More of Mac and her mom. There are similar warnings for this chapter as there were for the last one. Rape is also discussed briefly in this chapter, so be weary of that.

Chapter Forty-Six:
Mac & Deanne

APRIL 1999
FRESNO, CALIFORNIA

Mac stayed with her father until Father Genaro checked his pulse and assured her that he had passed. Then she promptly released Joe Mackenzie's hand and walked away from him one final, blessed time. It wasn't blessed because of some religious catharsis, it was blessed because Mac would never have to lay eyes on that man ever again. But Father Genaro looked so hopeful that Mac allowed him to believe she'd 'seen the light.'

After making arrangements to have Joe cremated and telling Father Genaro he could do what he pleased with the ashes, Mac headed out of the hospice center. She dusted her hands off her skirt, and then wrung her hands together. In the middle of the gravel parking lot, Mac stopped and stared down at her hands. There was nothing on them, but Mac still felt dirty.

She'd held hands with a dying man who'd spent his entire drinking and using his fists to get whatever he wanted. Nothing could be done to change that fact, and Mac was probably overthinking the significance of the gesture, but she couldn't shake the sense of betrayal. By walking back in to hold her father's hand in his final moments, Mac felt as though she'd betrayed the woman who had betrayed her so many years ago. Her mother.

She deserved it, Mac told herself, repeating it a few times to try and convince herself it was true. She left you. She abandoned you. Remember the day she left? She left the day after your fucking birthday. Now you can't even celebrate your birthday without thinking of her. Remember how awful you felt? Remember how lonely it was?

The other side of Mac, the angel on her other shoulder, had to remind her that she was only recalling half the story. Yes her mother left, yes she had abandoned her, but would she have done it if Joe Mackenzie hadn't done all that he did?

Mac didn't have to think long before she came up with her answer. No. As much as Mac had been hurt by her mother, she couldn't deny that she loved her.

"You're my favorite girl. You know that, right?"

"You're my favorite Mommy."

Was it enough? Mac knew that her mother's love for her was fierce, even after all those years. Deanne said herself that the only reason she came was for Mac. But was it enough? Was Deanne's love enough to outweigh what she had done?

"Sarah?"

Mac looked up from her hands. Her mother was standing a few feet away, in front of what was ostensibly her car. She was looking at Mac worriedly, and for the first time that day Mac felt some semblance of home. The one thing, other than the obvious things, that stuck out to Mac most vividly about her childhood was her mother worrying.

"You okay, sweetheart?" Deanne asked. It was on the tip of Mac's tongue to tell her not to call her sweetheart, that she'd forfeited that right a long time ago, but it had been such a long day, Mac didn't have it in her.

"Yeah," Mac nodded, looking over her shoulder at her rental car. She really needed to get going.

"Oh-" Deanne started to step back. "Do you have somewhere you need to be?"

Mac looked away from her car and back at her mother. "No," she shook her head. "I took a few days off work," she looked down at her feet, nudging at a pebble with the toe of her heel. "So yeah, I'm free."

"That's good," Deanne reached out, placing a hand on Mac's upper arm. "Honey, if you need to talk-"

"You want to talk about Dad?" Mac looked at her incredulously.

"I can if you want to."

Mac glanced down at her arm, and Deanne removed her hand without Mac having to ask. "I'm surprised you're not angry with me," she said.

"Why on earth would I be angry with you?" Deanne frowned.

"I just went in there and held hands with the man who spent every night you were together abusing you," Mac told her. "You should be angry with me."

"And I left you with that man," Deanne replied without missing a beat.

Mac sighed. If they were going to get on the hamster wheel of self pity again, she would get in her car and leave. "He never hit me." Well, he tried to hit me that one time, but he was so drunk he missed.

"Good," Deanne nodded. "That way I won't have to go in there and make sure he dies twice."

Mac smirked. She looked over her shoulder at the hospice center, halfway expecting Father Genaro to come rushing out there and ask if she wanted to be baptized. For someone who only went to church occasionally on Christmas Eve and rarely on Easter, this religious experience was basically a heroin shot to the arm of godliness that she hadn't asked for.

"I can forgive you," Mac said. "But him-" she paused. "I don't know."

Deanne pursed her lips. "Well the Father believed his soul was worth saving."

"What do you think?"

"I think that if Joe Mackenzie wanted forgiveness, he should've asked God for it. He shouldn't have put that on you," Deanne looked up at Mac, the pain and anger evident in her eyes.

"I can handle it," Mac said. "I've been through worse."

