Chapter 7
Gil wrapped the towel around his waist and padded back to the room. Sara was helping her mother with a small group of clients that drove in from Palm Springs every Thursday. He thought he might tag along with the husbands who did a lunch and a round of golf at a small but well appointed municipal course.
Well look at that, Gil Grissom being sociable. Meeting new people. Going to have lunch with the husbands. There was a panel card on the bed. He reached for it.
Sunshine Jewelers
22 Freedom Ave.
In the West Corner of the town square.
The back held Laura's plain, assertive green scrawl.
My Sara is meant to wear emeralds. Hannah, diamonds.
Laura.
OOOOOOOOO
Four women and three men filled the shop. The men were vaguely about Grissom's age. Some of the women were Sara's age and the others closer to Laura's. They were a mixture of hues and shapes and heights but presented the same general story. Semi-retired husbands. Stay at home or otherwise engaged wives and mothers. Like one another enough to spend part of a day together. Secure enough to let the husbands run off and play.
A compact Phillipino man came into view. He called to Grissom in clipped precise English learned in his primary Catholic school.
"You?" He grinned amiably and patted Grissom on the back.
"Robert."
"Someone managed to settle down and with Laura's daughter no less."
The Asian woman next to him offered her hand. "Isabella. You must be Gil. The boys were worried they'd have to pick up some vagabond on the greens."
"I might not be able to…"
Sara's voice came from over his shoulder where she was using a small stepladder to retrieve an apothecary jar filled with some kind blue leaf.
"What are you doing up a ladder?"
"Um, getting something."
"Down." Grissom said emphatically.
Sara grinned.
"Now please."
Sara stepped down pretending to be vexed. "I was only up two steps."
"I'm on thin ice with Laura. Please stay on the ground."
A man with an impossibly black beard called out. "Hey fellas. We gotta get going."
Grissom turned back to his former colleague. They had shared an office as TA's in grad school. "How about I meet you? I have an errand to run."
Sara was fooling with oils now letting the bearded man's red haired significant other smell first one concoction then another. "What errand?" she asked.
"Something for your mother. Hey can I buy some new clubs?" All the men were gathered at the door now looking relaxed yet anxious to get to the greens
"I thought you were going to rent some."
"Early father's day present?" His voice was light hoping the distraction worked.
Sara said something to the red haired woman that made her hoot. "I was thinking more along the lines of a card and Hannah's foot print in clay."
"Please." He gave Sara his best smile.
He was on the small porch now sunglasses perched on his nose. "Yeah, okay but remember we have a budget."
"Sure thing." She looked to ask him about his errand, but he was gone.
OOOOOOOOO
The white silver dress fell around Sara gracefully. Sections of satin alternated with matching silk pieces. The dress stopped just below Sara's ankles, and she wondered what kind of shoes a six months pregnant bride should or could wear. Sara's mother was working on adding a hidden piece of fabric to accommodate Sara's expanding waistline.
"I know you think you look like a whale, but you look beautiful and with this dress you can't tell you are pregnant."
Sara turned to the sideways and pointed to the swell of her belly.
Laura smiled. "Okay so don't turn that way. When I saw it last year, I knew it would be perfect for you. I just didn't know for what."
Sara's skin was rosy and smooth. Two days with her mother had rested her and put her mind at ease.
"What if he doesn't?" Sara whispered feverishly.
Laura sat up straight rubbing her back as she did so. "I honestly think he will."
"How do you know that? And I am not talking about your hocus pocus stuff."
"Hey that hocus pocus stuff is usually right thank you very much." Laura chided gently.
"Yeah." Sara admitted.
"I don't know if he will ask. I do know that he loves you, and he's good to you, and I believe he will do the right thing." Laura sighed and peered into her daughter's slightly plump face. "If he doesn't, you and Hannah are coming to live with me."
Sara groaned. "Mom!"
