The knock at the door surprised her, though she instantly knew who it was.
Maybe that was why her heart had begun to beat more rapidly after she heard the knock.
"Grace?" Nick asked, opening the door slightly. "Grace, are you there?"
"Y...yes..." She stammered.
"Hey." He said, walking into the house. "Are you okay?"
She nodded, rapidly. "Fine."
"You don't look fine." He said, studying her. "What's wrong?"
"You...you..."
"I..." He prompted.
"You kissed me." She finally blurted.
"I did." He said, nodding somewhat matter-of-factly. "Is there a problem with that?"
"Uh...well..." She stammered again. "I, uh, well...it was..."
"Unexpected, unpleasant or both?" He said, looking at her.
She tensed, trying to swallow. "Uh...unexpected."
He nodded, slowly. "Okay. Could I have done something different?"
"Uh...a little...warning...might have been nice..."
He raised an eyebrow. "You wanted me to say something like... "I'm going to kiss you now"?"
"No, I just..." She protested. "I...I just never knew that..."
"That I was in love with you." He finished.
Her eyes widened. "You're in..."
"Love." He said, nodding. "With you."
She felt faint; her heart was pulsing loudly in her chest.
He sighed as he realized she hadn't said anything. "And...you think of me like a brother..." He said with a sigh. "Man, I feel stupid..."
"What?" She asked, looking over at him. "Uh...no...that's...that's not it at all."
He raised an eyebrow. "Then what is it, Grace?"
She looked distinctly uncomfortable as she tried to answer him. "I, uh...I wasn't sure that it was...entirely....appropriate."
He looked at her, genuinely confused.
"Look, I'm...confused." She began as she tried to defend herself. "My mother hasn't even been dead for a whole week, and you - a guy I grew up with - just...kissed me out of the blue without any warning. I don't know what to do."
"It was just a kiss, Grace. I didn't ask you to move in with me. I didn't ask you to marry me." He said, softly. "And I won't ever do it again if you don't want me to."
"I think that would be best." She whispered after a moment.
Awkward silence reigned as Grace tried not to notice his visible disappointment.
"Well...let's get to work, shall we?" He asked after a moment's hesitation.
Grace looked down at the floor as she bit the inside of her cheek. She looked back at him. "Maybe...I should do that myself..."
He studied her with a small sigh. "If that's what you want." He finally said, trying to smile bravely.
She swallowed as she nodded. "I need to think..."
He nodded slowly. "All right. Uh...I'll see you around, Grace."
She nodded as she bit her lip and closed the door behind him. With a sigh, she leaned her back against the door. What had she done?
She stayed there for a moment, trying to comprehend what the last hour and a half had brought to her already confused mind.
Finally, she looked at the boxes which rested against the downstairs railing. Maybe she just needed to get back on track and do what she had planned to do.
She walked past the boxes and snagged a couple on her way down the stairs. Maybe she would start going through her parents' video collection. Teal'c and Vala would probably want most of them anyway.
The box of videos to give away was fairly full before she found the first home video. The nondescript DVD case had only one indicator that it belonged to her parents at all. On the spine of the plastic case in her mother's handwriting was a single word: "Grace".
She inhaled sharply before she looked at the television and DVD player, still sitting in the entertainment center.
She bit her lip before she opened the case and retrieved the DVD. With a trembling hand, she opened the DVD player and placed the DVD inside.
Almost instantly, she turned on the television.
"Hi, Jack." A much-younger TV Sam greeted.
Grace inhaled sharply as she saw her mother's face.
"I'm sending you this message from the Odyssey like I normally do, except this is a little different." She inhaled. "I can't send it to you once I'm finished recording because we're in a time dilation field while I try to get us home."
Grace's jaw dropped. "What?" She breathed.
She'd never heard that story.
"I've really done it," The televised version of her mother said with quivering lips as she looked down at her hands uneasily. "I've gotten us stuck in a time dilation field without any clue of how to get us home."
