Here's part 3 as promised. Thanks for the great reviews!

Nancy readily agreed to watch Lindsey for a few days, and the ride to my house and the subsequent one to the airport were made in uneventful silence.

Once we were in the terminal I decided I had to talk to Sara. She hadn't spoken for the last two hours, and I was afraid she would end up internalizing this situation just as she did everything else.

"Want to fill me in?" I asked quietly, putting a hand on her arm.

I knew Sara was uncomfortable with physical contact, but over the last six months, I felt that we had overcome that boundary somewhat. After a moment, Sara nodded silently and reached into her backpack. She pulled out a framed photograph and handed it to me. She looked at it over my shoulder with sorrowful, brown eyes.

The subjects of the photo were three very happy people; a woman and two men. The woman was obviously a much happier and younger Sara Sidle. Her hair was long- longer than I had ever seen it, and there was a wide streak of electric blue running down the front on one side. She was also tan and wearing a spaghetti strap yellow dress. My mind reeled at the thought. Had I ever even seen her wear a skirt?

The three were rolling in the grass at some kind of park. The two men were both hugging Sara, or possibly wrestling her to the ground, it was hard to tell. The taller curly-haired man was kneeling behind her, his arms wrapped tightly and protectively around her neck and shoulders. The shorter man, who I noticed had piercing blue eyes, had thrown himself around Sara's thin waist. I took note that Sara had been even skinnier then than she was now, but she was nowhere near as muscular.

It was a cloudless day in the photo, the sky was a pure, crystalline blue and everyone was laughing. I couldn't help but wish that I had had a chance to see Sara so carefree.

The more somber Sara beside me pointed to the happier one in the photo, "That's me," she said unnecessarily, before pointing to the two men, "This is Matt," she indicated the man with the blue eyes, "and this is Warren." This time she meant the tall man with the blonde curls. Her voice became a choked whisper, "They are," she hiccupped, "uhh, they were my best friends in the world."

She sighed and I said quickly, "Sara, you don't need to tell me if you don't want to…"

She shook her head, "No, it's okay. I want to talk about them, besides, if you're coming with me, you'll need to know."

Her brown hair fell into her face as she smiled at the picture once more, "We were the inseparable trio. This was taken nearly eleven years ago. I had been out of school and back in San Francisco for about two years. But this whole story starts three days after I first arrived, straight from Boston. Matt is my age," she explained her tone flat and yet filled with love, "and he had put an ad out for a roommate. Even though he had advertised for a male roommate, I answered the ad- his location and rent were exactly what I was looking for." Her voice picked up a bit of momentum here, "Long story short, he gave me a trial week and by the end of it we were attached at the hip- best friends forever. Warren is four years older than Matt and I. He was the manager at a twenty-four hour coffee place near my work. He basically adopted me and fed my caffeine addiction; we talked about everything. I used to go on first dates there so that if I wanted to escape, which I almost always did, he could come over and rescue me."

The thought of Sara dating threw me a bit. I just couldn't imagine it. But then I felt ashamed; of course she dated, she's young, she's beautiful- why wouldn't she? I nodded encouragingly for her to continue, forcing my thoughts on this subject to the back of my mind.

"One day, I asked Matt to meet me at Buzz24, the coffee shop, and I was late getting there so he wound up chatting with Warren. That's how my two best friends met. I guess I should mention at this point, that both Matt and Warren are gay."

I nodded, starting to see where this was going.

"Anyway, Warren fell hardcore for Matt. And Matt pretty much felt the same way, but he didn't date a lot and he was shy, so I ended up going out on their first several dates as a chaperone. I think it was on one of those dates that we went to this park, all three of us, for the first time." Sara gracefully tucked a wisp of hair behind one ear as she continued, "It didn't take long for them to fall in love. It didn't surprise me at all. I knew they were soul mates the second I came running into Buzz and saw them flirting at the bar. It was the forever kind of love, the kind everybody dreams of but you're hard pressed to name anyone who has it."

At that point they began boarding us and Sara fell silent again. It wasn't until we had left the runway and were flying high and level that we began to speak again, something still didn't work out in my brain, but I didn't want to push her. She seemed so fragile, I had never seen her express this kind of emotion. Her hand had been gripped tightly around my wrist as we took off, as it relaxed I decided to ask.

"Sara, you said something about children?" I said it quietly, gingerly, hoping to convey with my tone that I was only asking because I wanted to help.

Sara nodded and reached down to pull three more photos, loose this time and not in frames, out of her bag. She handed them to me. The first was of Sara and Matt and Warren again. Sara's hair was much shorter this time, ending just above her earlobes and the blue was gone. In one of the man's arms, Warren's I think, there was a little pink blanket with little white booties on one end and a tiny pink face on the other. "That's a few days after they brought Ayla home from the hospital. She was so tiny. Ayla Sara Holzman-Winger. Born April 3, 1997. 6 pounds, eleven ounces, twenty and a half inches long. She was perfect. And she was the best baby, all smiles and giggles."

