Tabitha yawned deeply as she woke up a few mornings later. Her father had kept his word and left the rest of the diaries on the counter the morning following their talk, and she felt a little overwhelmed with the knowledge that she had the rest of her mother's life at her fingertips. "I want to fly through the volumes, but another part of her wanted to take things slowly, to draw things out.
Shaking her head, she picked up the current diary she was reading and went down to the kitchen, her stomach gurgling loudly with hunger. To her shock and surprise, her father was still there, and she smiled as she poured herself a bowl of cereal and took a seat at the table across from him. "How's your case going?" she asked as he handed over a glass of orange juice.
"I think that it's going well. My client is innocent, and I am poking holes in each of the witnesses that the prosecution is bringing to the stand. I will admit that it's nice to get to sleep in a little, since the judge doesn't start until ten."
"Lucky you," she replied with a smile before taking a sip of the juice. "So, I finished up the rest of Mum's grad school diary, and made it through her time at the FBI Academy. Fate really wanted them together, didn't she?"
Her father nodded before taking a bite of his yoghurt. "She did. But us humans are so good at thwarting Fate, because we seem to know better than the universe, or God, or whatever you want to call that force that binds us together. And I take it you also read about Alex introducing your mother to James?"
Tabitha nodded as she stirred her cereal. "Mum made him sound nice, in her entries, but I can't help but feel like what she wrote were her attempts at convincing herself that James was right for Alex. And…Mum also wrote about finding out that Alex was pregnant."
A deep blush sprang up in her cheeks as she thought about that diary entry. She had known that her mother had been intimate with her father, with Alex, with Dave, but it hadn't truly clicked into place until she had read about the way her mother had described Alex's body and how she had felt the changes in her. "Oh, she wrote about that."
"You don't seem shocked to know that Mum and Alex were still intimate, even after her and James had become a couple."
Her father shrugged a little as he finished off his eggs. "Your mother insisted on radical honesty with me, because she knew she couldn't turn off her feelings for Alex. She didn't go into great detail, just told me that when things at the Academy got to be too rough, they would fall into bed together and wake up ready to face the world once more. Apparently, James didn't mind, or Alex wasn't quite as open with him as Erin was with me."
"I can see why, because it's weird to think about how the two of them could be faithful to you and faithful to each other at the same time. You really asked her to marry you five days after she found out about Alex's pregnancy?"
"Yes. I knew that she was floundering, that her heart was telling her Alex was moving on to the relationship that her family would approve of, and she didn't want to end up alone. I might have preyed on that vulnerability, I might have used that sorrow for my own benefit, but I did love her, so very much."
Tabitha nodded as sharp tears prickled her eyes. It turned out that she was learning more about her father as a result of reading these diaries, and she knew that this would also bring them closer by the end. "I totally get that, from what she's written about you. Now, you should get going to work, and I need to finish eating so that I can continue learning about what Mum was feeling as she started at the BSU. I can already tell that I'm not going to like Max Ryan or Jason Gideon. Though it's weird to read about Dave being young and dashing!"
Her father let out a loud laugh as he nodded. "That man was a lothario from the minute he was born. I wasn't surprised when he and your mother became a couple, since he had been attracted to her from the minute she started with the FBI. If I were you, I'd write down any questions you have for him, and go ask him for answers. I'm certain he can give you different insights into your mother, since he got to see different facets of her."
"I will definitely have to do that, Daddy. Now go, I'll take care of the dishes."
He nodded and got to his feet, picking up his briefcase from the counter behind him before pressing a quick kiss to her cheek. Tabitha watched him leave the house, finishing up her cereal as she listened to his car back out of the garage and head down the road. It didn't take her long to finish her breakfast, and she placed both their plates in the washer before grabbing her juice and the current diary and heading into the living room.
I don't know how I'll tell Alan, but I'm pregnant! I didn't think that it would happen so soon, because we've only had sex three times so far, but it will be so nice to have a little one in my life at the same time Lexie has her little one. And I know that this means we'll have to step up our wedding plans, because I don't want to be talked about in the bunker, but that suits me just fine. I never wanted a huge fuss made over me, and Mama doesn't have the money to fund anything lavish, either. Still, I know that I'm going to ask Lexie and James to my witnesses. I have no idea who Alan will ask. If it's a girl, I'm going to ask if her middle name can be Alexandra, to honour my best friend, my first love. I can only hope that Alan will agree. I know that he's not exactly comfortable with my continuing relationship with Lexie, since we have been so close in the past, but he has a heart of gold to still love me.
Tabitha frowned a little at what she read, knowing that Karen was the oldest, and she hadn't been born until 1993. This pregnancy that her mother was writing about would have been in 1989. "Oh, Mum," she whispered as she thought about what that meant, and she heaved out a little sigh as she continued on to the next entry. It mainly dwelt on the courthouse marriage between her mother and father and how excited she had been to tell Alex that they would be mothers together. From what her mother had written, Alex had been just as excited as she was to be pregnant at the same time.
We've been assigned a new case, and I wish that Rossi was still with us, and not in Paris. This seems to be his specialty, but I can't make heads or tails of what this man is trying to do. Domestic terrorism is not what I signed up for when I decided to become an FBI agent, I wanted to deal more with the serial killers, in putting the mundane, for lack of a better word, criminals away so that they couldn't hurt others. At least Gideon chose our small teams well, and I get to work with Alex on this case, along with another colleague, John Curtis. I don't really like him, he's a bit of an ass, but I can put up with him to be close to my best friend for the entire workday. He's the one that gave the name to this unsub, even though we don't like naming them, and is calling him the Amerithrax killer. I was shocked at how quickly that name stuck, even if it made me so uneasy.
But oh, how we're blooming with new life, even as we're focused on someone hellbent on taking lives. I keep that in mind every time I read another rambling letter from this jackass, talking about how he has to cleanse the county of dangerous fools who don't know how to govern our states. I just hope that we can catch him before another person dies, but it will all depend on what we can glean from his words. Since Lexie and John both have a focus on linguistics, that's the tack their taking, even if I don't quite understand everything they're talking about. Lexie does as much as she can to catch me up on our lunch breaks, and I feel like I'm earning another degree! Though knowing the IPA might be helpful when I'm teaching our little ones to read, since I know that this baby is the first of many, or well, five, I'm hoping. Though we're both only children, I always wanted to have a large family, and I only hope that Alan will agree.
And we're only six weeks out from Christmas, too. I can't wait for Mama to open her gift and find out that she's going to be a grandmother…