The two of them stood there in silence. Too many things needed to be said; their conversation would've taken up too much space for that tiny gravel parking lot. Mac wanted things to be perfect, for once in her life. She wanted her and her mother to have some tearful reunion and mend all things broken between them. But Mac knew that wasn't possible, at least not in that parking lot on that day, less than an hour after her deadbeat father died.

Joe Mackenzie had ultimately been the wedge between Mac and Deanne, but now that the wedge was gone, there was a void in its place.

"I think I should-" Mac gestured to her rental car. "I should be going," she did the one thing a Marine never did; retreat. She turned around before Deanne could say anything else and darted off to the car. Once inside, Mac just sat there. She spent a few moments staring at the tree in front of the car, her hands poised perfectly at ten and two on the steering wheel. She wanted to get out of there more than anything, yet found herself rooted to the spot.

When she heard someone tapping on her car window, Mac jumped, stifling a curse in case it was Father Genaro coming back to spread more of the gospel.

But it wasn't the Father; it was Deanne. Mac rolled down her window and Deanne held out a small, crumpled piece of blue paper. "What is this?" Mac asked, taking the paper and unfolding it. Scrawled on it was a Portland address with a phone number below it. The only reason Mac could read the chicken scratch was because her and her mother had the same handwriting.

"You don't have to contact me," Deanne told her. "This is only in case you...want to, I guess."

Mac knew looking down at the note that she would never use it, maybe never even look at it again, but she wasn't a heartless monster. She wasn't going to tell Deanne that.

"Thank you…" Mac ran her thumb over her mother's address. She lived in Oregon. Those two years Mac spent waiting for Deanne to come home before she left herself, she'd only been two states away. The irony made Mac want to laugh and scream at the same time.

"You went to Oregon?" Mac asked, trying not to make it sound like an accusation.

Deanne nodded. "After drifting around for a while, it seemed like a good enough place to settle down. What about you? You said you had to take some time off work-"

"Only a couple days," Mac assured her. "I'm in DC right now. I have an apartment in Georgetown."

"Oh-" Deanne paused. "What do you do?"

It suddenly occurred to Mac that her mother had no concept of what her life was like now. "I'm a lawyer for the Judge Advocate General."

"You are?" Deanne smiled. "That's great, honey. I'm so glad - I'm so glad you turned out okay."

"I am too," Mac nodded, allowing her mother to see a small smile. Maybe I shouldn't bring up how I fell off the wagon a year ago or how I had an affair with my commanding officer. Or about how I shot my ex-husband.

Deanne looked at her warily. "You're not still with that Chirs Ragle, are you?"

Mac blinked, laughing at the absurdity of her still being with Chris. "No," she answered, watching as Deanne's shoulders sagged with relief. "We did get married, but uh…it didn't work out."

"Thank goodness," Deanne said before she could stop herself. "Well, no I didn't mean it like that-"

"It's okay," Mac smirked. "It turns out you were always right about him," she looked down at the sticky note, then back up at her mother. "You know what, could you um-" she reached for the glove compartment, then realized she didn't have her own car. Mac then went for her purse, finding a pen that barely worked and a gas station receipt. On the back of the receipt, Mac quickly scribbled out her address and phone number.

"Here," she handed the receipt to Deanne. "In case you ever need anything."

Mac didn't know what it was, but there was something tugging inside her that made her want to tell her mother everything she'd gone through since she'd last seen her. Mac didn't even really consider Deanne Mackenzie her mother anymore, but she still felt compelled to tear herself open and bear everything out to her. She didn't know if she would ever see Deanne again, so she needed to know these things. Mac wanted her to know who her daughter had been.

Mac wanted Deanne to know about the car crash and what had happened to Eddie; she probably didn't even know he wasn't alive anymore. She wanted Deanne to know about how Chris had gotten arrested and Mac had been pissed off and brave enough to dump him and go off to college on a scholarship her uncle had forced her to apply for.

She also wanted Deanne to know the nitty gritty stuff; the stuff Mac had been too mortified and secretive to even tell Harm about. Deanne needed to know about how Mac had dated a guy in college and thought he would be the guy she would marry until she'd blown it by cheating on him - multiple times before he caught her, even. Turns out she'd been more scared of commitment than being labeled a cheater.