I smiled at the amount of love in Sara's voice; she genuinely thought this was the best child in the world. I flipped to the next photo. It was of a similar scene, but this time Sara looked just as she does now and she was holding the little pink bundle in her arms. The shorter man, Matt, had a little girl with curly brown hair, dressed in pink overalls covered in strawberries, in his arms. He was holding her up so that she could see the baby in Sara's arms. Something about the little girl sent signals to my brain but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

"This is almost four years ago, it's the same thing but with Ayla's little sister Maggie; Magnolia Helena, that's my middle name too, Holzman-Winger. Born September 14, 2000. She was big, eight pounds, three ounces and nearly twenty-two inches long. And she had a set of lungs; knew just how to get her way. Still does. But she's adorable and very sweet."

I turned to the last photo and my breath hitched. Sara said quietly, "That was them three months ago when I last went for a visit."

I flipped back to the photo we had just been looking at, realizing what I hadn't been able to put my finger on before. The gap between the little girl, Ayla's, two front teeth as she grinned down at her baby sister. I returned to the last photo of the two little girls sitting on a picnic blanket, their faces right next to the camera. The smaller one, Maggie had dark smoky curls and grey eyes, but her freckles, her nose, her jaw seemed all too familiar. And Ayla's eyes were such a pure chocolate with flecks of green and gold. Her eyebrows. Her lips. And the unmistakable gap in her beautiful smile.

"Sara, these little girls look exactly like you!" The resemblance was too much to ignore. Even the way Ayla was already starting to shoot up, thin out and grow gangly limbs. The matching freckles on both girls faces. It was exactly how I would envision Sara as a child.

Sara only nodded and smiled absently, "They should, they're mine."

Silence.

I just stared at her, "What? You have children in California and you didn't tell anyone?"

Sara shook her head this time. "No, when I say that they're mine, I only mean in a genetic sense. When Matt and Warren had been together for a long time, they told me they wanted to have children. I was all for it. When they asked me to donate eggs, I agreed right away. I mean- they're my best friends! They implanted my eggs and Warren's sperm into a surrogate - and nine months later, Ayla was born. The same thing with Matt's sperm and my eggs for Maggie."

I just stared at Sara in amazement. "Sara, that's an incredibly generous thing to do. Even for my best friends, I don't know if I could do that."

Sara looked out the window. "Actually, it turns out that I couldn't. I love Matt and Warren. But as Ayla got older…she just looked just like me, you know? The only thing she has from Warren is the little bit of curl in her hair. I mean, you saw her, right? She even has the gap between her two front teeth. And the boys said that they loved that. They loved knowing that the three of us had created something so spectacular. But they were her Dads, and I was Aunt Sara and I didn't think I wanted more than that until one day…I did." I nodded my understanding, I know that I would never be able to watch as Lindsey went through life not knowing I was her mother.

"It was just so weird," Sara fiddled with the tray table, "knowing that there was a piece of me out there and I wasn't her mother, that I could never be that and would always be expected to just…stand on the sidelines. It was weird. I never thought of myself as wanting kids. With my job and my luck with relationships, it just didn't seem like it was meant to be. But then Ayla learned to walk and talk and I toilet-trained her and taught her the colors of the rainbow and rocked her to sleep on the nights when the boys went off for a romantic getaway."

We breaked to accept drinks from the cart passing by, I got a club soda and Sara took a cranberry juice.

"I started to notice things, things that she could only have gotten from me. She liked the stars and puzzles and laughed the same way I did. My heart began to ache when I was with her, and every time she called to me, 'Ant Saywa,' it threatened to break. So when Matt and Warren said that they wanted to use the rest of the eggs we had harvested to have another baby, I knew I couldn't do it. I couldn't go through it again with another baby, another part of me. But of course I gave them my blessing, they were my everything and I wasn't going to stand in the way of their happiness."

Sara sighed as she shook the ice in her empty plastic cup. "Then Grissom called and offered me a job in Vegas and I took it. The boys didn't understand. They had thought I was happy. But I had only been torturing myself. So I missed most of Maggie's pregnancy and I only came down for few days when she was born. It was a bit easier. Maggie had almost black hair and her eyes were blue. But even when she was that small, I could see my nose on her. It was the way she scrunched it when she yawned. Just the way I do. My visits became less and less. Now I only go for a day or two every four to six months. I don't think the boys ever knew why I distanced myself."

I had listened quietly, nodding supportively when necessary. I could hear the heartache in Sara's voice with every word she admitted and I had a feeling that she had never told any of this to anyone before. And when I looked up from my drink, there were tears streaking down Sara's face. I pushed up the armrest between us and pulled her into an embrace, pushing her head to my shoulder, rocking her and running a hand through her soft hair.

I muttered comforting nothings into her ear just as I would with Lindsey and Sara was so awkward at it that I wondered if she had been held much as a little girl. "Shh, hey, baby…That's right…You're alright, honey…Hey, there, that's my girl…Just breathe, sweetheart." And the endearments just fell from my mouth as if I had always said them and it surprised me how much I liked the way they sounded on Sara. That despite the tension that was always between us at work, I really liked holding her in my embrace and I liked her firm arms wrapped around my waist.

As she calmed down, I drew nonsensical spirals and patterns on her upper arm. "There we go. That's better, hmm?"

