A/N: After The Vast, Terrible In-Between, I feel I kind of owe you a happier tale. Hope this suffices.

June 2008/September 2008

Knowledge Is Knowing A Tomato Is A Fruit;
Wisdom Is Not Putting It In A Fruit Salad.

My husband is a marvelous conversationalist. That's a nice way of saying he can talk on any subject at any moment and for any length of time.

His friends put up with it pretty well, though I've heard he is frequently told to "cut to the chase" at work. At home, they let him ramble and chatter (hey, it's his home), and I generally love listening to him. One, I love his voice. Two… I love his voice. Three… I frequently learn something. (You thought I was going to say "I love his voice" again. Fooled 'ja.) Four… I love his voice. (Ha!)

Ducky is able to talk to anyone about anything. Or no one about nothing. Children generally adore him; so do the elderly. (Well, except for his mother. You know what they say, familiarity breeds contempt.)

So when he's quiet, it's unusual. Sometimes he's just bone tired, barely able to stay awake through dinner; forget intelligent conversation, he's doing well to not eat his salad with a spoon and ice cream with a fork. Sometimes he has an ugly case weighing on his mind, and he's trying to sort out who, what, when, where, why and how regarding the latest roommate in Autopsy. Twice he's been sick (and that'll take the wind out of your sails for a while). But for all those exceptions to the rule, there's an exception to the exceptions…

/ / /

"Is Uncle Ducky… vexed? With me, I mean?"

"If he has, he hasn't mentioned it to me… Do you see a bag of rick-rack anywhere?" I'd been hunting up, down, left and right for the damned thing for an hour.

Charlie glanced around the room and grabbed the Jo-Ann's bag that was sitting in plain sight. "He's just so… remote. And he has the oddest expression looking at me, looking at you—"

My ears pricked up. "What sort of odd expression?" I started pulling cellophane off the packets of rick-rack. The baby was due in September; with any luck, I'd have the curtains for his/her room ready by then.

She pulled out a pack of trim and removed the wrapper, staring distractedly as she did so. Three packs later she said, "Melancholy."

That stopped me in my tracks. "Melancholy," I repeated. "Melancholy as in glum, depressed—" Just the thing an expectant mother wants to hear about the expectant father.

"Perhaps… pensive is a better choice."

Marginally better. But it made me stop and look at the past few days a little more closely.

He had been kind of quiet. No, not kind of—very.

And I started realizing other things. He was asking other people to do things for him. Not me—looking like I was about to give birth to the Goodyear blimp had me firmly on the "you sit, let me do that" list of everyone in the house (including Mother, heaven help us). No… if he wanted the crock pot that somehow migrated from the bottom shelf to the top he asked one of the girls to "be a dear and fetch that for me?" instead of dragging over the stepstool. Or asking Ev to run to the store for a few things instead of "popping out for a bit" on his own. He was going to bed early. Way early. If not, he was falling asleep in his chair—not at 11:00, when he closed his eyes for just a moment between paragraphs, but at 7:30, right after dinner. And he stopped walking to the park with me.

It had become a ritual of sorts. He had checked with Dr. Lester about what I could and could not do as the pregnancy progressed; walking was definitely on her A List. I am inherently lazy and had no desire to join the other pregnant women at the gym, struggling to get into workout clothes—but when my husband says, "Walk with me to the park, my love?" there is no way I'm saying no. It was a nice, leisurely stroll to the little garden a few blocks away, ambling down the pathways to admire the flowers, chatting about the day, good-naturedly arguing over baby names, enjoying a little private time together.

Much as I enjoyed the walks, I would occasionally decline. Being pregnant in the summer has some bad moments. (My cousin Trixi had moved to Arizona while we were in high school. Her kids were half grown and gone by now, but she remembered her pregnancies very well. When I whined about the heat and humidity, she shot back, "Pregnant. 117 degrees. Beat that." I emailed back, "But it's a dry heat!" and got, "SO IS A PIZZA OVEN!" She won.) So Ducky took my occasional, "It's so humid tonight" with good grace and said our exercise could be playing Scrabble. I had whine-declined the prior Monday. We played Scrabble.

He didn't ask Tuesday.

He didn't ask Wednesday.

I asked Thursday… and he declined, saying he was simply exhausted. He did look pooped, so I didn't push it.

But here it was, Saturday. In two days, it would have been two weeks since we last strolled to the park.

I set down the last card of rick-rack. "Who's fixing dinner?"

"Mommy and Mommy," Charlie said promptly. "Stuffed chicken breasts, stuffed tomatoes—"

I gave her an arched eyebrow. "They commenting on my girth?"

"No—Mommy Ev is trying to improve on her kitchen skills."

"Oh. Okay." Somewhat mollified, I glanced at the clock. 3:00. We were both off the hook for cooking dinner, Mother would have her tea soon, and it was a gorgeous day. We'd had an overnight rain that washed away the humidity of the past days and dropped the summer temperature to the high 70s. "Where's Uncle Ducky?"

"In the garage, I believe."

Yep; he was in the garage. Sitting. Staring at the Morgan, not really concentrating. "Hey." I sidled up to him (sort of sidled, anyway) and dropped a kiss on his head. "What'cha doing?"

He shrugged slightly. "Nothing. Just… thinking."

"About what?"

Another faint shrug.

"Well, why don't you come for a walk with me? To the park? You can think about nothing doing that as well as you can sitting here," I said brightly.

After a moment, he shook his head. "It's a bit humid…"

"Actually, it's not, for the first time in a while. It's gorgeous out."

Another pause; another headshake. "I'm rather tired."

