A/N Very, very nervous about posting these chapters. Since we got no explanation on the show for why Booth's mom did what she did, this is stuff I had to come up with out of thin air, Hopefully this fulfills people's expectations. I'd appreciate reviews on this-nice to know if I'm getting it right or not.

This confrontation will probably take several chapters. There's a fair amount of ground to cover-all sorts of questions and issues raised by the episode. And I suspect they will be long chapters-just saying.

First –usual stuff. Don't own Bones, etc.

And now, brace yourselves for impact, folks-here we go.

I was standing in the doorway watching Bones pack Christine's bag . "You sure Hodgins and Angela are OK with watching Christine overnight, Bones?"

Bones looked up. "Of course they are. You were the one who asked them, so you know they were agreeable to the suggestion. And both of them agreed that talking to your mother without the distraction of a child was best." She paused. "They want to help, Booth-this was a way for them to do that."

At the sound of the doorbell, Bones looked around. "I believe I have everything she will need, and that should be them now. Why don't you get the door, and I will get Christine."

I nodded and headed downstairs. I opened the door to Hodgins and Angela. "Hey guys. Bones is getting Christine and her stuff." I hesitated. "And in case I haven't already said it, I appreciate this a lot."

"No problem, man," Hodgins said with a wave. "And hey, I brought you something."

He held out a bag. I peered inside and then looked back up at him, grinning. "Scotch, Hodgins?"

Angela rolled her eyes but patted Hodgins' arm. "He sort of thought alcohol might come in handy."

"Hey, I offered to go out and get drunk with Booth, this is the next best thing!"

Angela sighed. "Just so you know, despite that little comment, Christine will be fine." She glared at her husband for a second. "Right, Babe?"

Hodgins opened his mouth, took a good look at Angela's face, closed it and nodded.

"And there she is!" Angela's face lit up. She walked over to Brennan and took Christine. "Hodgins, grab the bag will you?" Angle glanced back and forth between me and Bones. "So, we'll plan on having her back here by 10 tomorrow morning. If for some reason you need more time, just call us."

She hugged Boones, and then walked over to me. She hugged me and whispered in my ear, "Good luck, big guy."

"Thanks Angela."

"Booth, you're pacing again. That won't make your mother arrive any sooner."

I stopped and ran my hand through my hair. "I know, Bones. I-"

She sighed, walked in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders. "You have the lists we went over. Hank and I are here. You're ready. I know this will be difficult-" She stopped at the sound of the doorbell and the knock on the door.

I took a deep breath. "I got this-you go into the living room with Hank."

She did, and I turned to open the door. "Hey, Mom. Come on in."

We both walked into the living room. I sat next to Bones on the couch and Mom and Pops were across from us.

Mom put her purse on the floor, smoothed her skirt, and let out a long breath. "You had more questions, you said on the phone."

I gave a sideways glance at Bones and then picked up the notepad off the table. I cleared my throat and said, "Yeah, Mom, I do."

She frowned at the notepad. "And you're taking notes?"

"These are Booth's notes for himself, Marianne, although I encouraged him to take notes if he felt it was necessary." Bones was looking intently at my mom.

She stared. "I'm being questioned like a suspect in a robbery by my own son?"

I leaned forward. "No, Mom. But you haven't been willing to answer a lot of stuff. This list was to clarify exactly what I think I need to know. This is what I do when I investigate, Mom. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but notes help me stay on point."

"Marianne," Pops gravelly voice cut in. "This is Booth's show. It's his life that was most affected by your leaving. Let him handle this the way he needs to. "

Mom pressed her lips together and nodded.

I leaned back again. "The first thing I want from you is a rough timeline. I don't need a play by play of every venue you played for twenty years, but the highlights." I paused. "Starting from when you left."

"What is it you want to know about that, Seeley?"

"About when you left? Everything. Where did you go, what did you plan on doing, what kind of plans you might have had about your kids. And I need for you to be upfront about this. You've said you want me in your life, but I can't do that if it's just on your terms-the terms where we pretend everything is fine and that you didn't screw up how you handled this."

