A Domesticated Delko
Catherine Willows was on vacation in Miami. Her job as a CSI in Las Vegas was stressful and though tourists viewed the city as a vacation destination when it came to her vacation time, she was going elsewhere. She was in a grocery store picking up basic essentials when noticed someone she recognized at the other end of the aisle.
Eric Delko.
Eric was a CSI in Miami, she had occasion to work with him and Miami-Dade Crime Lab on a handful of interstate cases. But she wasn't used to seeing this Eric. A domesticated one. There was a little girl with dark hair in the front of the cart. The child was eating a jumbo chocolate chip cookie from the bakery and had crumbs on her face. The two were chatting away, Catherine could plainly hear her calling Eric "papa" She knew Eric didn't have to have gotten married but she hadn't heard he had become a father. The girl looked about three years old, four at the most.
Eric recognized her as she came up next to him in the aisle.
"Catherine! Hey. What brings you to town?"
The little girl turned her head and looked at Catherine. Catherine was surprised by the child's resemblance to her father.
"Just vacation. I have two weeks off. Who's this lil' one?" Catherine asked, looking at Chloe.
Eric smiled. "This is my daughter, Chloe. Chloe, this is my friend Catherine."
"Hi Chloe," Catherine said to the little girl. "How old are you?"Chloe held up three fingers."Wow. You're a big girl, aren't you?"
Chloe smiled. Calleigh wasn't with the two in the supermarket. It was Saturday and Eric decided to let her sleep while he and Chloe did the shopping.
"You've been up to a lot since the last time I saw you," Catherine said.
Eric laughed. "Yeah. You might say. This one came along, Calleigh and I got married and we're expecting another one in 'bout seven months."
"Wow. You two have been busy!"
At home, Calleigh was just getting her breakfast when the doorbell rang.
"Certified mail for Eric or Calleigh Delko," the courier in a forest green uniform said.
Calleigh signed for the envelope, closed the door and walked to the the contents of the envelope after she opened it tears breamed Calleigh's eyes.
Chloe's adoption papers.
The judge had approved the adoption, providing the three-year-old with a new birth certificate listing Calleigh as the child's and Eric had been married just over three months. They knew she had become pregnant in the two weeks before they got married, maybe even on the four-day trip they spent at Paloma and Gil's cabin. Although a set of papers she couldn't yet read and an amended birth certificate didn't mean a row of beans to Chloe, it meant so much to Calleigh to finally be acknowledged as Chloe's mother. It made her feel secure that if heaven forbid something happened to her husband, she wouldn't lose her first child. Pavel and Chlorinda told Calleigh for three years that neither they or their daughters would try to gain custody of Chloe if something happened to their son. Calleigh was the child's mother, plain and simple.
"Mommy, we're home!" Chloe called out as she ran into the living room.
Calleigh smiled as her daughter jumped into her lap.
"Daddy got you a cookie, didn't he?" she said, kissing the child's nose.
Chloe nodded. "A big one!" She said. "What's dat?" She said, spotting the papers on the table.
"These are papers mommy got from a judge saying I'm your mommy so everybody knows," Calleigh said.
"Oh," Chloe said.