Author's Notes: Thanks for all the kind reviews! Enjoy this chapter;)
Moments
by Kristen Elizabeth
"Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, MAMA!"
Sara closed her eyes, counted to ten, then opened them again. Rosalind was still sitting in her booster chair at the kitchen table, banging her spoon into her bowl of soggy cereal, and calling out "mama" at the top of her lungs. She closed her eyes, took another ten seconds, and tried again.
"What is it, Rosalind?" she asked in as calm a voice as she could muster before seven a.m.
"Wan' some juice."
"You have juice. You don't need more right now. What you need is to eat your cereal."
"No!"
If there was one word she could remove from her daughter's rapidly growing vocabulary, it would be that word.
"Cereal, Rosalind. Don't make me count."
Rosalind's answer to that was to throw a handful of cereal at the wall.
Sara's eye twitched. In another twenty minutes, she would have to have Rosalind cleaned and ready to drop off at daycare, so that she would be on time for the start of the dayshift. It was usually a flawless system. Grissom still headed up graveyard and slept while she was at work and Rosalind was at daycare, leaving them both the late afternoon and early evening hours to spend with their daughter and each other. Time at home together was far more precious than time together at work.
But today, the system wasn't quite working as flawlessly as usual. Her husband, never known for his punctuality, was thirty minutes late. And she was on her very last nerve.
"One…" she started, loudly and clearly, as not to be misunderstood by her toddler. "Two…you really don't want me to reach three, Rosalind. Eat your breakfast."
Her daughter's lower lip quivered, but she held her ground.
"Rosalind…" She was just about lose it when she heard the garage door opening. Sara released a pent-up breath. Grissom was home.
He came into the kitchen a minute later, dressed in dark blue coveralls, spouting off apologies and a story about Greg, an autopsy and the loss of his favorite pair of pants. Sara shot him a look that told him, in no uncertain terms, that now was not the time for explanations.
"Rough morning?" Grissom asked, taking in the cereal dripping down the wall.
"She is your daughter right now," Sara replied. "Do with her what you will."
She grabbed her purse from the counter, and stomped up the stairs, knowing full well she was being unfair and a tad bit overdramatic. But in her defense, it had been a rough morning. A rough, disappointing morning that had started with a rude awakening.
In the bathroom she shared with Grissom, Sara flung open the lower cabinet and dug into a large box of tampons. She slammed a few of them into her purse, blinking back hot tears. So she'd started her period. It wasn't the end of the world. All it meant was that she wasn't pregnant. Again.
Sara sat back on the cold tile. Five months of disappointments had taken their toll on her. She didn't understand the problem. She'd had no problem getting pregnant with Rosalind; truthfully, it had sort of snuck up on them. A wedding present they'd given themselves, Grissom had called it.
So, what had changed? Was she getting too old? She'd read somewhere that the closer you got to forty, the harder it was to conceive. Sara scowled. Grissom had at least twenty more childbearing years, and she was facing the end of hers. It was hardly fair.
She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't notice Grissom standing in the doorway for a full minute. When she finally did look up at him, she saw her own letdown mirrored in his eyes.
"Sorry," she said, holding up a tampon. "Another month, another cycle."
"Sara." He crouched down and reached for her hand. "It's all right. It'll happen."
"I waited too long," Sara said, shaking her head. "If I'd started popping them out when I was in my twenties…"
"Then I wouldn't be their father," he reminded her.
"It wouldn't have been for lack of trying on my part," she snapped. After a second, she sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm…well, I'm hormonal."
"Honey, you can't let this stress you. There's strong evidence linking stress and trouble conceiving."
Sara nodded. "I know. And I'm trying not to go overboard with my expectations. But every month, it gets a little bit harder."
Grissom helped her to her feet, and gave her a soft kiss. "It'll happen," he repeated. "We'll just have to keep trying."
"Fine," Sara grumbled. "I guess we can keep having crazy amounts of sex for another twenty-eight days." She started out of the bathroom. "But if you don't get me pregnant by this time next month, buster, we've got an appointment with Dr. Roget, fertility specialist. So if you don't like the idea of combining a plastic cup with a copy of Jugs, you'd better whip the soldiers into shape."
His deep chuckles echoed down the hallway.
To Be Continued