Or about the time when she'd gotten a nose piercing, only to yank it out herself three weeks after getting it when she found out she'd gotten into OCS - face piercings weren't exactly becoming of an officer. For such a small wound, it had taken an insanely long time to close back up. In fact it had still been healing by the time she'd gone off to OSC. One morning when she was sparring with another woman at the gym she'd been too slow to dodge a right hook and had been hit squarely in the nose, her barely-closed piercing splitting right back open. There had been an unreasonable amount of blood dribbling down from the side of Mac's nose, down her mouth and dripping onto the mat below. There had been so much blood that Mac's sparring partner had thought she'd broken her nose. They hadn't worn any protective headgear, joking earlier that they 'weren't out to kill each other.'

The piercing scar was still there, visible if Mac stared at her right nostril for long enough.

Mac should've told Deanne about how she'd gone celibate her first year of law school, in order to focus on her studies and because she somehow saw her father in every man she met and decided men weren't worth her time anymore. One of her friends had looked up a word for it. 'Misandrist' - a rebuff to misogyny that signified a prejudice towards men. Mac had liked the way the word sounded and it had become an inside joke between her and her friend group.

She also wanted to tell her mom about how much she loved being a JAG lawyer, but also tell her about how lonely it was, about how badly she wanted to 'have it all' like so many other women; a fruitful career and a loving family. Deanne needed to know how badly Mac wanted to be a mom, even though it terrified her.

Later that night, Mac found herself unable to fall asleep, despite how exhausted she was. Every time she closed her eyes, flashbacks from the day-and her life-kept playing through her head like some sadistic movie reel.

One blink. Her father squeezed her hand right before he died. Two blinks. Watching Chris's body fall to the ground. Three blinks. Cutting her hair at Red Rock Mesa. Four blinks. Cleaning the gash on her mother's arm. Five blinks. A long-ago Saturday morning fixing waffles in the kitchen.

Tossing back the covers and turning on the lamp, Mac grabbed her phone from the bedside table and opened it. She stared at it with much trepidation, trying to decide which number to dial as if her life depended on it. Finally, she dialed, and waited anxiously for the person to pick up.

"Hello?"

Mac breathed a silent sigh of relief. "Hey Harm. It's me."

"Mac?"

She glanced at the clock. It was 0100 where she was, meaning it was 2200 in DC. Harm wouldn't be in bed this early, Mac knew that for a fact. Part of the reason they got along so well was that they were both night owls by nature.

Jordan, Mac thought suddenly, Shit-he's probably with her.

"Are you busy?" Mac asked. "I could call back later."

"No, no, I'm just going over some files," Harm replied. "What's up? How did everything go?"

Mac took a deep breath, trying to calm the shakiness in her voice. "Well," she started. "It's all over. It's done."

"Is that it?"

"Yeah, for the most part."

"Mac," Harm said, using that infuriatingly concerned tone he always liked to use with her. "Come on."

She sighed. "Harm, I don't want to talk about it. At least not right now."

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Mac began to panic. She opened her mouth to beg him not to hang up when he spoke. "Okay," he said. "Do you want me to talk to you?"

Mac's brow furrowed. "About what?"

"I could tell you about my day."

"Oh…"

"Do you want me to?" he asked.

"Sure," she nodded. "Yeah, that sounds nice."

As Harm began to relay the events of his day, which were mundane in comparison to the events from Mac's day, Mac laid back down on the stiff hotel bed. She turned over on her side, turning all her focus to Harm's voice. She imagined he was there with her, holding her. The loneliness became suffocating, and Harm's voice was the only thing keeping it from swallowing her whole.

MAY 2001
GEORGETOWN, VIRGINIA

Mac got up after never falling asleep in the first place, sitting up slowly so she wouldn't wake Mic up by accident. Thankfully he didn't stir; coming down from the high of what he considered to be a successful engagement party had left him considerably exhausted. Mac however, hadn't been so lucky. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Harm. She saw him standing with her on the Admiral's porch, from a third person perspective, as if she were an outside observer-she wished more than anything that was the case. But it wasn't. Mac was in the middle of this awful situation, and there was no way for her to get out.

As quietly as she could, Mac slipped out of bed, taking her cellphone and one of her pillows with her. She crept to the bathroom, silently slipping inside. Without turning the light on, Mac turned on the shower and faucet. She sat down, almost mechanically, onto the bath mat below the sink. Sitting her phone down next to her, Mac buried her head into her pillow and screamed.

With tears burning in her eyes, Mac lifted her head from the pillow, listening intently to see if she'd woken up Mic. It appeared as though the running water, pillow, and wall had done their job at buffering the noise. It also helped that Mic happened to be an extremely heavy sleeper. Mac relaxed as much as she possibly could, which wasn't a lot.

