464A/N: Hi, I'm finally back with another update. I'm sorry it took me so long to get this posted but I have been having some health issues of late, but I will be resuming regular updates barring any further issues. Thanks to all who have sent good wishes, and special thanks to Jan for keeping me motivated and "listening" to me complain. I hope you all enjoy.
Please visit the Army Wives pages as well, and look for my newest piece, entitled "When Was the Day?" Tissue warning for that one. I'd love to know what you all think.
Chapter 36
Mackenzie-Rabb Residence
Manassas, VA
June 7, 2007
2024 EST
Harm was cleaning up the kitchen after the kids had eaten their supper when Mac walked in after a long day at work. She'd been up and gone from the house before the sun came up that day. She'd only been back to work just over a week and had already clocked close to 80 hours. Her billable hours were certainly mounting fast. The children were missing their mother and Harm was missing his wife, a status he wanted to restore to Mac as soon as possible but never felt it was the right time to bring it up to her. He'd thought once she started working again that her mood would improve, but it seemed to have gotten worse than it was even before they'd split. Trish assured her son that Mac was adjusting too and that he should help her more instead of just point out where she was falling short, so today he'd decided to give that a try and take care of some of the things Mac had to do by himself.
He'd soon come to realize that was a very serious mistake.
"Hey," Mac called kicking off her shoes as she entered the house. "Supper smells great. Any left?"
"Yeah," Harm replied. "Plenty. It's meatless lasagna, just noodles and two kinds of cheese and sauce, though no veggies; I wanted Lucy to eat it."
"How did she do today?" Lucy had plateaued in her therapy and was struggling with the slower progress she was making.
"I asked her therapist to leave about ten minutes into it," Harm replied. "She wasn't thrilled about it but…"
"Another one? Harm, that's the third one in two weeks. Lucy is never going to recover if you keep doing that," Mac warned. She was tired of this with him. It was bad enough when he fired his therapists, but Mac had come to terms with it. If Harm wanted to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, that was his choice and she'd have to accept it, but she was not going to accept him sentencing their daughter to the same fate. Not when there was an excellent chance for full or nearly full recovery.
"I can help her with her workouts and Mom can do the things for her that I can't," Harm replied shortly, serving Mac a plate of lasagna.
"She needs a professional, Harm," Mac sighed. "What about Analiese? She's gentle and AJ offered, besides I think it might be what she needs right now to help her heal as well. What do you think?"
"It's a good idea," Harm was pleased with the suggestion, and nodded in agreement. "I'll call her tomorrow and talk to her about it. How was work, you were late again."
"I spent the last two hours before I left with Mrs. Burwell. My God, Harm, I have never seen a woman more devastated at the idea of getting a divorce," Mac told him between bites. "She is shattered and absolutely refuses to let me use any of the traditional tactics we use in court. She won't even invoke her rights to spousal support even though several witnesses and she herself admit he prevented her from finishing Culinary Arts school. He was military, so I understand having a career would have been hard, but he didn't have to prevent her from finishing her education when she was six months shy of her degree when they got married. It is so frustrating. She gave me permission to contact her son so I'm going to and see if he'll sit in with us, maybe she's just afraid of adding more fuel to the fire."
"I think we both know the divorce fire can be stoked out of control pretty darn fast," Harm stated, his tone making it clear that he still felt the pain of that whole process.
Mac leaned over and kissed his cheek, "I know and I wish we could go back and undo it all except I think it's what we needed to get to where we are." She took another bite of her dinner, "This is amazing and exactly what I was hungry for tonight. Did your Mom take you to the Commissary?" Mac suddenly felt her food turn to a rock inside her stomach as she prayed he'd gone to the commissary or at the very least to the Walmart and not to…"No, I had it delivered from Whole Foods," Harm said showing her the ad in the paper advertising the organic tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. "It costs more but it's worth the price."
"Did your mom pay?" Mac asked feeling her chest tighten as the blood drained from her face. If Trish hadn't paid this grocery bill, they were at least $50 overdrawn on their checking account not including the fees. Maybe if she was fast enough she could get some money from savings transferred over before the fees were assessed, but it wasn't likely. Even if she was in time, the last of their savings account was already allocated to pay for their groceries and the utility bills that would come due before she got her first pay check at the end of the next week. No matter what, Harm's purchase had pushed them further into an ever deepening hole it was already going to take months of two incomes to climb out of. "Please let Trish have paid," she thought to herself.
