The move was good for her. Well worth the trouble it had taken convincing the government to allow her to relocate.
"We really do want you to be happy," one of her handlers had told her as she'd fought her way through the system. She hadn't bothered to answer. Happiness was not something she believed she'd ever experience again. It was, in fact, something that she had begun to wonder if she'd ever experienced at all. Perhaps the heartrending memory of happiness was just an illusion that she'd conjured up out of her misery.
"Why Minnesota?" they'd probed.
"No reason," she'd said with a shrug.
"Do you--did you know someone there?"
"No," she'd said. If they couldn't bother to clarify which timeline they were asking about they couldn't blame her for not being more specific herself. They should have known as well as she did that answers which would have been lies in her own world were the absolute truth as she knew it in this one.
"Have you ever been there?"
"No," she'd answered.
"Then, why Minnesota?" they'd demanded again.
"Maybe I want to dance with the bear. You know," she'd added with a weary sigh when they'd just looked at her with their puzzled faces, "the beer bear?" They'd pursed their lips and shaken their heads, and she'd shrugged her shoulders and apologetically said, "Wrong world." Which hadn't gone far in satisfying them even though it was the only completely truthful answer she'd given them the entire interview.
"It looks like the kind of place I could get lost in," she'd finally answered. Her voice must have conveyed the depth of her despair because that's when they'd wished her happiness as though they'd understood a little too well what she meant.
In time, she was duly installed into the small, northern town surrounded by rugged beauty and inhabited by fewer people than had lived in a five-block radius of her former apartment.
"Land of Sky-Blue Waters," he'd said enticingly as though the words alone could lure her in to dropping everything under the Mountain and joining him. But, she'd only smiled and shaken her head and if she had it to do over again she would have packed her bags and never looked back. Only, of course, even he hadn't made the trip that time. Other times though, when the Asgard hadn't seen fit to interfere with his vacation plans--she should have gone.
Why hadn't she? The rules and regulations? Her insecurities and uncertainties? Those about herself--her ability to succeed in a relationship after Jonas Hansen had callously shattered her confident belief that love and understanding were all that were needed to make a marriage work.
Or those about him? 'Too many years of black ops', the very words she'd used to explain to Daniel why she hadn't been surprised to find Hansen playing god, could and at times did apply to him. They'd left a shadowed hardness hidden beneath the smart mouth and soft, brown eyes. Had the fear one day the bitterness would win out over the boyishness kept her from joining him? That she wouldn't be able to hold the darkness at bay and would never survive waking up to his cutting sarcasm day after day? Or the fear it wasn't really her he wanted, that he'd find her only a poor substitute for Sarah, for Laira?
What was it that had kept her sheltered in the bowels of the Mountain frittering away precious moments and hours that she would now sell her soul to relive sitting by his side on his dock swatting mosquitoes and not catching a single fish?
Sheer stupidity anyway she looked at it. But there was no going back. And no real going forward either. Still, the move was good for her. The sky-blue waters of Minnesota, the crisp clean air, the woods, the people who nodded on the streets and smiled when she rang the bell pushing open the door to the small cafe or slightly dingy grocery store. They lured her out of her cabin in a way the sights and sounds and smells of the city never had.
Though she hadn't known it, she'd seen him the first day she'd arrived. She'd shut the door on the unopened boxes holding her few possessions and walked down to the lake. The sky-blue waters were fading into twilight, and the boats had been dark silhouettes against the darkening sky. The houseboat had been there, looming larger and lower in the water than the other vessels. And he'd stood with one leg on its railing and looked out over the lake. A dark shape she'd glanced at without recognition or sense of déjà vu.
She hadn't come looking for him. "There is no record of a Jack, Jon, or Jonathan O'Neill in the Air Force. Or any branch of the service, for that matter," they'd said. She'd had no reason to not believe them and every reason to avoid finding Jack O'Neill, not of the U.S. Air Force, if he existed in this timeline because he wouldn't be her Jack. He'd be a stranger with the face and voice and hands of the man she loved, but he wouldn't be him. So, she hadn't come looking for him. Hadn't even chosen on her way up from the city to drive pass the small town and lake where his cabin had stood in her timeline. Instead, she'd driven an extra hour to not have to see it and know he wasn't there.
She wondered later, if she had come looking would she have recognized him that day in the approaching nightfall? And the answer was no. He wasn't Jack, had never been Jack, and would never be Jack. The world he lived in was not the world of Jack O'Neill, and it would have shown in the way he stood at the railing that night.
