Sad chapter for Catherine, but things will start to look up soon.

I hope everyone is keeping safe out there!

x X x

Sara hadn't answered her timid invitation.

But, ironically, it was a different offer she had made to the brunette which had given her the brainwave they needed to solve the case.

The last time Catherine invited Sara somewhere – when they were still friends, before everything went wrong – she had asked her to accompany them to the aquarium.

The aquarium ... where they had sand.

There had been sand at Stephanie's scene too, but because she was found outside in an alley, in a desert state, nothing much had been thought of it at the time. There was sand all over Las Vegas.

However, beach girl Sara Sidle had had a hunch which, miraculously, had paid off. After paying a visit to Hodges, she established that it wasn't desert sand under Stephanie's body. It was the same sand that had been at the more recent murder case. Sand, with traces of shellfish.

Thankfully, Sara's knowledge of sea creatures and their diets had proved useful for more than just helping Lindsey with her homework.

After establishing that the sand must have come from the aquarium, it had been really easy to get a list of names of staff members who had been working there in 1988 and was still working there a week ago when Sara's victim was murdered...

As soon as Catherine saw the photograph, she recognised the face. Sure, he was older now – weren't they all. But the eyes were the same; those cold, cobalt blue eyes.

Stephanie had been beautiful and she had had a lot of admirers as a result; it was impossible to remember them all. Most of them had faded from memory a long time ago.

But Catherine remembered him now.

She remembered the silent, brooding young man sitting in the front row, within touching distance.

She remembered the way he would stand eerily close when the girls were at the bar, breathing down their neck.

And she remembered the way he used to stare at Stephanie like she was already his.

She didn't specifically recall seeing him the night Stephanie died; but then why would she? The bar was filled with quiet, creepy guys every night. There was nothing in particular about this guy which set him apart from all the other.

Although, as it turns out, he wasn't just one of the many quiet, creepy guys who had been loitering in the bar watching the girls that he knew he could never have.

He was just biding his time, waiting until he got Stephanie alone.

And because Catherine had gone to meet Eddie that night, instead of being with her, he had finally got it.

That was something that she was going to have to live with for the rest of her life.

She wanted to say that it felt good, walking out of the interrogation room, knowing that he would leave in handcuffs. She wanted to say that it had helped to take some of the sting off her guilt, at least for a little while.

She wanted to say that she felt proud to have finally gotten justice for the woman she had once loved.

But she only felt numb.

As she stalked down the corridor of the police station towards the parking lot, where she would sit in her car and cry for an hour before driving home, she realised that she hadn't felt a thing since she left the lab.

Since that moment when all of the pieces had fallen into place.

Since the moment that Sara had handed her the file, a coy little smile dancing on her lips.

"She was your friend." Sara had said. "You should do this for her."

x X x

"Alright," Lily sighed. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Catherine sulked, slinking down in her seat with a cup of coffee clasped between her hands.

"Come on, Catherine." She persevered, joining her at the kitchen table. "I'm your mother; I know when something is bothering you. Talk to me."

Catherine flicked her gaze up, searching her mother's face for a long moment, before letting it slide off to the side.

"I can't talk to you about this."

"Honey, you can talk to me about anything." Lily corrected in a wounded voice, reaching across the table towards her daughter. "Is it about Stephanie?"

Cath exhaled deeply.

"In a way." She agreed cryptically.

"I know that she was a good friend." Lily offered sympathetically. "But you've got him now. He's going to prison for a very long time and you can finally let her go."

Catherine laughed softly, shaking her head.

"Let her go." She echoed sadly. As if it were that easy.

A hurt look flashed across Lily's face. Confused, but realising that her words were providing little comfort, she reached out and gripped her daughter's hand, prising it away from the edge of the coffee mug and caressing it tenderly, silently coaxing her to open up.

Catherine watched her gentle movements warily, a thousand different excuses for her bad mood creeping onto her tongue and dying before she ever voiced them.

