I attempted to make this as overtly in character as possible. However, considering the difference between Jenny-without-a-kid and Jenny-with-a-kid, and the effects children have on people, I may have failed epic.
Your thoughts?
Disclaimer: I'll own this the second purple monkeys fly out my butt.
Tag: Hiatus Part One and Two.
-Livi
"Lilly, will you braid my hair, please?"
"Sure, Caroline," the six and a half year old mumbled under her breath. She shoved away from the desk she was seated at, and threw the green fine-tipped pencil down. Today her muse wasn't striking her quite right.
Lithe fingers grasped at the blonde hair and began parting it immediately.
"So...are you going to your house for summer break?" Caroline asked.
Lilly shrugged her shoulders and bit her lip.
"I kind of wanted to go to that summer camp here."
"Oh," the blonde whispered, and winced as a strand of hair was tugged a little too hard.
"Sorry."
"It's okay. I think you should go home. I bet your mother misses you," she supplied innocently.
"I'm not sure. I mean, I guess. I miss the way she talks. And the way she hugs."
Before Bob. But she didn't add that.
"My mother hugs really good too. Some of the best mothers do. I like it how every summer everyone in my family goes to the park for a picnic everyday."
"Oh," Lilly said, and this time the tug of hair was a little intentional.
She did end up going home late June.
The heat was sickening and the flowers had all died. But mommy looked the same as she did before she left the first time, and that was enough to make everything perfect. Her hair was starting to grow back. Lilly liked her mother's hair long.
"How was school?"
"Good." A beat.
"I learned how to make a sculpture of a puppy. I painted him brown and red."
"Really? I'm sure that was really pretty, Lil," Jenny said as she tugged the heavy pink bag onto the staircase.
She smiled at her daughter. "Why don't we put that up later? Noemi wants to see you!"
"How has work been, Momma?"
The older redhead almost chokes on the cheeseburger, but doesn't.
"Good."
"That's good," Lilly says, and moves to tug her bottom lip between her teeth.
The dining room is silent for a while, and then, out of the blue, the six year old makes a rather large inquiry.
"Who's my Daddy?"
This time, Jenny does loose a bit of her food.
"Why do you ask, Lilly?"
The girl chose her words carefully, her blue eyes narrowing on her half-eaten plate.
"Because...Caroline and Ciara and even Aubrey, the mean girl in my class, have one. I want to know where mine is."
Jenny almost laughed at the possessive quality in her daughter's voice. And at the look of indignant displeasure in her young blue eyes, because it looks so much like Jethro half of her wanted to scream.
"Lily, your Daddy is a very, very good man. I was very in love with him before you were born. But, sometimes, things happen, and we have to choose between the love for ourselves, and the love for others. I wanted to do what was best for me, and you, though I didn't know about you then."
"Oh," the little girl whispers, and doesn't ever mention the subject of her father again.
They have ice cream after dinner, and they laugh because Mommy can't stop getting it on her shirt. Jenny explains to her daughter that Noemi will take care of her while she's at work and makes sure she understands she is not to play outside.
Later, the little girl is tucked in without a sound, after already haven fallen asleep on the couch.
They had watched The Lion King, because apparently that was her favorite movie. Jenny wished she'd already known that.
If you can't already tell, Jenny was just starting to regret...things.
They go to the park, one Sunday.
Trees are swaying with the gentle breeze that is a saving grace throughout the suffocating heat. Warmth from the pavement licks at their ankles as they walk, hand and hand, through the comfortable greenery.
The peace is sweet.
"Mommy...how come I have to go to school so far away?"
Jenny feels a tightening in her chest, and she swallows hard. They pause at a bench, and sit down.
Yeah, how come?
Some things were starting to get very hard to explain.
"Lilly, my job makes some people not like me very much. If they were to know about you...they might want to hurt you."
The small redhead made a face. "Why would they want to hurt me?"
"Because if you got hurt, it would make me very sad," Jenny whispered.
Lilly's eyes widened.
There was a pregnant pause.
"I miss you a lot, though," the little girl mumbled, and tucked herself into her mother's embrace.
Jenny smiled weakly, and kissed Lilly's forehead. "I do too."
