Four: On the Home Front

"You and Grissom have been back in town since -" Catherine Willows' voice trailed off expectantly.

"Monday," Sara replied, steeling herself for the inevitable twenty questions she knew were to come.

Not that it all wasn't all routine; nothing she hadn't done herself hundreds if not more times over the years.

Still, she never had liked being on the answering end of the questioning, even if she knew its value. But they had to start somewhere.

"Flew out of SFO early that morning," she added. "Flight got in late. We took a cab to the lab - so he could pick up the car. Barely made it just in time for my ten a.m. strategy meeting with Andrea Yeager."

"Deputy District Attorney in charge of the Freeman trial -"

"Yeah."

That was what Sara was doing back in Vegas in the first place: to serve as the principal investigator for the prosecution in a particularly nasty high profile rape case. Rape cases as a general rule didn't usually garner all that much media coverage. Being all too common an occurrence on campuses across America, a seventeen year old being assaulted at a college post-game party sadly wasn't news. That she had been drugged, alcohol alone apparently not enough to render Megan Freeman pliant enough, interested few either. That she had been repeatedly violated with a used beer bottle didn't make a story either. It was what they had done to the rest of her body that had finally captured the media's fickle attentions.

Whether inflicted before, during or after the actual rape, investigators were never able to properly ascertain, only that when Freeman was discovered just before dawn collapsed in one of her own dorm's showers, she was found covered in indelible ink, every last inch of her Sharpie tattooed with every vile and vulgar slur ever invented to denigrate women.

It was enough to make you sick. It certainly had Sara.

Except that hadn't been the end of it either.

As if what they'd done was just another point of pride, the two players had publicly posted pictures of Freeman sprawled naked and freshly adorned as part of their virtual Snapchat bitch book.

That Megan had seen the pictures was certain. When her phone was found, it opened directly to those pics. Social Media being what it was, that much of the rest of the campus had seen them was equally certain.

Openly shamed and humiliated and unable to wash the boys' foul words from her skin, Megan Freeman slit her arms from wrists to elbows with a broken mirror shard. Having passed out from the blood loss, she ultimately drowned in less than six inches of water.

The Media labeled it the Graffiti Case, Sara insisted on calling it the Freeman Case, Megan deserved that at the very least.

With Finn dead, Russell having to recuse himself from the original investigation due to his personal affiliation with the team and Greg and Morgan having been busy off on other cases, that had only left Sara to tell Megan Freeman's tale.

It didn't help that one of the accused had a wealthy, highly connected father who could afford to purchase the best defense money could buy.

Thankfully, Grissom had understood Sara's need to return. Even if it meant leaving right in the middle of shark study season, he'd readily handed over the keys to the Ishmael to their fellow researchers and followed Sara back to Vegas. Only Hank had protested having to be corralled into a crate for the flight.

"Jury selection begins on the first," Sara added.

While testimony was scheduled to commence the day after the jury was set, with such a high profile case, voir dire alone could take days, if not most of the week. If Yeager stuck to her case strategy and the defense didn't needlessly prolong every cross examination, Sara's own testimony wasn't to come until the start of the second day and would, she knew, take the better part of that day to lay out the evidence, detail its collection, to dot every "I" and cross every "T," to make sure the two cocky ballplayers didn't worm their way out of justice.

Sara, too, would stay on as a potential rebuttal witness for when the defense set out to destroy the prosecution's case - and Megan Freeman's memory.

Only in rape cases did the victim end up on trial as much, as if not more, than the accused.

Needless to say, it was going to be a long two, maybe even three weeks. And definitely not how Sara would have chosen to spend her second honeymoon.

Catherine prompted. "You were in again on Tuesday and Wednesday -"

Sara nodded. "All day. Left him to his own devices."

Grissom hadn't grumbled. Instead, he'd assured his wife he had plenty to keep him occupied. Apparently, even oceanic vigilantes still had to complete paperwork. Plus, there had been a few post Paris conference papers he had offered to peer review.

Not that he had stayed home all day either.

"He went out. Did some shopping. I'm not entirely sure where. Groceries - That sort of thing.

"I know he went to see Eli after school on Wednesday."

Catherine's face softened a little at the mention of Warrick Brown's son.

"Told me he was growing like a weed," Sara continued with a sad sort of smile. "And looking more like his father everyday."

The two women were both a little somber for a moment. Seven years may have come and gone, but a loss was still a loss and losing Warrick the way they had, had hit everyone hard.