He'd stood then, no doubt, like he always stood with a slight hunch to his shoulders as though withstanding a chilly, northern blast of wind. His spine had never been stiffened by drill sergeants and long hours of standing at attention. The height would have been right, the long arms and legs, though he was thicker--not fat or heavy, just thicker than Jack had ever been. His stillness might have at first glance approximated that of Jack on watch, but it would have been too...relaxed. The man on the boat wouldn't have stood with the weight of command on his shoulders, ever watchful, ever ready for an attack. He would have been safe in his world with the soothing sounds of gentle waves lapping against the side of his boat. She would never have given him a second look, even if she had come expecting to find him. Which she hadn't.
It was the boys she remembered and recognized later. Various sizes and shapes of boys and young men shifting around the boat, their laughing, boisterous voices carrying faintly to her on the shore. They'd seemed happy, and she'd stood on the shore and gazed out at the boat for a long time before turning back to her silent cabin with its yet to be unpacked boxes.
And it was the boys she met first. Two or three or more of them would run past her as she walked along the shore or swarm through the door of the store while she was there shopping. Those were the youngest boys--always racing here or there, jostling to be first at the candy rack or to a finish line only they could see. They spoke to her in passing: "Sorry," as they bumped her in their headlong dash back out of the store or "Whoops," as they skidded to a stop to pick back up whatever they'd knocked from her hands as they'd raced past.
She'd smile at their rapidly departing backs and shake her head along with everyone else they'd left in their wake.
"Those boys!" the clerk would say, but she'd be smiling too.
The middle boys were quieter, slower, and shyer. They tended to wander the town alone on secret missions all their own. They were very similar in size and looks so that it was only one day when she happened to catch them sitting together at the café counter that she realized there were two of them. All four of the younger boys had rushed in then to beg change for the Coke machine from their older brothers and she'd seen their resemblance to one another. But in their brown eyes, laughing faces, and lanky bodies she hadn't seen him. That came later.
David, the younger of the two middle boys, seemed to gravitate toward the same outreaching arm of the shore that drew her. It was not a particularly welcoming area. The shore was rocky making it unpleasant for barefooted frolicking on the beach. The wind blew harder there, quickly carrying any line cast from its rocky point back to shore and discouraging the average fisherman. There wasn't even any scrub brush to offer shade from the glaring sun or shelter from the rain when it came. All in all, it was uninviting stretch of shoreline which made it her favorite haunt those first days following her arrival in town.
Why the boy (all long arms and legs, having hit his growth spurt but still chasing the changes puberty would wreck on his little boy body) chose it was a mystery she didn't have the energy to concern herself with. But, she nodded back in a not unfriendly fashion when he nodded at her in passing, and from there, over the next few days, they progressed to smiles and 'Afternoon'. Never 'Morning' as she fought off the day as long as possible and never left the nothingness of her bed before 1330 or 1400. And never 'Evening' because he was much too young to be wandering the town and lake unsupervised that late in the day. Eleven, she thought, twelve at the most. And that was about all the thought she gave him.
David, on the other hand, gave her a great deal more thought. There was something mysterious and sad about her. At least that's how it seemed to him. But, then maybe he'd read too many books or watched too many shows, because when he finally gathered up his courage and struck up a conversation with her she seemed ordinary enough. Well, he guessed so anyway. He hadn't visited with that many women to really be able to say for sure.
That's when he began dragging his younger brothers out to meet her. The older were all too busy to bother and might anyway tell him to leave the poor woman be as she most probably wanted to be alone and it was almost certain that if she didn't it wasn't a pack of wild, little hooligans she'd want around her.
The boys were all to one degree or another quickly taken with her. And she seemed happy enough to find herself in their acquaintance. Or maybe she was just too nice and polite to tell them to go jump in the lake. Because though they'd soon told her near enough everything about themselves, their dad and the older brothers on the boat and the one married with three sons of his own in Oregon, their summer life on the houseboat, and their winter life on land with school and skating and hockey they never seemed to learn much more from her than her name.
"I'm David O'Neill," he'd said shyly as he held out his hand for her to shake that first day he'd gotten up the courage to talk to her. She'd known by then, hadn't she? Heard his rough voice calling to the boys across the water, his laugh, his whistle, even his singing. ("If you call that singing," he'd said in another life, scowling at himself in the monitor singing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'.)
She'd reached out her hand and taken that of a child who almost could have been her own. A slightly damp, somewhat sticky hand whose grip had been firm and sure. It was a hand capable of anchoring her to this life, a hand to keep her from dissolving into the mist that covered the lake when evening fell. She hadn't come looking for it anymore than she'd come looking for the man on the boat, and she didn't recognize it for what it was anymore than she'd recognized him.
