Sara had sat there in the cold night air clutching the certificate in her hands feeling completely stunned. She may not have the best grasp on the memories of her past but she was certain she would have remembered something as significant as a sister.
She had never been curious about her family tree. The fact that most of her life had been plagued by their ghosts always prevented her from digging deeper. There had been ample opportunity for her to track down Michael and offer him an olive branch. Even when she had visited her mother she felt it best to leave him well alone and not pry into his life.
Now the urge to find Amy was instantly greater. Michael had made his choice by cutting her out; it could be that Amy was never offered the opportunity.
Sara pressed her cell phone to her ear with little regard for the time. She knew she could count on him to never let her down and sure enough his sleepy voice filled her ear and a smile crossed her face immediately.
"Sara? Is everything ok?" Greg shifted in position, attempting not to wake Robyn who was sleeping soundly on his chest.
"I'm fine. Or I will be fine anyway. Can you do something for me?" She cleared her throat nervously.
"Anything you need" he declared.
She wasn't totally sure how she was going to express the entire story that had unravelled before her. She was well aware that it was the middle of the night and that Grissom was probably getting increasingly worried for her, time was not really on her side.
"I uhh I need you to find someone for me" she muttered.
Greg unwound himself from Robyn's embrace, gently resting her head on his pillow and sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Find someone?" he frowned.
"Yeah, you know I figured with all the genealogy stuff you've been doing…" she shrugged even though she knew he wasn't there to see it.
"Oh right, sure, of course. Who do I need to find?"
"Well…" Sara began, taking a deep breath "its… she's called Amy. Amy Louise Sidle."
Greg stumbled around in the dark looking for something to write the information on, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder at Robyn.
"A relative?" Greg guessed, penning the name down in the corner of a bashed up old bible he found beside the bed.
"I think so…" Sara swallowed the lump in her throat. "Greg?"
"Yeah?" he replied with a sigh.
"This is… important. Can you get on it right away?"
She felt guilty even asking him but time was of the essence right now. She intended to uncover this mystery before she went back to Vegas and she needed his help to do that.
"I'm kind of in the middle of something right now" he smirked, casting his eyes over the plains of Robyn's back as she stirred in the bed.
"Please. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important"
"Ok" he sighed "I'll call you when I have something"
"I'll call you in the morning" she smiled, signing off the call.
A part of her rested easy knowing he was on the case. It was one less person for her to track down but she knew that she still had to go back and speak to Sandra. Despite what her son had said and his apparent need to keep her away Sara had to know why there were so many secrets surrounding this child.
Her legs felt heavier as she slowly made her way to the hotel. A light rain was starting to fall, dappling across her skin and making a shiver cross her body. The streetlights shimmered in the night sky as she passed them by, carefully creeping inside the hotel hoping not to wake anyone. She imagined this is what it would have felt like sneaking into your house as a teenager after staying out past curfew. Every single floorboard seemed to creak loudly reverberating off the walls and making her heart turn somersaults in her chest. The stairs had never took so long as she pressed each foot against them carefully, heaving herself higher towards their room.
She stood at the door, gripped by guilt for everything she had put him through tonight. He didn't understand what it was like to be so lost in your own family and she couldn't feasibly expect him to try. He had suffered his own loss as a child that had inevitably shaped him as a man but it was a different kind of loss with entirely different consequences. With a deep sigh she opened the door and slowly cast her eyes over the scene in front of her.
The plastic box from the hospital lay opened on the floor beside the desk, the letters and documents in neatly arranged piles dotted across the surface with a post it note stuck to each one. He had arranged everything into categories for her; each one lovingly unfolded and laid out for her perusal. Her heart swelled with love as she quickly darted her eyes to the bed.
