Second Chances: Chapter 54
Stardate 51890
January 2375
Hawaii, Earth
B'Elanna Torres twirled the stem of her wine glass with one hand as she stared out at the stars, barely holding onto a PADD with her other hand.
She had no idea what she was supposed to say to Tom.
She sighed, taking what had to have been the hundredth look at the blank PADD, and in a sudden burst of anger, barely stopped herself from throwing it off the lanai and toward the ocean below.
How did she not know what to say to Tom? What kind of wife doesn't know what to say to her own husband?
She checked the chronometer: 0100. She had been out on the lanai for over three hours, and still had yet to dictate a single word. To be fair, she was working on lesson plans for her courses for some of that time, but still couldn't figure out why this was so hard. She had never been at a loss for words around Tom, not even when she was an angry plebe who had some biting remark to every order he gave.
With a resolute air, she again brought up the PADD, this time closing the dictation and opening a comm channel. *You're up late,* Sarah Carey greeted her from Pennsylvania. B'Elanna heard the sounds of two young boys getting ready for school in the background, and smiled slightly at the thought of the controlled chaos of a family in the morning.
"I'm always up late," B'Elanna pointed out. "I've been writing lesson plans. This teaching thing is hard."
She heard Sarah's laugh through the comm. *Who would have thought?* the fourth-grade teacher teased. *At least yours should have some sense of decorum.*
"You've met Starfleet cadets," B'Elanna reminded her. "Your fourth graders are probably easier to deal with. They certainly can't be talking back as much as these cadets do."
*Somehow, B'Elanna, I doubt any cadets are talking back to you.* B'Elanna snorted, but did have to admit—at least, to herself—that she intentionally kept them a little bit afraid of her to minimize that. *What's on your mind? No, Sean, stop teasing your brother. Patrick, go get your shoes.*
"Have you written a letter for Joe yet?" B'Elanna asked, her words coming out in a rush.
*I thought I turned it into Pathfinder a few days ago. Did you guys not get it? I can send it again.*
"I haven't checked," B'Elanna said. "I'm sure it's there. I'll check when I go into the office. I just…" her voice trailed off. "What did you talk about?"
There was a long pause on the other end. *I told him about the boys. I asked for stories about the Delta quadrant to use in lesson plans. And I told him that I miss him, and I hope he stays safe, and I look forward to hearing from. And I apologized for giving up on him and thinking that he was dead. There was a lot of crying.*
"I don't know what to say," B'Elanna admitted. "I'm not good at casual correspondence. I write technical manuals and engineering lesson plans."
Sarah laughed. *Engineers,* she said teasingly, then became serious. *You can't fit four years' worth of life into one letter, B'Elanna. Don't even try. And he's going to be happy to hear from you, regardless of what you say. Just… talk to him. Tell him about Izzy. Tell him you miss him.*
"Thanks," B'Elanna replied, even though she was no closer to figuring out what she was supposed to say.
*We're under about twenty centimeters of snow here,* Sarah said, the non-sequitur making B'Elanna blink. *How would you feel about some visitors this weekend, for a couple of hours on Sunday?*
"I think Izzy and I could find some time for that," B'Elanna replied with a smile.
*Great. I'll comm you when we're getting ready to head out. We need to get to school. I'll see you then.*
"See you then," B'Elanna replied before closing the comm link.
She got up from her chair to refill her glass of wine and reopened the dictation program on the PADD. The cursor blinked at her, waiting to start, and she hated that blinking light. She twisted her wedding band with her thumb as she stared at it. She didn't remember exactly when she started wearing it again—sometime after they moved back to Earth, once she realized that her job no longer involved pieces of machinery that the thin band of medal could get caught on—but she caught herself fidgeting with it often, the way she used to catch Tom fidgeting with his without realizing it.
Finally, she took a deep breath.
