Brennan was cursing Booth's name. "God damn it. He wouldn't have wrote the damn letter unless he wasn't planning on coming back. He broke his promise! He lost his faith and now he is gone. Why did he write the letter? Before I got this, I had hope that he would return. Damn you, Seeley Booth!" She was angry. She was disgusted. But most of all, she was hurt. Broken, if you will. She had had hope that her best friend would return, but this letter finally broke her. He wouldn't be back. It would confirm to some that she was cold and detached, but she wouldn't allow her emotions or just how much Booth's death affected her… At least she wouldn't in the presence of other people.
As she stood in the shower the night she got the letter, she made some realizations that she didn't like. At all. No one would call her Bones anymore. When a draft of his cologne, or nearly the same cologne as it would never smell the same without all of the other separate smells of Booth combined with it, it wouldn't be him that she smelt, only someone else bringing up a memory of her friend. No one would come to the platform and yell for her, even if she was right in front of them. There wouldn't be anyone worried about her wellbeing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Sure, there were other people that cared about her, but Booth showed it the most and the least at the same time. The realization that hurt the most, the one that caused her to slump against the wall of her shower, was that Booth was really gone. He wouldn't be back.
Temperance calmed herself down and called Angela. They had had plans to meet at the diner in a little while, but she wasn't going to be able to meet her friend. The pain was too raw, too visible. She was incapable of hiding it at the moment. When she went to work the next day, however, she would make sure that she was as detached and unfeeling as she could be. If she wasn't, she would end up breaking down at the lab. She would keep herself busy, so busy she had no time to think of anything but what she was working on. When she got home, she would be too tired to do anything but shower and go to bed. That would work…She hoped.
Feeling the need to do so, she called Parker. The little boy sounded as if he had been crying but was trying to be strong, for Dr. Bones. "Dr. Bones, are you okay? Daddy loved you. He wouldn't want you to be sad." His voice broke on the word 'Daddy' but he quickly recovered. "You are so much like your father, Parker. He would be so proud of you." She barely managed to get it out before a sob escaped her throat. Parker broke down. "Dr. Brennan, would you be able to come to the park to meet Parker and I in about thirty minutes? I think he needs to see you as you were both the most important things in Seeley's life." Brennan was surprised at Rebecca's compassion as she thought the young boy's mother disliked her.
The trip to the park was hard, but she went. "It's for Parker." The anthem ran through her head a million times as she tried to convince herself of it. When she got there, they were waiting for her. As soon as Parker noticed her, the boy ran to her. She leant down in order to be able to catch him. As soon as she grasped him in her arms, they both began crying. Rebecca walked away in order to give them the space they needed. When the mother returned, the two were sitting against a tree. Laughing.
As she returned home, she took another shower and went straight to bed. Parker had explained that his father was in Heaven and was watching them now. The young boy's innocence and promise that he would see her that weekend, Rebecca agreed easily and readily to allow him to go to the Jeffersonian on Saturday, she fell asleep making plans of things for them to do on weekends that he would have spent with his father, but would now be spending with "Daddy's Squint Family."