"Maggie," she'd said, not because she wanted to make friends with this child but because it was the expected thing to say, "Maggie Clark. Nice to meet you." And it had been. The boys, in ones or twos or one large group, visited with her wherever she wandered through the afternoons. It didn't seem to occur to them she might enjoy a bit of peace and quiet though one day David had asked her quite solemnly if she thought they were a bother.
"No," she'd said and been surprised to find it was true. She liked their uncomplicated company. "Why?" she asked concerned she'd given them that impression and suddenly afraid they'd wander off and leave her to her own devices.
He shrugged and said, "My dad. He said, maybe we were. You know, maybe you didn't want us hanging around so much?"
"Oh." Their dad. A topic she avoided as much as possible. Though everything they told her of him only confirmed the truth she'd already understood. Regardless of the genetic material he shared with the man she knew, he was not her Jack O'Neill. Still, she shied away from even the mention of him.
It was an odd thing, knowing he had a counterpart in this world and wanting nothing more than to never meet him, never have to smile and say 'nice to meet you' to the stranger who was the man she loved--or had loved.
She would have thought she'd feel the opposite, a desperate need to see him alive and well whether he looked at her with the warmth of shared memories or the eyes of a stranger. Instead it left her with a choking dread. A dread that would have sent her packing if she had been at liberty to go where she wanted, do what she wished. But, she was a prisoner in this world and jumping through the hoops to move again...well, she could always hope he'd spend the summer on his boat and leave her alone.
"Oh," she said again not trusting herself to say anything else. After a moment, she'd forced herself to smile reassuringly at the boy and say, "He doesn't need to worry. Tell him...tell him it's a pleasure to have you around."
David had beamed at her words, and the next day reported his dad had given his permission for them to 'hang around if she really doesn't mind...but you better be sure you're not causing trouble!' And that could have sounded like any man, anywhere.
Ty, the youngest boy, was six (just turned, he'd proudly told her as though it had been a major accomplishment in his young life) and a live wire of movement and noise who one day to her surprise and maybe his own had wormed his way onto her lap, pulled her arms around his middle, clasped them there with his own hands, and melted into her embrace. After several minutes, he'd turned his face up to her and said, "Are you a mom?"
She might have been. If she'd played her hand differently she might have been a mom to a boy very much like him or any one of his brothers chasing crawdads and minnows in the shallow water of the lake. "No," she'd answered him quietly.
"Oh, I thought...I thought maybe this is what a mom feels like." They'd all as a group had very little to say about their mom and that had been more than fine with her. She hadn't wanted to know how he'd come to be living in a houseboat with a whole slew of sons, grown and not, and no mother in the picture. She'd half guessed there were divorce papers filed somewhere and the boys spent the winters in a house under their mother's care. Ty's wistful tone blew that guess out of the water.
"Well, I imagine it's very much the same," she'd said.
"Oh. It's nice."
"Yes, it is."
"She didn't leave us, you know," David had huffed from his place doodling in the soft sand at her feet. "She didn't!" he repeated harshly as though she'd argued with him. "It was snowing and the road was icy." And with that being the end all of an argument they hadn't been having, he rose and stalked off without dusting the sand from his long legs.
Meaning what exactly, she wondered? He'd been old enough to know when his mother had left, abandoning them to the storm and their father? Or he'd been too young to remember what had happened and someone--one of the older boys perhaps--had told him the story of his mother's death, explaining the accident away with icy roads? She blinked after him, pulled the little boy in her lap closer, kissed the top of his head, and refused to think anymore about what was clearly none of her business.
In time, she was dutifully introduced to the older brothers. Josh, a year older than David though they shared the same clothes and David was the trailblazer. Travis, fifteen and bridging the gap between the three older brothers already grown men and the six younger boys all still clearly children. Most days he stayed on the boat with the men, but there were times when he ran on the shore with the children. Always shy around her, he was the one who called her Miss Clark or Ma'am though she'd 'Maggied' him a dozen times.
She met Matt and Danny, the grown brothers from the boat, only briefly. They'd politely inclined their capped heads in her direction and then hurried off about their business. She'd breathed a sigh of relief after them. The caps had shadowed their faces and she hadn't had to see him there.
That wasn't the case when Charlie arrived with his three sons in tow. She met his sons first, of course. If she hadn't by then known better she would have thought they were simply more of the brothers. They ran about the town and lake with the same abandon and spirit as their uncles. Their presence was not a problem.
