"Inventing the Future"

Author's Note: Jaming and Meredith have their first major fight as a couple, and when she storms off Cap gives Jaming some badly-needed advice. All's well that ends well, right?

"Chapter 43: Discord"

"A letter might be the way to go," Meredith told Jaming as the two of them put together a light supper of baked fish and steamed vegetables. The topic of their conversation was the baby, and how Sarah should be told about it. "Inviting her to visit Veniccio at around the time the baby's due, I mean. It'll give her plenty of time to get used to the idea. What do you think?"

Jaming looked up from his task of peeling carrots, and his lack of expression was a sign that he didn't like this discussion and that he was trying to hide it. "I'll let you handle it, then."

Meredith, who was topping the fish fillets with lemon slices, half-turned to look at him. "Is there anything you'd like me to put in it?"

"What, the fish?"

"No, silly, the letter."

"Oh, well..." Jaming broke the carrots into two-inch pieces and dumped them into the steamer. "She's not my mother, so..."

"No..." Meredith went back to what she was doing, a little hurt that he seemed to want no part in this undertaking. "but you're with me, and you're the father of her grandchild."

Jaming, sensing her mood by the tone of her voice, came over and hugged her from behind. His hands still smelled sweetly of carrots, and he could see the apple of her cheek rising in a smile. "I honestly can't think of anything. You know her much better than I do."

Unfortunately, Meredith was just getting the cliff notes. Jaming had several reasons for not wanting to get involved in this. He and Sarah hadn't parted on the best of terms. Sarah was Meredith's mother, not his, and as much as he tried not to let on, he was jealous. And, finally, he anticipated a lot of drama, and he wanted to be as far-removed from it as possible.

It was a shame that no one had bothered to explain to Jaming what 'equal partners' meant.

About a month after Meredith had mailed her letter, she received a reply, which she picked up at the Veniccio post office. She hesitated to open the letter, which only seemed to be a page long, if the thickness of the envelope was any indication.

It had taken her the better part of a day to come up with what she thought was the proper wording, and in course she had gone through a pretty sizable stack of scrap paper as she worked on the rough draft. Jaming had more or less backed out of the entire process, and she had tried to hide her frustration from him. He did consent to read the final draft, and he'd told her that it sounded good. So, she had written up the final version of her letter to Sarah on some good stationary, and mailed it.

"Well...here goes nothin'," she mumbled, sliding her thumb along the flap of the envelope and taking out the folded letter within. As she read her mother's response, her eyes grew wide with chagrin.

'Dear Meredith,

It's so wonderful to finally hear from you! It seems that we have a lot of catching up to do. I was a little surprised to hear that you're expecting, but I am so happy for you, and I am glad you saw fit to include me. Especially after my last visit, but we won't speak of that.

Please tell Jaming that I am truly sorry for the way I've treated him, and do thank him for graciously allowing me to stay with you and get to know my grandchild.

So, are there wedding bells in the near future? I know, I know, 'back off, Mother'. Ha ha. I hope this letter finds you well, and I pray for a safe and easy pregnancy.

All my love,

Mother'

Meredith read the letter over and over, and three words jumped out at her every time. 'Stay with you'. Sarah thought they had invited her to stay at their house! In retrospect, Meredith should have expected it; in Sarah's generation, family was never made to stay at an inn, and the subject hadn't even come up the last time because her knees weren't up to climbing the ladder to Meredith's tree house.

"Oh, man...Jaming is going to have a fit!"

'Fit' was a bit of an understatement.

"Meredith, I didn't agree to that! This is simply impossible. She'll have to stay on the other shop boat, like she did the last time she was here," Jaming turned away and went back to his latest fix-it project. Donny's microwave. Before he could even begin to repair it, he had about a year's worth of burnt, crusty food splatter to scrape off.

Meredith picked her jaw up off the floor as her mood shifted alarmingly from dread to anger. "Don't turn away from me! Look at me, so that I don't have to talk to the back of your head!"

Jaming, startled, dropped his steel wool pad and gaped at her. "I don't understand why you're yelling at me, Meredith. It's my house. I did not invite her. She can stay somewhere else."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing..." Meredith almost whispered. "She's my mother!"

Jaming's face darkened as he felt his own anger beginning to rise up, and before he could stop himself, he snapped at her, "At least you still have one! Stop rubbing it in my face!"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. As soon as Meredith's eyes filled with tears, he hated himself. And as soon as she headed for the garage door, he panicked. "Meredith, wait! I-I didn't mean that!"

She whipped around to face him, her right fist clenched at her side as if she wanted to slug him, but the punch never came. "Damn it, Jaming, you built that house for us! You, me, and our child! Our family! Just because you hate my mother doesn't mean we should make her feel unwelcome!"

"Meredith, I don't hate her! I never said that!" Jaming reached for her, but she took a step back.

"You saw the letter I sent her. You said it was fine, and you didn't have anything to add. Hell, you didn't even want to have anything to do with it! You left it up to me, and now you don't like the answer we got! Well!" She turned to leave, and he put a hand on her shoulder. She roughly shook him off. "Get off me."

Jaming let go of her, a sickening mixture of anger and pain swirling in his heart. This was their first real fight as a couple, and he never wanted to have another one! "I didn't mean it the way it came out, Meredith. I-I don't hate your mother. It's the other way around, if it's anything."

"She doesn't hate you," Meredith's tears hadn't stopped, and her face was still a mask of anger and hurt as she half-turned away. "But right now, I don't want to be near you. I never thought you could be such a...such a selfish jerk! I'm going for a walk. Do me a favor, don't follow me, Jaming!"

