Harm on her own while Harm Sr. was deployed and when he went missing, so I felt like she deserved her time in the spotlight, just for that alone.

Basically these next few chapters are me just taking my headcanons and running with them, so I hope you guys enjoy. And what better backdrop is there than Thanksgiving to talk about family trauma?

-Harper