Chapter Seven - Photo Memories
Selecting another photo from her album, Sara spun the book around, pointing out the baby girl at the bottom of the page. "I knew I had one of right after she was born. Gil's hand was so shaky after she was born, most of the pictures were unusable. I think his mother took this one. She's laying on the scales. That's Gil's hand there." She pointed out the shiny metal object beneath her newborn, before she pointed to the hand that was gently resting over the baby's head. "Seven pounds exactly. She lost all that birth weight within the first couple of weeks though."
"She's gorgeous, just like her Mom." The Texan smiled at her, turning the page to see more of her at the hospital. "Is Grissom alright with you showin' me these?" He felt a bit intrusive sitting in their kitchen, when the man wasn't even home.
"It was his idea, he just didn't want to be here." Sara folded her arms across her chest, explaining, "I thought he was alright with this. He never really got over the fact that he couldn't father a child himself, but now he's telling me that he feels threatened of your presence, as if you're going to take her away from him. He wants to move away again, without even giving this place a chance."
"You know that's not what I want. She's yours and Grissom's. When I saw her, I didn't look at her and think of her as mine. I don't see her like that." Nick set down the photo album, assuring her, "I haven't changed my mind at all. She's not my daughter and I don't expect any rights."
"I know that, it's just Gil that's feeling as though his role as her father has been made redundant, while we're here in Las Vegas." She explained to him. "You know, before any of this, I never even thought of having a baby. Marriage, kids, the white picket fence... I never even thought I would ever end up having any of that. I didn't even want any of it. It all just kind of... took me by surprise."
"I'm the complete opposite. I thought that I'd be married with kids years ago, but it never happened. Now that it hasn't, I'm kinda relieved. No offence, but I like my job a lot more than I like datin'."
"You just haven't found the right one yet." She playfully ruffled her hand through her colleagues hair. "You've still got plenty of years ahead of you for all that."
"I'm only a year younger than you." He pointed out to her. "And if he feels threatened by me, then maybe I should go. I don't wonna ruin things between you two."
"No, don't go. You didn't do anything wrong." She stopped him from climbing to her feet, insisting that he stay to see more of the photos. "Besides, we both promised each other that if Rosa ever wanted to meet her donor father, that we wouldn't get in the way of that. Here's a good one, this is right after we brought her home."
Taking another look at the album, Nick smiled at the sight of the tiny baby in the huge crib. "How'd you pick the name, Rosaline, anyway?"
"Gil's idea." Sara remembered. "At first, he wanted to name her, Juliet, from the Shakespeare play. But his mother said it sounded a little too posh for her. Instead, he opted for Romeo's first love from the play. She's the first love of Romeo, before he even meets, Juliet. Gil tells it better, but in some versions of Romeo and Juliet, the character, Rosaline, doesn't have a role. She's Capulet's niece, described as wonderfully beautiful." She smiled at Nick beside her. "He also said that some studies of the Romeo and Juliet play have argued that Romeo never really forgets about his love for Rosaline, but instead he replaces it with Juliet."
Nick chuckled softly, glad to hear that Grissom hadn't changed much in the past few years. "So where is she?"
"She is upstairs actually, sleeping. Gil's Mom, Betty says that I'm too soft on her for letting her take her afternoon naps still, but she gets cranky and irritable without them. Betty says that Gil stopped his naps, all by himself, when he was two. But if Rosa doesn't have one, it brings up a huge battle at bedtime, because she's so over tired. She always needs one after preschool anyway."
"My Mama said that I had naps until was nearly eight. They weren't regular or anythin'." He quickly defended himself. "I was always runnin' around the ranch with my brother and sisters durin' the day. I usually fell asleep as soon as I got home."
"I don't ever remember taking naps as a kid. Childhood seems like a very long, distant memory now."
Nick nodded slightly to her, glancing at the album in front of him again. He looked at the baby in all of the pictures, thinking he would feel differently about her, knowing that she was a least half of him, but he really didn't. "You moved around a lot." He noticed that the rooms were from different houses each time.
"Yeah, the first couple we were still at Betty's house. Gil had a temp job teaching just after that, so we moved into a little apartment nearby. When that was over, we moved into this house here," She pointed to the house in one of the pictures. "It was really nice there. We were there until Rosa was about nineteen months, until we had to move again."
