OAKWOOD CLOSE

~ Chapter 8 ~

Settling himself more comfortably on the cosy chenille-covered sofa, Jim Brass propped his feet up on the edge of the coffee table before him and cracked opened his second bottle of Coors Light as he carefully watched the woman opposite. Seated in what he knew to be a favourite armchair, Sara's current posture of legs drawn up tightly beneath her and arms crossed defensively across her chest was in stark contrast to the carefree, apparently happy, demeanour she'd carried throughout dinner. That meal, though, had been spent catching up on what they'd both been up to in the months since their last meeting whilst the current conversation had veered onto a much more serious path.

"So you waited just long enough for him to leave the room and then walked out, huh?"

"What else was I supposed to do?" Sara answered, her fingers wrapped firmly around her own beer. "He all but handed me an ultimatum."

"You also said he accused you of not being an adult." Raising his drink to his lips, Brass took a hearty swig before putting it back down with a grin. "Guess you proved him right on that point then."

"Don't start on me, Jim." Leaning forward, Sara placed her bottle down on the table as she stared at the ex-detective. "It's been a long day and I'm probably more tired than I have been in ages so if you plan to sit there and do nothing but make smartass comments you can grab what's left of your pizza and beer and leave because I'm really not in the mood for a fight."

"You don't fight though, Sara." Brass pointed out evenly. "You turn tail and run which is exactly what you did this afternoon." He shook his head. "I know neither you nor Gil is really the confrontational type but sometimes a good old no-holds barred, knock out, drag down fight can be the quickest way to set the world to rights." A single eyebrow rose in defiance as Sara readied herself to interject. "And I'm not taking sides, okay?" He paused for a second. "No, actually, I take that back because I am, I'm going to take Ben's side in all of this because, as far as I can see, he's the only guilt-free party in this whole messy thing that the two of you have got going."

"We have nothing going." Sara assured him curtly.

"You sure?" Jim queried, brow furrowing in thought. "Because I could have sworn that you said just a little while ago that both of you confessed to loving the other earlier today." Raising his bottle again, he held it aloft, poised to drink. "Which sure sounds like something to me."

"I did… we did… but-"

"But what?" Staring at her now, Brass pushed the point. "But Ben?" He shook his head. "Was Gil right in asking that question, Sara? Have you ever actually said that child's name?"

She stared openly at him for a full minute before sighing heavily.

"You know, I've tried thinking back over the past couple of days and I'm really not sure." Knowing from long experience that the detective would neither give up on his line of questioning nor be fobbed off, Sara opted for the truth. "It hasn't been intentional; it's just his…" She stopped for a moment, then audibly swallowed before pushing on. "Ben's existence came as somewhat of a shock; I guess I'm still trying to process it."

"Well do it faster." Brass suggested. "He's not some abstract concept, you know; he's a living, breathing child - your ex-husband's child – and he's innocent in all of this." He shrugged. "You can't ignore that fact and you can't hold anything against that little boy either."

"I don't." Sara hastened to assure him. "I just… I have to get used to the idea." She dropped her gaze to her lap then bit her lip and looked up again. "But you're wrong about one thing, you know; he's not my ex-husband's son." She cocked her head to one side as she met Jim's gaze with a steady one of her own. "He's my husband's son; Gil and I are still married."

"Excuse me?" In the process of taking a sip from his beer, Jim almost spat it across the room at her statement. "

"I never actually filed the divorce papers." Sara admitted sheepishly. "I meant to, don't get me wrong, we'd been legally separated for almost a year and it seemed like the…" She shrugged, helplessly. "I don't know, the next logical step, I suppose." She sighed heavily. "So I had my attorney draw up the papers, signed them myself and sent them off to Gil but, when I got them back I just couldn't do it; I couldn't bring myself to make it final."

"Holy shit." Shaken by the revelation, Jim could only stare. "But you told Grissom that you did."

"No, actually, I didn't." Sara underlined the statement with a determined shake of the head. "In fact, until I managed to get hold of him on the phone the other day, we haven't spoken since I called to get his mailing address. I tried phoning him back when I realised that I couldn't go through with the divorce but that's when I discovered he'd changed his cell phone number and email address."

"And you never thought of trying to get hold of him in some other way?" Leaning forward, Brass placed his now-forgotten beer bottle on the table. "You could have let his mother know or Catherine or even me; hell, Sara, I'd have been on the phone to him before you even hung up." Raising his hand, he rubbed agitatedly at one temple as he looked across at her. "Like I said, this thing is a mess."

"Well it's not all my fault." Sara countered, her irritation at the way the conversation was going plain to see. "After all, I'm not the one who was unfaithful, remember; I'm not the one who had a kid with someone else."

"Unfaithful?" Jim exclaimed with a derisive laugh. "I'm pretty damned sure you can't be unfaithful unless you know you're supposed to be faithful in the first place." His eyes suddenly turned hard. "Do your maths, Sara; the two of you were legally separated and, when that's the case, an uncontested divorce in the state of Nevada will go through the courts in less than a week; so, considering that Ben was conceived about a month after his father signed those damned papers, I'm really not sure I'd go around accusing him of being unfaithful if I were you." He dropped his head and ran his hand roughly across his shortly cropped hair. "God, Sara, when he phoned me in a panic ten months ago and said that his son had just been born, he went to great pains to make sure that I knew he'd never cheated on you. That's the one thing he was worried about people…" He looked up again. "About you, thinking; that Ben was the result of an affair." His eyes widened in question. "So how the hell is he going to take this?"