"Course not," Harm said, shaking his head. What was Mac's problem? She was asking questions for seemingly no reason and had just gone white as a sheet. "You okay?"
She dropped her fork, "No, I'm not. I can't believe you went and did something like that without talking to me first. Going shopping in that type of store to begin with costs twice our normal budget, and then to have it delivered. That's a huge extra expense."
"A huge expense? Mac, it was only a little over $300 total for most of a week's groceries. We paid for the convenience but still…" Harm pointed out, not at all sure what was making her so upset.
Mac pushed her plate away. Harm's response to her distress was making her angry, and all of the fear and tension was starting to bubble up inside of her. Mac had to think quick to divert his attention to something else and get him off of the trail, if he was depressed and hard to live with now, she didn't want to know what he'd be like if he knew the whole truth and she couldn't take too much more pressure before losing control of herself. She took a deep breath and tried to divert him. "That doesn't matter. It's the principle, we are supposed to be sharing, doing this relationship together and it seems that unless it has something to do with housework or keeping after the kids, I'm going it alone, and that hurts, it really hurts because I thought we'd learned something from all we've been through, but I guess we haven't. It is just a sign of common respect that you talk to me before making big purchases from our money."
"I would, but it isn't a big purchase," said Harm, now frustrated as well as confused. "For God's sake Mac, you are angry with me for spending money to feed our family?"
"You didn't have to spend that much money to feed our family," Mac snapped back, rising from the table. "I've had a really long day and I'm tired. You clean up the kitchen, I'm going to bed." With that Mac brushed past him and darted into the bedroom praying she'd be able to keep her tears from falling.
Harm sat and wracked his brain trying to come up with a scenario in which Mac's behavior would make even the smallest amount of sense. Aside from her reaction being totally unlike her, especially since they'd reconciled, it was way out of proportion to his perceived "crime" of spending $300 without talking to her first. He'd spent far more than that in their marriage and she'd never even batted an eye. As he cleaned up Mac's practically uneaten dinner the conversation he'd had with Lucy a few days earlier began to reverberate through his head.
Two days earlier
Lucy closed the newest book in the Rabb family library, one Trish had acquired to help DJ with his fears about Mac returning to work, Mama Always Comes Home. It served the purpose for DJ and he accepted Mac's absence during the day with relative ease, but Lucy had always been more analytical. She turned to her father and asked, "Daddy is Mommy going back to work because we're poor?"
"No, Button, what gave you that idea?" Harm asked, knowing that wasn't in the book, he practically had it memorized.
"Well, these mommies go to find food or safe places for their babies, and my friend Stephie in school said her mommy had to go back to work so the bank man wouldn't take their house away," Lucy explained. "Mommy didn't work for a long time but now she does, like Stephanie's mommy."
"Mommy didn't go back to work for those reasons, Button, so you don't worry about that, okay? You, little lady, worry about getting your schoolwork done, okay?" Harm gave Lucy a kiss before setting her back into her chair.
"Okay, Daddy," Lucy replied trusting her father had given her the true and honest answer about her mother's return to the workforce.
Present
The memory pushed the knot in Harm's throat straight to his gut. That was it, it had to be, that's the only reason Mac was acting so funny. Knowing he'd need an arsenal of weapons to drag this information out of his Marine, Harm did a little investigation.
First he went to the computer and for the first time since March he logged into their joint accounts. The reality that hit him was enough to nearly make him sick. Their savings that they'd worked so hard to build over their seven year marriage were nearly eradicated, there was less than $1,800 left when there had been thousands. He moved to their checking account and saw that his online grocery purchase had left them with a negative balance and caused a $35 overdraft fee. The more Harm read the worse it got, there were numerous bills unpaid, they were a couple months behind on their mortgage and their car payments and were maxed out on one of their credit cards and nearly maxed out on the other one. How had he missed this? How had things gotten so bad without him even realizing it and without Mac feeling she needed to tell him? He was about to find out.
