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Chapter Seventy Eight:

Sara slept—I didn't.

I was holding a woman and child, neither of which were mine. I was in love with one and would now have to figure out how to atone for my mistakes while she dealt with the tragedies of the past day and a half… while somehow reconciling how I was supposed to fulfill the promise I made to Ayla's dying father that I would step up and take his place in her life when she wouldn't want me… she would always want him. Not to mention the fact that I now knew the child's grandmother was the twisted woman who had tortured my adolescence and twisted my conceptions of sex and sexuality for the beginning half of my adult life.

A couple hours after we laid down, Ayla woke up. I knew that Sara hadn't slept, so I quietly disentangled myself and took the child out of the room, thinking only that Sara needed her rest. I didn't consider that I knew nothing of the child… despite not knowing me, she had not once looked at me like she was afraid of me. I wondered if she was simply a trusting and outgoing child or if it was something more than that. …I wanted it to be more, but my senses told me that she hadn't cried when any of the nurses or doctors handled her.

Once out of the room, I looked down at the dark-haired child who was rubbing her eyes and burrowing her face into my shoulder. I had one arm under her bottom and tucked into the crook of her knees, and used to other to press experimentally against her diaper—I didn't necessarily have a lot of experience with children, but my adventure or two babysitting Lindsey gave me some vague knowledge on the difference between a wet and a dry diaper.

I moved past her bedroom, the entrance still blocked with crime scene tape, and found a diaper bag I had seen the previous day, on the floor between the couch and an end table. I tugged it out and fumbled through it with my free hand, finding a diaper and a small container of wipes. I laid Ayla on the carpet, watching her deeply brown eyes take in my face in long, searching strokes and short, flickering glances. I offered a smile, kneeling by her feet and opening the clean diaper. I slid her PJ pants down her chubby baby legs, smiling when I saw that each of her tiny toenails were painted a pretty pink. It didn't seem like the type of thing Sara would do, and I couldn't help but smirk at her more foolish, feminine side peeking out.

It felt good to smile genuinely, today.

I slid the stretched out diaper under her bottom, double checking that it was facing the right way, before struggling with the little container holding her wipes and finally getting it open. …I wasn't sure how many, and took out two, hoping that I would have smelled if she had a messy diaper, and then closed the contraption and tossed it unceremoniously back into the diaper bag. And surprisingly, the rest was fairly easy. I undid the flaps, reminded myself to wipe front to back and not back to front, grasped her ankles gently to slide the diaper from beneath her and fold it, and quickly fastened the clean one on her with care.

…I was rather proud of myself as I put her PJ pants back on and offered Ayla a grin. "Pretty good, don't you think?"

"Gla!" She said, pointing at my face, which made me frown. …I wished I knew if she were saying something specific or if it was just babbling. She giggled when I frowned and put her hands to my face, grabbing my bearded cheeks a little roughly and pulling.

"Oh! Oh, owie, princess… let go…"

She let go, but giggled again, apparently untroubled at my pain. I smiled again and scooped her up, taking the diaper to the kitchen garbage, which I assumed would be the first in the house to be changed, because I was avoiding her bedroom. I set her on the floor to wash my hands and watched as she pushed herself to standing, toddled over to the refrigerator, stretching up to reach the handle. When her thick little fingers brushed it but remained unable to grasp it, she turned her gaze on me, her bottom lip stuck out in a textbook pout.

I grinned. "Are you hungry, Ayla?"

She reached for the hand again, letting out an indignant little 'uh!' of frustration. I scooped her up again, opened the door of the fridge, and bent down, ignoring the slight protest in my knees. Together, we looked inside. "…You had pancakes with Mommy this morning, so I know you eat real food…"

"Mama!" She said, clapping her hands together. I smiled, sliding open drawers in frustration and finally deciding I would simply make her a real lunch and hope it was okay. My first thought was peanut butter and jelly, but Catherine's voice rang in my head… something about peanut anything before a child was a year old being a bad thing. I frowned, shuffling the contents and finding a pack of American cheese. …Grilled cheese would be fine, right? I found a highchair tucked into a large panty and scooted it out, securing her in it before moving to look through cupboards to find a sauce pan, a frying pan, bread, butter, and a can of tomato soup.

Ayla whimpered, banging her palms against the top of her highchair and I frowned, looking around for something to give her to occupy her while I made food. I opened the fridge again, this time finding individually sealed fruits… I took out some peaches, drained them, and poured them directly onto her highchair, watching her grin and attempt to pick up the slippery pieces in her little fingers while they skated across the surface evading her. Finally, she cornered one, grasped it in her palm with her digits wrapped around it, and brought it to her open mouth.

I smiled, turning to make the food.