She looked back up at the camera. "You'll probably receive this a little while after I get home; whenever that is. You probably opened this thinking that it was your Simpsons Season 10 DVD set, but found this instead. Watch the whole thing before you call me, please. Everything I need to tell you is going to be on here."
Grace's brow furrowed in confusion.
Sam inhaled. "Jack, you've probably heard by now that the Asgard home world was exploded. You've probably also heard that they did it on purpose. It was hard to watch, and I wish they hadn't done it, but they were determined." She took another deep breath. "Still, there's something else I need to tell you, and if I don't just say it, I may never say it. " She bit her lip and looked back at the camera. "Two weeks after I initiated the time dilation field, I began to suspect that I was pregnant."
Grace's eyes widened as the woman on the screen fought tears.
"I don't know when this will find you," the tape continued. "But I'm going to do my best to document this because even though we never talked about it, I felt that you wanted to be there if you ever had any more children."
Her mother had told her about Charlie when she had turned 10 years old - when she wanted to begin archery lessons. Needless to say, the archery lessons had not happened until she'd gone to college.
"Jack, no matter what happens, I want you to know that I love you. I always have, and I always will." Sam whispered with a trembling voice before she kissed her fingers and touched them to the lens of the camera. Just then, the video went black as the transmission ended.
Grace inhaled sharply. What exactly had happened to her mother on that mission?
Just then, Vala's voice could be heard. "Daniel, how do I turn this thing on?"
"Here, Vala, give it to me. You're going to break it." There was a little bit of an audible scuffle. "Vala! You already turned it on!"
"I did?"
"Yeah. You just didn't take the cap off the lens."
Suddenly, Daniel's fingers could be seen as well as the infirmary.
"Oh." Vala said with a childlike grin as she appeared on tape. "Why didn't you just say so?"
There was silence for a moment, and Grace gasped. She looked so...young...
"Now, how do I look?" Vala asked, looking at her reflection in the camcorder lens as she fussed with her hair. "I'm just not sure about this matter-converted shampoo..."
"Vala, this is not about you. It's about Sam and Grace." Daniel said, firmly.
"Right." She said, ducking out of the way with a sheepish smile.
Grace's eyes widened. She'd been born on a ship?
"Okay, here we are with Sam and Grace." Daniel said as he approached Sam's hospital bed where Sam held her newborn baby. She gave him a small smile as she shook her head. "Do you ever stop filming your excursions, Daniel?" She teased.
"Hey, be grateful." He said, seriously. "Until now, none of us had any posterity that would want to know."
She chuckled.
"Now, where is little Gracie?" He asked eagerly.
Grace shuddered at the juvenile nickname she'd grown to loathe.
Sam pulled the blankets which were carefully wound around Grace back a little so that her face could be more clearly seen.
"Look at that beautiful heart-shaped face," Daniel cooed. "And that head of blond hair."
"She looks just like you, Sam." Vala added.
"Not quite." Her mother said with a melancholy smile. She touched the baby's fingers with her own. "She has my mother's eyes, my father's nose, her father's smile, and my hair..." She said, studying her baby closely.
Grace studied the video intensely. It challenged everything she held to be true. Her parents had told her that she'd been born in this house during a blizzard that spanned Christmas eve and Christmas day.
The video switched scenes again, but Grace turned it off. She needed to talk to someone.
She looked at the box of DVDs. Maybe she would find Daniel and Vala and ask them about...
She closed her eyes as she inhaled sharply. Nick would be there. She couldn't do that to him.
She bit her lip before she remembered that with her mother's cell phone, she probably had Teal'c's number.
She paused before she used it. She probably didn't want someone's caller ID to read Samantha Carter - especially since she'd died only five days previously.
Suddenly, she remembered General Mitchell's story. "Mom's computer...she was a scientist...she wrote everything down." She muttered. Where would it be?
--
The laptop was found in her father's study - a room she thought had been locked by her mother upon his death eight years previously.