"Sara, you are not living the rest of your life with a man who doesn't want to be your husband. If something happens to him - if he drops dead right now, you don't have anything. You haven't built anything. He owns the house you live in. Whose name is on that spiffy Mercedes you two are driving? You live in a state were you can get married as fast as you can buy an ice cream cone. You don't even have to get out of the car if you don't want. I think he's scared, and I understand that. But he's a man's man. He's not some metrosexual.When he wanted you, he got you. When he made up his mind, his mind was made up and there was no veering from the course. I don't understand why you aren't Mrs. Gil Grissom."
"But what about my job and my friends?" Sara said weakly.
"You'll find another job. These wonderful people you have met will always be there for you." Laura was standing now, pincushion in one hand. "Darling, if you aren't going to live with your husband, you need to live with your mother. I know you are grown woman, but if you aren't with your husband, I want you here."
Laura lowered herself on the ancient stool and went back to work murmuring to Hannah as she did so. Sara's shoulders slumped, and her eyes bored a hole in her mother's head. Her mother's gray roots were starting to show.
OOOOOOOO
Blue eyes squinted at the burning ember.
"That doesn't look like a Benson and Hedges, Grandma."
"Sit."
He rested himself on the low railing across from her.
"Want one?"
"Random drug test. Hair these days." He ran his fingers through over his longish curls. Sara liked it long.
"Spoken like a man who can evade the drug test."
He waved a hand in Laura's direction." Sara knows you still smoke those."
"I don't know. I suppose. I didn't for years but these old bones. A dislocated shoulder here. A busted kneecap there. Got tired of being barely able to walk during the rainy season. Not a cure but some relief."
"Sorry." He didn't know what else to say.
"Nothing to be sorry about. You didn't marry the loser. I did."
"You sound like my mother." Grissom said ruefully.
"Good." Smoke that hadn't been held in long enough wafted from her nostrils. "I will try not to be bitter about the middle name thing."
He threw up hands. "Sara's idea. I just do what I am told."
"Probably my fault. Always told her that she must honor the ancestors. The oldest are usually the wisest."
"I guess that's why she is with me." Grissom said mildly.
"Maybe it is."
"What's she like-your mother?"
"Tough. Kind. She worked hard to make a life for us. Not easy for a deaf woman with an obstinate little boy who thought she had driven his father away."
"Count yourself lucky that he left."
"I do."
"My granddaughter. She's going to be very pretty."
"Between the three of you. That's to be expected."
"She'll have less of temper than Sara."
"Good. I am too old for much else."
"She'll be easier because you'll be wrapped around her little finger."
She made out a quick smile in the dark. He wondered if he could still beat a drug test. Not the time to find out.
"I won't take her away from you. I won't do that. Just considered me a charm bracelet she brought home."
Cackling a former smoker's laugh Laura took a long pull from the joint. "I know you are worried that you are too old for all this, but it's going to be okay."
"Okay?"
"Great. Hannah is smart and tough, and she thinks she's about the luckiest girl in the world."
"She tell you that?"
"As a matter of fact, she did."
OOOOOOOO
He dipped his fingertips in the cool, white cream. He rubbed a hand over Sara's warm flesh as Hannah made occasional movement. He tried to keep his mind on the task of banishing stretch marks. It was tough with Sara's lush backside laid bare.
He sniffed the mixture. "Roses and lavender."
His hand crept up and worked on the flesh under one full breast.
Sara spoke in a drowsy whisper. "Um, not sure. Mom said she put some shea butter in. Some jojoba oil. Not sure what else. She charges her clients like 70 bucks for one jar, but," Sara yawned and turned away from Grissom and he worked on her left hip, "she says it's worth it."
"Nice having a mother who knows these things." He ignored the stirring in his groin.
"Do you remember the first time?" Sara asked.
"The first time what?"
"The first time we made love."
He was inching closer to her, his heavy hands working on the outside of one thigh.
"I remember some of it," he admitted. "I don't remember all of it. How much do you remember?"
They'd all had too much to drink the night after Nick was saved. "I remember you telling me I was beautiful. That I was the most beautiful woman you had ever seen."
"Good for me."
"And then what?"
"After that you stuck your tongue down my throat."
"I am sure I was much more eloquent than that."
