Dinner that night was a peaceful but happy affair. Grissom played the perfect gentleman, holding doors open, pulling chairs out for Sara and Laura.

"So what's your life story?" Laura enquired over her chicken.

Grissom exchanged a glance with Sara and sipped his wine. "Which part?" he asked, his question partly masked by the wine glass.

"Whichever parts aren't the aural equivalent to moms taking out naked baby pictures," Laura answered, smiling as she ate a mouthful of her chicken.

Sara leaned back in her chair, pausing in between forkfuls of her salad. The corner of her mouth turned up as she watched Grissom, completely animated, recount several tales of growing up in Santa Monica and going thorugh college.

"I remember my first encounter with a bug," he recalled, his blue eyes tinkling fondly with the recollection. "I thought it was some kind of candy, so I popped it in my mouth." He winced slightly, making Laura and Sara laugh. "Oh, was I wrong. It was Leptinotarsa decemlineata."

"Colorado Beetle? How the hell did one of those end up in California?" Sara asked, slightly disbelieving.

Grissom shrugged. "It must have wound up in our house after my mom had some art shipped over from Colorado," Grissom replied simply. "And then there was the time my mother caught me with my Playboy collection, but I won't go into the details. It was scarring enough for me, God knows what it'd do to the two of you."

When he excused himself to go to the toilet, Laura leaned forward. "Did you have a nice time earlier?" she asked, trying to keep her voice clear of any anger that had been dredged up earlier in the day.

Sara looked her mother dead in the eye. "Not really. I told him what happened," she said, avoiding her mother's glance.

"And? How did he take it?"

"Must have been okay with it, otherwise he wouldn't be here now, would he?" Sara snapped. She caught the look in her mother's eye. "Mom, I'm sorry, but he has enough to deal with without me giving him any more trouble." She toyed with her fork.

"He cares about you a lot," Laura told her knowingly. "And I can see that you have feelings for him."

"Yeah, well you and I have talked about this already," Sara muttered, draining the rest of her glass. "And he and I have also discussed it. To some extent," she added.

"You told me he rejected your offer to dinner."

"He did. That was the discussion. He knows that I have a thing for emotionally unavailable men, and that I search for validation in inappropriate places, so as far as I'm concerned, he's only here now because he's a damn good friend. Nothing else. No matter what he might say."

Laura arched an eyebrow cynically. "Right. Whether or not he, or you, cares to admit it, you're made for each other. So why don't you use this trip to try patch things up romantically?"

Sara looked horrified. "No. No. No way at all. Ever. Especially not now. I will not use this trip as an excuse to emotionally blackmail him into dating me." She silenced herself as she saw Grissom approaching the table, and smiled at him as he took a seat.

"Are you okay?" he whispered in Sara's ear as he took a seat, noting that Laura was concentrating on her plate.

"Fine," Sara answered, tight-lipped. "We're okay, aren't we mom?" she said more loudly.

Grissom was desperate to make some sort of conversation, but was unsure of what areas were safe to bring up. "Even though her background is in physics, did you know that Sara has a higher solve-rate on fibre work that our fibre expert?" he said.

Laura smiled with pride, whilst Sara blushed. "Gil," she murmured in embarrassment. "He's lying," she said to Laura. "Nick and I have an equal solve rate."

"Considering you joined the team later, and were still a level two whilst Nick was a level three, I'd say that was a damn good achievement," Grissom told her seriously. But he noticed her air of discomfort.

He didn't speak for the rest of the meal, instead allowing Laura to regale him with tales of her hippy teenage years, and Sara's early upbringing.

Sara noted his amusment as it shone in his eyes, played upon his lips, and lingered in the cleft in his chin. "That's not the worst of it," Sara joined in, after Laura had told a story about Sara throwing crayons out of a window at people coming into her mom's guest house. "I started eating them for a year," Sara said, feeling lighter all of a sudden.

"I'm gonna hit the sack," Grissom said when they returned to the apartment.