Grissom slept soundly, a tense expression on his face as his eyelids flickered rapidly. He was dreaming, his lips twitching and his breathing hitching in his chest. She carefully crossed the room and sat at the edge of the bed, a concerned hand resting on his arm. His skin felt warm to the touch, much warmer than hers did and she quickly retracted her hand for fear of waking him. A frown furrowed his brow and his dreams made themselves known on his lips as his tortured voice whispered 'Sara'
A knot wound its way around her stomach as she realised he was dreaming about her, not just dreaming about her but worrying about her. Even in his sleep he was tortured by the consequences of her actions.
"Gil…" she whispered, dipping her head close to his ear and gently stroking his sleeping face "I'm here Gil, its ok"
His sleepy sigh filled the room as he turned and settled back into the pillow and she silently crept into the bed, fully clothed, beside him. She pressed her body against him, curling her arm around his body until he let his fingers lace with hers and they both fell into a deep slumber.
He woke her with a steaming mug of coffee and a gentle kiss to her temple. Sunlight streamed in through the windows declaring another beautiful day and his clear blue eyes gazed at her with nothing but love as she heaved her groggy brain back to consciousness.
"Thank you" she muttered, eyeing him somewhat suspiciously as she tried to decide if he was angry about the previous night.
"You're welcome" he nodded, moving across the room to retrieve his own coffee.
She pulled herself into a seated position, ignoring the throbbing in her head as she nursed her coffee. She could feel the warm liquid bringing her to life, the caffeine mingling with her blood stream and giving her the jolt she needed.
"I uhh… I'm sorry about last night. You were right… it probably was getting too much but I…did find something interesting" she kept her eyes fixed on her husband but he had his trained on the newspaper, his back to her. The coffee steadily cooling in his hand.
"Amy is your sister…" he declared as though it was common knowledge. Her words stopped in her throat as he twisted in his chair to look at her "and you want to go back to Sandra's"
"How did you know that?" she asked, unable to keep the smirk from forming on her lips and illustrating how impressed she was.
"Well I worked through that last night; waiting for you to come home…" he nodded his head towards the neat little piles on the desk "I added it to the letters you already had and the letters about Amy came ever year. On the same date and with almost the same information, just like you would expect in an adoption and you know, there was just something in her eyes, something so very… you… about her." a glimmer of a smile crossed his features as he thought about it before turning back to her "and I know you Sara. I know you wouldn't let that go"
Her trademark half smile lit her features as she got up from the bed and swung her arms around his shoulders. Her kisses rained on his neck as she whispered her thanks in his ear before disappearing into the bathroom.
Less than an hour later they were once again following the long coastal road towards Sandra's armed with a handful of evidence and a head full of questions. On the way, Sara took a call from an old colleague of hers that she had roped into tracking down Michael. He had a location but wanted to meet her in person to discuss it. She could only assume that meant bad news.
They pulled into Sandra's street a short time later and Sara marched onto the porch full of purpose. She didn't hesitate to press the doorbell, following it up with a tap on the living room window. Sandra's eyes appeared, wide and surprised through the thin veil of netting covering the glass.
Without a word she ushered them into the room, a tissue in her hands and an array of photographs spread out over the table.
"I'm glad you came back Sara" she sniffed, sitting on the edge of the sofa. "Ever since you came round…. I can't get it out of my head. I need to tell you the truth…"
Sara simply nodded, stunned that all her build up and prepared arguments would be unnecessary. Sandra reached out to hold her hand, the skeletal fingers closing around hers tightly and making her feel incredibly uncomfortable.
"Laura and I… we were very close Sara. Practically sisters, when your dad came along he didn't approve. He said I 'poisoned her mind' and tore her away from him."
Again Sara nodded. It wasn't unusual for abusers to try and isolate their victims from the people they loved the most; the people who could make them see the truth.
"He didn't know that she was pregnant and if he had chances are he would have performed his own kind of abortion if you know what I mean….Laura was good at hiding things. Very good in fact and she was built just like you, tall and slim… she never had much of a bump"
Tears streaked down the woman's face, she looked genuinely traumatised by the memory, as though it had shadowed her for a long, long time.