Unfortunately, she met their father all too soon.
"Maggie, here's Charlie--Charlie, here's Maggie," David had introduced them in passing as he careened down the otherwise quiet street after his brothers and nephews in some wild game of chase.
Caught unawares, laughing over the flurry of boys racing past, she'd turned and came face to face with the unmistakable son of Jack O'Neill. She realized she'd expected him to be a grownup version of the Charlie she'd glimpsed in the corridors of a besieged hospital years before. He wasn't, and with half-grown sons how could she have expected him to be? He couldn't have been even a full ten years younger than she was herself. Tall, like his father, but broader, darker. Dark brown, laughing eyes that came from his father. Wavy, black hair that hadn't.
Jack's hand extended towards her; his voice, not yet roughened by age but still his, said, "Heard a lot about you...good to meet you finally." They'd stood in the street a moment. Two strangers who knew each other rather well through the boys' never ending chatter. She knew he lived in Oregon (you know, the place the wagon trains went if they didn't all get killed by the Indians first?), had a wife who worked in a bank (did you know that when you work at a bank you don't get to take the money home, even if you need it?), a dog (bigger than Grandpa's ol' dog by a long ways!), and drove 'the coolest' car.
He doubtlessly knew just as much about her as well. Or at least he must have felt he did. "It's the first summer I've come home since Mom died...five years now. I thought--she loved the boat, see? I thought it would be too hard without her, but...I should have come sooner. The boys hardly know each other now." Having spent the past two afternoons watching them shouting and laughing with their uncles she thought that probably wasn't the problem he thought it was.
"And, Dad..." he let that observation trail off and that was more than fine with her. "So, what do you think of our little town?" he'd returned the conversation to small talk, and she'd soon found an exit line.
Two days later, the boys, all talking loudly and at once, informed her they were pushing off the next morning. "I can't understand all of you shouting at once," she'd told them with a smile on her face that had disappeared when David had explained at a rate and decibel she could comprehend, "The boat's finally all ready to go, and now that Charlie and everyone are here, we're leaving early in the morning!"
"Oh," she said weakly. "Where will you go?"
"Everywhere!" they told her with huge grins on their faces. "We're going everywhere. All the way up into Canada even!"
She thought she should have known. No wonder he'd been ok with his sons running around like street orphans. He'd been busy making preparations for the trip. She should have been relieved. The way she felt about seeing him, the more distance between them the better.
But, then it wasn't the thought of his absence that was upsetting her. (How could it be? She'd never even met him.) She looked at the excited faces of the boys surrounding her and fumbled with a reply, "How long...how long will you be gone? Or--will you even be coming back here this summer?"
"Oh, sure. We always come back here," they assured her.
"This is our homeport," Ty added.
"Won't be gone longer than a month," Charlie's oldest son told her, "Our mom won't let Dad keeps us here any longer than a month, and we've been gone almost a week already."
The other boys frowned at his words. "We might not get quite everywhere then," one of them said with disgust.
"Oh, well," David said philosophically, "if not this trip, the next!"
They'd run off then with a quick, 'See you, Maggie' to ensure they were stocked with enough bubble gum and jawbreakers to see them to everywhere and back. She'd swayed weakly watching them go and trying not to think what it meant that these boys from a world that shouldn't be could mean so much to her that the thought of a month without their laughing noisy presence filling her afternoons was devastating.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
"Trust me, if you lived in this timeline..." a General Landry they did not know had confidently started, and Cam had reluctantly finished, "...we'd want it to stay the way it is."
He'd shut them up all right, brought all their arguments to an end with that statement. Still, if it meant Jack was lying dead back there on that now empty world...she really hadn't cared who or what would be lost in this timeline. That sounded so callous, so hard, so not the person she wanted to be; but it had been the truth then and it still was. She'd trade this whole world for a shot at being the recipient of one more of his stupid wisecracks and half-grins. The whole universe: lock, stock, and barrel.
Including these sons which weren't his but were? She shied away from the answer and turned to stumble back to her empty house.
And there he was.
She'd stared dumbly at him, her mouth opening and shutting, fighting for air like a fish out of water. She might have gone down, fainted on the main street in front of the entire town, if he hadn't smiled at her. With a smile that was all his own without a hint of Jack's half-smile, or smirk, or arrogant cynicism.