There had been a permanent headache in the back of Mac's head ever since Sydney, when Mic gave her that ring. It started off barely noticeable, somewhere at the base of her neck. Over the next months, as her and Mic got closer to marriage and Mac got farther from Harm, the headache got worse. Mac tried to ignore it, but it got more and more impossible to ignore. Finally, that night, the headache got unbearable.

It felt like her head was in a vice, and it got so bad that on the way home from the Admiral's she had to keep her eyes closed because the bright traffic lights and headlights from the other cars only made the pain worse. Mic had even asked her if she was okay; Mac knew it was bad if Mic noticed she was in pain.

After taking some migraine medicine and laying awake for several hours pondering, Mac finally figured out the cause of this permanent headache. It was her brain screaming at her, telling her that she was making a mistake.

I can't marry him, was the terrifying thought that kept coming to Mac's mind, I can't leave Harm. I need Harm.

It would have to be either Mic or Harm, there was no room for compromise. There was no way they could coexist together in Mac's life, they wouldn't put up with it.

Damn him, Mac thought. She wasn't thinking of Mic as much as she was thinking of Harm. If he hadn't gone off to fly, if he hadn't kept shying away from commitment, if the two of them could just commit to what they already knew was true, Mac wouldn't be in this situation. She wouldn't have to choose between two men she cared for, and she wouldn't have this aching head or shattering heart.

Mac picked up her phone with a trembling hand. Flipping it open, Mac was at a loss as to who she could call, who she could turn to. She couldn't call Harm; that would lead to her doing something she would regret. Mac couldn't call anyone else from JAG without alarm bells going off, not to mention she'd risk having whatever she said get back to Mic. As much as liked Bud he couldn't keep a secret, and as much as trusted Harriet, she couldn't tell a lie to save her life.

Not quite grasping what she was doing, and certainly not thinking it through, Mac dialed a number she'd memorized, despite the fact she was sure she'd never use it.

Deanne picked up on the second to last ring. "Hello?"

Hearing her mother's voice was enough to push Mac over the edge. Hot tears began to roll down her cheeks and Mac couldn't speak to keep from sobbing.

"Hello?"

The only sound coming from Mac's end of the line was her breathing.

"Sarah?"

Mac gave a watery smile. "Hi Mom," she bit back a sob. "It's me, Sarah."

"What's wrong?" Deanne asked, dismayed to have to hear from her daughter when she was in such a state.

"Nothing, it's nothing," Mac tried to assure her. She looked upward, wondering if this was God's doing. She wondered if this situation was atonement for her past sins. Maybe Father Genaro saw through my act and put in a bad word for me, she thought ruefully.

"Sarah-"

"It's just...do you remember what you told me?" Mac asked, thinking back to the long ago night she wished she could forget just as fiercely as she clung to the memory of it. "That night when I was eleven? When I was-when you were-when you told me that I should never settle?"

"Yes…" Deanne answered slowly. "I remember telling you that."

"Well-" Mac drew a shaky breath. "Mom, I think I'm settling."

"Oh honey…What's happening? What's going on?"

"I-I'm engaged to this guy, and he's a good guy, and I love him, but-" Mac swallowed, taking a moment to wipe her tears away. "I don't think I can-I don't know if I want to marry him."

It was the first time Mac voiced that thought out loud. Having it out in the open made her realize how mangled and ugly it truly was. What exactly was she planning to do? Marry Mic and spend the rest of her life living a lie? Lying to him? Lying to any children they would have, if they had any? (That was another thing they hadn't discussed properly before deciding to tie the knot) Lying to everyone she cared about? Lying to Harm?

As opposed to what? Mac asked herself. Ruin my one chance at not being alone by throwing myself a guy that won't even admit he wants to be with me?

"He doesn't hurt you, does he?"

"Oh God no," Mac replied. "I just...I don't know if I love him enough."

Deanne's solution was a simple one. "Then don't marry him."

"I can't-"

"Yes you can," Mac was taken off guard by her mother's firm tone. Mac remembered her mother being a lot of things, firm not being one of them. "Sarah...don't make the same mistakes I did. Don't do something you might regret for the rest of your life."

"Mom-"

"Because you don't deserve that, honey. I might have deserved it, but you don't."

Mac was quiet for a few moments. "You didn't deserve that, either."

"Yeah, well, uh…thank you for that," Deanne's own voice was trembling by that point, and Mac got the sudden urge to flee. Too many emotions were coming to the surface, too many emotions that Mac couldn't deal with on top of the ones she was already feeling.

