Twenty-five: Objects in the Rear View Mirror
"I'd offer to give you the nickel tour," Grissom proposed as he led the way down the narrow steps to below deck, "but -"
"It's not worth the nickel?"
"Not really." He gave her a self-deprecating shrug. "It's not much. But -"
"It's home," Sara finished.
"It is now," he replied, his gaze warm and intent on her as he said it.
For her part, Sara peered around surprised that she hadn't noticed it sooner.
Sensing her sudden disquiet Grissom asked, "What is it?"
"I... I thought Hank would be with you..." Then as if the thought had just occurred to her, she paled; gulped. "He's - He didn't - He's not -"
Grissom rushed to reassure her. "No - No. He's... He's fine. A little slower these days. A lot slower these days," he corrected himself.
And that was saying something. Hank hadn't been the most energetic of dogs on the best of days, at least not as long as Grissom had known him.
How old the boxer had been when Grissom had brought him home from animal rescue, no one knew. Even the most conservative estimate put him at about eighty in human years. No wonder he was running slower and sleeping far more as of late.
"Who isn't?" asked a much relieved Sara.
"Still at the sitter's. I wasn't sure when I'd be back," Grissom said by way of explanation. "When I got in and saw the time, I thought it best not to interrupt his afternoon nap."
Sara nodded, knowing as she did that the dog's siestas bordered on sacrosanct.
Though that hadn't really been the reason.
It was simple really: Grissom couldn't face Hank, not with the scent of Sara still fresh on him. He couldn't endure the well-deserved baleful reproachful glares the dog would give him. Or the boxer's disappointment. Not when his own was so achingly fresh.
A fact, he'd known all too well then he could blame no one but himself for.
After Sara's abrupt good-bye in the lab hallway, the full extent of Gil Grissom's plans had amounted to his going back to his boat and the getting back to the half life he'd been living without her.
Despite that being the very last thing he wanted to do.
Yes, he would get back on his boat and miss her - as he always did - as he always would.
So without bothering to say farewell to anyone, he'd gathered up his things, taken a cab to the airport and caught the first available flight out.
Despite the loquacious screenwriter sitting beside him, he'd been quiet the entire journey back, busy lost in his own failure, disappointment - and heartbreak.
It was better this way, of this he was certain. It had to be. There no longer was any other way. He'd been the one to make sure of that.
Grissom had long thought of the divorce not as letting Sara go, but letting her have a chance at real happiness. Something he certainly hadn't been able to give her. But in sending those divorce papers, he'd closed a door, too, on any hopes of a future with her.
No wonder he wanted the sea and the sky and solitude.
Perhaps they would help clear his head, even if they could do little to ease his heartache. Work was good. Work kept him busy. Work was how he had managed to survive the past few years. And now work would be how he survived the rest of his life. He would chase his questions as he always had.
Only he'd never gotten used to it, that life lived without Sara Sidle beside him. Not really. He just did it. Made his way through the day or the night. Tried to sleep in what frequently felt a far too big a bed. Then started it all over again, all the routine motions of the day.
He would settle into whatever it took to fill the endless hours of endless days without Sara to lighten, brighten and Technicolor it.
For Grissom knew all too well that there was no point in wishing for that which could not be changed.
What's gone, and what's past help, should be past grief, Shakespeare had once written.
Only it wasn't. Returning to San Diego left Grissom bereft like he hadn't been before.
He certainly hadn't felt relieved to make it back to his boat. Resigned, yes, relieved, no. Grissom supposed it would never be entirely over for him: loving Sara.
He really would miss her for the rest of his life.
So he had gone straight back to the boat, set about preparing it to go out that night. All the regular routine. All the things he'd attempted to do while not thinking about her. All as if he hadn't just left. Hadn't just had the pleasure of spending those too too short hours with Sara. As if he hadn't heard her tell him good-bye in that hard, horribly final sort of way.
No, Grissom couldn't have faced Hank's disappointment, not on top of his own.
If he left Hank at the sitter's for a few more days, then maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't still smell of Sara when he finally stopped by to pick him up.
After all, it had been hard enough telling his mother.
xxxxxxx
Grissom had been sitting at a table outside of airport security, not quite ready to step through that particular door just yet. The notebook Catherine had caught him sketching in outside the lab open in front of him, he just drew, penciling in Sara as she had been only the afternoon before, sitting there in that camp chair all decked out in her beekeeping gear.
Admittedly, it had been awkward that moment. Only minutes previous, it had felt like old times again, the way it had before he had gone and royally fucked everything up with his misguided attempts at being noble.