She opened it. Mitchell had said something about a personal directory. That had a password...something about...
Fishing. Her father's favorite pastime.
Within a few moments, she'd found her way into her mother's personal files.
Almost instantly, a window appeared on the screen.
"Grace." Her sixty-seven-year-old mother greeted from the application window.
Grace inhaled sharply.
"If you're watching this, then I'm gone." She said, apologetically.
Grace's brow furrowed. How could her mother have known about her stroke?
"Grace, it's very important that you listen to what I'm about to say." She said, seriously. "I'm not sure who I can trust right now, and I guess I have reason if you're actually watching this..."
Grace's blood ran cold. Had her mother been murdered?
"Your father was looking into something before he died." She said, gravely.
Had her father been murdered as well?
Grace inhaled sharply at the possibility.
"Remember my password, Grace. It will answer all the questions you ever had." She said, cryptically.
As her eyes darted around the room, suspiciously, Sam turned the transmission off.
Grace stared at the blank screen. What was going on?
Two questions emerged as the main sources of her curiosity after the next few hours passed: How much had she been told about her childhood and what had her parents been working on?
A third question arose from the first two: whom could she trust?
Even the passing thought that Daniel, Vala, Teal'c or Mitchell could be involved in her parents' deaths made her feel paranoid. It seemed too ridiculous to be true.
Still, why hadn't her mother shared her suspicions with them?
Maybe she hadn't had a chance.
That made her blood run cold. If that was true of her mother - a virtual hermit after she'd left for the colony - then it would be true of her as well.
She bit her lip before grabbing her mother's keys and the laptop, going into the garage and getting into the car.
The drive to the Jackson house was a short one, though it felt longer than it had really been. Despite the fact that she hadn't seen anything suspicious besides her mother's behavior on the video, she had checked her mirror the whole time as she tried to verify that she wasn't being followed.
She breathed a sigh of relief as she arrived unscathed at the Jackson home. She looked over into the passenger seat, and retrieved the stylish laptop case which her mother had used to tote the computer around if she needed it.
She wasn't letting this out of her sight in case there were more clues to these mysteries on it.
She sighed as she looked at the suburban home which stood in front of her. Two of her parents' dearest friends resided in that home, and she hoped that she could trust them.
Daniel opened the door at her insistent knock. "Grace." He greeted, more than a little surprised. "What can I do for you?"
"I need some answers." She said, seriously.
He raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Of course. Come on in."
She walked into the house, and Daniel showed her into the living room.
"What's wrong?" He asked, looking at her.
"I found...a DVD..."
"Okay..."
"My mom was on it. She was telling my dad about this mission that she was on, where she was stuck in a time dilation field. The Asgard had just exploded their homeworld, she said." Grace inhaled slowly. "And she told my dad that she'd just realized that she was pregnant."
His brow was furrowed in confusion.
"Later on in the video, my mother was in the infirmary of a ship - I assume - and she had me in her arms." She said, seriously. "Now, I want to know what really happened when I was born."
"Grace, I was there. I delivered you." Daniel said, seriously. "You were born in your parents' room during after a Christmas Eve blizzard. Unless you've been on a ship since your days with the colony, you've never been on a ship."
"Then how do you explain the DVD?" She asked, looking at him intensely.
"I don't know!" He cried.
Suddenly, he stopped. "Wait...wait..."
She raised an eyebrow.
"There was a mission...it went wrong the first time..."
"The first time?" Grace asked, confused.
"Your parents had just gotten engaged." He said, thinking back to that time. "The Asgard had requested our presence at their homeworld for something; we didn't know what at the time."
Grace listened closely.
"They wanted to give us their legacy - everything they'd ever learned - before they blew up their planet."
"What does that have to do with this?" She asked after a moment.
"This was back when we were fighting the Ori." He said, thoughtfully. "The Asgard gave us some amazing technology, but the Ori could track us through hyperspace because of a unique energy signature we were emitting."