"Jon O'Neill," he said stretching out a chapped hand with a white scar marring his index finger where a fishing hook had caught him years before. She stared at his smile and his hand. This is not Jack. This is not Jack, she told herself. Not with that smile, not with that scar...Jack's soul had been scarred, his body too, but not his hands. This was not Jack...his eyebrow was smooth and unscarred, and his hair wasn't even completely gray. All the years of parenting had not managed to do what she, Daniel, and Teal'c had accomplished in just a year or two. This is not Jack she told herself and returned his handshake.
"You must be Maggie. I guess you know my sons are all in love with you...it's a real tossup on who will get to marry you in the end," he told her with a grin.
She realized with a horrifying sense of disbelief that he expected her to stand there and make small talk. If ever she could have chosen to disappear, this would have been the time.
"Let me buy you a Coke," he continued, "and we can compare notes on the boys. Goodness knows you've seen more of them lately than I have." She shook her head and made polite refusing-type noises, but he didn't seem to see her distress and she was helpless to escape his presence. The boys who had dogged her footsteps for the past weeks had disappeared into the corner store and not one was there to come to her rescue. "You can't refuse me," he quipped, "I know all of your secrets."
He didn't know any of them. He never would. And more than that, he wasn't interested in ferreting them out. He just wanted to assure himself she wasn't some lunatic stalking his sons. He wasn't Jack. He had only a passing interest in her. A Coke, all she had to do was drink a Coke and reassure him she didn't eat little boys for breakfast and he'd be off to Canada. She could survive this encounter. She could.
And she did. Because he wasn't Jack and she didn't see Jack when she looked at him, didn't hear Jack when he spoke. Though he'd always wonder, from that very first meeting she only saw Jon in him. Strange to think she'd seen Jack's son when she'd met a Charlie he had never fathered, but she hadn't seen Jack when she looked into his own face.
She saw a nice man; a kind, good-hearted, hard-working family man impossible not to like. A man concerned with groceries and clean underwear, not P-90's and hyperdrives. Not a man to step gamefully through an open StarGate into the unknown every day of the week. Disappear happily into the backwaters of Minnesota for weeks, maybe even months, on end, but that wasn't even in the same league.
Compared to Jack, Jon with his extraordinary life in a houseboat full of sons was ordinary. Something Jack O'Neill had never been--at least to her. He'd been larger than life, filling a room with his very presence. She clung to the differences and refused to see the similarities, and in that way, as uncomfortable as it was, she managed to survive the encounter.
By the time they'd finished their Cokes and he'd munched his way through an extra-large order of fries, the boys had found them. If his presence wasn't enough to fill the room theirs certainly was. Their laughter and their chatter safely carried her through until she was finally able to make her escape.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
She disappeared while they were gone. Not into the mists of time, but back into the emptiness of her purposeless life.
~*~*~
"Get to the Gate," he said and then he died.
"No!" she cried and stayed there at his side with Tok'ra disappearing left and right and Mitchell yelling at her to come. Grabbing Daniel and roughly pushing him toward the Gate. Yelling at her again, reaching to grab her and pull her away from Jack. Staring in shock at his hand passing through her shoulder like it wasn't there at all.
It wasn't. She was dissolving, disappearing, being wiped from time, vanishing into nothingness.
She gasped in relief.
This would all be changed. His death would not have happened. He'd still smirk at her waiting to see if she was going to laugh at his dumb joke or not. He'd still grumble about her talking too much, still roll his eyes when Daniel got off on his ancient gods, still convince Teal'c the Simpson's were worth watching. He'd still be there to save the day, the world, the galaxy...to save her.
That's when the nightmare began for though time was changing and everything was transforming around him, his body remained unaffected. Time left him untouched. Everything was changing, except his death. It was the one unchangeable thing in the universe.
She cried out in despair, but she made no sound for she had disappeared and only his body remained behind.
~*~*~
It was always a shock to wake trembling from the dream and find herself very much still physically present. She'd long ago come to the understanding that no matter how hard she struggled against it one day, when the hopelessness and loss overwhelmed her, she'd do something about that. It had up until David had extended his hand out to her seemed inevitable. And though she wouldn't have admitted it even to herself, it had become almost fine by her. It would have solved some problems and money issues for the folks who watched her life and cut her a check every month. It would have been a weight off of Cam's mind as well. And an open door for Daniel.
But in a month--or less, the boys would be watching for her to make her way down to the lake. All the stories of the wonders and things they'd seen on their trip would be welling up in them to share with her. She couldn't leave them waiting for her; she had never been that cruel. And she found to her surprise, she wanted to hear what they had to tell her.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
David plopped onto the bench beside Jon. "I miss Maggie," he said.