Moronic, foolish and cowardly really was far more like.
At the time, Sara's earlier offer of help had felt like an olive branch of sorts, a momentary thaw in the chill, a detente.
Grissom had meant it, too, what he'd told her. He had missed working side by side with her - way more than the bees.
Not that he could have told her that then.
Or ever apparently.
Yes, it had proven easy, so easy that afternoon up on Mount Charleston to slip back into the comfort of their old working habits.
Only once that work was done, sadly nothing but an uneasy quiet remained.
Still, he wanted to remember that day, remember her sitting there so close all he would have had to do was reach out a hand and -
What?
He didn't know now any more than he had then.
Heck, he still couldn't seem to heave his heart into his mouth.
So much for Sara's oft-repeated assertion: When words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain.
As Grissom continue to sketch, he recalled her inscription to another book, much like this one, one Sara had given him years ago.
There in her best attempt at neat chicken scratch she had written: Always remember it is of possibilities and not absence that blank pages speak. At the moment these words didn't seem to quite ring true either.
Grissom supposed that was the blessing - and curse - of having an eidetic memory. He could recall every detail with agonizing clarity: every smile, every laugh, every tear, every hurt word.
The first time it buzzed, he ignored his phone, but when it sounded a second time, he reluctantly drew it from his jacket.
Were you planning on leaving town without seeing your mother? read his latest text message.
Grissom didn't know how his mother always knew it, but somehow she usually did know when he was in town. Perhaps Dave Hodges had something to do with it, but Grissom never could or ever be bothered to find out.
While in truth the answer to his mother's question was indeed yes, Grissom wasn't about to admit it.
Still smarting from earlier and feeling more tired than he had in years, all he wanted to do was sit at his table and try to work out a way to put it all behind him, however futile that pursuit might prove.
Instead, Case just closed, he texted in return. At airport now.
What time's your flight?
Three hours.
Coffee Starbucks Esplanade.
His mother's message wasn't a question.
Thinking the exchange over, Grissom was about to pocket his phone and pack up to get ready to meet her when I take it you saw Sara appeared on his screen.
Yeah, he typed.
Then thinking he might as well just admit it, he added: Too little too late.
Or perhaps more precisely just too late.
And Grissom still hadn't managed to figure out what to do about any of it.
He'd had his last chance. And what had he done with it exactly? Spent most of it stunned into silence.
His mother was right, when it came to Sara, he really was a moron, a coward and a fool.
Although Ecklie's summons had done one good thing. It had finally given him an excuse to return to Vegas when he hadn't been able to summon the courage to do it on his own.
And it had been good to see Sara, beyond good to see her again.
Had it really been nearly three years since he'd seen her last?
It had, the rational part of him reasoned. And yet somehow he had no clue where the time had gone or why in some ways it felt even longer.
Standing there, seeing her again, he had known in that moment he should never have taken nearly so long to come back. He should have come back sooner. He should have come back for her.
Only somehow over the years the road home had stretched and stretched and stretched until Grissom found he could no longer find his way back where he belonged.
Mistake, Grissom thought. It had been a mistake to stay away. A mistake to have let his work get in the way. A mistake to let Sara go so easily. A mistake not to have fought tooth and nail for her.
So many mistakes. Too many mistakes and misreadings and misapprehensions.
He would have thought the divorce and all the time away would have diminished, if not at least dampened, all the rush of feelings.
It hadn't.
Of course all his words having shied away, they were of no help to him at all. And all the gestures Grissom once could have made use of convey whatever he somehow couldn't say - a look, a smile, a kiss, a caress - were definitely off limits now.
Admittedly, it had been hard, too. So hard just to stand there unable to do anything but stare. Naturally, there had been no hug, no kiss between them. No greeting beyond the most basic of hellos, not even that really.
He'd turned to find her standing there and why not? She was supposed to be there after all. He was the stranger in a seemingly strange land now.
At the sudden sight of Sara, Gil Grissom had been honestly impressed that he'd even managed to get out the two syllables of her name out properly.
But then he'd blown it with his not quite easy, yet utterly obvious: I'm back.
He'd never felt - nor sounded - more stupid in his life. And he knew it. Perhaps it had been a good thing Conrad had chosen that moment to interrupt.
Yet Grissom found he couldn't take his eyes off her, no matter how much his heart had ached at the sight of his wife - his ex-wife, he'd had to remind himself - of Sara, but not his Sara, not any more.
This cool and aloof Sara wasn't the Sara he knew so well; his Sara was warm and bright.