"When she went into labour she rushed round to mine. She insisted she was going to have the baby and we could pretend it was mine but… there was so much blood and she was so scared. I called an ambulance…they registered the birth at the hospital. Something she begged them not to do. When I got there she had discharged herself…I…I'd never seen her like that before. So closed, like stone. She handed me this tiny baby, this beautiful little girl and just walked away. Told me she didn't want to see either of us again"
Sara took a deep breath, trying to absorb the sheer mass of information she had just received. She couldn't imagine being in a situation bad enough where she would just hand over her child like that. She couldn't imagine being so scared that she'd have to hide something that should be considered a blessing.
"You changed her name? She became Lauren?" Sara nodded, assuming that the story would end there.
"No, oh no" Sandra shook her head, once again dabbing at her eyes with a tissue "I… I had just found out I was expecting Alan… it was all too much"
Sara nervously swallowed the lump that had been building in her throat.
"What did you do?"
A sob escaped Sandra's throat and she wheezed and coughed with the power of it, Sara was momentarily stunned. Wondering if she had made the wrong decision coming here and demanding answers like this but Sandra pressed on. She seemed determined to tell the truth, to clear her conscience perhaps before she faced the final judgement.
"I posed as Laura and gave her up for adoption. At the time it seemed like the only thing I could do… your mother and I…we met up every year and that last time, that photograph I showed to you….I gave her the photo of Amy… the one with the pink bear. Your dad found it, the whole thing came out. I can only imagine the hurt he inflicted on her for her to…"
Sandra faded away but the words weren't needed. Sara had the whole picture in her mind now, she understood for the first time in her entire life she understood what had happened that day.
But the closure didn't bring her any of the peace she craved. If anything it painted a worse picture of her childhood than the one she had created for herself.
"What happened the last time you visited my Mother?"
A car pulled into the driveway, Sandra's body stiffened and doubt clouded her eyes. Grissom stood at the window, a small nod all the confirmation she needed that it was Alan returning home. Sara could feel tension filling the other woman's body, the stress seeping out of her pores as she looked at Sara with wide pleading eyes and a head shake. She was begging her not to make her answer.
"Please… I need to know"
Sara's desperate whispers filled the room and Sandra exhaled loudly before speaking in a small quivering voice.
"I lost contact with Amy's adoptive mother. I don't know what happened; she just stopped writing to me. I told Laura and she lost it. She said I stole her baby, that I took her away and I was trying to keep her from her… she… she got violent. I thought it was best if I stepped away"
"You didn't see her again" Sara stated sadly.
She knew how hard it was to be on the receiving end of her mother's vicious tongue when she was having a down day. She knew how hard it was to walk away even when you knew it was for the best for everyone involved. Grissom steadily crossed the room as the front door clicked open and Alan's body filled the doorway. The storm brewing in his eyes was almost physically painful as he looked between Sara and his mother.
Grissom had placed himself between her and Alan on purpose; he was shielding her from the inevitable negativity he would throw their way. Sara took a deep breath and stood from the sofa, turning to embrace Sandra gently.
"Thank you" she muttered "I'm sorry…it ended that way"
Sandra nodded, this time escorting them to the door herself with Alan acting as her shadow. Sara slipped into the passenger seat with a heavy sigh and pressed her head back against the headrest. She could feel the information buzzing around in her brain like bees in a hive. She had placed herself in her mother's shoes, imagined what it would be like and what she must have thought in her fogged mind when Sandra told her that Amy was lost to them.
Grissom didn't start the engine right away, he sat there beside her watching as she processed everything in silence the way she often did. She ignored his gaze and his gentle hand on her leg, she ignored the way he gently stroked her hair and moved his body closer to her, and she ignored his soothing whispers as she sobbed into his chest. She just clung to his body and found herself thankful for his embrace because she knew that if she hadn't had him to cling to then she would have been lost too. She was drowning under the truth and he was the only thing keeping her afloat.