But I've been unable
To put you down
I'm still learning things I ought to know by now

--Vertical Horizon, You’re a God

As Sara stared at the assortment of botany-related books on the shelves in front of her, she could feel Grissom hovering some fifteen feet away, his large shopping bags hanging from either arm while he kept his eyes glued to her. Did he think she’d make a break for it? That she’d run screaming for the hills and slit her wrists? Though Sara was well aware his intentions were good, it didn’t feel too comforting to know that the only reason he had his eyes on her was because he thought she had lost her marbles. There was a time when she’d catch him watching her intently with a hunger in his stare that wasn’t present anymore. She used to get a chill up her spine when she’d see him looking at her, knowing his thoughts were probably bordering on carnal. That passion was gone, replaced with a sadness she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Perhaps he was sad for what they had lost, or maybe he was sad that he ever taken a chance on her.

She sighed and refocused her attention on the books in front of her. Her fingers skimmed the spines until she settled on a thick, shiny text. Sara pulled it off the shelf and opened the cover, delighting in the musical crack that accompanied the motion. She had developed an intense love of new textbooks in college. Sara mostly had used books while in school, but on the rare occasion when she could afford to buy a book new, she coveted the purchase.

She savored the clean scent -- paper and glue -- and the smooth, unmarred pages of the beautiful book in her hands. Her fingers played over the different textures until they came to a stop on the price. Sara frowned. It was over two hundred dollars. Six months ago, she wouldn’t have blinked at the price. Some women bought shoes. Some women hoarded designer bags. A book was a book, and so long as it interested Sara, it was worth the money. But now…

Grissom would offer to pay, and being the gentleman that he was, would probably not accept any repayment. And on the off chance that he did…the currently jobless Sara didn’t exactly have two-hundred dollars to spend willy-nilly on something she could pick up at the library for free. She had money saved, but California wasn’t exactly cheap, and if word got out that she had walked away from her old job under mysterious circumstances, getting a spot at a decent crime lab could prove very difficult.

Not that she was even sure she wanted to still be a criminalist anymore. It had been her passion for so long, and now it wasn’t. It was as simple as that. Like a light switch, the need to go to work, to process scenes and collect evidence -- it was all gone, shut off. Maybe she had been burning out for a long time, and maybe her sweet time with Grissom masked her struggle from even herself, or maybe it really just was almost dying that did it. It left her stripped of everything but her love for Grissom, and unfortunately even that could not trump the fear embedded deep within her soul, could not erase the past which still haunted her.

Sara put back the book and sighed. She walked to Grissom who furrowed his brow in confusion.

“They didn’t have what I wanted.” She headed for the exit without looking back.

They returned home without another word. When they entered the front door, Lady trotted towards them, eager for some attention. “I’ll take her out,” Sara said.

“Okay. I’ll get her food and water ready,” Grissom supplied, putting his bags down.

“No. You go do what you need to do,” she said, eyeing his bags of bedding. “I’ll take care of her food and water.”

She limited herself to an hour outside. Lady enjoyed the crisp air while Sara swallowed back tears. The last time she had set off into the unknown had been when she left to go to college, but youthful exuberance had trumped any fear she was having about moving on to the next stage of her life. She was two decades older now. Gone was the relentless ambition. In its wake was a broken heart and the knowledge that her own deficiencies had caused it. She wasn’t suffering because some callous man had treated her badly. No, Sara had to live with the bitter fact that she hadn’t been good enough; too much had happened in her life to let her be happy.

She had to accept it and, somehow, survive. Living the full life she had dreamed of was out of the question. Right now, Sara hoped she’d be able to find some decent work to support herself and the dog, who she’d no doubt be taking. She wasn’t going to stick Grissom with a living remnant of their failed relationship. He didn’t need the added trouble. Sara wanted him to go on and live his life to the best of his abilities. Though it hurt, she wanted him to forget her. She didn’t want him to wallow as she was. He was too good. If he managed to get back on track, to be the man he was before she came to Las Vegas, somehow that would be enough.

It would have to be.

She sighed as the watched Lady sniff the edges of someone else’s lawn. There had to be a library somewhere, hopefully within walking distance. Sara didn’t want to depend on Grissom to drive her everywhere. She was eager to escape into some newer botany books, to see where up-to-date research had taken the field. It seemed like a frivolous pursuit, but there were twenty-four hours in every day, and those hours went by very, very slowly when there were no cases to work or crime scenes to canvass.

And she needed access to the internet.

A job wasn’t going to come looking for her. And looking in the local paper was out of the question. She wasn’t going to settle down in Grissom’s hometown once she left his old house. She didn’t want to reside in the greater Los Angeles area on the off chance she’d ever run into him again.

San Francisco was out of the question as well.

Too many memories.

There were other cities, and though the economy wasn’t great, she had enough of an education and enough work experience to at least look good on paper. If a future employer were to ask for a reference…well…she’d have to hit up her old boss at the San Francisco Crime Lab, because there was no way she’d make Grissom have any part in this. He would be relieved of his duties to her.

When Sara returned home, she fed the dog and retreated to her room to read the textbook she had begun earlier in the day. Though it would have been nice to have a new book to compare it to, the old one sufficed. She rationalized that a strong understanding of the history of the subject would give her a good foundation for further investigation.

The next day she woke to the sound of Grissom’s furniture being delivered. Sara stayed out of the way and in her room, absorbed in yet another botany book from John Grissom’s collection. It was mid-afternoon before the her stomach rumbles urged her to venture into the kitchen for a bite to eat. The house was quiet, and Grissom’s bedroom door was closed.

She raided the fridge for something easy to put together. There was enough lettuce for a salad and a few slices of whole wheat bread left. They’d have to go shopping soon. He probably wouldn’t trust her enough to leave her there while he went to the grocery store, or, God forbid, let her take the rental car and go by herself. She ate standing up at the counter, annoyed at the world. After washing the dishes in the sink, Sara went back to the fridge for a bottle of water.

The light didn’t go on.

She frowned. The bulb must’ve burned out. Sara reached her hand into the refrigerator for the water and stopped suddenly. The whirring motor of the ancient appliance was silent.

“Shit,” she said to herself. The thing was broken.

Abandoning her beverage, Sara walked up to Grissom’s closed bedroom door and knocked.

“Come in.”

She opened the door to the 21st century. The bed linens she had thought looked plain and uninviting at the department store seemed luscious on Grissom’s new bed. The only other furniture pieces were the nightstands and a tall dresser, on top of which sat the crate of memorabilia he had kept from his old room. The walls were bare.

“It looks…great.”

“Thank you,” he said quickly. “Are you okay? Do you need something?”

“No, I…well…I think I broke your fridge.”

Grissom raised his brows. “What? Did the light go off?”

“And the motor.”

Two hours later, Grissom was on his knees in the middle of the kitchen, hands covered in grease as he examined the inner workings of a forty-year-old refrigerator. “It’s shot,” he sighed, absentmindedly scratching his cheek with a dirty hand, leaving a dark smudge the size of a quarter.

Sara nervously shifted from one foot to the other. The thing had worked fine for decades. His father had used that fridge, had probably raided it for a midnight snack every now and then, or reached in for a pair of Cokes to share with his son. “But can’t you call someone to fix it? I thought you said you had them serviced…”

Grissom winced at the pain in his knees as he got up off of the kitchen floor. He reached for a towel and began fruitlessly wiping the grease off his hands. “Nothing lasts forever, Sara.”

TBC…