| Any comments, suggestions or questions can be directed to the author. Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope you found something that you could enjoy. Disclaimer: I do not own anything in relation to C.S.I., Alliance Atlantic, CBS, William Petersen, Jorja Fox or any other characters contained herein... I just like playing with them now and then while stretching my writing muscles. And if you think there's any money to be gained by suing me, you're in for a horrible disappointment. |
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| LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY |
| Part 3 - Surf, Sand and Surprise Visitors |
| “Thanks for the lunch, Mom!” A flash of red hair and a trailing lab coat were all she saw when Stephanie lifted her gaze toward the sound as it disappeared through the garage door. She was still chuckling when her husband came ambling out of the library. “Am I to take it that the tornado that just whipped through here was our youngest son?” “That would be a yes… He got paged to cover another ER shift tonight.” She continued chopping the vegetables for a salad as she answered his light-hearted query. Thomas shook his head as he took a seat at the breakfast bar opposite her. “That kid has way too much energy.” He quirked his eyebrow and added, “Reminds me of another red-headed wonder.” “Nah… Bethie’s much worse than that.” She slyly tried to subvert his reference to her, but the sideways grin on her face gave her away. When she looked up at him, she knew it had not worked at all. His stubbly face was screwed up into a delighted grin, which only accentuated the smattering of silvery whiskers now taking up residence on his slowly aging face. As they settled back into their individual tasks, she was reminded of the number of years since their fateful meeting. She was still a fresh-faced teenager, off on her first big adventure away from home as she attended medical school in Los Angeles. Thomas was a recovering football hero trying to keep his head above water as they struggled through their first year of medical school. And all the years that followed, they really never strayed far from who they were back then. He was still a strong, stable and calming influence in her life, and she continued to inspire him to new heights with her energy, drive and zest for life. Despite the march of time, they remained true to themselves, and always to each other. Though the sharp color of her auburn hair had been dulled by the appearance of the occasionally increasing grays, and the lines of her face were beginning take permanent hold on her features, he still looked at her with those deep dark eyes that spoke to her of his love. Though his legs creaked and popped whenever he rose from a chair, and his midsection had begun to soften and expand with time, she still felt her breath hitch whenever he would tenderly lay his hands over her arms. As their youngest child would often report to anyone who would listen, they were the oldest love-struck teenagers alive. She was interrupted from her thoughts when Thomas turned the page in his medical journal to ask, “You think the kid would take offense if I told him he needed a haircut?” “I think he’d take more offense if you called him ‘kid.’” He laughed at their private joke. Their youngest son had grown up in the shadow of three older brothers, and then proceeded to join his father’s profession to boot. He was constantly fighting the stereotypes of the baby, and being thought of as the junior version of his father. “Very true… But what’s up with that hair?” It seemed strange to her that he would be fixating on Danny’s mop of curly red hair any longer. After all, the boy was technically a grown man. “Why are you so concerned about Danny’s hair? I would think you’d be more worried about the fact that it’s Friday night, and he’s already put in seventy six hours this week, but he’s still covering a twelve hour shift in the ER.” She dropped her chopping knife to the board and looked him dead on. “But that puts him over the eighty hour max for a seven day stretch… Who the hell authorized that?” He was pulling out his phone before she had a chance to answer. “Hello, let me speak to-” “THOMAS! Hang up that phone.” He stared at her with wide eyes, but was drawn from his shock by the voice on the other end of the line. “What? Oh, ah, nevermind… I’ll call back.” He closed the call and asked his wife, “Why did you do tha-” “You swore you wouldn’t interfere with anything at the hospital for him.” Thomas sunk in his seat at having been caught trying to break his own promise. “If you make that call, he’d never live it down. You know that.” “Sorry… It’s just, Carter and I worked so hard to change the structure of the internships and residencies that I hate to see it abused like that. I wasn’t even thinking about what my call would do to Danny.” Stephanie wiped her hands off on a nearby towel and