Only Grissom had managed to lose that Sara between the miles, the silence and the divorce he'd been the idiot to asked for.
He didn't have the least clue how to get his Sara back no matter how desperately he may have wanted to.
Even before the divorce, Grissom hadn't known what to do about the great gulf that had grown up between them. Not with her hundreds or thousands of miles away. Nor with her practically within arm's-length.
Sadly, the later proved just as hard and fast a distance. Those two feet might as well have been two thousand miles.
Somehow they had become the greatest of strangers.
Grissom really had wanted to do something - anything. But it was, he knew all too well, too late. He'd been too late, just as Sara had once warned him he would be.
He supposed it could have been worse. It could have proven like Lord Byron's post parting poem:
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?-
With silence and tears.
Well, there had been silence.
That and a million questions. At least for him.
When Sara had first shown up in Vegas sixteen years before, he'd readily confessed that he had so many unanswered questions. Fast forward to a far different here and now and he still did. Probably even more. Questions he hadn't even thought to ask then.
How are you?
Have you been sleeping?
Are you seeing someone now?
Sure, there had been no ring on her finger, but she could be with someone else. It had been nearly three years after all. And wasn't that why he had let her go, so that Sara might have a chance at the life she deserved?
He certainly couldn't - wouldn't - begrudge her that happiness.
Not that any of it was any of his business in any case.
Not could he have asked. Not about that, nor anything else. There just weren't the words - any words - at all. Words failed him as they had so often - too often done - when it came to her.
No, no one had ever left him speechless the way Sara did.
Quotations didn't count. They wouldn't come either.
It wasn't that he hadn't anything to say to her, but rather far too much. He just hadn't known where or how to begin.
Talk, he knew he should talk to her. His mother had said as much to him time and time again.
And he wanted to. But somehow all his words got lost somewhere between his heart and his mouth.
Even after all these years, he still had a hard time expressing his feelings to her. Regrettably, that hadn't changed.
No wonder that ever since the divorce he'd had the same persistent nightmare: her and him, the two of them trapped on opposite sides of some sort of one-way glass. He could see her, but never reach her, touch her, speak to her.
It had been like that that first afternoon in Vegas.
In the Yukon, on the ride over to Heather Kessler's house, with Sara in the driver's seat beside him, he'd been so lost in his own thoughts and regrets, so lost that he really had thought they had been talking, only to realize that any and all of said conversation had been entirely in his head, like every other conversation he'd had with her over the last several years. Sara was right, he hadn't spoken a single word aloud.
True, too, that they hadn't spoken much since the divorce - or before that for that matter - little more than a handful of emails, business mostly. Sara had informed him she had moved out of their Vegas home. He'd written her about the boat, given her a post office box if any further correspondence needed to be sent. Other than that, Grissom had left out more than he ever said.
He'd made a decision. She had agreed. It was done.
Like Sara said: Things ended.
He got that, too.
So ultimately he'd found that all he could do was just stand there outside Heather's door attempting to listen to Sara ramble uncomfortably on, an attempt which had proven all the more difficult as Grissom had discovered himself far too distracted by the fact that however hot and harried Sara might presently appear, she was still breathtakingly beautiful.
No wonder she had left him more than a little speechless.
A reality that had changed little in the hours they'd spent together.
At the end, she'd struck him just as wordless, so that ultimately all he could do was stand there and watch her walk away.
Yes, definitely too little too late.
So completely lost in his own remembrances as he was, it took Grissom a moment to register his mother's reply:
Be there in half an hour.
xxxxxxx
Twenty-five minutes later found Grissom sitting at a table outside Starbucks, his eagle-eyed mother sitting across from him.
As usual Betty Grissom found her way straight to the point.
How was Sara? she asked.
Good. She's lab director now.
His mother signed, You must be proud.
I am.
Ecklie's loose canon made lab director. Yes, Grissom was proud, beyond proud of Sara. However little a hand he may have had in it, he was still proud.
But then pride and heartache frequently kept company these days.
Grissom had meant what he'd said to Heather about Sara returning his faith in the human being. She did. Even now.
If anyone had traveled through hell and yet still belonged to heaven, it was her.
Before the promotion, part of him, the reckless, heartsick, irrational part of him had wanted to ask Sara to come back with him. To just leave Vegas behind and return with him to his boat. It was the same part of him that considered walking away from the Ishmael and his Jacques Cousteau thing as Sara had called it and instead staying in Vegas.
