Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: Okay, not super eventful, but it gives you some insight into Grissom's state of mind right now, and it sets us up for the case to unfold a little more. ...This is my first case file type story, so I'm trying hard to make it clear without giving away the ending. Yell at me if I screw up details or if what I say isn't clear. :) Thanks!!

Oh, and thank you for the reviews, as always, which make me so very happy. More, please, yes?

Chapter Thirty-Five:

There was too much going on to process it all correctly.

I had the irritating feeling in the back of my mind that I usually got when I was looking at evidence and I knew there was something there that I just couldn't put my finger on… yet.

Debbie had had her stuff ready to go and was packing up Wesley when I returned, having made the call to the university to apologize that I would have to cancel the lecture for the next day. I moved into the bedroom we'd shared the night before—though it felt like it had been a million years since then—and started packing my own suitcase.

I picked up the slacks I'd worn to the lecture that morning and immediately felt something in the pocket—something I'd forgotten when I'd felt the sudden urge to check a detail between the cases that I felt like I'd missed, but which turned out to be nothing. I tugged it out, glancing behind me at the door that was still half-open, feeling immensely guilty for even wanting to read it.

But I did. I wanted to. …Call it morbid curiosity or stroking my ego or whatever, but it felt good to be desired by a woman who would have nothing to gain by it, except me.

I unfolded the paper, feeling that there must be something inside because it was far too thick… to find a condom marked 'Xxxtra Large' on the front. …Tacky. I think I must have blushed and cringed simultaneously. I mean, it was obviously flattering that the strange blonde woman I'd never met had such a high opinion of me… but it was still rather… crude. I unwrapped the paper, glancing behind myself again, feeling guilty.

It was not, as I had assumed, something as straight-forward and honest as a name and phone number. No, it was an invitation. For tonight. In a hotel room. With a condom included. I read it twice, and then moved to the trash can in the room and dropped them both inside it, and then turned back to continue packing.

It was an easy thing to do, because no one-night stand would ever take precedence over a case… especially not this case. And it was easy not to think about it beyond that, because I didn't want to admit that I was tempted. Not only by the sex of it… if it were only that, I think I would have been rather turned off by the entire thing. No—it was about wanting to hurt the woman who was still twisting me around her little finger, playing games with me.

I wanted her to understand the pain of what she'd done to me. I wanted her to feel inadequate, because it was how I had felt for two years… It was that feeling of inadequacy that made such an offer so tempting in the first place. It's human and natural to want to be wanted.

But like I said, a moot point. I didn't have to make a decision, because we were leaving.

I packed up, loaded the car, walked through the rooms to be certain we hadn't left anything behind, and checked out. We were on the road at a quarter to three.

Debbie did exactly as she said she would, and tried to sleep while I drove. Nearing supper time, we pulled over at a McDonalds because it had a play place and I felt like he needed to run around if he was going to be stuck in a car for another seven hours. Debbie frowned at it, but said nothing, and normally I would have asked, but today I didn't. I didn't want to hear anymore from her, whether it would be old-Debbie complaining about her figure or new-Debbie about Wesley's dietary needs.

I told my mother to take Wesley in to play and get a table, and we'd meet them there… and fifteen minutes later, I was calling him down to eat. He slid into his chair, reaching for his happy meal, but Debbie stood up, abandoning her food. "Wes, hon, let's wash your hands before you eat. That play place is germy…"

Ah. There was the reason for the frown. Good to know—my wife now cared about germs.

"Gumby?"

She laughed softly and took him to the bathroom to wash, and I was confronted with my mother's eyes. I had avoided them for most of the trip, but there was no escaping them now. No Wes to talk to, no people around to discourage discussion, no Debbie to be polite and not sign in front of. She signed openly now.

"You slept in her room last night?"

I raised an eyebrow. "How did you know that?"

Her eyebrow raised in an almost identical gesture. "Midnight bathroom break. You didn't talk all day."

"I have nothing to say to her."

She hesitated. "She… isn't the same."

I nodded. "She says… the plane crash made her reevaluate her priorities."

She seemed to consider this and me at the same time. "But you don't believe her?"

I frowned. "I think it's understandable if I have trust issues."

"A plane crash is life-threatening enough to make a person change… She's different with Wes, too."

"Didn't you hate her?"

She frowned too. "I didn't hate her. I… disapproved. …But, if you insist that remaining married is the course of action you both want to pursue… and she isn't seeing anyone else anymore… Does it matter why she's changed, so long as she has?"

"Yes. It matters. I… It's not who I am to invest my body but not my heart."

She smiled then. "I know that, Gilbert, I know. …But you're foolish if you believe you haven't invested your heart already."

I scowled, angry now. "So, what, you just think I should take her back, forget everything she did, and let that be good enough?"

She shook her head. "No… No, I don't think that either. I just… want to see you happy, baby."

I couldn't help but smile—my mother had called me 'baby' my whole life, and while it had bothered me as a teenager, as an adult it provoked a kind of nostalgia that was fond. Debbie returned before I could respond, and my mother's words swirled in my head despite my arguments. If she was my wife, and she was willing…

No. I knew better than anyone that I would fall for her all over again if I gave in… if she kept acting so differently… It would be over for me, and when she didn't feel death breathing on her neck anymore, she would go back to being herself and it would hurt all over again. Why would I invite torture?

We finished eating and piled back into the car, and Debbie slept again, until it was nearing ten o'clock. We switched places, and I closed my eyes, but of course, sleep would not come. I was going back and forth through a hundred different things, unable to focus clearly on any of them.

There were the serials and every detail I'd been attempting to expand to find out how they all fit together, and the new body that was waiting for me, hopefully providing a clue I didn't yet have… there was the child in the backseat who I feared would go back to being unresponsive when we returned home, the mother who seemed to be advocating radical things for strange reasons, the wife who had become a constant source of confusion and pain… my head was swirling with all of it, and I couldn't make sense of all of it.

Debbie drove us home, took my suitcase inside as well as Wesley's, and I took my own and my mother's, while she carried Wes in and placed him in his bed. He'd slept through most of the second half of the trip. I said goodbye to both women, somewhat awkwardly, and called the lab, getting a uniform to meet me at the scene—another hotel room—but there wasn't anything new to find. Graveyard had processed it, since the serial was their case, so I shouldn't be surprised, but… I just felt like we were missing something obvious. Something large and life-size standing right in front of us.

I went back to the lab—getting the run down on the girl. Alexandra Clare, 26, visiting her grandmother who lived in town. She was staying in a hotel because her grandmother lived in a nursing home. Her 90th birthday was this week.

This case was really getting under my skin.

But that was a difference… this woman had a living relative. I read through the information but eventually decided to head home and sleep—all the evidence had been collected, and none of the evidence would be finished processing at least until morning. The autopsy might not take place until the following afternoon. And I needed to be awake and aware and more level-headed to talk to Grandma Clare tomorrow.

I drove home, feeling exhausted, and curled up on the couch, fully clothed. Because my pajamas were in the bedroom, with my wife… and I knew exactly where that road led.