Sins of the Daughter
Prologue
She looked up at the large house through her tinted window. This was it, she knew. Now or never. She knew she had to stop torturing herself with the unknown. It had been over two years now she had spent working towards this moment. Two years of research and phone calls and waiting and endless anxiety. And now that she was finally here, at the end of her quest, so to speak, she was too frightened and too nervous to complete it.
She sighed and burrowed down further into her seat.
She really wasn't ready for this. Maybe she should come back next week. Maybe next month.
Now she was angry and frustrated with herself.
"Dammit Sidle! Go through with this. You need to go through with this!"
Great, now she was talking to herself.
But herself was right. She remembered what she had decided, remembered the ultimatum she made to herself after the Collins case. The quadruple murder that had changed many of her attitudes.
She violently jabbed at the steering wheel in front of her, out of frustration more than anything, and was startled, ironically, by the loud honk that subsequently issued forth.
Two years ago, during the last half hour or so that Sara had spent with little Brenda Collins at the hospital before Social Services had come to take her, Sara had tried her best to think about anything but her past.
About Brenda's past.
About how just a small twist of fate could have easily put her in Tina Collin's shoes, with a little girl of her own to protect from the savagery of men, maybe in a way similar to the one in which Brenda had been protected.
But when she looked into Brenda's eyes, really looked to see into the scared soul of that little girl, she had had to give up that struggle.
She saw all the scary what ifs and could have beens.
She saw herself.
She saw the future she had not lived, the choices she had not had to make, as well as the choices she had made.
But she also saw the true reality of her own situation, and the new bright possibility of Brenda's future.
But what, she had then thought, about the future of her own little girl.
That tiny baby, that huge mistake.
Did she have possibilities? Did she have the chance at a bright future as well?
That was the moment in which Sara had both in given in to weakness and grasped courage by both hands. It was when she made the decisions that led her to this moment.
First she had decided that she must not ever give up, or ever disappear, on Brenda.
She had once promised the girl that she wasn't going to leave her, and while circumstances certainly prevented her from being by Brenda's side 24/7, she vowed to herself that she would check in on her, look over her, visit her, and always help her in anyway she could.
For the first year and a half, Sara would keep to her promise, and her schedule, religiously. She would visit Brenda on the first Sunday of every month, in whatever foster home the girl happened to be in at the time.
Sara would discreetly observe the situation Brenda was in, and how the little girl was being treated, before taking her out on some excursion.
They had visited zoos, amusement parks, museums, planetariums, and some of the many shows in Las Vegas that were geared towards family entertainment.
She had made sure Brenda was safe, healthy and happy.
Or as healthy and happy as any little girl in her position could be.
When Brenda was finally up for adoption, Sara had performed her own background check and evaluation on the parents.
She had stretched the limits of her skills, abilities, and resources as a professional investigator making sure that these people were the real deal.
And happily, she had not been disappointed.
She knew that she would have given anything to have been placed with people like the Robins when she had been in the system.
She still visited and went out with Brenda on the first Sunday of every month. She had been doing so for over two years and, circumstances permitting, would continue to do so for as long as she was able and Brenda was willing.
It was only two months after she had started visiting Brenda on a regular basis that she had decided to do the same with Pamela Adler.
She had told Grissom that the young woman was special to her.
And she was. Pamela was a fighter.
Tough, outspoken, loved. Everything and more that Sara strived to be but never seemed to be able to achieve.
The younger woman's awful fate ate at Sara. It helped to disillusion her regarding faith, and everyday it continued to add to the disillusionment of the idea of human morality.
And then there was the question of her own morality... Sara had hated herself for it, but for the first year after Pamela had been shot twice in the head, she had wished that the beautiful young woman would give up and die.
She had wished that Pamela would stop fighting, stop hanging on to the threads of life left to her, and sacrifice herself to put Thorpe in prison for life.
Then, once it was quite obvious Thorpe would never be charged with Pamela's murder, she had spent months hating herself, and wrestling with herself, over morality, faith, society, and the human condition.
She couldn't really say she had ever come to a resolution regarding those things, but eventually she had been able to make peace with herself.
And that peace included Sara spending the afternoon of every third Sunday of the month visiting with Pamela, and oftentimes Pamela's husband, at the Havenview Center.
Her third decision, the one that directly led to her sitting in this car now, was infinitely more complicated. It was both harder to stick too, and harder to carry out.
Every time Sara saw a brown haired, brown eyed little girl, every time she worked child abuse, missing children, or underage rape cases, sometimes a dozen times a day, she thought about her little girl, wondered where she was, if she was safe, if she was healthy.
She had looked at Brenda, seen all the questions and the what ifs and the maybes and the possibilities, both bright and horrible, and decided that she had to know.
She had to find her little girl, make sure she was okay.
See for herself the results of the mistake her father had put her through.
See for herself that she had made the right decision all those years ago, when she was nothing more then a scared little girl like Brenda trapped inside the body of a sixteen year old.
She had to face her past, so she could know, and reassure herself with knowing. So that she could finally, maybe, have a chance at a future with her past at peace.