"You want to know what's wrong with me?" She asked eventually. "I'm gay."

Lily straightened up, her mouth falling open.

"You ... you're what?" She choked out with a startled laugh.

Catherine met her eye and, at the sight of the tears trekking silently down her cheeks, the older woman quickly sobered up.

"I'm gay."

A whole minute passed where neither moved, barely breathed. A chasm seemed to open up between them, as if neither were quite sure what the next move should be.

"Catherine ..." Lily licked her lips, carefully considering her words. "Is this some new fad you're trying to follow?"

"Oh, God." Cath pushed her chair back in dramatic fashion and stood up, walking towards the back door.

"I'm just asking," Lily followed her. "I see the news and it seems that this is the new 'in-thing', so..."

"No, mom." She whirled to face her again, her hands raised defensively. "This is not a fad and it's not new. This is who I am; it's who I've always been."

Her earnest pleading drew more tears and she wiped pitifully at her eyes, with little effect.

"But, what about Eddie? And ..."

"Always, mom." Catherine cut her off before she could start listing her past exploits. "I never wanted to deal with it, so I pushed it away. It was just easier that way."

"I don't believe you." Lily said sceptically, searching her face for any sign of deceit but finding only pain. "I would have known."

"Nancy knew." Catherine offered with a small shrug, opening the door and wandering out into the yard. Lily watched her amble over to a plant and pretend to examine it, debating whether or not to follow her.

She knew that Catherine had been distracted of late, but this was certainly not what she had been expecting. And to learn that her other child had apparently known about it and neglected to mention it? That stung.

But that was a conversation for her and Nancy to have later. Right now, she had more pressing matters to deal with.

Eventually, she stepped outside into the sun and crept up to her daughter's side.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked in a voice which sounded more offended than she intended.

"How could I?" Catherine asked. "You were never around. I don't know if you remember this, but we weren't exactly the kind of family who sat around the dinner table together every night."

"You told your sister."

"No, I didn't." She amended. "Nancy figured it out on her own."

That seemed to bother Lily even more and she shook her head to get rid of the thoughts that had begun to seep into her mind. Had she really been that oblivious to her children when they were growing up?

Catherine was right, they didn't spend a lot of time together a family, mainly due to her work hours. But how could she have missed something this big?

To be honest, that was a question that she wasn't prepared to investigation further just yet.

"So, why now?" She asked instead.

Catherine laughed sadly, finally dropping the leaf that she had been absently caressing.

"Because I can't do it anymore." She shrugged helplessly, beginning to break down. "Someone recently told me that they had were struggling with their own sexuality and I told them that they needed to be honest with themselves – that they owed themselves that much. But what kind of hypocrite does that make me? Because I've been lying to myself for my whole adult life. And I can't do it anymore, it's too hard."

Somewhere during her diatribe, the barriers had broken and the tears were flowing unstemmed now, her breath coming in short bursts. Slowly, she turned to lean her back against the garden wall and slid down to the ground, her body wracked with sobs.

Lily hadn't seen her daughter like this in a very long time – she hadn't even broken down like this when she caught Eddie in bed with another woman.

Come to think of it, the last time she had seen Catherine break down in such spectacular fashion, it had been when Stephanie died. She wasn't just upset, she was inconsolable.

Lily hadn't known what to do for the best back then, so she had left it to Eddie to help Catherine. But he wasn't around anymore, and he probably wouldn't be much use now even if he was here.

Crouching down beside her, Lily wrapped her into a hug, burying a kiss into her hair.

"I can understand why you felt like you needed to hide this from the world when you were younger." She mumbled against Catherine's temple. "I can even understand why you might have tried to lie to yourself about it. But you never, ever needed to lie to me about it."

Catherine's only response was another hiccupped cry, smothered by her mom's shoulder. Lily held her tighter, feeling herself suddenly warped back fifteen years; back to the last time she had held her baby like this.

"You don't ever need to hide who you are from me."