Sam squirmed around under the gazes of all three men. She slowly lifted her head and met Jack's eyes. "Two million dollars? And you're still working for the Air Force?" He said in a confused tone of voice.
"I didn't want to let the money affect how I led my life." Sam sighed and found her hands very fascinating yet again. "When I gave up my baby, Dad and I talked a lot about what I should do with the money. We decided not to let it determine how I lived my life. I have one million in a IRA for when I retire, and the other half I donated to the Air Force Academy."
"Is it the custom of this country to sell their children at birth?" Teal'c asked, his voice void of all emotion.
Sam looked at him, shock in her eyes that he could think such a thing. "I only gave up my baby because I couldn't take care of her. The Smalls could. I didn't want to take the money that they offered me for Elise, but Dad and Mr. Small made me take it. They said that it was the least they could do for me." She smiled bitterly, "As I recall it, he put it, 'It's the least we can do after you going through all that pain for us'. I looked him straight in the eye and very bluntly told him that none of what I had done was for him. He was just the best candidate for the parent of my child."
Elise looked at her mother, an unrecognizable emotion in her eyes, "The best candidate for a parent was you. Even if I had grown up poor, and with the possibility of loosing my mother in the line of duty each day, I would give anything to have known you in the first twenty-one years of my life."
Tears of regret and anger began to fall down the faces of both mother and daughter. Daniel, not use to seeing this level of emotion from Samantha Carter, cleared his throat loudly, and motioned for Teal'c and Jack to leave the room with him.
The mother and daughter spent the entire night talking. Simply talking. Elise was caught up on as much of her mother's life as wasn't classified or too sore to talk about. Sam even told Elise about the Martin Lloyd incident – well, all except the fact that Martin really was an alien. Elise got a kick out of the message he left at Stargate Command though.