"Hey um, I should probably get going," Mac said, talking quickly so Deanne couldn't interrupt her and convince her to stay. "Thank you for um...listening to me. It was nice getting to talk to you again."

"Sarah, wait-"

"Mom, I gotta go. Call me if you need anything, okay?"

Mac hung up before her mother could respond, trying to ignore the guilt she felt as she did so. She stared at her phone, so lost in thought that she didn't notice the bathroom door creak open.

"Sarah?" Mic asked, looking down at her strangely, blinking through sleep-clouded eyes. Mac blinked, for a moment hearing her mother's voice instead of Mic's.

"Huh?" she jumped, finally noticing Mic was there.

He reached out and turned off the faucet. "What are you doing, love?"

Mac looked around. It finally occurred to her how strange this all looked. "Oh, nothing. I was just….I was just...meditating,"

"Meditating?"

"Yeah," Mac got to her feet and turned the light on. Mic turned off the shower. "They say it helps with stress," she gave her most convincing smile.

Mic frowned. "You're stressed?"

She shrugged. "Just some pre-wedding jitters. Nothing much," placing a quick peck on Mic's cheek, Mac headed back into the bedroom. She tried to ignore Mic's eyes watching her as she went back to bed. Mac knew she wasn't fooling anyone, let alone her own fiancé. She just hoped no one would get the guts to call her out.

By some sort of miracle, Mac was able to doze off. She woke up a little before three in the morning to Mic not in bed. Turning over, Mac noticed that Mic wasn't anywhere in the room, either. When she sat up, she noticed the chill of a breeze coming from the living room, and she knew exactly where he was.

When she first met Mic, she wouldn't have pinned him for a smoker. Granted, it wasn't something he did often. Mac noticed he only really did it when he was drinking - or stressed. For not being the most considerate man all the time, Mic had always been polite about his smoking habits - he always went out onto the balcony.

Mac's favorite thing about the whole thing was that Mic acted like she didn't know, even though she'd seen him do it multiple times. Many times, after ranting about paperwork or a stubborn client, Mic would head out to the balcony after helping Mac do the dishes, assuming that Mac couldn't see the lighter flicker through the glass (she could) or that she couldn't smell the smoke through the cracked french door. (she could)

Maybe he thought smoking made him look less desirable, viewing that as his one flaw. Mac found that hilarious - the thought that Mic believed his only flaw to be that he was a part-time smoker.

You completely lost your shit at me after Larry Kalinski's garden party and most of the time it feels like you only use me for sex, but yes, the problem with you is that you like a cigarette from time to time. That's the one thing holding you back from being the perfect man. Fucking cigarettes.

The suddenness of that thought caused Mac to stop dead in tracks. You're exhausted, she reasoned with herself, You're exhausted and you're taking it out on him.

That was the alibi Mac decided to go with, even though she knew there was more to that thought than just her being tired. But the wedding was two weeks away. Whatever ill will she felt towards her fiancé would have to be swallowed for the time being and then, hopefully, worked out in couple's therapy.

Good luck with that, Mac told herself as she made her way into the living room. Sure enough, the french doors that led out to Mac's small balcony were open and there was Mic, leaning against the balcony railing, a cigarette in one hand.

Mic noticed her almost immediately and his eyes instantly widened. He went to stomp out the cigarette, but Mac shook her head.

"I don't care that you smoke, you know that, right?" Mac asked as she joined him out on the balcony.

"I know," Mic said, though Mac didn't believe him. "I just feel bad doing it in the apartment."

Mac nodded, her eyes landing on the pack and lighter that were sitting on the balcony ledge. Mic wasn't exactly clever about hiding those, either. He kept them in the nightstand drawer next to the box of condoms they still used even though Mac thought they were going to stop using contraception when she got her IUD taken out in January. This was another thing that she tried to not let bother her - Mic was probably just trying to be a good, upstanding Catholic man and not have any children out of wedlock.

"Can I have one?" Mac asked, nodding down to the pack.

"Oh-" Mic paused in surprise. "Uh, sure?"

He passed Mac the pack and lighter. "I didn't know you smoked," he said.

"I don't," Mac replied as she flicked the lighter a couple of times. "Why are you smoking? Are you stressed?"

"It's nothing much," Mic assured her. "Just pre-wedding jitters."

Mac smirked. "Very funny."