Mom sucked in a breath. "I'm not trying to pretend anything, Seeley."

"Really, Mom? Because so far it seems like I'm the one having to do everything here. I'm not sure if you thought you could give me vague answers and I'd be fine with that-because I have to tell you, if that's what you thought, then you're underestimating how angry I am about all this.

Mom sighed. "I admit I underestimated your reaction to my coming back and announcing my marriage the way I did-"

Bones' voice broke in. "And Reggie's children-Booth's 'brother and sister' as you put it."

I held up my hand. "We'll cover that later-again. Right now, Mom - that timeline." I leaned back and folded my arms across my chest. "Starting with your leaving. Don't leave anything out this time."

Mom lowered her head so that she was staring at her hands in her lap. "I-I'm not even sure where to start."

Pops shifted slightly. "Start with the decision to leave, Marianne."

Mom looked back up at me. "As I said before, after your father threw me down the stairs, I knew I had to leave-that I probably wouldn't survive another fall like that. I was panicked, all right? All I could think was if your father found out, he wouldn't let me leave. I had called the police before, but nothing really happened." She spread her hands out in front of her. "You have to understand, Seeley. It's not like today, where domestic violence meant automatic arrest. Hell, half the time it wasn't taken seriously by the cops. I had very little money and just the stuff I could manage to take from the house. I called a friend of mine-we used to dance together. I told her what had happened. She sent a little money, a plane ticket, and an address in California. I used it and got the hell out. Am I proud that I couldn't take you and Jared? Of course not. But I could barely take care of myself, Seeley, let alone two kids."

"But surely you must have had some idea of what would happen to your children? Did you not have some sort of plan for finding a way to removing them from the household?"

"Hell, Marianne, " Pops' was staring at my mom now. "You could've called me. Maybe we didn't have a lot of money, but we could have figured something out. I understand leaving my son-" He held up his hand when it looked like Mom would interrupt, "-but even if you thought I wouldn't have taken you in, you can't have thought I would have wanted Seeley and Jared there."

"All I could think about was getting out. And I knew your son would kill me if I took the boys." She shook her head. "I know it makes no sense, and yes he hit them, but they were his sons. Not ours, his. Always his. And I know you loved the boys, Hank, but it was your son I was running from. I had no idea if your loyalty was to him or me. I thought you might have called him to tell him where I was-something."

"My loyalty was to those two boys, Marianne." Pops was starting to look angry. "No matter how you felt about my son-or even about me-you should have recognized that much."

She fell back against the back of the love seat. "I suppose I should have. But the only thing that crossed my mind was you raised him-and you know what they say about blood being thicker than water."

"So you think it's my fault he beat his family. Don't you think I wondered about that for years? What his mother and I did to make him like that? Was it 'Nam? Was he just like that?" Pops voice broke off.

Mom turned slightly towards him. "I don't believe it was anything you did, Hank. Maybe it was Vietnam, I don't know. I just know I couldn't live with it any longer."

I jumped in. "But it was OK for your kids to keep living with it."

"Of course not." Mom's voice was sharp, angry. "I never thought that."

"But you never came back for your children." Bones voice was thoughtful, considering-like she was analyzing a piece of evidence for answers.

"I stayed in touch with people from the neighborhood. They said you seemed fine-"

I snorted. "Yeah, like people thought you were fine."

Mom opened her mouth, paused, and closed it again. "I just thought-"

Bones voice was cold. "You thought you were fine, so there was no more reason to worry about your children."

"No!" My mom practically yelled that. "I was trying to earn money to be able to support them, plus get myself together enough to be able to emotionally support them. Trust me, it took quite a few years before that happened."

"So, " I said slowly, "when Mrs. Wisnoski wrote and said we were with Hank, why not come back then? Dad was gone-out of our lives." I saw her hesitate. "You didn't trust Hank, not even then. He cared enough about your kids to get us out of that hellhole and raise us, and even then you didn't trust him." I let out a long breath and leaned my head against the back of the couch so I was staring at the ceiling.

