Chapter 26
She kept an eye out for him at work, but soon found out that Grissom had logged so much overtime he was able to take a week off with little objection from his superiors. Sara didn't doubt that he needed it, and while she was glad that he wasn't overworking himself, she was worried that he was alone. She debated stopping by his house during her lunch break, but decided against it. Their last encounter there wasn't very warm, to say the least, and Sara had no intention of invading his space.
But she couldn't leave him alone.
Shannon Carmichael's body had been released right after Ned Meyer's confession, and the subsequent funeral was being held on a hot Wednesday morning. Sara entered the air conditioned church and immediately saw Grissom sitting in one of the back pews. She sat down next to him quietly. He turned to regard her for a moment, but said nothing. The pews began to fill up quickly. All of the people couldn't have been Shannon's close and personal friends, but Sara knew that very public murders tended to bring out the curiosity in most. She wondered who would have come to her funeral if she had died months earlier when Shannon did -- without family or a large group of friends, without Brenda . She had the people at work, who she knew cared for her, though they knew little about her. A neighbor or two in her apartment building might have come to be polite. And though Sara had gathered some friends in college, they were on either coast, and she doubted any would ever make the trip to Vegas for her funeral. It was, all in all, a pitiful list. But as she stood there for the prayer, Sara knew that the only person who had truly cared for her throughout the years, though he didn't always show it, was right next to her. She could feel the warmth radiate from Grissom's body in the cold, marble church. She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and held it there and felt the heat seep into her fingers from the soft wool of his suit jacket.
If she had startled him, he made no indication of it. They sat down for the remainder of the service, and Sara slid her palm down his forearm to grip his hand, intertwining their fingers. On two previous occasions, Grissom had reached out to her in a similar fashion and it helped. Small gesture as it was, it had helped. His hand was lax in hers for several minutes, but soon he gripped her as tightly as she gripped him.
Sara reluctantly let him go when it was time to leave. It was almost noon and she had promised her boss -- her new boss -- she'd testify in court on an assault case they had processed the month before. The church began to empty out and she bit her lip, wondering what Grissom would do next. She turned to him and smiled tentatively.
"Are you going to the burial?"
He didn't return her smile, only stared at her. "Are you?"
Behind her back, Sara clasped and unclasped her hands nervously. "I've got to be in court in forty-five minutes."
Grissom merely nodded.
"I can have someone cover for me and then I could go with you," she began, but he just shook his head.
"I'm not going, anyway."
"Oh." She wondered what he would do instead. So much of Grissom's time and energy had been put into finding Shannon, and then finding her killer. Whenever she'd leave work, she knew that he was, in some capacity, still working the case, still examining the evidence, if not at the lab, then in his head.
Now, it was over.
She pictured him going home alone to his townhouse with no case to keep him company. It hurt her heart to think about it. She could see him sinking down on his couch and staring at a wall, his eyes glassy and unresponsive, much like Brenda had been the night her family was murdered. Shannon was dead and her killer was behind bars, but Sara knew that obsession didn't wear off so easily. The case would live on in Grissom's brain, would fester and rot because he'd let it. And he'd let it because he knew no one would stop him.
And so Sara took a deep breath and a shot in the dark. "Why don't you come over my house for dinner? It…it's been so long since we talked. We could…catch up."
He seemed skeptical and wary, but she added a quiet, "Please," and his face seemed to soften fractionally.
"Alright."
"Great," she said, widening her smile. "I'll see you around six? Six-thirty?"
Though his enthusiasm was more than lacking, he nodded. "Okay."
They exited the church and walked together to the parking lot, saying their goodbyes in the process. Sara moved to open her car door when a thought suddenly seized her. "Grissom!" she called out to him. "You need my new address."
He squinted at her in the late morning sun. "I know where you live."
TBC…