Wherefore
Chapter 4
Grissom drives me home, the silence between us riding shotgun. As I'm about to open the car door, he says my name hesitantly, a delicate whisper of a prayer that I've heard all too often. I turn back as always, waiting expectantly.
"Um. never mind," he mumbles.
My heart is sore, just from looking at his dejected face. He does this every few months. He'll work up the nerve to say something to me, then lose it a second later. I reach out and put my hand on his shoulder gently, just for a moment.
"It's okay. I'll see you tomorrow."
"So. she's in there now?"
"Who?"
He's staring at my apartment building. "Julie."
"Oh, yeah." I'd actually forgotten. "Yeah, I guess they both are."
"Both?"
"Juliette and Ian."
When I say the baby's name, his gaze shifts back to his hands. "Oh. Right."
"Do you. want to go say hi?"
"No," he replies immediately, as if I'm insane for suggesting such a thing.
"Okay, but you're missing out. He's adorable."
"I'm sure he is, it's just. no."
"All right." I'm about to get out of the car when he stops me again.
"I'm sorry the trip wasn't more fruitful."
"It was fine," I assure him. "We had no way of knowing whether Collingswood was a suspect."
Grissom nods.
"Plus," I add, "I got to find out what you were like when you were younger. That was interesting."
"What do you mean?"
Leaning my head back against the car seat, I smile sadly. "The way everyone in the LA lab interacted with you, it was kind of obvious that you were different back then. I'm envious of them."
"I'm the same person now," he scoffs. "I haven't changed."
"No? So you still joke around with all the lab techs?
"Sara." He pinches the bridge of his nose, a sure sign of an impending headache.
"Still have no problem playing Romeo to a coworker?"
"Stop."
"Or does she have to be named Juliette for that?"
"I said stop."
It kills me to hear the resignation in his voice. When I met him, he wasn't quite like he'd been in LA, but he was spirited and engaging. Nicky likes to tell me my spark has gone out, but Grissom's dimmed long before mine. I don't know why, or if it had something to do with something I did, but it kills me.
"I'm sorry," I say finally, and he looks surprised. "That was unfair. It must be hard for you, seeing her again, finding out she has a son named Ian, investigating her mother's death."
"She liked me," he says hoarsely.
"Who?"
"Her mother. Josephine."
I nod sympathetically. "A lot of doors are being thrown open that you expected to remain closed." He's hanging on my every word. "If you need to talk about it."
Oh yeah, I lost him there. He turns away and heaves a sigh.
"If you do," I continue, "I'm here. I'm. I'm always here."
When he doesn't respond, I grab my bags and head up to my apartment, unlocking the door and throwing the keys on the counter. Juliette's sitting on my sofa, with baby Ian asleep on her shoulder and a forensics journal open in her lap.
"Welcome home," she says softly. I can't remember the last time I came home to anyone.
Setting my bags on the floor, I tiptoe over to the couch and sit down next to her, sneaking a peek at Ian. "I've only been gone for a day, and he looks bigger."
She laughs. "They do that at this age."
"What are you reading?"
"It's an article on forensic fire investigation. I hadn't realized how much technology has advanced since I left the field."
Ian stirs a little, and she kisses his forehead gently, murmuring soothing noises. It's strange, watching a domestic scene unfold in my home. Especially when Juliette looks so much like me.
"How was your trip? Any leads?"
"Maybe. We'll see how it pans out."
She nods, knowing I can't tell her any more. "How's Gil doing?"
"Um. okay," I reply hesitantly.
"He's still angry with me."
I don't bother denying it.
"Guess I should have expected it," she says quietly.
"It didn't end well?"
"No."
"What happened?"
Juliette sighs. "We were together for all the wrong reasons - physical attraction, love of the job, understanding the toll it takes on you. I think that's how everything started. We transferred our passion for the job to each other."
"Did, uh. did he make the first move?" I'm just torturing myself at this point.
"No, I actually asked him out."
"Progressive," I tease.
She smiles. "Again, it was born of passion. We were at a crime scene and a pipe bomb went off. Gil was hit with debris, it left a nasty scar over his eyebrow."