James Dempsey is dead, and Jennifer Shepard still can't breath. Or think. Or speak.
Facades are easy things, and come so naturally to her by now. She wore one as she made sarcastic banter with Ducky and Jethro. She didn't protest as the crystal eyed man insisted he drive her home.
Jethro dropped her off with a worried glance, and in that moment she wished so much to kiss his mouth. She wanted to see if he still tasted of coffee and bourbon. She wanted to wrap herself up in his sawdust aroma and hide in a corner for just a little bit.
It wasn't going to happen, much to Jenny's dismay.
Everything falls the moment she is in the door.
She runs for the toilet, almost not making it. After retching for a good five minutes, Jenny wipes her mouth and splashes her face with water. The house is dark, save a light in the living room.
With heavy legs, she finally reaches her bedroom. She falls into bed.
She cries.
Then, all of a sudden, there's a warm hand on her arm, and she flinches. Lilly smells like flowers and fabric softener, and it's comforting to her mother.
Her daughter looks at her, blue eyes wide and scared, and hugs her mother.
Jenny hugs her back with as much ferocity as she can muster.
They fall asleep like that.
"Cynthia, I need to take a few days off after the tonight."
The woman's eyes widened at her boss' order.
"It's just, I want to be able to have a few days, especially after...last week."
Lilly hadn't known about her mom's abduction, about Dempsey, but she had seen her mother cry. Had crawled into bed with her and hugged her because she didn't like seeing her mother in pain.
"Of course. I'll have it arranged."
Jenny's smile is a little brittle."Thanks, Cynthia."
The White House is all it's cracked up to be. Politicians and their wives, doting on their every move. Jenny is here alone.
It's around three hours into the party when her phone rings.
She hears Ducky's words, and wants to scream. Right there, in front of everyone.
But it's a show, it always has been, so she smiles and tells Condi she has to leave, that it's urgent, that her best agent is in the hospital. The same agent she has such deep feelings for, the same agent that fathered her child.
The same agent she left in Paris almost seven years ago.
She leaves the last of those details out, though, because she still needs to have her secrets.
It doesn't cross her mind until nearly midnight that she has a daughter waiting for her at home. At 11:30 the doctor had declared Jethro stable.
Jenny calls Noemi, and somehow, the woman understands immediately.
The Hispanic woman is comforting and says that she'll stay with Lilly for the night.
After they say their parting words, Jenny calls the airport.
Then she calls the boarding school, and the summer activity's instructor, and enrolls Lilly in the art camp going on for the next two weeks.
When she hangs up, she has a bitter taste in her mouth. But then she sees Jethro, lying there, and hears Abby's sobs, and her thoughts go to a different place.
Jenny is collected as she walks into her home for the first time in two days.
She hasn't showered in fifty-two hours. She wants to cry.
It's a hard thing to do, telling Lilly she has to go back to school.
Jenny explains it as Lilly's eyes crinkle up and her mouth forms a little 'o'. If the situation was different, it might've been a cute picture. The redhead spins, and starts filling the tote back up again, and doesn't see her daughter shaking her head.
She does, however, hear the six-year old start to cry. The mother in her wants to hold her daughter and soothe her and tell her she doesn't want her to go, but another part of Jenny thinks about Jethro's face as he recalled his daughter and his wife. The one's she never knew about.
The one's he felt he couldn't tell her about.
Then, something hits her in the back, hard. The woman almost lost her balance. She was taken so off guard.
"No...You can't make me leave!"Lilly growls, her small fists clenching tight.
Jennifer Shepard gives her daughter a tap on the rear, and the girl straightens up, her eyes going wide and her bottom lip quivering.
Jenny hugs her daughter, then, because that's all she can do. Lilly starts sobbing, and her mother wishes to hit herself on the back of the head.
"I'm sorry. Please don't make me go!" The words are thick as they are moaned into Jenny's wet blouse.
Lilly wraps her arms around her mother's waist. Jenny picks her up.
"Lilly...you can come back in a few weeks, baby. I'm not saying goodbye to you forever," she whispers, stroking her daughter's cheek.
There's a few sniffles, and then a little, "Okay."
Lilly hiccups, and Jenny smiles sadly. "Come on, there's a car waiting outside."