Harm printed out the latest statements from their checking and savings accounts and put them on the pile of past due notices from the bank and the credit card companies that Mac had hidden inside Lucy's baby book. Harm had never been able to figure out exactly why their wedding album or their children's keepsake books were Mac's favorite hiding places, but he knew her well enough to know she had a reason that was perfectly logical to her. He was just glad he knew the hiding places, the reason wasn't important. Armed with the evidence he went to talk to Mac.
She was sitting on their bed with her head in her hands. Her shoulders were slumped and shaking. Before Harm was even close enough to touch her he could hear the sobbing she was trying to muffle by shoving the sleeves of her suit jacket into her mouth. Harm's heart broke seeing her like that and he knew that while money was the topic, it wasn't the issue.
He moved closer and reached out for Mac but she surprised him by moving evasively to escape his touch. She hadn't done that since before Matthew was born. When she saw the small stack of papers on Harm's lap the color drained from her face, it was time to face the music for keeping such a secret.
"I know everything, Mac," Harm began, fighting to keep his tone gentle so it wouldn't upset her further. Since Mac had gone back to work, Harm had tried very hard to get his outbursts back under control and for the most part it was working. Still he could feel the anger building at her silence. "Why didn't you say anything to me about this? Why did you keep it all to yourself? Why? I don't understand."
"That's right," Mac spat all of the anger and frustration that had been building up since Harm's fall and it came bubbling to the surface. "You don't understand. You don't understand what it is like for me to try to raise this family mostly on my own with the only help coming from friends and my mother-in-law! My children's father should be helping me care for them and provide for them…"
"Wait a minute," Harm interjected. "Until this job of yours came along my pay's been the only cash coming into this house. You chose to leave the Corps, Mac, nothing I did made you do that!"
"Oh, no? I left the Corp because of Mic and need I remind you what events occurred that led to me getting involved with him in the first place? That was all you." Mac got up and walked around the room. She was so angry she had to do something to keep from lashing out at Harm.
"All right, fine! You can blame me for Mic, but this," Harm gestured to his wheelchair by slamming his hands down on the arm rests "is not my fault!"
"Getting into the chair wasn't your fault," Mac corrected. "Staying in it is. How many therapists is it now, Harm? Eight? Ten? And if that wasn't bad enough you're bringing our daughter down with you and that hurts me so much to watch you do that to her. She has a chance at recovering, she really does and so do you but each day that you go without therapy the smaller the chances get of a successful recovery. You're an adult, that's your choice, if you're done trying, that's fine. I'll support that choice and I'll stand by you, - while you sit - but I will not support it for my daughter and I'll make sure that you won't have the opportunity to interfere in her recovery anymore if that's what I have to do. If you don't work with Ana on getting Lucy back on her feet, I'll ask AJ or your mom to drive her back and forth to therapy and have you banned from the room and don't you think I won't," Mac warned sternly.
"You aren't listening to her, Mac," Harm shot back. "She cried and whimpers and it is so clear she is in pain and I can't watch my little girl suffer anymore than she already has."
"But keeping her from doing what she needs to be a normal, healthy child again is making her suffer, Harm," Mac sighed trying to make him see. She knelt in front of him, "I know you are trying to protect her, but you aren't. If anything you're hurting her and I know you don't want to do that. You love her too much."
Harm looked at Mac's eyes, really looked for the first time since she'd gone back to work, the pain he saw there, the stress, the exhaustion made him shiver. It was a miracle she hadn't begun to buckle before now, he'd not let her carry this alone one minute longer.
"You're right," Harm said softly. "I do love her too much, and I love you too much to just let things go like they have been going. I'm so sorry, Mac." He reached to take her into his arms. "I'm so sorry."
Mac let Harm hold her and let a few more tears leak from her eyes, "I want us back Harm. We were getting so close and then all of this happened. I want my best friend, I want my partner, I want my lover, and not the man who's made love to me, I want you Harm, the man I know is inside of you, let him out again, please."
Harm wrapped his arms around her, "I don't know if I can, Mac. I don't know if I know who that is anymore."
Mac reached for his hand and placed it on her heart, "I know who he is and I'll help you find him again, Harm. I promise I will."
Coming Soon in Let's Be Us Again: Harm, Mac, and AJ finally resolve Cynthia's murder, Analiese begins a therapy regimen for Lucy and Harm, while AJ worries about her reaction to his marriage proposal. Later: Trish returns to California and Harm and Mac go on their first "date."