Lindsey put down the bite of pizza she'd just speared and focused her expressive blue eyes on me. "I didn't know you had a daughter, Uncle Gil."

"That's because she's lived in California for the last two years so she can train in gymnastics," I replied, still not looking at Catherine or Lindsey.

"What about her mom?" Lindsey asked. "Does she live in California too?"

"No, Dominique's mother died a couple of years ago. She lives with her grandmother. My mom."

"Linds – I think Uncle Gil might not want to talk about this too much," Catherine interjected quickly "Kind of like when Mommy doesn't like talking about her divorce all the time. Why don't we talk about something else?"

"Okay, Mommy." Lindsey turned to me. "I'm sorry, Uncle Gil."

"That's all right, Lindsey," I reassured her. "And I'll tell you what. When I talk to Dominique, I'll ask her to send me a signed photo for you. How does that sound?"

Lindsey's eyes lit up. "Great!"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Thankfully we'd driven in separate vehicles, so I got a reprieve. Back at CSI I avoided Catherine until the rest of the team arrived, then sent her and Nick out on a home invasion on the north side while Holly and I worked a homicide over at the Watertown. I knew it was a temporary solution, but I'd take what I could get.

Holly's performance at the crime scene helped to distract me for a little while. She'd truly blossomed during her first year at CSI and in many ways had become like a second daughter for me. Gone was the quiet, hesitant young woman who'd walked into my office almost a year earlier. In her place was a spunky CSI – full of enthusiasm and with a lively sense of humor.

This time around we had a victim who'd been stabbed several times in the back – but whose actual cause of death was from a bullet to the head. The first thing out of Holly's mouth was, "Whoa – blue and green. Is this some kind of psycho we're dealing with or did our victim just take to long to die?"

I just grinned. The blue and green reference to the victim's injuries was not an official department code. Holly is synesthetic and sees causes of death – as well as letters, numbers, music, and some types of emotion and pain in color. For her, gunshots are green and stabbings are blue. We'd found this out by accident a few months ago when the whole team was working the scene of an explosion. Nick had noticed Holly closing her eyes a few times at the scene and when he asked if she was okay and she'd replied that she was feeling bombarded. I'd overheard her response and was about to suggest she recuse her elf when she clarified that she was being bombarded by color as a result of the multiple injuries.

After we understood what was going on, I reassigned her from shooting and sketching to bagging individual pieces of evidence that had already been photographed. Later, on the way back to the lab, Nick and I had brought up the topic again. Holly responded freely and was very in patient in regards to our questions, even when Nick expressed a persistent confusion in why stabbings weren't red on account of all the blood. Her only moment of frustration with the topic came a few days later, when Greg – playing on the words of a popular equine saying – asked Holly about a crime of a different color.

This time, with only one body, Holly had no difficulties and we finished working the scene without incident. But when we arrived back at the lab, Catherine was waiting by my office leaning against the wall. She informed me that she and Nick had closed their home invasion and asked if she could talk to me privately.

For a moment I seriously considered declining. I knew darn well what she wanted to talk to me about and that it sure wasn't work related. But I also knew Catherine. There was no way she was going to just simply let this go.

So I said "Sure," told Holly to start cataloguing the evidence and gestured for Catherine to follow me into my office.

After we were both seated, and the door was closed behind us, there was a moment of silence, before Catherine said, "Well, now that you've tried to avoid me all evening, is there something you want to tell me?"

"Yeah, our case was a real weird one this time." Stupid thing to say – I knew that, but I went ahead anyway. "Guy stabbed multiple times in the back – then shot once in the head. Crazy, huh? Should be really interesting to solve this one. How was yours?"

"Well let's see. My suspect didn't surprise me by telling me had a teenaged daughter I'd never heard of."

Her emphasis on the word 'suspect' made me wince. I was already having some serious regrets – although I'm afraid they had more to do with what I had said at the diner than what I hadn't said during the last fifteen years. That and the fact that I should have assigned Catherine to the more difficult case, which might have delayed this conversation longer.

"I don't even know where to begin, Grissom. I find out that you were married – and not only that, you've been married for almost the entire time we've worked together and that you never told me or anyone else at the lab about that. Not only that, but you also have a fifteen-year-old daughter who you've never mentioned at any point in her lifetime. And if that's not enough, you somehow have managed to conceal the fact that you're also widow – which means for some reason an entire lab of detail-oriented professional investigators failed to notice you taking time off for a funeral or any signs we had a co-worker who was grieving." Catherine paused and thought about what she'd just said. "Then again, maybe I don't want to know how we missed that."

"You didn't miss it." I sounded as tired as I felt. 15 years plus of keeping a secret made telling any part of it emotionally exhausting.

"Ashleigh and I divorced around the time Dominique was born – the year before you came to the lab."

"And Dominique went to live with her mother? Is that why you never mentioned her?"

I so did not want to be having this conversation. "No, I had custody." Catherine didn't say anything to that, just looked at me expectantly, giving me an idea of what the suspects she interrogates go through. I sighed. "I guess the topic never came up."

"Never came up?" I'd never heard Catherine sound so mad. "Gil, I know you're not the most open creature on the planet, but for crying out loud, we've been friends for fourteen years. How can you not trust me enough to let the topic of your daughter come up?"

There was a hurt note in her voice too, and maybe if I'd been less emotionally volatile at that moment, I'd have registered it and responded accordingly. Instead I snapped.

"All right, Catherine. You want to know the whole story – here it is. My ex-wife died May 21, 1999, by lethal injection. She was executed by the state after trying to kill a criminalist from this lab 14 years earlier. She put arsenic in his coffee and don't even ask me why?"

I could hear my voice shaking as I continued, "The guy collapsed in the hallway, maybe fifteen feet from this office. Was in a coma for four days. Four days!"

Catherine might have gasped at that point. I have a hazy impression of hearing that, but at that moment I wasn't really registering Catherine's presence enough to know for sure. I do remember feeling my hear trace at that point and the sudden feeling that any breath I drew wasn't nearly deep enough to slow it down.

"Now I can come into the lab and nobody thinks about what happened. But I can't bring Dominique in. "I was really struggling to keep my voice level on that one. "I so much as mention her name and they remember the whole thing. The victim, the killer, and the baby that was born two weeks after the trial."

Crap. I knew Catherine could hear in my voice that I was on the verge of crying. Quickly I rushed ahead with the last few sentences before she could ask me any well-meaning but emotionally-decimating questions.

"I got the call during a crime scene and I went straight to the hospital. 24 hours later id rove home with my one-day –old daughter in a car seat at the same time a van drove my ex-wife back to Death Row." I struggled through another breath and it was all I could do to make my voice audible as I added, "Do you have any other questions?"

"No." Catherine's whisper caused me to cognitively register her face for the first time since I'd started talking. "No, I don't."

Then I did something I'd never done during my entire year as Graveyard Shift Supervisor. I stood up and walked out of the door as a co-worker sat frozen in my office.

TBC

A/N: I'm also synesthetic, which is where I got the idea of including this. I don't see injuries in color – but I do see gymnastics skills that way and have heard of other people who see pain in color. Also, this is in no way meant to reflect on the information we received on Warrick last week. I came up with this idea early into the summer and just hadn't had a chance to post it.