"So that's what you've been moping about? The whole lot of you? I wondered what was up."
"She's a real nice lady, Dad."
"Yeah, I noticed that."
"Real pretty, too."
"Yep."
"And smart. She's real smart."
"Oh?"
"Yep. And she doesn't get water sick, I asked her once."
"That's good."
"Yep...she ain't got no one. Just us to keep her company."
"That so?"
"Yep. I asked her once and she said she didn't."
"Really? She said, "I ain't got no one,' just like that, did she?"
"Daaaad! You know what I mean."
"Yep, just not sure what you want me to do about it."
"Well, I was thinking--the others and I were thinking, seeing she's so nice and pretty and all alone-"
"And smart, don't forget smart," he interjected not bothering to hide his smile.
"This is serious, Dad."
"What, then?"
"Well, we were thinking, seeing she's all that and all alone...and she likes us--a lot, I think, and we like her a lot too--and you and her seemed to be getting along pretty well in the café, and...and all. Well..."
"Well, what, Son? You want to call her when we get to a phone...say 'hi'?"
"That'd be nice, but...we were thinking more like you could...you know."
"Haven't a clue."
Charlie laughed behind them, "I think he's suggesting you marry her, Dad."
David lowered his head and scrunched his shoulders up like a turtle.
Jon couldn't help reaching out a hand and rubbing his head. He tried to keep the laugh out of his voice but wasn't quite successful. "Well, that sort of thing works in the movies and books, but it's not that simple. Besides, we're all right, aren't we? The way we are? We wouldn't want to risk messing that up. And I imagine she might have something to say about it seeing she probably figures she's just fine the way she is, too. She doesn't even know me, and I doubt she'd be interested in getting to know me like that--I'm way too old, and I've got a whole boatload of pesky boys besides."
"You're not that old, Dad," Charlie said with a wink. Jon gave him a 'you are not helping here' look that only made the laugh his son had been hiding slip through.
David didn't notice. "And she likes us, Dad, she does," he said popping back up hopefully. "So all you'd have to do is let her get to know you...you're nice enough--I bet she'd like you fine."
"Liking someone and wanting to marry them are not the same things, David."
"Yes, Sir," David said and dropped his head once more.
"She could do worse though," Charlie said, "and so could you, Dad."
"What's that supposed to mean? You're not serious are you? Surely you're not in on this too?"
"Nah. I'm just saying."
"Well, I'll take it under advisement, but in the meantime, I suppose someone better start thinking about what's for supper. Come on, David. Help me whip something up."
"You know, she can probably cook, too. That would be a plus, right?" David asked uncurling from the bench and looking hopefully up at him.
He grunted. "I can cook just fine," he said. "Besides, she's probably one of those health nuts who only cook soybeans and asparagus anyway."
"Oh no, Dad, she eats junk just like us!" David assured him. Jon and Charlie shared a grin over his earnest head.
Maggie Clark had made quite an impression on his boys. And Jon couldn't deny, he'd felt drawn to her in the few minutes he'd spent in her company himself. Of course, he'd been hearing about her for weeks by then which probably explained why he'd found her so compelling. But even so, despite what his sons might hope, he hadn't fallen for her over a Coke and a large order of fries.
How could he have when he barely knew her and knew nothing about her? He frowned then because for all the time the boys had spent with her and all the not-so-gentle probing the townfolk had given her, she was still the mysterious stranger come to stay. He had no doubt the boys had managed to tell her all of his secrets (what few there were, tantalizing ones like the fact he couldn't be bothered to match his socks and figured who noticed anyway?) but they'd gleaned very few, if any, of hers.
Her wide blue eyes and smile hinted at openness and honesty, but he thought she was hiding something behind them. He'd gotten the impression she was frightened...of him. He pursed his lips and shook his head at that thought. Unless she was some sort of a psychopath stalking his sons, she had nothing to fear from him. Nothing at all. He'd leave her in peace with her secrets intact. They didn't affect him or his boys.
The town had been agog when she'd first arrived with her few boxes of belongings and remarkable resemblance to the astronaut who'd sacrificed herself to save her crew and a good chunk of the East Coast when the shuttle had gone down. That had all blown over now, thankfully, but he supposed it might explain her apprehension. If so, she had no need to worry he'd ever bring it up.
~*~*~*~*~
The interrupted programming announcing a catastrophe in the making had barely registered on his aching consciousness. He'd been stretched out in his bed with the baby's sweaty, feverish body sprawled on his chest and the other little boys pressing up against him. All of them too sick with a nasty stomach bug to even groan when the news flash had replaced some mindless cartoon or another.