"Why, Marianne? Was there something I said or did to make you not trust me to do the right thing for those boys? For you? You're the mother of my grandkids. You were important. I'm sorry if you didn't see it that way but you were. And I know you damn well know how I felt about those kids. You should have trusted that, if you didn't trust anything else."

Mom blinked away tears. "I suppose I should have-but frankly at the time I didn't trust any adult male with the last name Booth. I'm sorry if that bothers you, but I can't change how I was feeling."

"So you kept in touch with a neighbor, but didn't have any direct contact. It didn't occur to you that Jared and I might have wanted to hear from our mother? Even if you couldn't come back, was there some reason you couldn't contact us? Besides not trusting Hank, which you obviously didn't."

"How? You were living with him-"

Bones interrupted. "This neighbor you remained in touch with. She had Hank's address, I assume? Hank said her daughter contacted him after her mother passed away. Or if you yourself visited you must have had Hank's address yourself. Why not write Booth and Jared directly? I would not have thought that would have been difficult."

"I moved around a lot-"

"So your career was more important than your children." Bones was pretty close to sneering now. "My career has been of primary importance for most of my life, Marianne. But once I had Christine, I discovered that she became my main focus. My career is important, but Christine and Booth, as my family, are more so."

I turned my head to look at the love of my life. "That's actually-very sweet, Bones."

She shrugged. "It is true, Booth." She turned back to Mom, who looked a little shell-shocked. "When you were visiting after you first arrived, you said that you knew Booth would be strong. He is strong-but he is strong because of the events that he has survived. Events you contributed to, whether that was what you intended or not."

Mom looked back and forth between me and Bones, swallowed, then whispered, "I know. I suppose I was hoping Seeley would be able to forgive me for that."

Bones sat straight up. "Without any explanation from you? Surely that was expecting more of Booth than you had a right to expect-possibly more than you deserve."

"Bones!" I hissed through my teeth.

"What? She reenters your life with no explanations, calmly announces a marriage and second family and expects instant reconciliation without any discernible effort on her part. I meant what I told you about forgiveness outside the diner, but Booth, surely you should not be the only one who needs to make an effort at it. At least Max was willing to put forth some effort into mending our relationship."

I sighed. This was going to be one really long night.

I'll pick this up in next chapter. I'm not sure how many chapters the confrontation will be yet, depends on what question/explanations/answers I think of. I'm thinking at least 3-but it could be more.

Some info about domestic violence (including domestic violence in Philadelphia, which is where Booth is from.) It wasn't really called domestic violence until the 70's and while it started to become more important in the 70's and 80's, it wasn't until the 90's that any real action was put in place. The Violence Against Women Act (which improved both victim services and arrests and prosecutions) wasn't enacted until 1994. While many states have mandatory arrest laws in place now for domestic violence, those didn't happen until the 90's as well (After Marianne Booth left her family-no matter what screwed-up timeline HH and Co might use.)

Some scary stats about Philadelphia's domestic violence (from an article in the Philadelphia Weekly from 2010) .

I recently learned that only 15 years ago in Pennsylvania, the rape of a spouse carried less jail time than rape of a nonspouse.

Today, Philadelphia lags far behind comparable cities in providing services for victims of DV. WAA runs the only domestic violence shelter in Philly. A single building with 100 beds is the only emergency shelter for domestic-violence victims in our city of 1.5 million, even though current statistics estimate that up to one in three women are battered in their lifetime.

To make matters worse, WAA recently reported a dramatic increase in request for services. They attribute the spike to the bad economy: money struggles aggravate household tension and make it logistically more difficult to leave. In fiscal year 2010, WAA denied almost 6,000 requests for shelter, up from 2,552 in FY 2009.

And this was in 2010, folks. Would no doubt have been worse when Marianne Booth was married to her husband-fewer resources, etc.

All that being said, I still think Booth's mom was really selfish and self-involved-a woman who worried more about herself than her kids. Just wanted to point out that certain things (like a shelter) may not have been as available as it would be in most places today-not to mention improvements in enforcement and prosecution of batterers.

And now I'm going to sit here and bite my nails, hoping people like where I'm going with this. Please don't throw rotten fruit-otherwise all comments/suggestion welcome.