The Visitor From The University of Buffalo

Pairing: Speed and Calleigh

After a heated verbal confrontation between Speedle boys, Tim makes a confession. How will that affect their not so brotherly relationship? What about Calleigh?

Disclaimer: I don't own Speed, Calleigh and the other CSI: Miami characters! Like I had said in my previous work, if I owned these characters, Speed would be alive and with Calleigh. However, I do own Kevin Speedle and his girlfriend Amber as well as Speed and Kevin's sister Amanda Speedle.

The Confession

The next night Calleigh took over the kitchen. She was making crawfish Creole with saffron rice. It was one of the few dishes Tim would allow her to make. Not that she was a bad cook; she was just an excellent cook as Tim. Her husband insisted that he make the main course and she would make the side dishes most of the time. He did permit her to make desserts.

There was shouting coming from the guest room. Calleigh found it hard to concentrate on her cooking. Fortunately, the food was already finished cooking, it just needed to be kept at warm until she called her guys to dinner. She went to investigate the noise.

"I don't understand!" Kevin yelled. "You were hardly ever there for me when I was growing up. When you visited from Columbia University, you ignored me. I was a little boy who was reaching out for his much older brother. You were more withdrawn after your best friend Jeff died. Damn it Tim, you disappeared to Miami for a year without telling us anything! You returned to Columbia to finish your degree and went back to Miami to work for the Miami-Dade Police Department! Didn't you even give a shit that you had a kid brother still back in Syracuse who wanted to get to know you a little better! What about mom and dad? Were you ever concerned that they worried about you! No, you wouldn't even care at all!"

"Well excuse me for being distant!" Tim angrily shot back. "How dare you even drag Jeff into your accusations! He was my friend and doesn't deserve to have his memory trashed like that! We collaborated in school science projects and contests! We were like brothers!"

"I had no idea I was trashing Jeff's memory!" Kevin shouted. 'I thought-"

"It was implied!" Tim exploded. "I don't expect you to understand at all!"

Kevin gave Tim a scornful look.

"Tim, I do understand!" Kevin said with intense anger. "When I was a year old and learning to walk. I lost my balance and landed on my ass. I was crying for help and for comfort! You were a 14 year old punk who saw me in distress and just ignored me. You were reading some stupid book."

"That wasn't true!" Tim shouted defensively. "I did pick you up and put you in your playpen. You still kept crying so I took you out of there. I had to steady you because you were squirming in my arms. I put you back on the floor because I didn't know what to do with you. Do you have anything else to bitch and moan about?"

"Yes, I do," Kevin replied coldly. "I was four years old and you caught me reading your high school physics textbook. You yelled at me that I was too young to understand. Then, you violently swiped the book from my little hands. What about your girlfriend of the moment Sherri? Do you remember her?"

"Oh, that girl," Tim said with a colder tone of voice. "She was at our house one time and saw how I was treating you and slapped me in the face for it. She dumped me that very day."

"You deserved that slapped and to be dumped!" Kevin exploded and Tim gave him a good slap in the face. "You are a total bastard. You cared more about your friend and your science projects than your family and your girlfriends of the moment. You haven't really changed! Was there something that happened to you before or around the time I was born that made you this way?"

Calleigh was standing in the doorway silently crying. This couldn't be the description of the man she married. Tim was the most caring and compassionate person she has ever met. Although that was part of his past in New York, but definitely not in his most recent past and present in Miami. Yesterday, the Speedle brothers looked like they got along when Kevin got a tour of the crime lab courtesy of Tim. What triggered this fight? Did many years of not being close finally catch up to them? She wanted to intervene to defend Tim, but it would have been futile for her and their unborn child.

Tim sat on the bed, slumped over and with his hand on his face. He said nothing nor did he want to look at his brother. Kevin stood a few inches away and rubbed the part of his face that felt the impact of a hand slapping it. There was an eerie silence in the house.

"We had a sister," Tim said breaking the silence.

"What?" Kevin said. "Did I hear you correctly? We had a sister!"