"And is Grissom alright with her?" He didn't exactly mean to word his sentence like that, but Sara got what he meant anyway.
"Yeah. He's really good with her, great actually. She loves listening to his stories and his explanations of how things work. She knows quite a lot about spiders too, they seem to be her favourite. Gil thought that she'd like butterflies more, because she's a lot more girly than me, but she loves spiders. She can name a couple of species already. We even got her one for her fourth birthday. One of Gil's collection, but she's really careful with it." She smiled proudly. "I'll just go check on her, actually." Climbing to her feet, Sara approached the bottom of the stairs, listening out for any sign of life. She quietly made her way up to her room, easing her daughter's bedroom door open, so she wouldn't wake her up.
Rosa was still lying on her side across the middle of her bed, sucking her thumb as she softly snoozed. She had only been asleep less than an hour, but Sara didn't want her to miss out on meeting her donor father for the first time. She had been so excited about it all week.
Hearing footsteps making their way down the stairs, Nick climbed to his feet, anxiously biting his lower lip as he waited for them.
Sara stepped round the corner a few seconds later, holding her sleepy little girl securely in her embrace. He had seen her before briefly at the lab, but he hadn't got a good look at her then. She looked just like her mother, and even though there was no way she could look like Grissom, he recognised some familiarity in her expression that reminded him of his old boss.
"Here we are," Sara adjusted her daughter against her hip, letting her rub the sleep from her eyes, before she introduced them. "Do you remember Nick from the lab?"
"Hi, sweetie." He gently shook her hand as she reached hers out to him. "Your Mommy was just showin' me your baby pictures."
"Do you like her dress? We bought it this morning, didn't we?" She brushed her daughter's hair back behind her ear, giving her a smile as she shied away again. She hadn't introduced her to that many people over the years, but she never thought that she would be this shy around new people.
"It's a very pretty dress you're wearin'." Nick complimented her. Her dress was a baby blue colour, with an embroidered white flower design across it.
"We got some new shoes too, didn't we? Would you like to show him your new shoes?" Sara set her daughter down, letting her walk to the front door to get her new shoes. She hurried back into the room as soon as she got them, holding them up to him so he could see. They were an adorable pair of pink buckled boots. The buckle itself was in the shape of a heart, making them even more adorable.
"Wow," Nick knelt down to her level, admiring her trendy new boots. "I wish I had a pair of these. They'd come in handy when I'm out in the field."
"They're pink though." Rosa pointed out to him.
"Maybe I like pink."
The little girl giggled, leaning back against her mother's legs behind her. "They're not boys boots, are they Mommy?"
"No, your Uncle Nicky is just being silly. They wouldn't go with your complexion." She smiled at her colleague. "So, who's up for some lunch?" She suggested, getting nods out of both of them. "Okay, I'll fix us some sandwiches. Do you want to show Nicky some more of our pictures?" She motioned towards the photos on the table. "There should be a couple in there from our apartment we had in New York."
Rosa set her boots down, climbing onto one of the chairs around the table. She reached for the album from the middle of the table, smiling at the familiar sight of all of her baby pictures. "Mommy, where's the one with Nana Bets?"
Sara leant over her shoulder, searching for the photo for her. "There she is." She ushered Nick over, letting him sit at the table beside her. "Look at that proud smile on her lips. She couldn't believe that her first grandchild was finally here."
"There's my Grandma." Rosa pointed to another woman that looked like a much older and haggard version of Sara.
"Yep, that's Grandma. That's our place that we had in Colorado." Sara pointed out the framed butterfly's in the background. "Gil's office was in the living room there. That was the last place that we had, Hank." She remembered, giving Nick a smile as he looked round at her. "He was actually alright with Rosa as a baby. Remember Grissom was worried about how the dog would be around kids. Well he was fine. Hank used to carry around her blankets. If she was crying and I couldn't hear her, he would start doing this whining noise that you could hear clear across the garden."
"There he is." Rosa tapped the photo of her parents' dog, that she knew only from the pictures she had seen. "Mommy, can we get another dog?"