"I don't know." One slim shoulder rose in a shrug as Sara returned his stare. "I've been trying to work out the best way to tell him, the best time to tell him but-" She leaned forward and snagged her beer again. "I just don't know how or when." She took a small sip from the bottle. "Did you go to him then? When he called you that day?"

"Yeah, I kind of had to." Leaning back, Jim made a conscious effort to relax again. "After he told me the rest of it, about the baby being in intensive care and the mother taking off from the hospital the way she did, I couldn't just leave him there alone." Reclaiming his own bottle, he took a mouthful. "I got in the car and high-tailed it down to Flagstaff; I was with him at the hospital before nightfall."

"She left that day?" Sara frowned at that particular piece of news. "The mother, I mean."

"Yep, signed herself out of the hospital four hours after the birth." Brass shook his head in amazement. "She'd told Gil to stay with Ben which he did until he was assured everything was fine and when he went down to tell her the good news, all he found in her room were the legal papers giving him full custody."

"How does someone do that?" Staring fixedly at the beer bottle in her hand, Sara picked at the label. "What kind of mother does that?"

"I don't know" Jim admitted. "The same kind that only tones down her drinking when she discovers she's pregnant and doesn't cut it out completely, I guess." He paused a moment before going on. "But I do know it's not the first time she's done it; she walked out on a husband and two kids almost a decade ago, one of whom has developmental delays caused by her mother's alcoholism." He shook his head. "It was just pure luck that Ben turned out okay."

She looked up. "How did you manage to find out about that?"

"About a month after Ben's arrival, Gil asked me to see if I could track Melissa down." Sara's frown deepened at the news but Jim pushed on regardless. "He wanted to make sure that she was alright, both physically and mentally, with what she'd done. I traced her back to Gainesville, back to the university where they met actually and, while she all but refused to talk to me herself, she did put me in touch with a friend of hers who told me to let Gil know that Melissa was perfectly fine with her decision, that she was in the process of setting up a child support order for Ben and that she definitely wanted no further contact with either of them whatsoever." He shrugged. "It was after that that I did a little further digging and found out about the husband and kids and that's what Gil and Catherine were doing in Raleigh when you phoned to tell him about Betty; Ben was meeting his half-sisters."

"Well he certainly picked a winner, didn't he?" Sara didn't bother even attempting to mask the sarcasm. "Of all the woman to have a baby with."

"Yeah well, he's not the first idiot to hit the bottle and do something stupid and I doubt he'll be the last." Jim shrugged. "But, considering how things could have gone, I can't help but think that it turned out pretty well; I mean, he may not be too comfortable with the way his son came into being but Gil adores that boy and he's proud as hell of him." He allowed himself a smile. "This past 10 months or so have been the making of Gil Grissom – his life used to revolve around work and research and bugs but now it's all playgroups and parks and teaching a little boy everything he can about the world he's brought him into and, unless I'm very much mistaken, Grissom is having the time of his life." He glanced at his watch and realised he was going to have to start making tracks. "Look, Sara, this whole thing might be a mess like I said but it's a mess that can probably be handled pretty simply." Draining the last of his beer, he screwed the cap on the bottle and slid it back onto the table. "If you file the paperwork now, the two of you could probably have the divorce finalised by the end of the month at the latest." Meeting her gaze, he cocked his head. "Provided that's the way you want to go, of course."

She didn't look away but she didn't answer either and Jim frowned before cocking his head and prompting her. "Sara?"

"I don't know." Eyes locked firmly with his, her shoulders rose in an almost imperceptible shrug. "That's a question I've been asking myself for days now and I just can't come up with an answer; I'm really not sure that I know what I want and I sure as hell don't know what to do."

"Okaaay," Brass drew the word out as he thought. "How about we look at it from a different angle, huh? Do you still want Gil?"

"Well, that, at least, is something that I can answer." Sara told him with a sad smile. "He's all I've ever wanted; the problem is I don't know if can have him now, not after everything that's happened." She sighed wearily. "Not after Ben."

"Don't make Ben the major issue here, Sara." Jim advised. "And trust me on this because I'm speaking from experience, okay? There's a hell of a lot I regret about my marriage and the way it turned out but being Ellie's dad, biological or not, isn't one of them. A child is the easiest thing in the world to accept, you know, especially if you happen to love his father."

She dropped her head, staring back down at her lap and Jim scooted far enough forward on the sofa so that he could reach across to take her hand.

"Look, the two of you really need to talk, okay; you're going to have to tell him that he's still married for a start and then you both need to sit down and hammer this damned thing out until you decide exactly what it is that you're going to do." He cocked his head. "And, given what happened last time you tried, it would probably be best to do it somewhere you can't just run away from when things get tough." He frowned for a moment then looked at her with a sudden smile. "You got any plans for tomorrow?"

"No," Sara looked up, wary of the look she was now receiving. "Not really."

"Good," Jim's smile quickly morphed into a grin. "Because you do now."