With some effort, Sara turned over and angled herself towards him. Her breasts touched his chest. Her smiling lips taunted him.
"No, honey, you were not much more eloquent. You told me I was beautiful and then you shoved your tongue down my throat."
"Shoved? I thought I stuck." He rubbed the cream into unattended skin. She had tiny freckles that covered the dotted only the left side of her body.
Sara clarified. "You stuck then you shoved."
"So my first kiss was crap?" He wanted to know.
"Pretty much."
"I hope I redeemed myself."
"You did. While the introduction to your tongue was marginal the follow up was outstanding. You remember that?"
"You taste. You taste." His lips brushed at curls of hair as he tried finding the words for the muskiness. Of course there were not words.
"Delicious," he said.
"I can't imagine. Five hours in a bar wearing blue jeans and satin panties."
"Perfect."
"It's good you love me." She only half joked.
"There is that."
"Confession?" Her dark eye lit up with curiosity. Always the investigator.
"I started there because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do much else."
"Really?"
"The object of my very active fantasy life just let me feel her up in a hotel elevator fresh from the hotel bar where she gave me a foot job for the better part of an hour."
"I did that?" Sara questioned.
"Not that anyone noticed. Greg was hitting on the bartender by then, and Nick was dirty dancing with a brunette from Sacramento. And Warrick had shoved his own tongue down Catherine's throat. You still think they are doing the dirty."
"I am telling you when I walked into the supply closet, his face was a millimeter from hers. What else do you remember?"
"I remember that I told myself that when we were both sober, we'd have a proper courtship."
"Well why didn't you?" Sara sighed.
"Because you left and you were so casual, I thought you had worked me out of your system. Changed your mind."
"I left because I needed a few hours to myself. I expected you to call or something, but when you didn't, I told myself that I was thoroughly modern and could deal."
"We are silly, aren't we?" Sara wondered as she turned onto her back watching Gil as he closed the jar and began to work on the buttons of his shirt.
"What are you doing?" Sara smiled at him.
OOOOOOO
He walked down along the sand with no shoes, and his shirt half buttoned. Khaki's rolled up to his calves; he wondered why he hadn't bought lighter clothes. They had been at Laura's for three days and nearly every line on Sara's face had receded, her ankles were no longer swollen and she looked better than she had in weeks.
He'd not bought the ring as he anticipated when he left for the golf excursion. He'd gone into the shop recommended by one of the professors, a part time gemologist. He had nearly bought a two-carat emerald surrounded by diamonds but he could not do it. It was perfect for Sara. Brilliant, full of fire, not too unconventional. He'd had his card in his hand and was nearly ready to pay for it when the sweat on his hands caused it to hit the counter.
He looked at his watch. Sara would sleep another hour or so. Then she'd be hungry, and then they would make love after and she would sleep soundly for the rest of the night. She needed this, a steady routine. She didn't need him traipsing in at all times of the night and day waking her because he wanted sex, or he needed to talk.
He'd been fooling himself. He'd not taken care of Sara. She was pregnant and should be pampered and cherished. Hell, she needed that when she wasn't pregnant. Some husband he would make.
He did not see the woman fall into place with him until she kissed his ear.
"My serious Gil Grissom. Whatcha thinking about?" she asked tugging at one of his curls.
"You and Hannah."
"You looked so serious. I wonder if she is going to be serious like you." Sara turned and faced him. He stopped moving.
"You are going to fall."
Sara shook her head. "You, baby, me."
"Cause well-you have my baby in there. Now no fooling around, walk straight."
"I am walking straight just backwards." Sara saluted him impishly. "Yes, Sir."
She giggled at the falsity of his stern expression.
"I know you have been telling Hannah how to get over on me, and I don't appreciate it."
Sara tugged him closer to the water. "She would have to be blind, crippled, and crazy not to know how to work you."
The water lapped at their feet and he scooped down to pick up a shell.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Grissom asked mildly as Sara squinted at something in the sand.
"I am going to put that in her book." Sara held up a peach colored shell.
Grissom squinted at the shell. "What is that doing here?"
