A/N- Yesterday at approximately 6:30 EST (6 years and one day since I posted the first chapter) I finished writing IandB! There are officially 52 chapters plus an epilogue, so that makes 53 in total. I'll be posting a chapter a day for three days after this until it is done.
I hope you all enjoyed it.
Chapter 50: Understatement of the Century
I couldn't help but smile as I watched her at the window. She looked out the back of the small townhouse to the manicured lawn with a hint of awe sparkling in her eyes. The walls around Emma were bare, but like so many times before, she seemed to bring all sorts of possibilities to them. "You… can't be serious," she half asked, half declared as she turned around, our engagement ring reflecting the sun into my eyes for a second.
I really couldn't help the goofy grin on my face. "Oh, but I am. If you like it I can have the realtor here in fifteen minutes to sign the papers."
"Greg, your apartment is fine. We don't need to-"
I cut her off, moving closer until she's trapped between me and the window. "No. My apartment is small and old and all the way across town. We may not need to, but I want to. This is a better area. Plus we're both closer to work and to your Dad and Sara."
She bites her bottom lip, eyebrows raised and I know she's starting to get the idea. Her hands fall on my shoulders, brushing up and down. If things start to go that way, maybe we won't be calling the realtor… "Are you really sure being closer to your in-laws is a good thing?"
It's so easy to take her in my arms. "Haven't figured out how it can be a bad thing yet." I shrug then steal a kiss. "You like it?"
She turns, grabbing my hand and walking us through the first floor again: spacious living and dining room, brand new kitchen, stopping at the entrance to one of three bedrooms. "What's not to like?" She giggles a bit, looking around. "But what are we going to do with all of this space? It's too much for just us!"
I spin her, pressing her back to my chest and walk her into the room. "Oh, I don't know. I was thinking this might make a good office, or maybe throw a ballet barre over there on the wall for you, or maybe…" I take a deep breath, we haven't really talked about this, but I mean, I'm pretty sure about it, "maybe it would make a good nursery?"
She stiffens up, her arms hold onto mine tight. Not a good sign. "You'd still want to have children?"
Why wouldn't I want to have kids with her? I'm wracking my brain, thinking back, trying to figure out if she's given me a reason not to… but nothing pops up, there are no red flags, no lightning bolts… "Well, yeah." The confusion's plain in my voice.
She looks up at me, shocked. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
I shake my head, trying to stay positive. "No, no idea at all."
"I guess when Dad had his surgery he didn't tell you-"
"What surgery?" Now I'm getting worried and confused. And upset. I know my fiancé. I know her family. I've worked with her father for over a decade, I've known her, been dating her for so long- how is there something that I don't know about her that can be this important? It's hard not to panic. "Emma…"
She turns to me and steps away, her eyes can barely look at me as she speaks. "When I first came to live with my Dad he had surgery on his ears- a stapedectomy. He has otosclerosis. My grandmother went deaf from it; my father nearly did, as well. I have a strong predisposition for it, and so would any children we have." She stepped back further into the room and away from me, but I followed, unwilling to let her go as she made herself more upset. "It could show up tomorrow, or in ten years, or never. I could pass it on to every child I have, or none of them. And there's no promise that any treatment could ever work. Sometimes they do- my Dad got lucky, but sometimes they don't."
What can I say to that? How can I even… I take a deep breath as I rush forward and grab her hands. This is not as catastrophic as I thought it would be a moment ago. "Ok." So it's not the most eloquent thing in the world.
"Ok?" She asks, looking up and holding my hands tightly. "How's this ok?" There are tears in her eyes as her face keeps changing, morphing through emotions faster than I can name them. At least she's as confused about this as I am. "How is it ok that we're getting married and we didn't know something as important as this? That we haven't talked about it already? Did you know that I have a family history of ovarian cysts? And alcoholism?"
She tries to step back again but I stop her. "So? We'll talk about it now." I can feel desperation rising in my voice, she's panicking, and I can't let that happen. This isn't how I imagined this afternoon going at all. "This isn't anything that we can't handle. We'll talk about it… now just calm down…"
She rips her hands from mine and turns away from me, I can hear her breath hitching and I know she's crying. Shit. I hate when she cries. "What are we doing? Really, what are we doing? How can we get married when we don't know these important things?"
She turns, tears flowing freely. I push forward to hold her, to pull her to me but her hand on my chest stops me: her bare left hand. She holds up her ring in her right. I won't take it. "What are you doing?" My voice is so quiet, so steady while my heart is beating out of control.
"Maybe we shouldn't be doing this," she says through caught breaths that make the words break in unnatural patterns. "Maybe you should really think about this again."
"I don't need to," I take her head in my hands, brush away the tears I can't stand to see, and make her look in my eyes. "I. Don't. Need. To. I love you."
She moves away a little and I couldn't stop her: my body wouldn't let me. She pushed the ring into my hand and stepped away. "We should just think about this." Emma pushed past me, another tear falling. "I need to get to work."
Two steps: I let her get two steps away and that was too many. I turn and go after her, right on her heels, but she's not stopping. "Emma, Emma! Don't do this. I'm serious. Don't… Don't do this." I follow her out of the house, down the steps and to the curb. She hasn't stopped, hasn't turned, and is heading to her car, keys already in her hand. "Emma, please!"
She has to turn to look at me as she opens the driver side door. Her car's between us, only a few feet, but I haven't felt farther away in years. She swipes her tears away with a rough hand. I can't stand it; I can't stand to see her like this. "I have to go to work, Greg."
