Chapter 2
She was tempted to wear sunglasses and a baseball cap so no one would notice her. After she had been properly screened and deemed safe, an appointment was set up for Sara and Brenda on a sunny Saturday morning. Sara had talked briefly on the phone with the little girl, who seemed none too excited about the prospect of doing anything. Sara wondered if she was doing the right thing, if her presence would only remind Brenda of the night her family died, of the abuse she suffered at the hands of the man who was supposed to protect her.
Over the phone Sara suggested the planetarium and Brenda responded with the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
"Would you like to go somewhere else?" she asked nervously. "We could go to an amusement park."
"The planetarium is fine," Brenda mumbled.
"Okay. Good. Good," Sara said, smiling in fear, her teeth clenched. She wondered if Brenda would react once she saw her, once she knew who she was.
When she picked Brenda up at the group home the next day, Sara got her answer. The sluggish little girl who was waiting at the doorway with her caseworker stood ramrod straight when she recognized the CSI who had stayed with her throughout devastating trauma.
Sara made sure Brenda was secure in the backseat before getting into the driver's seat and pulling out of her parking space. She looked at her in the rearview mirror. Brenda was staring at her hands. Her hair had been brushed, but still looked unkempt. Sara bit her lip. "Uh…do you remember me?" she asked softly.
Brenda nodded. "You were there. You helped me."
Sara felt her stomach tie itself in knots. "Yes," she said, barely audible.
"You didn't ask me a lot of questions. Everybody asks me questions now," Brenda sighed, looking out the window.
"We don't have to talk about…anything you don't want to."
"Okay."
The rest of the ride was silent. Sara kept glancing at the little girl's reflection, hoping to see…something. A smile? Enthusiasm? The same vacant look she had come to associate with Brenda was still very much the girl's main expression.
They arrived at the planetarium. Sara opened the car door for Brenda and she slid off of the seat. They walked into the air-conditioned planetarium and bought two tickets.
"The main show in the theater is in a half hour," Sara said, checking her watch. "Do you want to look around until then?"
"Okay."
The halls were dark, lit only by footlights and bright sculptures of the solar system. They stood silently as a mechanical moon encircled the earth. A nearby child pushed a button and Neil Armstrong's famous words wafted through the dark hall.
"Do you have a favorite planet?" Sara asked.
Brenda tilted her head and considered. "That one," she said, pointing.
"Saturn," Sara said. "Very nice."
"I like the loops."
Sara smiled. "Those are Saturn's rings. Maybe we'll get a book at the gift shop on the way out. Come on," she said, placing her hand on Brenda's shoulder, "the show is about to start."
They sat in the theater, staring at the lit ceiling, which sparkled in comets and meteors and constellations. The narrator had a nice, deep voice that lulled the audience. Sara would sneak peeks and the little girl sitting to her right every so often. Brenda was enthralled by the spectacle. She watched the sky and Sara watched her.
When it was over, they headed to the gift shop. Brenda seemed uneasy about picking something, so Sara found what she assumed would be a good book for a nine-year old who wanted to know more about the solar system. "This one looks good," she said, handing it to Brenda to inspect. "Do you see anything else you like?"
She shook her head. Sara paid for the book and they walked back to the car, the intense Nevada sun's warmth and bright light a big difference from the cool, climate-controlled darkness of the planetarium.
"Do you want to go for some ice cream before I take you back?"
Brenda stood staring straight ahead for a long moment.
"Brenda?"
"Yes."
There was an old soda fountain shop close by, a place that looked like it had been there since the days the Rat Pack ruled the Strip. Brenda brought her book with her and they flipped through it as they ate their ice cream sundaes.
"Hey," Sara said, swallowing a mouthful of ice cream, "it says here that Saturn's rings are made out of chunks of rocks and ice."
"But they're so pretty," Brenda countered.
"It's amazing how something that you don't think is pretty really is pretty when you look at it a different way."
The little girl considered this and then went back to studying the book.
"Do you like school, Brenda?"
She shook her head. "I'm not good at it."
Sara raised her eyebrows. When she had been in a similar situation, school was her refuge. She wasn't the most beautiful, she wasn't the most popular. But she had been the smartest. It was the one thing a young Sara had control over. She couldn't do anything about the space in her teeth. She couldn't do anything about the attitudes of her fellow students. But she could work her ass off.