"He brought Eli a chemistry kit," Sara eventually added, causing Catherine to quip, "The Grissom gift of choice."

Sara returned to her timeline. "He was home before I finally finished up with Andrea."

In the midst of folding the last of the laundry, Sara recalled, but did not say, seriously doubting that any of his erstwhile coworkers ever imagined Gil Grissom doing anything as domestic as folding clean clothes. But he did.

Catherine's next words were more observation than question:

"And he came in with you yesterday."

"Fresh eyes," Sara explained.

True, her husband had offered to come in with her that morning to play devil's advocate and help find the gaps the defense might attempt to exploit.

Only that hadn't been the sole reason.

The reason she had come home late from her meeting with the Deputy D.A., why what should have been a simple status conference had run long, was the disturbing news that the Defense had been digging.

This didn't surprise Sara. When you couldn't go after the evidence, you went after the people who collected the evidence. Defense 101.

Sara already figured there would be questions about her work record, her absences and returns. What she hadn't counted on was the boys' cutthroat defense attorney nosing out what had happened one horrible night thirty years before.

Murderous schizophrenic mothers could prove more than a little difficult to explain on the stand.

So apart from the practical help, for which even with him retired for the better part of the last six years there were still few people in the field he couldn't outthink, Grissom had come in for much needed moral support. Something Sara hadn't realized or truly appreciated until they were back in her apartment admittedly late at the end of a very long day.

That his presence hadn't gone entirely unnoticed, didn't come as a surprise. The lab was stocked full of perfectly qualified investigators after all.

The only reason she and Grissom had opted not to disturb Catherine, having found the recently made lab director currently entrenched in Grissom's old, Sara's once, and now Catherine's current office, was when they had passed her door, it was to find Catherine Willows hunched over her desk in the midst of that most dreaded of all managerial tasks: paperwork.

And the one thing they both knew: one never interrupted Paperwork Patrol.

Not if you valued your life. Or disliked being sent on trash runs.

Additionally, it being a holiday and all, neither had any intention of keeping Catherine at the office any later then she already was. Besides, there would be plenty of opportunity to catch up at breakfast on Saturday after all.

What Grissom hadn't told her, nor did Catherine now, was that coat in hand on her way out of the office, Catherine had stopped to pop her head in the layout room for a quick hello. Where Sara had disappeared off to, Catherine had no clue, but it was Grissom alone she had found there, pouring over scene photos.

She had offered her old friend no other greeting apart from a pleased: "I'm glad to see you two finally got your heads out of your asses."

Rather than be affronted, Grissom only grinned as he turned to face her. "It's always good to see you, too, Catherine."

The feeling was mutual.

In the momentary fond silence, Catherine Willows gave Gil Grissom a thorough once over. He certainly looked better than the last time she had seen him. He'd lost a bit of weight. His previous general scruffiness had given way to a neatly trimmed goatee. He wasn't nearly so carelessly thrown together.

All due to Sara's influence Catherine figured. The perpetual smile was likely due to Sara, too. Grissom certainly seemed more content that Catherine could ever quite recall seeing him in all the years they'd known each other.

All in all, he looked nearly ten years younger than he had only months before.

Whatever had passed between him and Sara suited him.

"I don't even need to ask how you are," she said with an approving grin of her own. "You look like a man who's right where he wants to be.

"The company more so than the place, I'd imagine."

Grissom held her gaze thinking he really was. Amazing how sometimes you had to travel the world and back again to realize what you most needed was waiting for you to return.

No, he never felt more fortunate. His heart almost ached with it.

As for Catherine, while life may have skewed her more cynic than romantic these days, the earlier sight of Grissom and Sara huddled over the evidence table looking utterly at ease and at home, warmed her heart; gave her a little bit more hope.

And Vegas could use all the hope it could get.

"It's good to have you both back," said Catherine. "And under far less... complicated circumstances."

"You mean without mad bombers?"

Or former dominatrices, Catherine privately rued.

Aloud, but no less regretful, she said, "Not that the Freeman case isn't a bitch. Cases like that..."

"Bring the red out?" Grissom quipped, knowing all too well there were certain crimes and occasions where Catherine's fiery temper could match the color of her hair.

"Definitely. Post rape suicide. A mother's worst nightmare," she sighed. "You manage to get them through the bumps and bruises of childhood. Don't manage to kill them yourselves during the terrible teens. Then send them off to college thinking they are going to be fine, just fine on their own.