"That's a problem." She agreed.
He nodded. "Your mother came up with an idea that might buy us some time..."
"A time dilation field..."
He nodded. "As she went to start the program, however, Teal'c came out of nowhere and handed her another crystal, telling her not to start the time dilation field."
Grace's brow furrowed. "What?"
"Apparently, we had already done it, and ended up spending over fifty years in that field."
Grace's eyebrows shot up.
"Somehow, he was able to travel back in time to warn us not to go there in the first place." Daniel looked at her. "I would imagine that if your mother had already been pregnant on that mission, you would have been born there as well."
"So...this is...an alternate way that my life could have - or did, rather - go? Fatherless on a ship?"
Daniel nodded sympathetically.
She became somewhat introspective at that time, thinking for a moment about how awful it would have been not to have her father for any length of time rather than the seventeen years she'd gotten to have him for.
Suddenly, she remembered why she'd really come.
"Daniel..."
"Yes?"
"Do you think my parents' deaths were entirely natural?"
He gave her a strange look. "What?"
"Come on, Daniel...my parents made too many enemies for someone not to have thought about it. Even I know that a heart attack can be easily faked. A stroke...I'm not sure, but my mother was scared of something..."
"Grace," Daniel said, softly. "Your mother's death was tragic. She went too soon, and you're looking for meaning in her death."
She studied him, closely. Was he really going to tell her that she was crazy?
"Nobody killed her, Grace. It's sad that she's gone, but don't do this to yourself."
She bit the inside of her cheek as she looked at the floor. Daniel wasn't going to help her.
"Look, I had this crate of DVDs I was going to bring over, but I wasn't sure about whether or not you'd want to see them." He picked it up and brought it to her. "They're video logs of the missions I went on with your parents - maybe even some that Jonas made."
She looked back at him. "You won't get your parents back, but maybe you'll understand a little more of what they did..."
"Thank you, Daniel." She said, after a moment.
"No problem, Grace. Just...let us know if you need anything, okay?"
She nodded. "I think that maybe I'll...go up to the cabin."
He raised his eyebrows, curiously.
"You know...remember the good times my family had up there when we were there for the summer."
"Ah." Daniel said, nodding. "Yes, you're right. That would probably be a good thing for you. Do you want some company? I'm sure Vala and Teal'c wouldn't mind taking some time off..."
She shook her head. "No...I think I need some time to think..."
"Let us know if you need any company." He said, earnestly.
She nodded slowly. "I will." She lied.
She stood. "I should get going."
"Okay." He said with a small smile. "I hope you enjoy the DVDs."
"They'll be very helpful." She said, gratefully.
To say that the visit with Daniel had been frustrating would have been an understatement. To say that he had not helped her at all, however, would have been an overstatement. She placed the DVDs in the trunk of the car. He'd given her a place to start her investigation, and he'd given her some time to think about her mother's clue.
Fishing. Her father rarely fished in any place other than at his grandfather's cabin in Minnesota. Her mother had undoubtedly hidden whatever evidence she had to support her theory at the cabin...and it was probably in plain sight.
Probably with her father's fishing poles.
She drove back to the house as she began to feel somewhat paranoid. What if someone had come to the house? Should she even go back?
She sighed. She wouldn't be able to second-guess herself like this for too much longer. She just needed to trust her instincts.
"Let me tell you, kiddo," her dad said, looking at her. "Sometimes, you just have to follow your gut. There's no rhyme or reason to it, but you just get this feeling in the pit of your stomach..."
She had thought he was crazy. But now, she had this feeling in the pit of her stomach that made her feel like it was okay to go back to the house this time. This was probably the last time, though. At least, if she wanted to stay alive.
She drove to the house anxiously. Within a few moments, she had returned to the house, and hurried in.
Grabbing a bag, she threw a few sets of clothes and some toiletries into it.
She hurried back out the door, looking around one more time before she forced herself to close the door.