And I smiled as she nodded and snuffled into the crook of my neck.

She sat up again, her eyes red and her face splotchy. She looked at me wide eyed and I found my heart pounding in my ears. I pushed it down and reached out to cup her chin with my hand and wipe the rest of her tears away with my thumb. She closed her eyes as I ran the pad of my thumb along her cheek and jaw bones before dropping my hand back to my lap.

"Catherine…I…"

And the tone of her voice said she was trying to articulate something important. But just then, the fasten-seat-belt sign lit up and the captain announced our final descent into San Francisco. Sara twisted in her seat and looked out the window, silent once again.

After a moment I ventured, "Sara?"

And she turned back to me. "Yeah?" Her voice was a whisper.

"What happened today?"

She looked out the window again and for a moment, I thought she wasn't going to answer. But then she started up and her voice was so soft that I had to lean in to hear her.

"I got a call around noon from Tony Winger, Matt's dad. He said that the whole family had been in a car crash, that the girls were okay and with Marie, his wife. He told me that Warren had died immediately- straight through the windshield." Sara shook her head and almost smiled, "Last time I was there, Ayla was always telling him to wear his seatbelt. If she had to wear one, she said, he did too. But Warren was always complaining of car sickness and saying that the belt hurt his stomach."

Sara began to fiddle with the hem of her shirt, "Tony said that Matt was in surgery for internal bleeding and head trauma and that they didn't know what was happening. The doctors wouldn't tell them anything. I told him not to worry, that I'd be on the next flight out and that we would work everything out when I got there." Sara's voice started to lose its certainty, "About an hour later he called and his voice was just awful. He said I didn't need to rush, that Matt was dead. There had been complications on the table somehow. And I had been holding it together okay before then but the sound of Tony's voice…we just cried together for who knows how long.

"And when I finally regained control, I asked how the girls were and he said that little Maggie didn't really get it- she's still only three, you know? But he said Ayla seemed to understand. He actually laughed, said she was acting just like I would. Comforting her little sister and not shedding a tear. Just hugging Maggie and rocking her back and forth. And he said that she had asked for me and wanted to know when I was coming to get them. And that's when I paused. I had completely forgotten just because it had seemed so unlikely that anything would ever happen to one, let alone both of my boys. But last year, Evelyn, Warren's mom passed away unexpectedly, and Marie had to have her hip replaced. Matt and Warren had asked if I would become the girls' legal guardian should they both…have something happen to them. Their parents were no longer a stable option. I agreed and I had to go down to see them to sign papers in front of a notary. And I remembered sitting and explaining to Ayla the way I would have wanted it explained to me. And she had been happy that she would be taken care of and not at all upset by the idea of her Dads dying. It had just seemed so improbable that anything would happen, none of us ever thought…"

Sara's voice drifted away on an invisible breeze and I put a supportive hand on her shoulder and squeezed, and when she looked at me her eyes were full of sorrow and loss, but also fear, "Catherine, how am I going to take care of them?" Her voice had a tinge of desperation that I had never heard there before, "I know I should be upset about Matt and Warren and I am but…I'm scared. They are going to need love and support and so many things and I don't know the first thing, but I have to take them…" Her breath was coming in ragged gasps now as she tried to fight off the tears. "I have to, I promised their Dads and I promised them and I just…"

Beneath us I could hear the landing gear dropping down, and once again I pulled her to me. "Sara, oh, Sara, shh…I know everything's really scary right now, but things will work out, you'll see. You're amazing with Lindsey and I know you'll be the same with these girls. And I'll be right here with you and I'll be right there when we get home, and we're going to work everything out."

"What if I can't?" she whispered in my ear and despite the situation, the sensation stirred up Goosebumps on the back of my neck. As I rubbed her back, a thought occurred to me and I wondered if I'd be pushing her too far.

But I decided to tell her anyway. I pushed her back and took both of her hands in both of mine as I started to talk, "Sara, when I found out that I was pregnant with Lindsey it was both the best and most terrifying moment in my life. What did I know about children and babies? And I fretted about it for nine months. But as soon as I held Lindsey in my arms, I wasn't so scared. I knew exactly what to do and I wasn't worried about the times that I wouldn't know what to do. I suddenly knew that I would figure it out as I went along and that everything would be okay."

Sara gave me a curious look as if to ask what the point of my story was and I took a deep breath, just as we touched down in San Francisco, I squeezed her hands and said, "Sara, you'll be fine, you'll know exactly what to do. I know that as soon as you take them in your arms that you'll feel safe and more confident. Sara; they're your children. Yours. Ayla and Maggie are your daughters. And whether they know it or not, you're their mother. And that bond holds no matter what."

Just as I suspected, this realization was too much for Sara and she suddenly looked like she was going to faint. I wrapped an arm around her waist and held her upright as we taxied in to the gate. Her shampoo smelled amazing and I took advantage of her glazed state to nuzzle into her neck before saying, "You're exhausted, baby, let's get you into bed and we'll drive wherever you want to go in the morning."

I love feedback!! If I don't get enough…I may not post part 4! Mwahahaha!