Prompt 45- Beautiful

Calleigh tucked her stack of reports under her arm and headed toward Horatio's office. He caught her on the way there.

"Hey there handsome," she grinned. "Just the man I was looking for."

Horatio smiled. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Just wanted to hand deliver these to you," she handed the files to him.

"All caught up, I see."

"Of course."

He glanced over the paperwork and nodded to himself. "I'm sure these are fine," his eyes flitted briefly over her shoulder towards reception. "Why don't you go ahead and take off?"

"Oh, well there're a few things I still need to go over. I was just going to head back down to the lab."

"I think," he paused with a smile, "I think there may be someone here to see you."

Calleigh turned toward reception and blinked several times.

"Her name is Calleigh Duquesne," a woman with shoulder length, graying blonde hair and the deep accent of a southern belle was saying slowing to the receptionist. "It's spelled like Do-Ques-Knee…"

"Mama!" Calleigh called, swallowing her shock.

The woman turned, her flowery tunic top belling out around her. Her green eyes brightened and she let out a small squeal of excitement. "Never mind," she addressed the receptionist again, "I found her."

They approached one another. "Mama, what are you doing here?" Calleigh asked through a tight hug and a kiss on each cheek.

"I'm not allowed to come to see my beautiful daughter as a surprise?" She pulled away and held her daughter's face in her hands. "You look good, honey. You look real good."

"You do too, Mama," Calleigh's eyes traveled over her mother. She looked exactly the same as she had two years ago. Still appearing to weigh no more than a hundred and twenty pounds, still attempting to squelch her gray roots with peroxide, still with long, pink fingernails and still, much to Calleigh's dismay, clad in Spandex leggings and stiletto heels.

Her mother fluffed her hair. "I know it."

She hid her rolling eyes while turning back to Horatio. "Here, Mama, come meet a few people."

Horatio took a few steps toward them. "Ma'am," he smiled, extending his hand.

"Mama, this is my boss, Horatio Caine. Horatio, this is my mother."

"Carlene Duquesne, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure's all mine." They smiled at one another. "Are you just here visiting Calleigh?"

"Well I thought it was about time, seeing as this city seems to have kidnapped my daughter and I don't think I'll ever get her home." They shared a laugh. "She speaks so highly of y'all I just had to come down and see for myself." Carlene gave her daughter a stern look. "And y'know I had to surprise her because otherwise she'd make y'all scarce and I wouldn't get to meet anybody."

Horatio smiled. "She'd just want to keep you all to herself, I'm sure. Well ladies," he placed his hands on his hips, "I'm sorry to cut this short but I do need to be getting back to work. Enjoy yourselves."

"It was nice meeting you, Horatio."

"You as well. Calleigh, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yep," she smiled tightly. "Have a good night."

Carlene looked around in curiosity. "Certainly is a big place."

"Well, we do a lot of stuff here."

"Are you going to show me where you shoot all those guns?"

Calleigh blinked in surprise. Her mother had always hated what she did—she had been terrified of guns for as long as she could remember. "Yeah, I guess I could do that."

On the way to the ballistics lab, they ran into Eric. He stopped and did a double take, a wide smile spreading on his face. "Calleigh, you didn't tell me your little sister was visiting."

She rolled her eyes. "Eric, this is my—"

Her mother stepped up and extended her hand. "Carlene Duquesne, I'm Calleigh's mother."

"Eric Delko," his smile amplified. "It's nice to finally meet you."

"Eric?" Carlene glanced over at her daughter and then back to the man before her. "I've heard nothing but good things."

"To what do we owe your visit?" Eric asked, still in disbelief at the similarities between Calleigh and her mother.

"Just stopped in for a surprise," Carlene purred. "I'm not ruining any plans y'all had tonight, am I?" She raised her eyebrows suggestively.

"Mama…" Calleigh felt a blush rising to her cheeks.

"Oh, I'm sorry, am I embarrassing you?" the older of the two put her arm around Calleigh's shoulders. "I'm sorry but I just can't help but point it out when there's a big beautiful piece of man standing in arms' length of my gorgeous, single daughter." She bumped her hip against said gorgeous, single daughter.

Calleigh had forgotten what it was like to want to be swallowed by the earth. "We need to go."

"It was nice meeting you!" Eric called gleefully as Carlene was dragged down the corridor.

Ryan approached him then about a call. "Hey, was that who I think it was?"

"Yeah," Eric smiled, still watching the pair retreat. "Calleigh and her mom."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"Well, I guess we know what Calleigh's going to look like in thirty years."

Eric chuckled to himself. "I don't think Calleigh's ever going to be wearing Spandex."