I watch her go. I think I might be crying, but I don't really care. What the hell just happened? I watch the road, hoping that I'll see her car coming back to me, but there's nothing moving on the quiet side street in the small development. Maybe there are still things I don't know about her, but there can't be that many. I can't imagine how we missed her predisposition for hearing loss. Maybe she thought I already knew… but then again, medical histories aren't exactly things that come up during romantic dinners.
I don't know how long I was standing there when the silence was interrupted by the ringing of my cell. I hold her ring tightly in my left hand as I answer the phone with my right. "What?"
"Well hello to you too, Greg." It's Brass.
"Bad day, is it important?" Well, if that wasn't the understatement of the century…
"Yeah, all hands on deck- we've got a kidnapping- only gone three hours. How soon can you be in?"
It's not Brass' fault. He doesn't know that all I want to do is go after her despite being unable to move from this spot. I look at the ring, close my fist around it and shove it in my pocket. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
*~*~*
"Sara, can you check and see if Greg's here yet?" Grissom calls out to me in the hallway from his desk. "I want to take him with me to the scene while you and Nick run the surveillance video with Archie."
"Yeah, I'll send him over if I find him." I turn and redirect myself to the right instead of the left. Missing persons, especially like this, are always high priority and high pressure. Archie should be ready to start looking at the video Nick brought in, but Nick can catch me up on a few missed minutes. I turn the corner and can see Greg sitting in the locker room, head down and hands out in front of him.
"Hey, Griss is looking for you." I say as I step into the room. He doesn't move. I step closer, figuring he's got headphones in and didn't hear me. "Greg, I-" When I get closer I can see he's not listening to anything, but staring at something very intently. "Hey, what's up?"
He looks up, lost, confused, maybe even heartbroken. "I uh, I don't really know."
A step closer and I can see Emma's engagement ring in his hand, his eyes shining with unshed tears. I sit next to him and put a hand on his shoulder, the case nearly forgotten. "What happened?"
He shrugs and plays with the diamond and platinum band. "I took her to see the house… all of a sudden she's freaking out. I guess… I mentioned having kids. I mean, she loves kids, she's great with them- works with them all day at the studio where she teaches and I guess I just assumed… All of a sudden she freaked. I don't know…She said we need to think about what we're doing."
I know Emma loves him. I know it. I know she wants to marry him, I can see it in the way she looks at him, can hear it in her voice every time he's around or on the phone. "She loves you, Greg. I'm sure that she just… got overwhelmed." I put a hand on his, stopping him from fidgeting with the ring. "She'll realize her mistake."
"But what if she's right? What if we really shouldn't be doing this?" Greg looks so unsure, so terrified of the answer to his question.
"What do you think?" I ask him, smiling. I'll talk to her as soon as my shift is over. I'll get to the bottom of it if they haven't already made up by then.
"I want to marry her." He declares in a strong voice, determination set on his face. He stands, clutches the ring tight, and pushes it into his jean pocket. He looks down at me. "You said Grissom was looking for me?"
"Yeah," I'm a bit surprised at how quickly he changes the subject. "He wants you to work the scene with him while Nick and I hold down the fort."
He quickly grabs his vest out of his locker and turns to me. "Thanks," is all he says before he walks out the door.
It is a few minutes before I've collected myself enough to get back to what I was doing. I jump up and nearly run down to Archie's lab.
"Where were you?" Nick asks as he and Archie turn as I enter the room. "Hey- what's up? You look, well, stunned."
"Well, I am." I take a seat next to them, all business. I don't know if Greg wants anyone to know. This is their business, not everyone's. He can tell Nick and Archie if he wants to. "Gossip later, find anything yet?"
"Not yet," Archie pipes in as his hands fly over the keyboard. "The footage from the neighbor's security camera has awful compression. I finally cleaned it up and got it to run decently. But the angle sucks seeing as it's not supposed to be aimed at the house we're looking at, so I doubt we'll get anything."
"Hey, you never know!" Nick scowls and leans back in his seat. "I hate kidnappings- but the thing about criminals stupid enough to do it in the day time? Maybe they're stupid enough to get caught, too."
"Well, you might be right. About four hours ago there are three guys sneaking into the back of the house here." Archie rewound the tape and slowed it down; sure enough we could see three shadows on the low grade image sneaking just in frame to the victim's house.
"It's a start, at least." I say, thinking that somehow that was far too easy. "Do you think that you can find out when they left? It'll give us a better time frame to work with."
"I've actually been watching the tape backwards- there were ten hours stored on the camera's drive, we only needed the last three or so. I'll check again, but they must have used a different route out of the house because there wasn't any other movement."
"Oh well," Nick said, standing. "Guess it's better than nothing. I'll give Griss a call and let him know to check near the back entrance of the house."
"Like I said, I'll check again, but I don't think I'll find anything."
"Thanks Archie." Nick and I leave, only to bump into Brass in the hallway.
"Hey guys," Brass forces a smile. "Any good news?"
"Looks like we're dealing with three perps who entered from the back of the house, but they didn't exit that way." Nick rattled off for the police officer.
Brass' eyebrows knit together in thought, a face that somehow always looks a little comical to me. "That's not likely."
"Why not?" Nick asked.
"There's construction on the front half of the house. The rear door is the only working entrance or exit. Unless they pulled her out a window…"
His line of thought hung in the air for a second. None of us wanted to recognize the idea for what I could be, but we couldn't ignore it. I broke the silence. "So it's possible that they're still on the scene?"
"Well, the house was crawling with cops before, but yeah," Brass nodded. "It's possible."