"Yes, we did," Tim said heavily. "Her name was Amanda. She was five years younger than me and she would have been eight years older than you."

Kevin was in shock and disbelief. He had an older sister and nobody ever told him about her; not his parents, not even his brother. He sat down next to Tim and placed his arm around him. This time, Tim didn't push his brother away.

"So, what happened to her?" Kevin asked frantically. "Why nobody talked about her? Was that photo of that baby girl really Amanda and not cousin Isabella when she was a baby like our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins claim that is? Tim, I want to know about Amanda. Tell me what you can remember and why she was swept under the rug."

Tim paused for a moment, took a very deep breath and let it down.

"Amanda was a healthy girl for the first three years of her life," Tim said with each word getting heavier. "We went on vacation to Vermont after the school year was over for me. She was complaining of headaches and being tired. When we got home, Mom took her to the doctor. That was when we learned Amanda had leukemia. I don't remember what kind it was, but she had it. She went through chemotherapy and had two bone marrow transplants. Everyone in the family was tested for a match and I was the perfect match. Extracting the bone marrow was a painful procedure and they had to give me a local to calm me down. She hung on for two years before the losing her battle with the disease. After Amanda was laid to rest, mom and dad never talked about her. They even forbade me from mentioning her in their presence."

"Did they ever visit her grave?" Kevin asked.

"I am sure they do," Tim said. "It would be wrong to neglect the grave of their five year daughter's. However, they also forbade me from visiting her grave. I did it anyway when I was in high school. First, I visited her with Jeff's help until his accident. When I was already in college, I used some lame bullshit lie on my parents like going to the mall to get a present for my girlfriend. It worked all the time. Now, if I visit Syracuse, I often make it one of the last things I do before returning to Miami."

Kevin sat with his mouth open as if to say something, but he forgot what he wanted to say and he closed it.

"You wanted to know who that baby girl in that photograph was?" Tim asked and Kevin nodded his head. "That was Amanda when she was a baby. If they tell you that it is our cousin Isabella when she was a baby, it is complete bullshit."

"Mom carried Amanda in her womb for nine months," Kevin said. "Five years later, leukemia claims her. All this time, mom and dad forbid themselves and their older son from talking about her. Now, the younger son finds out about her and wants to know more about her."

"Maybe that's why we were never that close," Tim said. "When you were born, I was afraid to get close to another sibling like I was with Amanda. I was afraid to lose you the way we lost our sister. I wasn't there for you while you were growing up. I coped with it in a bad way. I let you down, bro. I am very sorry."

"Tim, that was in the past," Kevin said. "You can't change it. However, it is not too late to have that brotherly relationship. It's not just for Calleigh and my future niece or nephew, but Amanda would have wanted us to be great siblings."

"Kevin, you are right," Tim beamed. "She would have really love that!"

They gave each other a hearty embrace. Tim pulled away from his brother when he heard loud crying. Calleigh was still at the doorway.

"Calleigh, come here," Tim said. "What is the matter?"

"You were fighting," Calleigh said. "Then you talked about your sister Amanda. I didn't know you had a sister. I can't believe your parents didn't want to mention her and didn't allow you to do the same."

"Aw, Cal, parents can be cruel," Tim said embracing her. "As a father-to-be, I will tell our kids about their Aunt Amanda and how special she was. There is absolutely no way I will sweep her memory under the rug like my parents did."

"Hey, lovebirds, I can smell food," Kevin said. "I think it's that time for dinner."

"I have kept dinner warm," Calleigh said as she released herself from Tim's embrace. "Tonight I am the chef and made one of my favorite dishes. It's crawfish Creole with saffron rice."

"It is delicious," Tim told Kevin. "You are going love it and beg Cal for the recipe."

Once everyone was settled at the table and started eating. Topics of conversation ranged from who they wanted to go to the Superbowl to jokes about college cafeteria food. Calleigh looked at her husband and brother-in-law – the Speedle boys. It looks like they are going to get along just fine.

TBC