Chapter 7
Grissom turned the car into the short driveway, cut the ignition and smiled at the very worried woman by his side. He lifted her hand, placed a kiss at her wrist and brushed his beard along the inside of her arm all the way to her elbow. The sensuality of it, juxtaposed with their situation of the moment was enough to throw Sara right out of her trance.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to relax, to let whatever this day was going to bring unfold and be okay. She wondered what Dr. Case would say about the fact that she knew it would be okay because Gil was with her. Something in his eyes told her that her mother couldn't possibly scare him away, if anything they were together in this, a united front. It was a new feeling, to have someone on your side.
He took her hand as they made their way to the front door. Grissom half whispered to her "You weren't kidding about the cookies, I can smell them already." Inside her mother was a whirling dervish of activity, pulling cookies out of the oven, moving a cooling rack off a chair so the "kids" could sit and fussing over how handsome Sara's "friend" was.
Grissom turned on the charm, taking over the duties of moving the newly baked cookies from their sheet to the rack with precision spatula work and insisting that Mrs. Sidle (you'll have to call me mom, I insist) sit with her daughter and discuss their plan of attack for the day.
Sara tried to concentrate on her mother's barrage of ideas; things that needed cleaning, repairing, throwing out, but she couldn't pull her eyes off of Grissom. Grissom standing in her mother's kitchen in faded old blue jeans and worn sneakers, diligently treating every cookie her mother had baked as if it were a miniature piece of art. He actually seemed to not only be calm in the face of this huge moment (somehow it felt less huge because of his reaction) but he seemed to be enjoying it, to be in his element.
He handed a warm cookie to her and took a bite of another, "When I helped in the kitchen my mother always paid me in cookies, I trust this arrangement will work here as well?"
"You eat as many as you want Gil. Doesn't Sara make them for you at home?"
He shook his head, " 'Friad not, she leaves me woefully neglected in the baked goods department."
"Like me and grandkids." Her mother said pointedly and wrinkled her nose at her daughter.
Gil leaned down and mock whispered, "I'll see what I can do about your problem, you see what you can do about mine" in the older woman's ear.
"That's enough out of both of you. I'm not sticking anything in my oven yet. We have work to do."
Grissom shrugged at "Mom Sidle" in a 'what can you do?' way and then turned semi serious. "I think I'll start in the yard. It looks like I can clear away some of the stuff on the side and in the back. Your wood pile looks like it's falling down."
"You be careful around that woodpile young man, it's full of spiders."
"Is it?" he sounded excited. "Excellent!" he kissed Sara's cheek and winked at her on his way out the door.
The women began in the living room, the kitchen was disorganized but clean, but the living room needed much attention. Her mother was a keeper, magazines, junk mail, thank you cards created by the children at local schools and organizations to whom she had donated cookies for one drive or another.
The clutter was all from the time after her mother had returned home. There were no photographs displayed in the house at all. No reminders of a time reaching further in the past than five years.
Sara filled two garbage bags with the receipts, cardboard boxes and peanut filling that remained from her mother's romance last year with QVC. She stacked all of those cards from the kids in a pile; someday maybe they could put them in a scrapbook. When the room's clutter was at it's minimum she handed her mother a rag and some polish. "You start the dusting in here, I'll start the front hall."
An hour later while working in the guest bedroom a scent other than cookies curled itself around Sara's conscious. It crept in slowly, a vaguely familiar and pleasant thing that was subtle enough to evade her only to be detected again moments later. She cut off the motor of the vacuum cleaner and sniffed the air. In the distance she could hear another motor humming along.
Sara pushed aside the faded curtains to find her mother's backyard, normally an overgrown mess of weeds, grass and discarded junk, transformed into something much more appealing. Most appealing of all was Grissom, pushing what she had to assume was a borrowed lawn mower, her mothers had broken down a year ago and she just never would let Sara replace it. She sat on the edge of an old hope chest and lifted the window allowing the breeze to carry in the smell of grass, cut just for her, by the man she loved.