Only Ecklie's announcement had put to rest even his most wishful of imaginings. Sara had worked too hard, been through far too much, to walk away from the lab and the directorship now.
In any case, there had been no way in hell that he would have even considered daring to ask her to.
No, he wouldn't ask. Neither could he stay either.
No wonder he'd had a hard time finding something other than good-bye to say.
Only he hadn't said that either. He hadn't said anything at all.
Ultimately, Sara had done all the talking. And the leaving. All he could do was stand there and watch her walk away.
There'd been no good in that last good-bye. But then they never had been all that good at partings.
But, he supposed, at least they had had a proper one this time.
A last one.
Any possibility, even the vaguest of hopes of any sort of reconciliation he could have still possibly clung to, her Bye, Gil, had more than effectively laid to rest.
Never again would he return to Vegas. Nor would Gil Grissom ever see Sara Sidle again. Her farewell had been final. He knew that all too well.
He had done this. Grissom could blame no one but himself. She had shown him a wonderful life, Sara had. Only he'd been the one to take it all away, throw it away on all his damn good intentions.
And Sara was just gone, gone without even a single backwards glance, leaving him alone with his aching heart - and hands.
No, he really hadn't known what to do with his hands.
Not in that moment when he first caught sight of her again. Not in the eternity it took for her to disappear down that hall. Nor during any of the in between.
Only that had been that.
Nothing to do but go back to his boat and to making - or at least attempting to make - a life without her. He'd managed as much before. Thought he'd been managing just fine. It wasn't a bad life after all, just one without her in it.
Until he saw Sara again.
How could he ever have thought it better without her? That anything was better without her?
True, he was living, but he was nowhere near alive.
Somehow he'd once again reverted to being a ghost in his own life.
While Grissom had been away it had been easier, easier to talk himself into his new (but sadly not improved) life. Been easier to convince himself that he'd done the best thing for the both of them.
Sorrow had settled. He'd accepted it.
One could become adapted to unhappiness after all. He'd done it before. He'd do it again. It wasn't okay, but it would have to be.
He just had to keep breathing - doing - living - being - continue on without her, however hard it hurt.
But then as Thoreau had once said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Who was he to be fortunate enough to have it any other way?
No matter how much Grissom had genuinely enjoyed their one last time together in Vegas, however awkward it had frequently proved, despite the fact that he knew all along it would be the last, it had still felt in that farewell like he had lost Sara all over again. Even if he knew, too, one couldn't lose what one already no longer possessed.
And yet he'd meant what he'd said to Heather. He was grateful, genuinely grateful. Grateful for the chance to learn to love someone. Grateful that someone had been Sara. Grateful for the life together they had once shared. Grateful all the while knowing he would miss never having her in his life again.
Yes, Vegas was lucky to have her. He'd been lucky like that for a while, though not nearly long enough.
He certainly didn't regret loving her, not for a minute.
Losing her yes, loving her, never.
Only Sara certainly didn't need him any longer. She was managing just fine on her own. Excelling. She'd thrived just as Grissom had wanted her to.
It still hurt though. No longer to belong. No longer to be needed.
If his time back in Vegas had taught him anything, it was that life had gone on without him. Sara had gone on without him.
And it never hurt so much for him to have what he said he had wanted.
Rather ruefully Grissom let himself muse for a moment over how it might have been. If they had still been married they might have gone out - or perhaps have stayed in - to celebrate Sara's promotion. Perhaps then he could have shown her then just how immensely proud of her he was. He could have kissed her, held her, made love to her. Maybe then he could have somehow managed to convey everything his heart was so desperate to say.
But no, he no longer possessed the luxury of that opportunity. Instead, all he could do was stand there vainly applaud her accomplishment.
Sitting there at the Starbucks together, Grissom expected his mother to purse her lips, shake her head in disgust and swiftly sign her usual and perhaps well-warranted refrain that he was a moron, a coward and a fool - whatshe'd been telling him every time Sara came up in conversation ever since he had broken the news of the divorce.
However true the words might be, he wasn't quite sure he could handle hearing them again right now.
His mother didn't need to say them, he already knew. But she would, this he knew, too.
Only she didn't. Betty Grissom simply reached out and after giving her son's hand a reassuring squeeze, replied, I'm sorry.
Me, too, he signed once he'd gotten past his surprise.
Her face fond, but sad, his mother patted his cheek affectionately.
Both resigned to the fact that there was nothing more to be said about the subject, they sipped silently at their drinks for a while before making small talk about far less painful subjects until it was time for Grissom to get cleared through security for his flight.