"And then something like this happens. To too many girls."

"One in four," Grissom sadly acknowledged.

"More than 110,000 a year, on the conservative end."

Then spoken with all the fervor of a mother with a still young daughter, she added, "Sometimes it makes you wish rape was still considered a capital crime."

Catherine had done the math, too, felt fortunate, beyond fortunate Lindsey had managed to make it through her college years unscathed in that particular way. Particularly when she recalled her own fear when she, having woken from being drugged, feared she might have been raped.

From his sympathetic, yet intellectually detached demeanor when it came to the subject, Catherine figured Sara had never told him about her visit to help Catherine afterwards. Sara had been gentle and calming, both professional and compassionate at the same time, as well as apparently discrete.

Yes, the last thing Catherine wanted was her daughter to have to go through that, to have to pick up the pieces after that sort of hell.

Grissom was still speaking, his tone not entirely unaffected after the day's evidence review. "America's silent epidemic. And certainly not what college is supposed to be about."

"Sad thing is, the rate is even higher for women that age who don't go to college," Catherine countered. "And those numbers are with a sixty plus percent unreported rate."

With a sad sigh, Catherine added, "I heard Mark Ellington took the case. And I thought good old Marjorie Wescott played dirty. She's got nothing on Ellington.

"Of course he has to play dirty. I've read the file, seen the evidence. Those boys practically signed their own confessions on Megan Freeman's body."

Both Grissom and Catherine knew that didn't always matter.

Certain she would never get an honest answer out of Sara, Catherine asked, "Sara hanging in there okay?"

Hers wasn't a question of abilities, or even concern about Sara's sometimes equally explosive temper, just friendly solicitude, a recognition that this sort of case was hard - particularly hard. Grissom recognized it as such.

"You know Sara," he replied, fondness tugging at the corners of his lips.

His Sara was a fighter. Always was, always would be.

As a speaker for the dead, she would, he knew, do everything in her power to seek justice for Megan Freeman.

He was just glad to be there with her while she did. Too many times he hadn't been. But he was here now.

Catherine sensed there was more to this than just Grissom's reply, but equally wasn't about to press. Not that pressing ever usually worked on Gil Grissom. You'd have a better chance of getting blood from a stone when that man's lips were sealed, she well knew.

So Catherine figured it was best to let it go. But before she did, she said, "Yeah, I'm really glad I didn't pull that one. Not so sure I could keep myself from reaching across the table and knocking the smug off those boys' faces.

"But -"

And at this she actually grinned. "You... You must be doing something right. Sara seems even more -"

Catherine paused in search of just the right word. With a wry smirk of her own, she recalled Sara's inadvertent admission nearly five years before that she and Grissom had great sex.

"Satisfied than I remember," she finished.

Apart from the arch of an eyebrow, Grissom refused to rise to her thinly veiled taunt.

Catherine sighed. No point fishing.

In any case, it was obvious the man was completely smitten; Catherine knew that the moment she first mentioned Sara's name.

Then both serious and not, she said, "Gil, try not to screw it up."

Before he could comment, Catherine was already on her way out the door.

"I'd better run," she insisted. "The way things are going around here, we might - just might - get to sit down to eat before the start of next shift."

Grissom grinned. Thanksgiving in Las Vegas. Some things really never did change.

"I left Lindsey in charge of the turkey this year.

"Which has better odds do you think - burnt or coming out still half frozen?" she asked.

"No clue," Grissom laughed. "We don't do turkey."

"Of course you don't," Catherine replied with a chuckle of her own.

"See you - both - Saturday."

At Grissom's apparent sudden bout of puzzlement, she prompted, "Breakfast. Frank's."

"Right." He nodded, recalling as he did so, he and Sara's earlier decision to spring the whole We got married news when everyone was together for breakfast after shift on Saturday morning.

"Saturday," he agreed.

Catherine lingered only long enough at the door to leave him with one last volley.

"Oh and Gil," she said, "don't work too late."

And with a wink and a grin she was gone.

However playful Catherine may have felt just the day before, standing here in Sara's apartment trying to work out what Hannah had done with Grissom, playful was the very last thing Catherine was feeling. Frustrated was more like, even though Sara, she knew, was doing the best that she could.

"We worked until about ten," Sara was telling her. "Didn't get home until late. Must have been well past eleven."

