"Monsieur," Nicolette begged of Grissom when he returned from his phone call with Nick. "This may sound strange, but…will you stay with me? Just until I get some news about my son?"
Grissom started to refuse. "I really have to return to work," he lied.
"Please, just stay. You remind me of someone; you give me warm comfort."
Blinking in confusion, Grissom sat beside her. "Who did I remind you of?"
Nicolette looked at her lap. "No one in particular," she teased.
As they waited for any news of Adrian's surgery, Nicolette talked and Grissom listened. It was either from nervousness or the urge to fill silence, but she shared her life with him. Grissom was patient, nodding where appropriate but otherwise staying more or less silent.
Nicolette briefly reviewed her life in Quebec, starting with the death of her parents in a car accident when she was ten and living with her aunt Violette in France where she'd lived for four years until Aunt Violette sent her to boarding school and then continued her education at college—UCLA. Here, Grissom held his breath to see if she would mention him. She didn't. She skipped right to her internship and a "brief affair with a handsome coroner" that led to her pregnancy with Adrian.
Grissom, though flattered she'd called him handsome, was insulted that she'd considered their five-year relationship a "brief affair". He held his tongue, however, and continued to listen.
"When I revealed my pregnancy, I was so mortified that I didn't come to work for a week. After contemplating for some time, I decided to quietly resign and I returned to France."
She moved back in with Aunt Violette's loft in Paris, where Adrian was born a month premature on August twenty-second, 1982.
Grissom felt winded. His own son was born five days after his twenty-seventh birthday. And he never knew.
After Adrian was born, Nicolette explained her return trip to Canada, her moving-in with her older sister Sophie, her husband Jean and their four young children and then her eventual internship at a children's hospital in Quebec and how by Adrian's fifth birthday, she was a full-fledged pediatrician.
She also began a "serious" relationship with a lawyer from Toronto named Robert Meullier. She and Adrian moved into Robert's penthouse together and a year after living with him, she realized how controlling he was.
"Robert constantly told me what to wear and sometimes even bought clothes for me that were to his liking. He would tell me exactly how to do my make-up, what to make for dinner. He hid my car keys on the weekends, from Friday night to Monday morning. It wasn't long before he made me quit my job at the children's hospital," Nicolette recalled sadly, her lower lip quivering.
When Robert proposed marriage to Nicolette and offered to adopt Adrian, she was hesitant but accepted, knowing he could provide well for them,
The physical abuse didn't manifest til about three months after the honeymoon. Nicolette was almost relieved she was home all the time—she could protect Adrian.
It wasn't long before Robert wanted children. Again, Nicolette was tentative but agreed. She prayed that if she gave Robert a child, he would calm down and stop the abuse.
She became pregnant with twins when Adrian was ten and her daughters Sylvie and Fleur were born in May of 1992.
"After the girls were born, I was so careful to make sure Adrian didn't complain and remained quiet and behaved when Robert came home from work."
Nicolette paused and toyed with the gold antique locket around her neck, a locket Grissom never noticed before.
"Later on, things got worse. Robert hit me…he hit Adrian…he hit the girls. Adrian was tough—never cried. The girls, however, unable to understand, cried. There was nothing Robert hated more than crying children. Fleur used to wet the bed, which disgusted him, and when he found out when she did it, he would thrash her. Sylvie would try to stand up for her sister but Robert would just knocker her down, literally.
"It took a long time, six years before I was able to leave Robert. I moved back in with Sophie and Jean for a few months while I got myself together."
"Six years?"
"Oui. I would leave with the children—going to friends' houses and such—and he would follow, apologizing, promising to change. I foolishly believed him. But after six years of hiding bruises and lying about where I got them…I just refused to continue.
"I went to a hotel with the children and that's when things got really bad. He pulled a gun on me. Adrian was able to call the police and get the girls out. Robert shot me in the shoulder before the cops got there."
"He shot you?"
Nicolette removed her sweater jacket and unbuttoned a few buttons of her shirt. She turned towards him and showed Grissom the mottled skin below her collarbone, only inches away from her famous birthmark, where the bullet had entered her body.
"It didn't hurt," she whispered. "It never hurt when he hit me. It only hurt when he hit the children."
Grissom put his forefinger to the wound and stared into Nicolette's eyes, her skin burning with heat. They were still the most beautiful colors of night he'd ever seen.
"I'm sorry this happened to you."
Nicolette quickly pulled her sweater back up and blushed deeply. "I'm sorry too."
"Would you like some coffee?" he said suddenly.
She smiled and bobbed her head. "Yes, I would…thank you."
Grissom rose from his seat and went to the waiting room where he'd seen a coffee pot earlier. The room was a bit more full now. He saw a few men whom he guessed to be expectant fathers. He saw a woman in her seventies, fingering some rosary beads. And he saw a pair of red-headed twins playing cat's cradle and singing a French lullaby.
When he glanced over at them, the one on the right leaned over to her sister and whispered in her ear. Then the left one nodded and spoke up.
"Monsieur?…Monsieur?"
Grissom turned away from his coffee. "Yes?"
The left twin slid off her chair, but not before she pulled the cat's cradle off her fingers, and approached him. "Pardon me, monsieur," she said in a voice as sweet as an angel's, "you don't know us but we know you. Are you the cop who helped my brother?"