"But-"

"No!"

Jaming winced as the door slammed and a pair of tin snips fell from their peg on the wall. He rested his hand on the closed wooden door, and clenched it into a fist when he saw that his fingers were shaking. What the hell had just happened?

Grasping the doorknob, he let himself out of the garage and scanned the area for any sign of Meredith. She was gone.

"Damn it..."

Jaming didn't really start to get worried until the sun began to approach the western horizon and Meredith still hadn't returned home.

'At least you still have one! Stop rubbing it in my face!'

"How could I have said that to her?" he whispered. That was one of the cruelest things he could have said! No wonder she didn't want to see him.

Jaming asked around, but no one he spoke to could remember seeing Meredith after ten in the morning, which was sometime before they had argued. What if something had happened to her? What if she had gone into the Ocean's Roar Cave?

No, she wouldn't endanger their child like that.

Then again, she wasn't exactly rational when she left the garage! Groaning, Jaming tugged at his hair, making it look more wild than usual before stalking up the gangplank and looking for Cap. When he asked the old man if he had seen Meredith, the answer he got made his heart sink.

"Nope," Cap shook his head, "Haven't seen her."

Jaming turned on his heel without a word, ready to leave, but Cap gripped his shoulder to stop him.

"Hold on, now. Why would she be missing? Did you two get into it?"

Jaming gripped the railing, clenching his teeth before mustering up the will to answer. "I think I...how does Pau put it?...'messed up'. I 'messed up'..."

If Jaming hadn't been so desperate to find Meredith and fix things, and if he hadn't been so remorseful for his careless words, he never would have told Cap what was troubling him. Now, though, he found himself explaining to the old man what they had fought about, and why he had reacted the way he had. Admittedly, part of him hoped to find solidarity in another male, but when Cap finally started to speak he seemed completely impartial.

"She's pregnant, son. You have to keep in mind that the lass is more likely to be a bit...well, emotional. When my wife was pregnant, she cried because I forgot to take out the garbage." Cap lit his pipe.

"You were married?" Jaming looked interested.

Cap lowered his brows in a scowl, and shut down that avenue real quick. "We're talkin' about you, not me."

"Yes sir," Jaming said automatically.

Cap nodded, satisfied, and continued. "Now, if the two of you are together...married, shacked up, anything like that...you gotta remember that you're a team. This means making important decisions together, and not jumping down her throat when you leave it up to her and you end up not liking how she handled it. Or, in this case, how her mum responded. You gotta be on the same page, you understand?"

Jaming nodded, feeling absolutely horrible. In truth, he was on the verge of tears, and he dug his fingernails into his palms to distract himself. No way did he want to cry in front of the captain! "Yes..."

"Sounds to me like Meredith didn't actually go against anything you two agreed on. Her mother misunderstood; these things happen. But, tell me...Would havin' Sarah over be so terrible?" Cap moved to stand beside Jaming, and the two of them leaned on the railing and looked down at the water.

Jaming sighed. "I don't dislike Sarah. Not really. It's the other way around...I think. And, well...I don't know how to handle things with her there, while still remaining civil. And...Captain, it's all happening so fast! I don't know how to be a father, and I'm not even a husband yet! And having Sarah stay with us, when I'm not used to even sharing a house...I don't know what I'm doing!"

Cap chuckled and gave him a knowing look. "Yer thinking she'll be the mother-in-law from Hell, right?"

"No, I think she'll find me an unworthy match for her daughter. And she'd be right, too. I got her daughter pregnant, and we aren't even married yet." Jaming mumbled.

"Bah!" Cap snorted, waving a dismissive hand. "You think you're the first couple who couldn't wait for the wedding bells? Happens more often than ya think. And Sarah herself was a young lass once, so I'll wager she remembers how it was for her and her man."

"Would a worthy man yell at his pregnant girlfriend, just because she wants to go ahead and let her mother stay in our house? She was right...I am a selfish jerk." Jaming turned his face away from the captain and brushed away a tear.

"Ah, don't take it so hard, son..." Cap gave him a brusque pat on the back. "Sounds like it goes a bit deeper'n plain selfishness, it does. Sounds to me like you're both scared to face that woman, and instead of having a sit-down and workin' through it good and proper, ya turned on each other. But that don't mean ya can't fix it, am I right?"

Resting his forearms on the boat's guard rail, Jaming shut his eyes and lowered his head. "I didn't mean to take it out on her. And now I can't even find her."

Cap, who had politely been looking in another direction so that Jaming could collect himself, spotted a familiar figure emerging from the mango grove. "Well, look over there," he pointed.

Jaming followed Cap's finger, and drew in a breath that was almost a sob.

"Go and talk to her."

"What if she won't talk to me?" Jaming asked, never taking his eyes off Meredith. By the Gods, she looked every bit as miserable as he was, and it was all his fault!

"Well, you won't know unless you go over there and try it!" Cap laughed warmly. "That woman thinks the world of ya, son. She'll get steamed from time to time, same as you, but she won't stay that way. Now, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and go make it right."

Jaming nodded uncertainly, then gave another, more determined nod. "Thank you, sir."

"Off with ya!" Cap gave him a little shove to get him going and muttered, amiably enough, "Idjit..."

The old sea captain watched as Jaming uncertainly approached Meredith.

As soon as she spotted Jaming, the two lovers froze on the spot. They stared at each other for nearly a full minute, completely motionless and saying nothing. Then, without a word, they met in the middle and embraced.

Cap nodded approvingly, and dumped out his spent pipe into the ocean. "That's more like it. Damn kids..."