As Mac inhaled, letting the smoke sit in her lungs just long enough to burn before exhaling, she wondered what Harm would say if he saw her. For all the grief she gave him before he stopped smoking his cigars, she had a feeling he would laugh his ass off if he saw her now. But then thinking about Harm began to burn as much as the cigarette, so Mac had to distract herself.

Seeing the lighter flicker as Mic lit up another cigarette reminded Mac of something. Leaning against the balcony, she faced him and took another drag from her own cigarette.

"Can I ask you something?"

Mic nodded. "Of course, Sarah."

"How'd you lose your virginity?" Mac giggled despite herself. Between the migraine that was still lingering around in her head, the medication Mac had taken for the migraine, and the fact that she hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in almost a week was making her feel a little loopy. This was probably the closest Mic would ever get to seeing her tipsy.

Mic chuckled and ran his fingers through his hair, either very uncomfortable with the question or the way Mac was acting.

"Come on," Mac teased. "How many times have we had sex in the past year and a half? You can tell me about your first time."

"Sarah-"

"I'll go right after you, I promise."

Mic's virginity story wasn't far off from what Mac had expected it to be. He had been seventeen and it had happened in his parent's basement while they were away on a trip. It happened while they were on the couch, watching a movie. Mac was pleased to find out that Mic did have the decency to take the girl out to dinner first.

"Was it her first time, too?" Mac asked. "The girl?"

"Oh I don't know," Mic shrugged. "I didn't ask."

Figures, Mac thought. Come to think of it, Chris hadn't asked Mac if it had been her first time either. Even though the fact that she had practically still been fourteen at the time should've been an indicator, he still didn't ask.

Mac had a strong stomach, but thinking about that night always made her want to vomit. Whenever she felt the slightest bit of guilt at Chris being dead, she remembered that night and suddenly she didn't feel so bad anymore. In fact sometimes she wished she had killed him herself, and that it had been deliberate.

You knew it was wrong, she wanted to tell him, You were a couple of months away from turning eighteen and I had turned fifteen the day before. You knew exactly what you were doing.

But Mac hadn't known at the time. She wouldn't even learn that coercion counted as rape until years later. It would also take her years to realize that him wanting to go out with her when she was that young was a little strange, and that him proposing to her a week before she turned eighteen so he could marry her the day she turned eighteen was also a little strange.

She hadn't been that much older than Chloe when it happened, another thing that made her ill to think about. Chloe would be coming into town in about a week for the wedding, and Mac suddenly found herself making a mental checklist in her mind of things to talk about with Chloe when she arrived.

Call me when you want to get on birth control. If you have to be convinced to do something, it's never a good idea. If he says he cares about you, he's lying. When you do have sex, make sure you use a condom. Don't date him if he's older than you. When he introduces you to his parents, don't lie and say you're older than you actually are-

"What about you?" Mic asked, yanking Mac out of her thoughts. "How did you lose yours?"

Mac blinked. "I was eighteen," she lied. This was the story she always told instead of the real one. "He was my prom date. We did it in the back of his car after the dance."

The last time Mic and Mac had sex was their last morning as a couple. It was the morning before Mic hopped on a plane back to Sydney and Mac found herself in Harm's apartment and, later, in his bed.

Mac didn't even know why had sex, because things certainly weren't amicable between them. Maybe it was out of habit, just them completing a task in their daily routine. Or maybe they both subconsciously knew it would be their last time together.

Mic had thrown out the box of condoms at Mac's casual suggestion a few days before the infamous rehearsal dinner, and since then they hadn't been using any contraception. Usually Mic at least tried to pull out but that morning, for some reason, he didn't.

After they finished, Mac remained in bed to sleep in for a little while longer while Mic dressed for work. When he left the bedroom, Mac heard the french doors open in the living room, and a few seconds later she caught the faint scent of a cigarette.

Maybe it was finally her intuition kicking in, but Mac suddenly realized it was over.

DECEMBER 2001
FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA

Each time she felt her child roll and tumble inside of her, Mac was reminded of what she had to do. She'd been sitting at her desk, the door to her office closed, staring at her cellphone as it sat on her desk, almost mocking her. There was a possibility she wouldn't answer, or that she wouldn't want to talk to Mac. That would be understandable, considering Mac had hung up on her the last time they'd talked.

Mac took one kick right to the ribs, and that was enough to motivate her to finally make her move. She picked up her cell phone and dialed.

Well, another chapter down! I think I'm going to start updating every other Friday instead of every Friday like I usually do. Just because the chapters are long, and it's a lot for me to edit. I also imagine it's a lot for you guys to read, LOL.

Speaking of which, thank you so much for reading!

-Harper