Notes: Thank you all so, so, so much for sticking with A Different Kind of Family. I know you are all impatiently waiting to meet Nora, and I am glad you're as excited to meet her as I am. I couldn't decide whether or not to write her into this chapter or to wait until next. I literally wrote six different versions of this chapter. I hope you like the one I chose. I don't know how well the emotions will come through to you in my writing, but I literally felt sick to my stomach at the end of writing this chapter; I was so nervous for Sara. Anyway, enough rambling. I do hope you enjoy this chapter. Please let me know how I did. Thanks!

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This was it. Today was the day. In forty-five minutes, Grissom and Sara were scheduled to walk into the lab. Not to work. To pick up Nora. Their new foster child.

Their application had been signed and sent in. The reference questionnaires from their lab family and Grissom's mom had been turned in. Their personal histories questionnaires had been turned in. A matronly old woman from Child and Family Services had completed the SAFE family inventory with them and had deemed them worthy of being Nora's substitute parents. Nora's current foster family gladly relinquished guardianship responsibilities.

The conversations had been had time and time again with Betty Grissom and the lab crew. The questions had been answered. The comments had been accepted. The confusion had been transformed to acceptance, even approval. Sara had shared more about her past than she had ever wanted to.

Sara had gone through hell. Grissom had gone through hell watching Sara go through hell. Her struggle with the nightmares, the memories, the fear was heartbreaking to him.

The two of them had gone shopping, Grissom grudgingly tagging along as he and Sara had wandered the aisles in search of items Sara insisted they needed for Nora. There had been the new sheets for Nora's bed. The consideration Sara gave to thread count, satin vs. cotton, and precise color had worn on Grissom's nerves (was there really a difference between bright white and pristine white?). There had been the i-pod. Sara had mulled over pink vs. white, nano vs. touch, ear buds vs. headphones for over an hour. Grissom had patiently given his input when asked and had gladly handed over his debit card when a choice had finally been made. There had been the toiletries. Grissom had had no idea it was possible to deliberate over toothbrushes for thirty minutes. Shampoo had taken even longer.

The trip to Barnes and Noble had been a different story altogether. Grissom had been equally vested in the choosing of a proper assortment of books for their foster daughter. Sara had chosen a few best-selling teenage fiction novels and a beautiful hard-covered journal, complete with lock and key. Grissom had selected a couple non-fiction titles, and though he had argued for An Introduction to Entomology, Sara had coerced him into shelving his preferred title and choosing something a bit less "Grissom-esque."

The trip to the local department store had been a disaster. Sara had been plagued with a belief that Nora would come to them with nothing but a garbage bag of poorly fitting clothes, as had been her plight when she had arrived at all of her foster homes. Try as Grissom might to convince Sara that the clothes Nora had from her original home were plentiful and probably still fit and regardless of the fact that Nora had left the lab with her first foster parents with two proper suitcases and a backpack, Sara had insisted on the clothes. The cart had been painstakingly filled with shirts, shorts, jeans, pajamas, underwear, all of which Sara was certain would fit Nora's slight frame perfectly. And then Sara had had a change of heart, insisting instead that Nora would be angry at them for assuming they knew her likes and dislikes and worse yet, for even thinking of buying her underwear. Grissom had had to bite his tongue.

And yet, after all the nightmares, all the planning, all the preparation, all the arguments, all the time Sara spent crying in Grissom's arms, all the tiresome conversations, the moment had come. It was high time for it, too. Considering the struggles Sara and Grissom had endured during the past six weeks while awaiting their foster parenting licensure, there had been more than a fair amount of giddy excitement and pleasurable conversation about the future of their family, and they were more impatient to bring Nora home than they had ever been to get a serial killer behind bars, and that was saying something.

"Oh my God, Gil, oh my God. I can't do this. What if I'm an awful mother? What the hell were we thinking?" Sara paced restlessly through the family room. She had not spent the morning sleeping, but had instead meticulously cleaned every surface in the townhouse, not caring that she'd done the same thing just yesterday. Every shred of laundry had been washed, folded, and put away. Fresh flowers were filling the kitchen with a heady scent. Nora's room was immaculate. The fridge had been stocked. Sara was left to pacing to release some of her nervous energy. Grissom's nervousness was not as obvious, but he didn't fool Sara for a moment- the way he surreptitiously glanced at the microwave's clock every sixty seconds and the fact that while he'd been "working" on his crossword for the past hour, but had only a handful of answers penciled in made it obvious to Sara that her husband was just as nervous as she was.

"Honey, calm down." Grissom set his crossword puzzle on the coffee table, and Sara promptly snatched it up and set it on an end table instead. Grissom chuckled to himself, simultaneously amazed that he hadn't gotten chastised for placing the puzzle in the "wrong" place, wondering what the difference was between the coffee table and the end table, and being amused at the crazy perfectionism the impending arrival of Nora had brought out in his wife.

"I can't calm down. Are you serious? Let's just go. Come on." Sara pulled Grissom up off the sofa.

He smirked as he replied, "In a hurry, are you?" Truth be told, if he had had to spend one more blasted minute pretending to work his crossword, he would have gone insane. "Come on, I'll drive."

Neither Sara nor Grissom had ever been so nervous stepping into the lab. Sure, they'd been nervous on their first days of work, but not this nervous. Sure, they'd experienced intense emotions at work, but those emotions were mainly terror, or anger, or a furious passion for justice. The butterflies they both felt now were something different and unique.

As the couple walked hand in hand past the reception desk, Nick joined them in the hallway as he came through a stairwell doorway, having just come up from the morgue. "So, the big day's here, huh?" Nick's grin couldn't seem to get big enough to express his excitement for his friends. "You ready? When will she be here? Can I be there, too?"

Grissom teased, "Geez, Nick. You're worse than Sara, and I wasn't sure that was possible."

Sara crossed her arms and dropped her jaw. Feigning annoyance, she griped, "Hey! You, mister, are just as nervous and excited as I am, and while you might be able to hide that from Nora, good luck hiding it from the guys. They know you." She smirked at Grissom in triumph and said to Nick, "She'll be here in twenty minutes. Oh, Dear God, twenty minutes to motherhood."

Catherine and Ray were in the break room when Grissom, Sara, and Nick stepped in to wait for the call to beckon them to the lobby. Sara was torn between feeling like she was going to vomit and wanting to hug everyone in the room. Grissom clutched his cell phone, which Judy had promised to call the moment Nora arrived, like a lifeline and didn't speak to anyone. Catherine texted Greg to join them; she knew Greg would be crushed if he missed "the moment."

As Greg was trying to convince Sara that Nora would probably not give her the silent treatment from the get-go, Grissom's phone rang. Silence fell immediately. A weak-kneed Sara stood up, wide-eyed and feeling sick to her stomach. Grissom stared down at his phone, almost disbelievingly, and then at Sara. He held the phone out to her with a look on his face that plainly asked, "Do you want to answer?" Sara shook her head no; she wasn't entirely sure she was capable of speech at the moment. Grissom flipped the phone open, held it up to his ear, and said, "We'll be right there."