I know that scar. I've pictured hundreds of scenarios of how he got it. This wasn't one of them.
"I took him to the hospital," she continues, "and after he got stitches, I asked him out to dinner. The bomb had scared us both, and we ended up clinging to each other all night."
Blinking away the mental image of the two of them in bed, I ask, "Did you leave him for Robert?"
She nods. "I'd met him through my family's business, and we hit it off right away. Eventually I realized that I needed someone outside of my profession. Gil didn't take it well, to say the least. Kept fixating on the point that Robert was younger and richer than he was. Which hurt, of course, since neither of those things factored into me choosing him. Gil ended up resigning, and moving away."
"And then you got married."
"I did."
"And had Ian."
"Eventually, yes."
I watch her carefully. "Does Robert know you named his son after another man?"
Juliette sighs and stands up, walking over to the corner and putting Ian in his crib. "There's a lot of things my husband doesn't know," she says cryptically, walking back to sit next to me.
"Like what?"
"Like that I know he's been sleeping with his secretary." At my look of dismay, she laughs mirthlessly. "I know, it's such a cliché, right? I was nine months pregnant, and he called home to say he had to work late again, so I thought I'd surprise him by bringing by dinner. I opened the door to his office and he had Linda bent over his desk. They were making so much noise that they didn't even hear me come in."
"What did you do?"
"I left. And on the car ride home, my water broke. By the time I made it to the hospital, I was in full-blown labor. I was all by myself when the baby was born, and all I could think about was Gil, and how we'd always planned to name our first son Ian."
I've never been particularly good at consoling people, but I take her hand gently. "I'm so sorry, Juliette."
"It happens," she says dully. "God, it happens all the time, I just never thought it would happen to me. This. this isn't what I wanted to be, who I wanted to be. I love my son, he's the most important person in my life, but I'm not a stay-at-home mom. I'm not put together that way." She shakes her head. "I look at you, and I'm envious."
"Of me?" I almost laugh, thinking she's kidding, but her expression is serious.
"You're making a difference every day with your job, getting criminals off the streets. Plus you're single, beautiful. you could have any man you want."
"Not any man," I mumble.
"And you get to work with Gil. I miss that. I miss the look he'd get when he was trying to figure out a puzzle." She smiles wistfully, and so do I. I love that look. "How long have you worked with him?"
"About five years," I reply. "We met two years before that, at one of his seminars at Berkeley. Then one of his CSI's was killed on the job, and he asked me to come out and investigate her murder."
"Why'd you stay?" Her eyes are watching me shrewdly, and I can tell she knows.
"The Celine Dion shows, I'm just such a fan," I deadpan, and she laughs, letting me off the hook.
"Ah, yes, I hear she's the new Wayne Newton. We'll have to take in a show sometime."
"Yes, let's do that."
"Because, you know, I need to hear 'My Heart Will Go On' in concert at least once before I die."
"Oh, you should see how hard she pounds her chest when she sings it."
"Sounds moving."
"Brings me to tears every time."
We both smile, and then her face grows sad. "I miss him."
"Wayne Newton?"
"Gil," she says, rolling her eyes. "Is he. happy?"
The question throws me off guard. "Happy?"
"Does he have, you know. someone special in his life?"
I avert my eyes again, wishing she weren't looking at me so keenly. "Grissom, uh. works a lot."
"Too much?"
"Sometimes."
She nods. "Back in LA certain cases rubbed him wrong. Usually the ones that hit too close to home, like when this elderly deaf woman was murdered. He worked 72 straight hours, until we caught the guy. I kept telling him that he was too close to the case, that he was acting like it was his mother." She looks at me curiously. "You know his mom's deaf, right?"
"Ah, no, actually," I say, feeling myself blush. "Grissom's not much of a talker when it comes to his personal life. He told me once that when work is tough on him, he rides roller coasters."
"Yeah, he did that back then, too. What kind of cases bother him here?"
I immediately think of a victim, carefully posed on a bathroom floor, in a house decorated with hundreds of butterflies. A murdered nurse, who looked just like me. who left her lover for a younger man... and I'm wondering if maybe I'm not the one Grissom saw when he looked at Debbie Marlin.