"What?"
"Species isn't indigenous to this area. Leave it to you, honey, to find something that doesn't belong without even knowing why."
Sara grinned. "I don't miss work as much as I thought you know. I miss the guys and even Catherine. You tell her I said that I will disavow all knowledge."
"She misses you too."
"Maybe we can have lunch when we get back."
They were moving again now hands tightly wound. "Me playing golf. You having lunch. What happened to us? We used to be so…"
"Odd?"
"I was going to say eclectic but that will do."
She broke away from him and for just a second he remembered the Debbie Marlin case. She was so young, and he was… well he was too old to be starting a family. Most men were winding this part of life down.
"Honey." The seriousness of his words was carried away by the tides. He repeated himself as Sara made a dash for the water again.
"You have to come play with me. Pregnant woman's prerogative."
He walked out to join her.
OOOOOOOO
Grissom hung up on Conrad. He hadn't done that in what-five years? He pressed his forehead against the phone.
"I know exactly what you are thinking, and you are not leaving her here."
Without turning around, Grissom spoke. "Laura…" he sighed. He tried again. "She needs to relax. She can't do that in Vegas. You take better care of her than I can."
A sharp finger tapped him on the shoulder. "I know it seems like that. You are doing a fine job.'
"No, I am not. Besides I thought this is what you wanted."
"Sometimes a mother has to do a little pushing."
"So 72 hours and I am in."
"In a word, yes. You love her. She loves you. That's important between the two of you. As a mother, I want to make sure she's safe with you. That you can provide for her, that you respect her. That you need her."
Some insect flitted near Grissom ear. He clutched for it without looking. Walking to an open window he released the tiny black bug. "He'll die if he stays inside."
The irony of his words was not lost on either of them.
"Want me to tell you how this is going to play out?" Laura asked.
He gave a somber nod.
"You leave her here. She cries because you left, and she thinks you are trying to ditch her, and she gets depressed. You get home and become so somber and morbid that your friend the red head, um Catherine?"
"Yes and she's mostly blonde. These days anyway."
"She has to kick your ass for like the 100th time since she's known you. You drive back here. By that time, she's mad as a wet hen, and you have to grovel and buy lots of ice cream and shiny things. No matter what she says, she loves shiny things."
Laura walked closer to her would be son in law. "Whatever the issue is, just figure it out and deal with it. You are too old for this shit."
19 years later
She was gone. Her little girl was in Cambridge, England. Yes, they would be in Europe soon enough, but Hannah was already there. Who would brush her hair when it was horribly tangled? Who would make sure she had her inhaler? What if she caught a cold? Would she know the right medicine to buy?
Gil walked softly to where his wife sat on the pale lavender comforter.
"Honey..."
"Don't you dare say it Gil Grissom. She is my first-born. My baby. The baby I never thought I would have. I can sulk and wallow as long as I damn well please. I should have smothered her. Made her go UNLV. Not let her date. And whose idea was it to let her wear lipstick? She doesn't need any enhancement. She's stunning."
He slipped a dark leathery hand in Sara's. "For the record, you said she had to date and live her life. I was not particularly thrilled with the pink haired boy, but…"
"His name was Robert, and his hair was not pink. It was very light red." Sara corrected.
"Whatever. She's going to be fine, Mom. She's going to be wonderful. We gave her everything she needs to face the world. She's confident, kind, generous, loving…"
"And smart, don't forget smart."
"She's better prepared to be on her own than either one of us was. You did it because you had to and I did it because I didn't know what else to do."
"You gave her that. She had a daddy, who loved her unconditionally. You know what it's like, those girls who go thought life searching for a daddy."
"We gave her that. I nearly made a mess of it all."
Sara sighed and dropped her head to her husband's shoulder. "No you didn't. I used to wonder what if this or what if that. Now I know we are fate. No matter what we are fated."
"Do you realize that we are alone in our home? How much does that happen? One down and one to go."
"Don't remind me."
"There is an upside to this."
"Oh yeah."
"We can play stripper and wealthy patron for the next two hours."