"The 7-up is gone, and at this rate, we'll be out of Tylenol by midnight," Jamie had said, sticking her dark head through the door and resolutely refusing to see Josh puking into an ice cream bucket. "Seeing as I'm the only one still on my feet, I guess I better make a run to the store." And she'd gone out into the storm without him even uttering a 'be careful' after her.
"Love you guys," she'd called from the door, but he was dumping Ty off of him and making a dash for the bathroom and hadn't answered. By the time Samantha Carter's crew were safely drifting down in their chutes and she was piloting the shuttle away from millions of New Englanders, the state troopers were at his door saying, "Mr. O'Neill? We're sorry. There's been an accident."
The face that looked remarkably like the stranger his sons had fallen in love with had been splashed all over the TV screens, newspapers, and magazines of America for the next week or two, but he'd never seen it. Almost a year later when the end of the year recaps brought the shuttle accident back up, he and Danny had exchanged surprised looks, and he'd said, "I didn't know we lost another shuttle. When did that happened?"
~*~*~*~*~
It had been apparent, however, that the rest of the townsfolk didn't share in his ignorance. After hearing it about a dozen times too many he'd protested, "For crying out loud, obviously everyone who looks at her doesn't swear she's the spitting image of Samantha Carter because I don't! I don't even know what the woman looked like!"
Marla, the waitress at the café had snootily informed him that he was quite probably the only adult in America who didn't. But, if he wanted to know all he had to do was take a gander at the stranger in town; she was the spitting image of Samantha Carter.
As gawking at strangers was not an activity he indulged in and the fish were calling his name, he hadn't bothered. Of course, he hadn't known then she would bewitch his little boys. If he had, he might have torn himself away from the fishing and trip preparations to at least glance her way. Maybe. The fishing had been exceptionally good, the trip preparations extra important with Charlie and the grandsons coming along for the first time in forever, and every report he heard about her harmless and benign.
It wasn't like they were running the streets of the Twin Cities with a stranger after all. If anything would have seemed the slightest bit off, half the town would have hustled down to the shore and shouted it over the water to him. But, of course, they hadn't because she was harmless.
She was also a good influence on the boys. Since meeting her, the books they lugged home from the library all had a distinctly scientific and educational slant. By the end of the summer, they'd be ready to launch their own shuttle if it continued. From the report cards he'd seen on the last day of school, it wouldn't hurt the boys to pick up a few things from her.
But that didn't mean he was putting on a clean shirt and knocking on her door with a marriage proposal even if his boys thought she was lonely. When did they become such romantics anyway?
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
The boys were glad to be back, and he discovered things with Maggie were more serious than he had thought.
They suggested to him that maybe they should postpone their next trip out...a storm might be brewing or something. When he assured them the old boat was good for at least another season of gales and squalls, they'd mused that as they had all the extra room with Charlie and his boys gone back to Oregon and Matt and Danny back to their jobs and lives in Duluth, they might as well invite a friend or two along...just so the trip wouldn't be so lonesome, of course.
"I fail to see how the lot of us could possibly get lonely with all the stuff we've got planned. It won't be a problem," he'd told them.
Well then, did he realize there were people in the world all alone, Maggie for instance, who were terribly lonesome and it wouldn't be right not to invite someone like that along when you had such a great trip planned out, would it?
"You'd bring some strange woman on my boat?" he'd squawked indignantly just to see their reaction.
"Maggie's not a stranger, Dad!"
"And she's real quiet...you wouldn't hardly have to know she was onboard."
"She doesn't eat much either."
"Or take up much room."
"We'd look after her, Dad...make sure she doesn't sink the boat or anything like that!"
He'd looked at their anxious faces, and allowed, as she'd be so trouble-free, they could try to talk her into coming out to the boat for an afternoon of fishing. But that would have to do them. 'The Boys' Home' wasn't a cruise ship after all.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
The visit to the boat was against her better judgment; even her worst judgment counseled against it.
So why did she go? Maybe because she'd said 'no' to too many fishing invitations already, said it and lived to regret it. Maybe. But, she blamed it on the boys' award-worthy persuasive arguments and deep, brown eyes. She thought even Senator Kinsey couldn't have stood against their pleas.
"Welcome aboard," he told her stretching out a long arm to give her a hand up.
"Thanks," she'd said and let the boys pull her away in their excitement to show her around. With everything there was to see on the boat, she managed to avoid him right up until suppertime.