It was Sara's turn to remember, to recall the night before. They had been busy laughing and talking, she and Grissom as they had come in, as they busied themselves with all the usual busyness of getting home after a long day: shucking off their shoes, depositing keys, letting Hank off his leash. Grissom had been in the midst of taking Sara's coat when he leaned in and murmured, "Shower -" in her ear.

Knowing the suggestion was based on his hope that the warm water might help wash away the last of the long day's tension, as it so often did, rather than a comment on her current state of hygiene, Sara wordlessly acquiesced.

Under the spray, Sara caught herself in the midst of soaping for the third time. Old habits really did die hard. At least back in Vegas.

Out on the open ocean with Grissom, she hadn't needed their comfort. But then sea salt was far easier to wash out of one's hair than the stench of death, even if it was but mere remembered stench.

But tonight, she found she didn't need the ritual near as much as she needed her husband, her husband who had just willingly spent an emotionally grueling day to be there with her - for her.

Husband -

Sara couldn't help but beam at the word as she hurriedly toweled herself off.

They would leave the case for the day, go on with living life, talk of other things, simply spend time together as husband and wife, just as Andrea had instructed that she should.

God, it was good to regard Grissom that way again.

Still attempting to wrest her unruly mop of wet curls into a haphazard ponytail, Sara reentered her rather cramped kitchen space to find Grissom pouring tea into two mugs.

Grissom had been pleased when he turned to take her in. Perhaps it was the hair. She wore it like that more often these days: loose and curly, silly as it was with all the time they spent out in the wet ocean air to even begin to bother with straightening it. Or so Sara had maintained. Sara hadn't returned to the habit in Vegas, much to Grissom's pleasure, him having always harbored a not entirely secret appreciation for those curls of hers.

Of course it may have been the outfit. She had padded out barefoot, clad in nothing more dressy than a thin-strapped camisole and a pair of yoga pants. And looking sexy as hell, to Grissom's reckoning, and all the while with Sara apparently not having the least clue to that fact.

She also didn't seem to know that standing there looking as she did, at that moment Sara, could have asked him for anything and Grissom would have moved heaven and earth if he had to to give it to her. Luckily for him, all Sara Sidle had ever really wanted was him.

The appreciation wasn't solely one sided. Grissom, with a tea towel draped over one shoulder, and him having changed into sweatshirt and jeans, looked far more relaxed and at ease and not the least like someone who had just spent the day sifting and arguing his way through a heart-wrenching case.

That evening, Sara admired that in him, took comfort in his quiet presence, rested in the joy that he was here; that they were here together.

Sara knew exactly what to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: Grissom.

Gil Grissom and him back in her life for good.

No more long distance, no more misunderstandings, no more good intentions. Just a life - a real life - with each other again.

She was grateful, beyond grateful for him - for everything: the evening, the long day, the last few months, for this life lived together. There weren't words for just how much; just weren't words at all.

At the moment, Sara figured it was time to make use of some of her own advice. So she simply showed him.

Their kiss proved long and sweet and might have lingered, if the sudden ding of the doorbell didn't serve to tug them apart.

Still, before he finally released her, Grissom asked, his warm blue gaze intent on her face, "Better?"

"Much," Sara replied. "You were right. Of course."

Grissom's grin implied Naturally, causing Sara to purse her lips in an attempt to not roll her eyes as she reached for the wad of cash on the counter top.

"I'd better get the door, Gilbert," she said.

She further smiled at the sight of Tim Woo with several large paper bags in hand. Chinese delivery. She should have known.

While the rest of Vegas might be busy gorging themselves on turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pie, for Grissom and Sara, it just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without Chinese take-out.

Not all traditions were bad after all.

"Hey, Sara. Late night," Woo greeted her.

"Work. Looks like you, too, Woo," she replied.

The young man nodded as Grissom joined her to help with the bags. If Woo was surprised to find Sara not alone this time, he didn't show it. He simply wished her his usual genial goodnight.

Considering the sheer number and heft of the bags, Grissom had apparently ordered a veritable feast.

With a strange mixture of shock and appreciation, Sara watched her husband unpack, then crack open each of the containers.

Garlic broccoli, sweet and sour shrimp, sesame shrimp, lobster fried rice, sautéed mushrooms and cartons of lo mein all took their places beside piles of vegetarian egg rolls and crab rangoon.

"Hungry?" Sara asked aghast.

"'One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,'" Grissom sagely intoned.

"Confucius?"

"Virginia Woolf," he supplied.