Ryan raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. "She might if you're lucky."

x0x0x

The tour of the rest of the lab had been quick and thankfully without incident. They'd arrived at Calleigh's condo shortly thereafter.

"Well, this is it," she said, waving a hand over the space. "Kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom," she pointed out the rooms as they moved through them quickly.

"And who is this charming little character?" Carlene asked suddenly as Cubano entered the room.

Calleigh smiled. "That's Cubano. He's a recent addition to the Duquesne family."

"Cubano, huh?" her mother raised an eyebrow as she scooped the cat up.

Calleigh rolled her eyes. "Eric's nieces named him."

"Oh, he's a gift from Eric?"

Her daughter pursed her lips. "I need to take a shower before we go out to eat. I'll show you the upstairs."

"All right, all right," Carlene sighed as they made their way up the stairs. "I'm not prying, I'm just saying…"

"Well you certainly do a lot of that, Mama."

"Yes, as I remember it's a rather unattractive trait I passed on to you."

Calleigh closed her eyes momentarily and regained her composure. "So here we have the master bedroom, the master bath and the guest room."

They stood in the hall for a moment before her mother smiled. "It's a nice place, Calleigh. You're doing all right for yourself."

Calleigh felt that familiar pathological need to please the woman standing before her. Despite everything that had happened only in the last hour, she smiled. "Thank you. I'm going to shower, just make yourself at home."

She showered and dressed quickly before returning to her room to find her mother sitting on the bed, lazily rubbing Cubano's chocolate belly. "He is the friendliest cat," she remarked.

Calleigh smiled. "Yep, he's a good one." She turned her attention to the mirror and began applying her make-up.

Carlene watched quietly for a few moments as her daughter rubbed moisturizer into her skin and dabbed concealer under her eyes. She remembered, briefly, a time when these roles were reversed. When her precious little girl would sit on the edge of the bathtub, green eyes large with wonder, and beg 'Make me pretty, Mama! Make me pretty like you!' She got to her feet and stood behind her daughter, her fingernails combing through her long blonde hair. "Doesn't matter what you do," she said softly, "you'll always be the most beautiful girl in any room."

Calleigh smiled and looked at their reflections in the mirror. Even she couldn't deny their similarities. "You're biased."

Carlene echoed her daughter's smile. "Maybe just a little." She wandered away from the mirror and back to the bed.

"Mama, what's going on?"

"What do you mean, honey?"

Calleigh rolled her eyes. "I mean you come all the way to Miami when you hate to fly, you don't even tell me you're coming, you won't say why you're here… something's going on," she dropped onto the bed. "What's up?

Carlene sighed. "I should've known better than to try to hide things from an investigator."

"What is it?"

"It's nothing, I'm fine."

"Mama…"

"I'm fine. Unfortunately, the doctor found a few lumps in this old body of mine."

Calleigh's stomach dropped to her knees. She swallowed hard. "A few?"

"Well there's one in my breast, one on my ovary, and one in my uterus. So yeah," she shrugged. "A few."

"How long have you known about this? Did you tell the boys or Daddy yet? When do you start treatment? Are they going to do a full hysterectomy? What can I—"

"Calleigh!" her mother held her hand to her mouth. "I'm going to tell you everything I know, all right?" Calleigh nodded, her heart still racing. "I'm going to have a hysterectomy and the lump in my breast removed. They don't think it's spread anywhere else but I'm going to go through fifteen rounds of chemo, just to be safe."

Calleigh's heart sank lower. "Chemo," she echoed softly. "So it definitely is cancer?"

"Well, yes, darlin'. It definitely is cancer. But I'm going to tell you the same thing I told the doctor. I licked scarlet fever as a child, I pulled myself up out of a bad news marriage, and I happened to be the mother of the most mischievous set of brothers to ever come out of the fair state of Louisiana. If I can't lick cancer, honey, ain't nobody can."

Despite the tears she felt welling in her eyes, Calleigh smiled. "Mama," she shook her head. "You're amazing."

"No, baby girl," Carlene took her daughter's face in her hands and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "You're amazing. I'm only this way because of you." She took her daughter in her arms and allowed a few, frightened tears to escape her eyes. After a moment, she pulled away and laughed. "My goodness, I'm sure I look an absolute fright," she wiped at her eyes and stood up to face the mirror. "These tears just won't do." She dabbed at her face with a tissue and adjusted her eye make-up. "How do I look, darlin'?"

Calleigh got to her feet and wrapped her arms around the difficult woman she called her mother. She rested her head on her shoulder and looked at them both in the mirror. "You're beautiful, Mama. You're absolutely beautiful."

And she was. She always was.

Written in loving memory of my mother, Peggy,

and the first Mother's Day I've spent without her.

1956-2008