"Our brother," corrected the still-seated right twin, scowling.
"Don't start," snapped the left twin. Then she looked at Grissom in anticipation.
So these were the twins from the picture in Adrian's wallet. Not his children as Catherine had guessed, but his sisters. "Yes, I helped your brother," Grissom said, "but I'm not a cop. I'm a forensic investigator."
"We know about forensics!" the right twin exclaimed excitedly. "Our mother used to be a dead-people doctor."
"A coroner, dummy," the left twin rolled her eyes. "But now she works with children, in pediatrics."
Nicolette came to the waiting room. "Girls," she said, sounding a little surprised. "When…and how…did you get here?"
"Twenty minutes ago. We took a cab," the right twin said.
"A cab, huh? That was clever. Stupid, but clever."
"We got bored waiting around the hotel room, no phone call. So we decided to come here and wait with you."
"It was Fleur's idea," the left twin pouted.
"Sylvie!" groaned the right twin.
"Are you bothering this nice man?" Nicolette asked, nodding at Grissom.
"No, Mama," the twins said simultaneously.
"It's fine," Grissom assured her. "Are these your twins?"
"Oui. Sylvie and Fleur." Nicolette gestured to show who was who: Sylvie, the left, in a yellow shirt; Fleur, the right, in green. "They are eleven."
"Is Adrian okay, Mama?" Sylvie, the left twin asked.
"Oh, yes," Nicolette knelt beside her. "Adrian will be fine. And as soon as he is well, we will go back home."
"As soon as the investigation is over," Grissom said. "We'll need his testimony on what happened last night."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that Adrian is valuable to the case."
"Case? What case?" Nicolette rose and crossed her arms under her breasts. She cocked her head like a confused puppy.
"The robbery. He's a survivor and all witnessed evidence is valuable. He can help set a timeline, give us a description of the shooter. There are endless possibilities for your son in this case."
"Whatever gets us home, monsieur," Nicolette said kindly.
Grissom nodded sincerely, "I understand."
"We were here on vacation, you know," she said sadly, stroking Sylvie's hair. "What horror to spend it awaiting news on a life-or-death operation on your only son."
A grim-looking nurse with tarnished silver hair and a large nose entered the waiting room. "Is there a Nicolette de L'eau in here?" she asked, her sharp eyes searching the room.
Nicolette gasped, putting her hands over her mouth. "That is me," she mumbled.
"Doctor Sefikosa wishes to speak with you on your son's surgery," the nurse said.
Nicolette began to follow the nurse but then grabbed Grissom's hand. "Please," she whispered. "I cannot go alone."
He hadn't held a woman's hand in at least fifteen years. Touched by this gesture, Grissom nodded and followed Nicolette to hear, hopefully, news about Adrian.
Doctor Caleb Sefikosa, one of Las Vegas Medical's leading surgeons, was waiting on the other side of the double doors for Nicolette, standing in blood-stained scrubs and wiping his sweaty brow with the back of his arm.
"Ms. de L'eau," Sefikosa said in a tone that Grissom couldn't tell if it was glad or upset, "it was a long surgery but successful. The liver transplant was a success. We did it. Adrian survived and will survive."
Nicolette let out a small cry of happiness. She held onto Grissom's arm and let the joyful tears flow.
"Don't celebrate yet," Sefikosa warned. "I regret to report that we were unable to remove one of the bullets from Adrian's back. It's too close to the spine. If we remove it, it could be fatal or leave him quadriplegic. We had to leave it in. Unfortunately, this leaves him permanently paraplegic. He'll never walk again."
Grissom heard Nicolette gasp, horrified, and release a long, mournful wail. Then she went limp against his body. "Whoa now," he said, as he grabbed her by the shoulders. He didn't need two people fainting on him in one shift.
"Are you a relative?" asked Sefikosa of Grissom.
"No," he said, as he helped Nicolette stand, "just…a friend."
"My son!" Nicolette sobbed. "My son…why? Mon Dieu, pourquoi? Ce qui dommage!"
"Ms. De L'eau," Sefikosa said, sounding as if he was going to start a lecture.
Grissom sat Nicolette in a nearby chair. "Give her a minute, doctor," he said. "Talk to her later, okay?"
Sefikosa glanced at Nicolette, now leaned over and wailing into her cupped hands. "Just tell her that he's in recovery right now and she can see him tomorrow."
"I'll do that."
Sefikosa walked away and Grissom went to Nicolette's side. She was sniffling and wiping her tears away with the sleeve of her sweater jacket.
"Here," Grissom pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket and knelt beside her. His mind suddenly flashed back to the day his world shattered, the day at the morgue when Nicolette revealed her pregnancy. They were seated in these exact positions.
"Merci," she thanked him in a whispery voice. Then she looked into his eyes and cupped his cheek in her ice-cold hand. "You are a remarkable man."
Grissom put his hand on hers. She smelled of licorice flowers. "So I'm told."
"I want you to know that I'm no usually so co-dependent."
"I believe you."
Nicolette wiped her eyes. "Monsieur," she said. "I will stay in Las Vegas as long as you want. Catch the bastard who incapacitated my son. Please."
Grissom stood and wiped the dust off the knees his jeans. "It's what I do best."