With that, Sara simply surrendered, sat and dug in.

Neither all that interested in bothering with plates that night, they ate directly out of the cartons, chopsticks occasionally clacking when they each dipped into the same box at the same time.

Before long, the counter was clear of everything but a pair of fortune cookies.

Sara passed her husband one, took up the other. As Grissom slipped on his reading glasses, the better to examine his own fortune, Sara read, "'A tall, dark stranger will come into your life.'"

When Grissom looked particularly askance at this, his wife flipped her fortune over to show him the real one.

It's a good time to finish up old tasks, it read.

"The Chinese have obviously never heard of forensic backlog," Sara rued.

"It can't be that bad."

"Sixty-eight open cases," she sighed. "Reviewed the inventory yesterday."

At the thought of all of her open cases, Sara cringed. She'd returned to Vegas six years before, purely on a temporary basis, in hopes of making a dent in the hundred plus cases Riley Adams had so hastily left behind.

That hadn't happened - the purely temporary or the dent. And here Sara was leaving quite a few of her own behind.

But it was an ever unending battle, this Sara knew, too. Would always be.

It was time to let someone else fight the good fight for a while. And that, that was okay.

"What can you do?" Sara shrugged and after taking a bite of cookie, opted to change the subject. "Of course, you know fortune cookies really aren't Chinese.

"American, by way of Japan."

From the curious way Grissom was peering at her over his reading glasses, perhaps it was for the best that she hadn't mentioned the fact that July 20th was National Fortune Cookie Day.

"What?" she asked. "I... I eat a lot of Chinese."

"May I?" her husband asked in turn, indicating the fortune still clutched in her hand.

Sara readily handed it to him, curious herself as she watched him take out a pen, turn the slip over and briefly scribble on the reverse before returning it to her to read.

"'Even know-it-alls eventually discover they don't know everything,'" she read. "Cute, really cute, Gil. Like you can talk."

As Grissom couldn't rightly refute this and with Sara being, in truth, far more amused than vexed, all the pair of them could do was laugh.

So they did.

Once their chuckles died down, Sara in all seriousness turned to him and said, "Besides, haven't you heard, Doctor Grissom?

"Smart's the new sexy."

Grissom seemed to consider this for a moment. From the openly appreciative look he was giving her, he appeared to agree.

Sara nearly blushed.

To hide this, she quickly added, "Remember the time Greg insisted we all add the phrase 'in bed' to the end of every fortune?"

"Yeah."

Grissom didn't do literal eye rolls, but his tone certainly suggested it.

Upon finishing up the last of his own cookie he said, "I ran into Greg today."

"You, too, huh?" Sara laughed.

Although Greg certainly hadn't said anything to her about it. Mind you it hadn't been all that long of a conversation exactly.

Sara, for her part, had nearly physically run into Greg in the hall on his way back from what must have been a particularly nasty crime scene.

It certainly had smelled like it.

Understandably, the younger man had been a little terse.

"Don't ask."

Sara hugged him anyway.

"And you were telling me to stay out of trouble," she grinned.

"And look how well that turned out," Greg rejoined. "Only you two would find a dead body in Paris."

"It was more like three."

It was Greg's turn to laugh. "But who's counting?"

Where the conversation would have headed next, Sara never found out as Greg's phone chose that precise moment to go off.

Greg, peering down at the caller ID, muttered, "Morgan."

"You should definitely get that then," Sara insisted. "Don't you know better than to keep a girl waiting?"

Sara shot him a sly look and a smirk before she began to saunter down the hall.

Greg called after her. "What, no good-bye?"

Sara half wondered if Greg had felt as left hanging then as she did at Grissom's current pronouncement.

When her husband hadn't continued on with his story, she prompted, "And?"

"He had a few choice words."

"Greg?" Sara stammered in disbelief.

The Greg she knew may have grown up and hardened quite a bit over the years, the job did that to you, but choice words really weren't Greg's style.

"About?"

"You. Me."

"And?"

It really was like pulling teeth.

Yet Grissom didn't seem the least bit upset or bothered about the events, only more contemplative if anything.

"He reminded me in no uncertain terms that if I hurt you again, he knew where to hide a body."

Both amused and agog, Sara asked, "And what did you say?"

"I told him I'd bring the shovel."

Okay, Sara wasn't entirely sure what to say to that.