"Sara and I are gonna stay up for a while," Laura told him.

Grissom exchanged another look with Sara (something he found them doing more and more). He reached over and squeezed Sar's shoulder. "Don't worry about waking me up, I sleep like the dead," he told her affectionately.

Sara smiled weakly. "Okay," she whispered.

"I think we need to talk now," Laura said when Grissom had gone to bed. "'Cause I know there's stuff you haven't told me. So spill. What's been going on?"

Sara took a seat on the couch opposite her mother. "I had a sort of breakdown after he rejected me. I've always been a bit edgy at work, especially with the domestic abuse cases," she said, avoiding her mother's stare. "So not being able to be with the only person whom I felt really understood me, and an inability to deal with what used to happen here, I turned to alcohol. I'd been drinking for about a year, and then I got caught after one particularly traumatic case. I got a DUI, and Grissom had to take me home. And then. roughly six months later, I was insubordinate to one of the superiors at work. Grissom stopped by to find out what was going on, and then he found out about all this," she added, a hand waving around the room.

"You say he 'stopped by.' What exactly happened?"

"He wanted to know why I was so angry."

Laura nodded. "He definitely cares."

"Mom! Would you stop saying that?"

"It's true."

Sara gritted her teeth. "I didn't come here to discuss my romantic failings," she said. "I'm here because I need to know what happened when I was a kid. I don't remember a lot of stuff, mainly, because, as Grissom said, 'the mind has its filters.' So I wanna know what happened."

Laura's eyes darkened. "What you saw was bad enough. You don't need to know any more than that."

"I do, mom," Sara insisted. "I need to know what the fuck happened when I wasn't old enough to be able to cope with remembering," she spat.

"Really? Well, your dad didn't want any more kids after your brother. So he wasn't best happy when he found out I was pregnant with you. Of course, I made the point that if he wasn't so insistent on wanting sex all the time, without protection, it wouldn't have happened."

Sara raised an eyebrow. "So what happened?"

"That's when he started being abusive. He'd push me around a bit, hell, he always pushed people around. Then it got steadily worse. By the time you were two, he'd be hitting me at least three times a day. But not where ayone would see it." Laura paused, but managed to keep herself focused. She'd dealt with her emotions long ago, she was comfortable with them. "He didn't touch your brother, he always had a soft spot for him. He did for you at first, too, but it disappeared when it turned out you were happy to be with books on your own - he wanted a daughter who was more outgoing than that."

Sara smiled. "I remember that time when I told him that popularity wouldn't get me through tests at school."

"That was the first time he hit you," Laura told her. "Then he hit me for encouraging that sort of rude behaviour, then he went out, got drunk, and hit us some more. Don't you remember that hospital visit?"

Sara's face dropped. "We went so many times in such a short space of time, I don't remember a lot of stuff," Sara admitted.

Laura thought for a while. "I don't think you're ready to hear what needs to be said."

"Mom ...".

"He abused you, as well, like your brother did."

"What?"

"I know he did, because I saw. That evidence was used when I was tried," Laura explained. "They needed evidence of mitigating circumstances." She sat back, understanding Sara's expression. "I'm not saying any more tonight," she said softly. "You need time to think about this."

Sara nodded numbly.

"You want a hug?" Laura asked.

Sara shook her head. "See you in the morning," she said.

Sara didn't have the heart to wake Grissom. He looked so cute and innocent in his sleep that she grabbed a pillow that he wasn't using, and put it down on the floor, lying on it and closing her eyes.

Grissom woke up in the early hours, wondering why Sara wasn't in bed. Propping himself up on an elbow, he leaned over the side of the bed. He saw Sara lying on the floor, curled in a foetal position, and was overwhelmed by the intense ache in his chest. He slipped out of the bed, bent over and scooped Sara into his strong arms, laying her down in the bed. He placed her with her back to him, pulled the duvet cover over them, kissed her shoulder and rested an arm on her stomach. "It's okay, honey," he whispered in a pained expression. "I'm here for you."