If Catherine thought that confessing to her mother was hard, it was nothing compared to getting up the courage to knock on the door that she had been staring at for ten minutes.

To her relief, when it swung open, the occupant didn't look upset to see her. Bemused, perhaps, but not upset.

"Hi." Sara greeted dumbly.

"Hey," Catherine cleared her throat, twisting her hands. "I'm sorry; I should have called first..."

"No, it's okay." Sara stepped aside to let her enter.

As Cath crept into the apartment, she was hit by a warm, pleasant smell. Casting her eyes towards the small kitchenette, she spotted the source in the form of a cake, fresh out of the oven and cooling on the side. Beside it sat a bowl of frosting that Sara had been mixing before she answered the door.

"You've been baking." She noted with more than a hint of surprise.

"Yeah." Sara agreed, sliding past her to make some fresh coffee.

Taking it as an invite to make herself comfortable, Catherine ambled over to the bench and hopped up onto a stool.

"Funny, you never struck me as a baker." She commented.

Sara offered a small shrug as she poured out two mugs.

"It's an old habit, keeps my hands busy when I have stuff on my mind." She explained. "My grandmother taught me – she was a firm believer that idle hands are the devil's workshop."

Catherine laughed softly, accepting her drink. Sara moved around the bench to join her on the stools. As she sat down, she dragged her bowl of frosting over and continued to stir it lackadaisically.

As Catherine sipped her coffee, contemplating her reason for coming here, she studied Sara over the rim of her mug. The brunette did seem somewhat distracted, but not necessarily sad. Perhaps her grandmother's trick really did work.

"You've never mentioned your grandmother before." She said at last. .

"Haven't I?" Sara asked half-heartedly.

For a minute, Catherine thought that that was as much as she was going to get, when Sara began speaking again.

"She loved to cook. And bake. Basically anything in the kitchen." She explained. "She got custody of me when I was 15, so I lived with her for a couple of years before I went to college."

"You two must have been pretty close." Cath smiled. There was an affectionate tone to Sara's voice that she had never heard before.

"I guess." The younger woman agreed. "Although at the time I probably drove her up the wall."

The flippant comment drew a laugh from her companion and Sara cracked a smile at the reaction.

"Bit of a hell-raiser were we?" Catherine asked playfully. Sara pursed her lips and nodded.

"Maybe. Although I'm sure you weren't much better." She half-joked. "I'm sure you gave your mother her fair share of sleepless nights when you were a teenager."

Catherine's expression faltered and her attempts to cover it failed miserably. Sara cocked her head to the side, finally scrutinising her unexpected visitor.

"Cat," she said softly, putting down her bowl. "Why are you really here?"

x X x

Nancy knew that there was something on her mother's mind – Lily never stopped by unannounced unless there was something she needed to talk about.

But it had been a long shift at the hospital and she couldn't be bothered to drag it out of her. So, she poured out two drinks and ambled into the garden, waiting for her mom to open up in her own time.

"Why didn't you tell me?" The older woman finally asked, following her out onto the deck.

"Tell you what?" She asked lazily.

"That your sister's a lesbian."

The blunt statement caused Nancy to stall, her coffee mug half-way to her lips, and cast her eyes slowly upwards.

"You know?" She asked cautiously.

"Yes, I know." Lily sank onto the chair beside her.

"How ... how did you find out?" Nancy shuffled further upright, suddenly a lot more alert.

"She told me."

"She ... Catherine told you?" Nancy clarified. "In those exact words?"

"Yes." Lily agreed calmly. "How long have you known?"

"Well, I knew about Stephanie ..." Nancy frowned. "I didn't ..."

"Stephanie?" Lily's mouth fell open, interrupting her mid-thought. "Catherine and Stephanie were..."

"Yeah." Nancy licked her lips slowly, fixing her mother with a challenging look. "What exactly did she tell you?"

"She said that she was gay, that she always had been, but that she'd tried to hide it. And that you knew."

The last comment was added with a distinct tone of disapproval, causing Nancy to drop her head.

"Look, it was right after Stephanie died. Surely you remember what she did?"

"Of course I remember." Lily exhaled. "It was one of the worst days of my life."

"Well, then you remember what kind of state she was in." Nancy continued earnestly. "I was with her in the hospital and she was distraught, she was talking about Stephanie and her and who she really was. She was a mess; all I could do was try to calm her down."

"Did you talk to her about it, once she was out of hospital?"

"I never got chance – the next thing I knew she was engaged to Eddie. Whenever I mentioned Stephanie again, she shut me down."

Lily hummed, sitting back in her chair to think about this.

"Is it because of Stephanie's case being solved?" She asked eventually. "Is that why this has all come out now?"

"I wish." Nancy laughed dryly, choosing to ignore her mother's accidental pun. "She's been thinking about this for a while."

"Why?" Lily pressed. "After all these years, why now?"

Nancy cast her eyes towards the sky and shook her head sadly.

"Sara Sidle."

"Sara?" Lily echoed, drawing to memory the image of Catherine's young brunette colleague. "Is this about her counselling file that Catherine took?"

"It started there." Nancy agreed. "Although I get the impression that she's had these feelings for a while."

"Feelings for Sara?" Lily clarified. "But the girl must be ten years younger than Catherine."

Despite the serious nature of the conversation, the dry remark caused Nancy to emit a bright laugh.

"If you're going to bring this up with her, I wouldn't start with that." She suggested cheekily.

Lily rolled her eyes, not finding it remotely amusing.

"So, is she going to act on them, these feelings?"

"Not if my advice means anything." Nancy exhaled sarcastically. "Which means she's probably at Sara's apartment right now."

x X x

"You've never told her any of this before?"

"Not a word." Cath inhaled sharply. They had moved to the couch, where she was now sunk into the cushions, swirling the remnants of her coffee around the bottom of her mug.

"Well, it sounds like she took it pretty well."

"Yeah, maybe." She laughed dryly. "I think she was just too shocked to do anything else."

"Your mom's pretty savvy." Sara shrugged. "I'm sure this won't be that big of a deal for her."

"I don't know." Cath mused. "It's really not something we've ever talked about before. I honestly have no idea what her feelings on the matter are."

Having run out of useful platitudes, Sara fell quiet and Catherine took the time to cast her eyes over her. She was absently doodling a pattern in the cake crumbs left on her empty plate, a pensive look on her face.

Taking the plate from her, Catherine placed it on the coffee table with her own, forcing Sara to meet her gaze.

"Spend Thanksgiving with us."

"What?" Sara blinked, taken aback.

"I asked you in the lab, right before you broke Stephanie's case, but you never answered." Cath explained nervously. "So, I'm asking again. I want you to spend Thanksgiving with Lindsey and me."

"Cat..."

Before she could finish her sentence, Catherine gripped her hands and lunged forward, pressing brief kiss to her lips.

As they parted, Sara stared at her for a whole minute with a completely unreadable expression, causing Catherine's heart rate to increase with every passing second.

Finally, as her tongue darted out to wet her lips, Sara found her voice.

"What time on Thanksgiving?"