Even then, the boys served as an effective buffer. "Hope you like fish" and "Thanks, it's great, really" pretty much summed up what they had to say to each other during the meal. She had the feeling that was as okay with him as it was with her. The boys had spent the past week extolling his virtues when they were with her, and more than likely he'd had his fill of hers as well. Not that the boys were done yet.
"Dad's a real good cook. He can cook lots more than fish. Like, um..."
"Hot dogs. He's really good with hot dogs!"
"And hamburgers."
"Yeah, his hamburgers are really good. The best. He makes 'em black and crunchy...no one makes hamburgers like, Dad." She couldn't help laughing at that. Jack had had a similar (though she guessed more alcoholic) way with hamburgers which explained why she'd never requested them when he'd offered to cook.
Hearing her laugh, Jon leaned over to stage-whisper, "Subtle, aren't they?
She'd laughed again while the boys demanded to know what he was saying.
"I'm saying, my dear young men, that we are on to you...and also that you should give it a rest. Unless you're hankering to go to bed as soon as chores are done without any of the most fabulous dessert in the entire world. In which case you can just go on the way you've been."
The boys clammed up quickly. Which would have been a nice change if it hadn't left just the two of them to carry the conversation. Into the awkward silence she said, "So let me guess...cake?"
"You told her," he accused the boys.
"Not us...you wouldn't tell us, remember?"
Travis snorted and offered his only utterance of the evening, "What's that got to do with anything? Everyone knows if Dad's in charge of dessert it's cake."
"Fine," Jon said. "The real question is, what kind?" To his surprise, Ty climbed into Maggie's lap while she pondered her answer. He pulled her arms around him and laid his head against her chest as though he thought he belonged there. She absentmindedly brushed her lips over the top of his head as through he did.
"Pumpkin with chocolate frosting," she finally said after having given the question due consideration.
Jon, his eyes on his youngest son in her arms, almost missed his cue. He grimaced and said, "What! Who eats pumpkin cake with chocolate frosting? You blew it. You almost made us believe you knew what you were talking about but...pumpkin with chocolate frosting!" He shook his head in mock disgust while the boys laughed.
"Try again, Maggie," David urged her, and she blew out her cheeks in mock concentration. She knew as well as they did exactly what kind of cake they would all soon been eating. Jack had liked all kinds (except for pumpkin) but when it was up to him he had always and only picked white with chocolate frosting.
"Hmmm, if not pumpkin it must be chocolate with vanilla frosting."
The boys groaned, and he shook his head and said, "Last chance."
Ty pulled her head down and whispered in her ear. "White with chocolate frosting," she announced triumphantly, and they cheered her as though she'd performed a great feat.
Later when she'd turned from the lake and walked back to her silent, empty house after coming to shore, she could still hear their laughing, happy voices ringing out over the water.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
"See, Dad? She really is nice."
"Yes, David. She's just as nice and smart and pretty as you said...but you've got to admit, she doesn't know a thing about cake." Not that that one little foible was likely to save him. He'd only ever loved the one woman, and he'd never expected to ever love another, but...she was everything the boys had told him and more. Could he really be falling in love with someone that quickly?
Of course, he could. Jamie had fallen in love with him in his grandfather's garage over a box of hound pups. He'd stood there, shuffling his feet and wishing she and her brother would hurry up and pick the pup they wanted already so he could get back to his fishing and never guessing what was happening right before his eyes. Had she went home that afternoon, cuddling the little black pup and already missing him even though he'd never said a word directly to her? Maybe she had.
That had worked out all right. Twenty-six years, ten sons, summers on the boat, winters working to pay for the summers and keep the boys fed and clothed...lots of laughs and no regrets. He looked out over the water and wondered how he could possibly be falling in love with someone else while missing her so badly.
And wondering just how big a fool he really was. A woman like that was never going to fall for the likes of him. She was nearer Charlie's age than his for one thing. And way smarter than him. She was also grieving over a loss of her own if he were any judge. Plus, he was far too encumbered with dependents. Whether she liked them a lot as David presumed or not, a boatload of boys wasn't something most women would have toted up on the plus side.
And though he still hadn't figured out why, she was scared to death of him. What on earth was there about him to scare her?
Unless...she was afraid of falling in love. Which was, as he had just been thinking, ridiculous. He was a fool; a certifiable idiot to think she was ever going to feel anything for him.
"So you like her, huh?" David pressed on.
"I like her, Son. I like a lot of people, but that doesn't mean I'm marrying them."
"They're not Maggie though. You wait, Dad. If you get to know her, you really will like her. I know it."
"David, enough."
"Yes, Sir."
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