MONDAY AFTERNOON

11 JUNE 2001

JAG HEADQUARTERS

FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA

Mac tossed her briefcase on the floor behind her desk with a frustrated sigh and plopped down in her chair. This case was so far shaping up to be a colossal waste of her time, but at least it was Mattoni dealing with the defense and not her. There was no way right now that she'd be able to deal with an obviously guilty client. What had the Admiral been thinking giving her this case? A newly minted lawyer barely past the bar exam could probably win a conviction in his sleep. She was a senior attorney and the Admiral's Chief of Staff.

Propping her elbows on the desk, she pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, wondering what the Admiral would say if she asked to take a couple of hours of leave time and to head on home. Despite the fact that JAG had been shorthanded the past two and a half weeks, she felt that she would be a lot more use at home than she currently was at work.

"Colonel?" Harriet asked.

Mac looked up, startled, to find Harriet standing in the door, a worried expression on the younger woman's face. She hadn't even heard her approach. Smiling weakly, she motioned Harriet into the office. Harriet closed the door behind her and sat down, studying Mac intently.

Mac pretended not to notice the scrutiny, busying herself with checking her e-mail. She'd tried to keep up with it while she'd been on leave, but keeping her inbox manageable had hardly been foremost in her mind. "Is there something I can do for you, Lieutenant?" she asked, not unkindly, but purposely using Harriet's rank in the hope that she could keep the conversation professional.

"Actually, I wanted to see how you're doing, Ma'am," Harriet said. "I was just interviewed by Commanders Fleming and Turner and – and I can't believe Mic would do something like that!"

"He's angry," Mac said quietly with a shrug. She continued before Harriet could reply. "Harriet, we probably shouldn't talk about this. We don't want it to look like I'm influencing your testimony in any way."

"But is it really going to get that far, Ma'am?" Harriet asked in a worried tone. "Several of us knew that you were planning to call off the wedding. I told Bud, and the Admiral figured it out on his own…" She trailed off at Mac's expression. "Sorry, Ma'am, but everyone here knows what flying means to Commander Rabb. There's no way any of us could think what's being suggested."

"I know, Harriet," Mac said, "and I appreciate that. I'm sure Harm will, too. But..."

"I know," Harriet said reluctantly. "We shouldn't talk about the case."

"It'll be okay, Harriet," Mac said, trying to assure herself as much as the other woman. "Just tell the truth, and everything will come out as it's supposed to…" She trailed off, focusing her gaze on her computer monitor again.

"Colonel…Mac, how are you doing?" Harriet asked. Mac looked up from her work again, not really surprised at her forwardness. Although Harriet understood the lines that had to be respected in the military, she sometimes managed to set protocol aside out of concern for her friends.

Mac forced a smile, although she could see Harriet wasn't quite convinced. "I'm fine," she said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. "Just trying to get back into the swing of things at work. I guess it's good that things seem so quiet around here right now. It'll give me a chance to concentrate on my husband…"

"You like saying that," Harriet said.

"I guess I never thought it was going to happen," Mac admitted with a soft smile. She shook herself, realizing that this conversation was getting entirely too personal. "Was there anything else, Harriet?"

"I'm not sure, Ma'am," Harriet said, looking down at her shoes. "It's probably not the right time…I'm not really sure there is a good time, but..."

"Harriet," Mac said firmly, repeating herself until the other woman looked up. "If there's not really a right time, just go ahead and say it. Putting off whatever you have to say probably isn't going to make it any easier."

Harriet took a deep breath. "Well, the morning after the crash, I helped Mic call all the guests and tell them…He didn't know that the wedding was off, so he was telling everyone that he'd let them know when the wedding was rescheduled. I didn't want to say anything different with him listening, so..." She trailed off, an apologetic look on her face.

"So you told the people you spoke to that the wedding was only postponed," Mac finished for her.

"Yeah," Harriet admitted reluctantly.

"It's okay, Harriet," Mac said, sighing. "It wasn't your place to tell Mic that the wedding was off, even if he would have believed you. So there are guests who don't know everything was cancelled?"