"What do you mean? Are your grades…bad?"
Brenda shrugged. "They're not good. I'm failing math."
Sara almost chocked on a slice of banana. Brenda just said the f-word. "Failing?" She tried not to seem so dramatic, but it was not something Sara could grasp easily.
"I can't do long division," Brenda told her, licking her spoon. "It's hard."
Sara's eyes widened. "What about your other subjects? Are they hard, too?"
"Well…science. And reading. That's hard." She wiped her mouth with a napkin, only managing to spread the chocolate over a greater area of her skin.
Sara smiled and shook her head. She dipped a clean napkin in her ice water and cleaned the ice cream off of Brenda's face. "I've got an idea. Why don't I pick you up some days after school and help you with your homework? Would you like that?"
Brenda looked at the ceiling as she considered it. "Could…we talk about planets, too?"
"You bet."
After dropping the little girl off, Sara wondered what she had gotten herself into. She just committed the spare time of a workaholic to a troubled child who didn't know long division. Sara spent the next night at work fearing the sunlight. She had looked up directions to Brenda's school and had already mapped out the route after calling the caseworker and double-checking to make sure it was alright, but for some reason she felt wholly unprepared. Right after work, she rushed to the supermarket to fill her bare cupboard. Kids liked snacks after school, she surmised. Sara began to wrack her brain, trying to remember what it was like to be a child, but then she thought against it. Her childhood wasn't exactly a template to draw from. She wheeled her cart through produce and picked up a bag of baby carrots, figuring that would be something healthy for Brenda to snack on while they worked on long division. She piled in juice, milk, eggs, and the rest of the essentials.
Dinner. Sara couldn't assume that she'd have Brenda back at the group home in time to eat, so she knew she had to feed the girl a meal. But kids were picky. She recalled Catherine complaining late one shift how Lindsey refused to eat chicken and turkey after a class trip to the farm. Sara settled on pasta. After filling her cart with two boxes of angel hair and the ingredients for tomato sauce, she ambled to frozen foods.
Ice cream. It was the one thing she was sure Brenda liked. Sara got all of the fixings for a sundae and smiled to herself as she watched the cashier ring up her purchases at the register.
Her apartment had been cleaned a day in advance. Instead of sleeping the day before, nerves kept Sara awake, scrubbing and dusting things that were already clean. When she got home, she unpacked her groceries, looked through her mail, and counted the minutes until school was out. She knew she should try to get some sleep, but she wasn't sure if she could. It was silly to be nervous, but nervous she was. Children were not her forte.
And yet…there was a pull. A pull to help. To be there.
After all, twenty years ago, she was in Brenda's shoes. Her mother killed her father. Tina Collins may have done so indirectly, but she was still a murderer. And Brenda's father, bastard that he was, was stabbed to death, much like Sara's father.
And Brenda was alone in the world, just as Sara had been. Just as she still was.
Suddenly, she felt very tired, very weary. Sara set her alarm for 1:30 and fell into bed. She dreamt of the night her life changed, but she wasn't a little girl anymore. She was Sara Sidle, CSI 3, in the doorway of her parent's bedroom. Grissom was standing over her father, examining the blood spatter on the wall.
"Right in the jugular. That must've been the first cut," he said somberly.
Detective Vartann came in and checked his watch. "We got the wife outside. She's rocking back and forth. Won't say shit."
Grissom shrugged. "Well, she's covered in blood." He turned back to look at the wall. "Where's the girl?"
Both men turned to look at Sara, who was straddling the bedroom and the hallway. She furrowed her eyebrows as Vartann walked toward her and gently took her elbow. "Let's get you out of here," he said quietly. She pulled away and noticed she was in a white, polyester nightgown with a pink lace edging. "Come on," he said trying to usher her out of the crime scene.
Grissom glanced at her one more time, frowning sympathetically, before holding his camera up to the blood spatter and snapping a picture, the light of the flash blinding her.
Sara woke up in a cold sweat, panting heavily. She looked at the clock on her nightstand.
It was time to go to school.
TBC…