"Hey, Tom," she started. "It's almost 0200 in Hawaii and I have to be at the Academy in about five hours to teach a class on Dominion technology, and I'm sitting here on the lanai with a glass of wine, trying to figure out what to say. The wine is a cab sav, and every time I open a bottle, I think about what you said every time you opened a bottle of cab sav—'Ah, the wine that gave you a Starfleet career.'" She smiled, then continued, "You'd be laughing at me if you were here, because it's almost 19 degrees out and I'm wrapped in a blanket. 'Only you can move to Hawaii and still find it too cold.'"
She took a deep breath. "I miss you," she said in a rush. "I've missed you every day since you left for DS9. I've missed having you around to be a dad to Izzy, but more than that… I've just missed having you around." She paused again. "I'm glad I got to see you on the comm the other day. I wish we had longer. I wish we could have actually talked. I wish we were taking now and I wasn't just rambling incoherently into a PADD." She smiled. "I'm glad you got to see Izzy, even though it was because she was being her usual ornery self. She wasn't supposed to be in the lab—Kahless, I'm not that bad of a mother, that I let my preschooler run around Starfleet research labs—but when we went into the lab to investigate your attempts to respond to our message, she threw a fit when we tried leaving her with your mother. And your father is a complete push-over when it comes to giving his grandchildren what they want. So she came in with us to the lab, and, well, you saw how well that went." She laughed. "She is just like you. My mother used to say that my punishment would be to have a daughter just like me, but nobody ever prepared me for what would happen when I had a daughter just like you. Well, maybe not just like you. She has my temper, which has made for some interesting tantrums. And she's stubborn, but don't think I'm taking all the blame for that one!" She smiled at the thought of the knowing grin on his face. "I didn't think I could love someone the way I love her. She's changed me—Nicki says it's impossible to be a mother and not be changed by that. I actually leave work at reasonable hours now, believe it or not." She smiled, again imagining his disbelieving expression. "I wasn't sure I'd be able to do this without you," she admitted. "I thought I'd be too much like my mother. I thought I'd demand too much of her or be too hard on her or… something. I was afraid I'd turn her that angry person I was when arrived in San Francisco.
"My mother died," she said abruptly. "After you disappeared, a little before Izzy was born. I went to Qo'noS to see if we could make amends, and I thought… I thought that maybe we could. That maybe me being about to be a mother would mean that we could find a place that we could move forward from, together. But before we could see… she died." She gave a bitter chuckle. "It wasn't a good year. And then Izzy was born, and that was hard.
"But I figured it out. As much as anybody figures it, I think. Nicki and your parents are always saying that every parent is making it up as they go. I'm sure Sydney thinks otherwise, but, well, that's Sydney. They've been really helpful, your family. Nicki's a pain in the ass most of the time, as I'm sure you could guess, but having a pediatrician in the family comes in handy at times. Sydney… Sydney's helpful in her own way. We go running together a few times a week. She got me running marathons, if you can believe that. I tried to teach her how to pole vault in return, but she's terrible at it." She smiled at the memory; Sydney really had been terrible at vaulting. She barely cleared two meters, and that had taken her quite a few tries. She refused to try again after that day.
"I guess what I'm trying to say is that we're okay, Tom. We miss you, and we're working to find a way to get you back home, but we're okay. And we need you to be okay, too. We need you to stay safe. I need you to be safe, to come back home." She frowned slightly. "I think the most over-used phrase at Starfleet weddings is, 'you're my tether.' I think I've been to half a dozen weddings where one or both officers says that in their vows, talks about those damn second-classman space walks and how their partner makes them feel that confidence of being tethered. You were never my tether, Tom. You never tried to hold me down anywhere, never tried to keep me anywhere. You were… you were my guidance system. No," she corrected quickly. "You were my compass. You pointed me in the right direction, but made me figure out how to get there myself. Four years ago, someone put a magnet on that compass, and I got a little lost. I got a little turned around. I think I've figured out where I'm going now. It might not be the direction you pointed me in back when we met, but that happens. Make it home, Tom. We can plot a new course together, the three of us. I want to see where that takes us."