"Ducky…" I sat on the padded workbench next to him, turned and tried to tuck one ankle under the opposite thigh; right. Last time I pulled that maneuver was two trimesters ago. "What's wrong? You've been so quiet, so distracted…"

"I'm sorry." He sighed heavily.

I folded my arms. "Are you seeing another woman?"

That shocked him, despite my teasing tone. "Cassandra!"

"Well, then… what's wrong?" I reached over and laced the fingers of our left hands together. "Remember me? For better or worse? You know—wife?"

"Oh… oh, Sandy…" He squeezed my hand lightly, continuing to stare at the car. "I rebuilt it, you know."

I nodded. "Mm-hmm."

"It's older than I am…" (Heck, only Mother can't say that. His mother, that is. I think it's older than my mother, too.) "Automobiles today are so different… More difficult to repair, you need a computer to fix a computer… no carburetors…" He trailed off. "All so different. So… old…"

I could barely hear the last word. We aren't talking about cars; we're using the car as a stand-in. "Old?" I repeated. "Honey, you are not old. Heck, I don't consider Mother old! And I'm sure not old!" I tried to quell the flutter in my heart. 'If I fathered a child now, I would be eighty or thereabouts when that child learned to drive, and I don't think those two demographics should be in a vehicle with a learner's permit between them.' (Man, oh, man—of all the zillion things Ducky has said to me, WHY is that the one that I can't erase from my hard drive?) I pointed to the green and white striped t-shirt stretched taut over my belly. "We are not old, fella. This is not a watermelon I'm packin'!"

He gave me a ghost of a smile and forced it to a full blown one. "True enough."

I wriggled around and snuggled against him until his arm slipped around my waist. "So. What put you in this mood?"

He sighed. "Oh… This. That. The other thing… Having a—" His mouth worked. "—junior agent for the FBI—"

(A punk.)

"—call me Gramps—"

(Not a punk. Smartass whippersnapper.)

"Ziva made a rather scathing remark—which she refused to translate. It was in Russian."

"How do you know it was scathing?"

"Jethro laughed. His accent is abysmal, but he understands the language fairly well. That plus the agent's eyes bugged out rather comically and he slunk off like a whipped dog."

I smiled. I like Ziva. A lot.

"The next day or so they mentioned that this year marks 55 years since the Rosenbergs were executed for espionage. I said, in passing, that I was a mere lad of ten when that happened; an agent—not on Gibbs' team—blurted out, 'Wow, they got the year wrong?' and "suggested" that this took place in nineteen-thirty-three, not nineteen-fifty-three… which would make me only fifteen years younger than Mother!"

"Oh. Ow." I winced.

"Well, that was just a glaring example of poor arithmetic and a lack of attention in history class. But the ultimate blow… was hearing I Can't Get No Satisfaction." He sighed, looking more chagrined than depressed, now.

"Rolling Stones? Big hit in the 60s." He nodded. "What's so bad about that? You like the Stones. I know you like them." (I chose not to remind him of the time he imitated Jagger singing Let's Spend the Night Together and I fell on the floor, laughing. We both ended up on the floor. Doing more than laughing, too.)

"Yes, but—" He sighed heavily. "It was on an elevator." I looked at him: and? "It was… Muzaked."

Ugh. Muzak is for Mantiovani, not Rolling Stones.

"I just feel… old," he said.

"'There's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years who's trying to kill me. You show me a son that'd be happy to help. How do I feel? Old... worn out.'" He stared at me. "Star Trek. Wrath of Khan."

He rolled his eyes. "It's like being married to Anthony DiNozzo."

Hey. It was a tiny laugh—but better than nothing. "Wanna go upstairs and feel… not old?" I arched my eyebrows suggestively.

He looked pointedly at the watermelon.

"Hey. We have books. And the internet. We're creative!"

"True. But right now…" He stood up and took my hands, tugging me up. "I would rather have a walk in the park with my wife."

/ / / / / / / / / /

My mother was simply scandalized over how new mothers are treated nowadays. "When I had Ray—even when I had you!—I stayed in the hospital for a week. Two days! That isn't enough time to put your name on the door!"

"It's plenty of time," I argued. "The food is dreadful."

"No one will be able to send you flowers! By the time the florist gets the order, you'll be home."

"So, tell anyone who wants to send flowers, send 'em to the house," I said (quite reasonably, I thought).

She "tsk'd." "Cassie, it's not the same."

"You're right. One less thing to haul home."

Ducky was, of course, there for this exchange. Ducky missed nothing. He got there right before Alexandra was born—literally six minutes before showtime—and we had a family room in the Maternity ward. He didn't have to miss a thing. They pulled in a substitute M.E. and he was able to not leave my side until I was discharged.

Our sides, that is. Alexandra was barely six hours old and he was never more than four feet away from her—and that was if she had fallen asleep. Family rooms are great: double bed for the mom and dad (or you could opt for a hospital bed for mom and foldout couch or cot for dad) and a crib for the baby. They even had provisions for siblings staying over.

Ducky wandered about the suite, our tiny baby (JOLT! Our baby. Wow.) carefully cradled in his arms, talking to her oh-so-softly and looking at her with the most amazed expression. "Oh, Cassandra… she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Wrinkled, blotchy, powdery—yep. Gorgeous. I scooched over so that he and the baby could sit next to me. I was enjoying watching him with her—enjoying it a lot. I've met too many men who are uninterested in their own children at this stage. "I can deal with them when they're older," one young man in our Lamaze class said. The teacher gently pointed out that if you don't relate to them now, you probably won't get the chance later. "So. How do you feel being a daddy?"

He stared down at the wriggling baby in her pale yellow shirt. He looked like he was going to burst with pride and his eyes were shining with joy… and tears. "I feel… so young!"

I slipped under his free arm. "I know what you mean."