"You see," Harriet said, "I've been getting calls from a few of the people I spoke to two weeks ago. Don't worry, I told them that it has since been cancelled. That's not the problem."

"So what is the problem?" Mac asked in confusion.

"Some people are just unbelievably rude," Harriet said in a frustrated rush. "You've just cancelled a wedding and there's a lot to take care of, even if you didn't have to worry about an injured husband and all that. You'll get around to returning the gifts that were sent. It's just incredibly crass that with everything that's on your mind right now, people would ask when you'll get around to returning stuff."

If the situation hadn't been so upsetting, Mac might have laughed. Harriet sounded an awful lot like the mother she tried so hard not to emulate, or at least sounded like Mac's vision of her. "I have had a lot on my mind," Mac said, "and…I guess I've been trying not to think about it."

In fact, she hadn't thought about the gifts at all since the day Harm had been transferred to Bethesda. When she'd gone over to her apartment to pick up some of her things, she hadn't been in any condition to deal with it, so she'd just shoved the boxes of gifts off into a corner of the living room where they'd be out of Sergei's way.

Trish had offered to help deal with it, but given the tenuous state of the truce they'd reached during the week Harm was in the hospital, Mac had been reluctant to involve her mother-in-law in the mess that was her life. The gifts had ended up piled together, and once she'd walked out of her apartment, she'd managed to put it all out of her mind.

"I'm surprised Sergei hasn't asked what all the boxes in the living room are," Mac tried to joke, wincing internally at the look on Harriet's face. She sighed. "I guess I should set aside an evening soon to deal with it."

"Why don't I meet you at your apartment one night this week?" Harriet suggested. "We can order pizza or Chinese and spend a few hours getting everything boxed back up. We could pack everything in the back of my minivan, and I can take you to the post office the next afternoon after work to drop everything off."

"That would be fine, Harriet," Mac said, before she remembered. "Actually, I have access to an SUV now. We can pack everything up in that, and you could ride with me over to the post office after work the next day. I can drop you off at home after we're finished mailing everything, so Bud doesn't have to worry about finding a ride home."

"I guess you do have a larger car now," Harriet said with a light laugh. "It's kind of strange getting used to the whole "what's his is yours and what's yours is his" thing, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Mac said softly. After a moment, she shook herself out of her revere. She had work to do, which might help her not think about her personal situation. She'd actually managed to do that for stretches at a time that morning. It was easier to do so when she'd been contemplating how to keep her cool in the face of a defendant who couldn't tell the truth to save his life. "Give me a couple of days. Hmm, why don't I have Sergei spend Wednesday evening with Harm? That'll give us the apartment to ourselves."

"That'll work for me, Ma'am," Harriet said. "Bud's in Norfolk today and tomorrow, so neither day would have been good for me. Unless something happens, he should return Wednesday morning, so he can watch AJ."

"Why don't you bring AJ with you?" Mac suggested. Her eyes lit up at the thought of spending a few hours with her godson. "I'd love to spend some time with him."

"If you're sure he won't be in the way," Harriet said. Mac shook her head. "Okay, Ma'am. We'll see you Wednesday evening, say about 1800?"

"1800 is fine," Mac agreed. It would give her a chance to stop at Harm's apartment…their apartment and make sure Harm was set for the evening. She opened a folder in front of her. "Close the door on your way out, Lieutenant."

Harriet stood and briefly snapped to attention. "Yes, Ma'am," she said before turning and leaving the office.

Mac tried to read the report in front of her, but after reading over the first two paragraphs three times without comprehending a single word, she leaned back with a sigh.

When she and Harm had decided to get married, their plan had seemed so simple. Everything would just be between the two of them for the time being. She'd properly break things off with Mic, and Harm would do the same with Renee. Then they would then enjoy being married, keeping everything between them – except for telling the Admiral, which they were required to do by military regulations - until the dust from previous relationships had settled. It was never supposed to be like this, and now all their friends were getting swept up in the wake.

~*~*~*~