I left the soup on low heat and only made Ayla's sandwich, first, cutting it up for her to eat by herself while the soup cooled, and then spoon-feeding her that. I gave her a sippy cup with water, uncertain if she could have milk yet, and found myself simply watching her deep-eyed concentration on each little movement of hand to surface to pink-tinged lips. I smiled and asked her, "Does your Mommy give you milk yet?" She looked at me and then glanced around, and I expected her to once again repeat 'Mama,' but she didn't.

"Dada! …Dada?" She looked around her again, frowning, and so did I, a dread growing within me. …How did I address that?

I jumped about a foot when Sara shouted "Ayla? Gil?" in alarm from the end of the hallway.

Ayla squealed "Mama!" happily and twisted in her seat, trying to see behind her to where Sara's voice had come from.

"In the kitchen!" I called, knowing from her tone that she'd been frightened to wake alone and relieved that Ayla now seemed distracted. I hadn't thought of that and instantly felt guilty—I'd just wanted her to catch up on some sleep, but instead she'd woken up alone, Ayla once again missing from the place she'd fallen asleep. I frowned at my own stupidity, placing new sandwiches on the still-hot frying pan, hoping that she wouldn't be angry with me.

"Oh Ayla!" She wrapped her arms awkwardly around the girl in her seat and kissed her head over and over. I glanced at her uncertainly and offered a strained half-smile when she glanced up at me, the panic not entirely gone from her eyes.

"I, uh… wanted to let you get some sleep."

She nodded, kissing Ayla's curls once more for good measure before moving around the chair and over to me. I wasn't sure what she was going to do and found my heart racing… I was nervous, scared even… until her arms wrapped around my waist tightly and her head came to rest against my chest. Uncertainly, I set down the spatula in my hand and slowly slid my arms around her shoulders, drawing her in closer to me. "…I'm sorry that I scared you. I wasn't thinking… I just… I… Sara…" I felt myself tremble as words I hadn't been able to speak when I first arrived in Boston tumbled out. "…I missed you, so much."

She pulled back from me, blinking rapidly, and sniffled. "…Gil, I… I don't… I…" She shook her head. "Can we… not talk about this yet?" Her voice was pleading, and even though it hurt… I knew that she was also hurting. She was dealing with a lot, and I couldn't push her to confront the situation between us when so much else had happened. …If I did, she might just decide it'd be easier to end things entirely, and where would that leave me? …No, I needed to give her time, so I nodded and gently pulled her back into a hug.

This one was shorter—she pulled back after a moment, as if worried now that prolonged contact might give me the wrong idea—and breathed in deeply. "…That smells good. Is there more?"

I picked up the spatula and turned the sandwich that was just a little overdone on that side now and offered her a smile. "Go ahead and pull out some bowls… it'll be done in a minute."

And somehow, that was all it took. I mean, we didn't touch again, after that brief hug… but things weren't complicated. We ate, we played with Ayla, and Sara spent a lot of time on the phone, figuring things out. She was stressed and tried to hide the fact that she was barely holding back her tears most of the day, and because I knew she wanted me to keep a distance, I let the charade of being 'fine' go on, simply because I didn't know what to do about it if she wasn't going to let me comfort her.

Ayla went down for another nap and I mindlessly pretended to watch television, listening to her words murmured softly through the telephone because she was worried about waking her sleeping child. She was trying to make funeral arrangements, but she didn't know what kind of a budget she had… I wanted to suggest calling the crime lab. Jace had crouched behind one of the briefcases and there was every possibility that that money was still intact and bore no evidence… maybe she could get some of it back. …I just wasn't sure she would want any of it back.

She paged through bills, wrote and rewrote numbers on a pad of paper, apparently trying to figure it out. I offered to help, just once, but the look she gave me told me not to try again, so I didn't. When Ayla woke, I once again changed her and fixed the three of us supper… Sara commented, at the table, that it seemed odd that she hadn't heard from Jace's family all day, and I nodded slowly, wondering if that meant that she had told them the truth…

Sara went to bed with Ayla that night, and once again left the space behind them open for me, indicating that I was welcome. I nodded and moved to my duffle bag, thinking I'd shower and change into clean boxers and an undershirt for bed—I was still in the clothes I'd been in all the day before and the entire night before that, at the lab. Speaking of… I pulled my phone from my pocket, where it had sat since I'd silenced it.

36 Missed Calls. I scanned through them quickly. Ten were from Catherine, one from Warrick… the rest from Ecklie. I frowned, wondering what could be so urgent, thinking that I should perhaps check my messages now rather than waiting 'til I went back to Vegas to figure out what had Conrad's panties in a twist…

A whimper from the bedroom stopped me—I didn't know which of my girls was upset, probably having a nightmare… but I knew exactly where I needed to be in the moment. I dropped my phone and my clean underclothing back into the duffle and hurried back to them.