"You'll have to ask your father that one." Sara pressed a kiss to her daughter's forehead, before she turned back to the counter behind her. Her daughter showed Nick a few more of their photos, before their sandwiches were ready. "Yours is turkey." She set down the first plate in front of Nick. "And yours is peanut butter and jelly."
"Thanks, Sara."
"Thank you, Mommy." Rosa reached for her first sandwich, while her mother quickly cleared away the pictures, so they wouldn't get sticky. "When Daddy gets back, can Nicky have dinner with us?"
"Oh no, sweetie. Nick has to go to work tonight. He works the same time as me." Sara took her seat beside them, with her own sandwich. "This was the only available time that he had to meet us for lunch, so he decided to come over and see a few pictures."
Rosa licked her lips after a bite of her sandwich, leaning closer to her mother. She placed one hand beside her mouth, whispering, "Is he really my donor father?" as if it was a huge secret to them.
"Yes, sweetie." Sara smiled at the man in question. "And he knows about it, so you don't have to whisper. He gave us you as a gift. You're the greatest gift he could have ever given us. Without him, Mommy and Daddy would have never of had you."
"Does that mean he's part of our family?"
"He sure is."
"Why isn't there any pictures of him in here then?" She asked her mother, putting her on the spot as she had never even thought of keeping a picture of him before. Rosa finally turned her head to look at Nick, asking him, "Can we have some pictures of you? If we move again, I want to remember what you look like."
Nick looked at Sara first as if to check with her that it was alright, before he gave the child in front of him a nod. "Yeah, that'll be okay."
"Okay." Rosa suddenly jumped down from her chair, running out of the kitchen.
"Rosa?" Sara climbed to her feet after her. "Where are you going?" She caught her running up the stairs. She waited at the bottom for a moment, until her daughter returned with something in her hands. "Where'd you go? What's that?"
"Daddy's camera." The child revealed the Polaroid camera from her father's office, that printed instant pictures.
"I'm sure that Nick didn't mean right away, we're eating lunch." Sara chuckled, following her daughter into the kitchen. She scrambled back onto her chair beside the man, handing the camera over to her mother as she returned. "Oh, you want me to take it?" Her mother took her seat, waiting for Nick to wipe the crumbs from his lip, before she lined up the camera.
After lunch, Sara suggested that they go outside, where she took some pictures of the two of them together that didn't feel so forced. Rosa got the man working in her play kitchen, getting him to stir the grass stew, while she fed dinner to the three baby's that were sitting on the garden furniture with her mother.
"Okay, I gotta go." Nick finally grabbed his jacket, after a long day with the two of them. "Thanks for havin' me." He pressed a kiss to Sara's cheek, as the woman led him towards the door. "I've gotta get back to Sam and feed him some dinner, before I have to go to work."
"Who's Sam?" Rosa followed them to the door, reaching her arms up to her mother, so she'd pick her up.
"Sam. He's a retired police dog that's livin' with me at the moment." Nick explained to her, smiling as she handed him one of the extra pictures of the three of them together. "Thank you, sweetie. I'll pin this to my fridge, so I can see you every day. And I'll see you in a couple of hours, Sara."
"Bye." Sara waved him off, smiling as her little girl did the same. "Bye." She waited until his truck disappeared down the road, before she pushed the front door shut. "Well, let's go clean up, before Daddy gets home." She pressed a kiss to her daughter's forehead, setting her down in the front room, where they had been playing with some of her toys.
While her daughter neatly put her toys back in their boxes, Sara collected up her photo albums, carefully slotting the ones of Nick into place. She really couldn't have had a baby without him, but none of this would have ever been possible without her husband. He was the one who had been there for them both, changed their little girl's diapers, got up all hours of the night to feed her and stayed with her all night when she was sick.
His role in their daughter's life was far more important than the role of the sperm donor.
Sara just wished that her husband would realise that.
Thank you for reading and reviewing. I don't want to ruin the ending, but a lot of people are jumping to conclusions that this is going to be a Nick/Sara fiction. Well it's not. It's just a little conflict between Grissom and Sara. I'm not a Nick/Sara shipper and as is stated in the pairings for this story, it's a GSR fic, all the way.
~ Holly