Greg, she knew, was only trying to be a good friend, as misguided as those attempts might ultimately prove. He only wanted the best for her. Perhaps that's why Grissom hadn't been offended. He wanted very much the same. Not that Grissom tended to offend easily in the first place.

As for Grissom, his response, while appearing perhaps cavalier, Sara knew was anything but. It was rather, she realized, a very public admission of his willingness to take responsibility for Sara and her happiness, a verbal indication that he had absolutely no intention of making the same mistakes he'd made before.

Not that there hadn't been mistakes on both sides - far too many to count.

But this time would be different. He wanted it to be different; she wanted it to be different. And so far it had been.

So when her husband said things like that, it gave Sara hope that it could and would continue to be different.

But then the only constant in the universe is change as Grissom was frequently wont to say.

And this - all this - these past few months - the life they had begun to build together again - had proved a wonderful change indeed.

Sara peered over at the man she had loved for nearly half her life, the man who was once again her husband and flushed with fondness. And something more.

These days it seemed omnipresent, that deep hum of desire which constantly passed between them.

Perhaps, it had been all the time apart. Perhaps it was once again possessing something one never thought to possess again. Whatever it was they couldn't seem to keep their hands off each other these days.

Love wasn't always just for the young. This they both knew.

A lot older and a bit wiser, passion for all the years they'd known and loved each other proved all the sweeter still.

So she wasn't about to resist its lure any longer that night. Snagging Grissom's fortune and commandeering his pen, Sara set about leaving him a fortune of her own.

Though before he could read it properly, she had shifted off her stool and trundled off to the bedroom.

For a moment, Grissom merely goggled after her. Then donning his spectacles again, he read, a slow grin spreading over his features as he attempted to decipher his wife's usual chicken scratch.

It simply read: You will soon find happiness.

Recalling their earlier conversation on fortunes, Grissom mentally added the phrase in bed to the end of her scrawl.

"So are you coming?" Came his wife's voice from just beyond the bedroom door.

He didn't have to be asked twice.

Besides, kisses really were the best dessert.

xxxxxxx

Back in her kitchen, intently watching Morgan set to work printing the apartment's doors and flat spaces, Sara didn't tell Catherine this. Any of it.

Like the two slips currently housed in her pocket, it was just too much, too close. And Sara agreed with her husband: there really were just some things best kept private.

Instead, she said, "He ordered take-out while I was in the shower. Our usual. Chinese. Same place. Same delivery driver as always - before you ask.

"We had dinner and -"

That and hung there for a long moment - a very long moment - until Sara quietly finished, "We went to bed."

Catherine knew there was a lot more to that and that Sara wasn't telling.

If the circumstances had been different, she might have been tempted to call Sara out on her bullshit response. But today wasn't that sort of day. So Catherine simply left it at that.

Sara's own treacherous memories weren't nearly so considerate.

Sara ached at the memory of him meeting her in the doorway, catching her up in a kiss, how they stumbled their way to bed, too intent on kissing as they swiftly separated each other from their clothes. How once both naked, he'd eased her back onto the bed before covering her body with his own. How they each been rendered breathless by the time they were done, having made love like the newlyweds they were.

The cookies did know all after all.

How later they had, not bothering to dress, slid between the sheets to curl up in each other's arms. How relaxed and sweetly sated, they had both soon slipped off to sleep.

No wonder it had taken Conrad's call to rouse her that morning. But then Sara never did sleep as well as she did with Grissom beside her.

But like all the rest, Catherine didn't need to know that either.

Catherine let Sara have a moment, before she asked, "And what about today? Any calls, messages, emails?"

Sara shook her head. "No. It was a quiet morning until Ecklie called me in around seven or so."

"And that was the last time you saw him?"

Sara knew Catherine had to ask, but the question still rattled.

Or maybe it was the last that did.

"Grissom? Yeah," she stammered a little uneasy.

Sensing Sara's disquiet, Catherine gave her a reassuring: "We're almost done here. Just a few more questions. Okay?"

Sara gave her a silent, knowing nod to continue.

"You two talk about his plans for the day at all?" Catherine asked.

"Just dinner with his mother tonight."

"You texted him this morning. You call?"

"No."

"Never mentioned Hannah?"

"I didn't want to worry him," said Sara.

"Okay," Catherine finished, electing to end her questioning there. "Okay."

Even if she knew things were anything but.

xxxxxxx

A/N: For more about what Sara didn't tell Catherine about her and Grissom's time back in Vegas, see (Not) Your Usual Ups and Downs.