rounded the counter to stand beside her husband. “He needs to figure this stuff out on his own, no matter how much he might benefit from your help.” She laid a hand on his shoulder and he nodded. “And I wouldn’t worry about the hair thing either.” Thomas looked up and found a wicked glint in her eyes. “It was a girl, wasn’t it?” He shook his head when she smiled. Stephanie scraped her fingertips over his stubbly face and said, “Some things are just genetic.” Their shared laughter was almost enough to mask the stampeding feet of their eldest son as he barreled down the stairs in a rush. He stopped cold once he saw his parents in an embrace. “Okay… I’m nearing thirty, and it’s still weird that you two do that.” He knelt down to tie his shoes and added, “Aren’t you two too old for that stuff anyway?” They laughed at his question, but as usual, Stephanie had the perfect comeback to end the conversation. “I don’t know… You’re Uncle Gil and Aunt Sara are still doing all right.” Michael stood up in a flash and his face showed exactly how he felt about that prospect. “Ew gross! And on that note, I’m late for the airport.” Thomas reached into his pocket and was about to throw him a set of keys when Michael produced a different set. “Mom already said I could take the Thing, but thanks anyway, Pop.” He turned for the garage and then had a second thought. “Hey, Mom? Are you sure you don’t want to go out for dinner? I don’t want you going to a lot of trouble or anyth-” “Quit arguing with me and go to the airport…” She looked at her watch and saw that it was already quarter to four. “You’ve only got thirty minutes to make it to McCarran, in rush hour traffic, on a Friday night.” He looked at his own watch and swore out loud as he raced for the door. “Has that kid ever been on time for anything?” Thomas stood up from his stool and kissed Stephanie on the forehead as he prepared to return to the library. “Not since he was born, I’m afraid.” Returning to their endeavors, they tried to keep busy as they waited for the arrival of their special guest. Neither one had spoken to the other about the development, but they both understood that Michael was an insanely private person, so the fact that he was bringing anyone home to meet them was a big deal. He had never brought anyone to the house before, and when she questioned him about it on a previous visit, she was surprised by his answer. Michael told her that their family was something he treasured, and he never wanted to cheapen its importance by bringing anyone home that he was not absolutely sure about, because it would not be fair to them, or the family. So, when he informed them that he had invited someone for the weekend, they were shocked. This was a very big deal. As Stephanie checked the roasting pan once more, she looked at her watch. It had been almost ninety minutes since Michael darted out through the garage, which meant that he would be returning shortly. She decided that immediate action was necessary and called out to her husband. “Thomas?! I need you to set the tab-” He snuck up beside her and kissed her cheek before she could finish bellowing the instructions. “You don’t have to yell, Babe.” She clutched a hand to her chest to contain her fright. “Jesus! Where’d you come from?!” “Sorry… I wanted to check on those new plants on the side of the house. Looks like the moth balls did the trick.” He nudged her out of the way and reached into the cupboard to retrieve the plates. “No more litterbox treatment?” “Not even a tuft of fur in the spines. Little buggers have finally gotten the clue.” His pride was evident in the wide grin on his broad face. “My husband…the great feline tamer of Summerlin. Be still my heart.” She gave him a mock gesture of gentility and fluttered her lashes to add to the joke. However, the joke was on her when he turned around and caught her in his arms. “Anything for my girl.” He then proceeded to rub his chin into the crook of her neck until she started to laugh uncontrollably. “I give!” He released her from his hold and proudly went back to work. “Anymore of that and I’m gonna have to explain why I’m wearing a scarf in July.” As he passed by her again, she bumped him with her hip and added, “And I haven’t had to do that since med school.” He wore a lopsided grin as he took the first plates into the dining room. Satisfied that everything was ready to go, Stephanie turned to reach into the refrigerator for the salad dressing. As she dug through the carefully capped carafes on the door, Thomas called out from the dining room. “You make it really hard to set the table with all this crap laying around.” She was suddenly reminded about her latest scrapbook project. “Shit!” The dressing all but forgotten for the moment, she rushed into the next room to survey the disaster. Over every square centimeter of the expansive table were countless family photos and a healthy supply of scrapbooking materials. Not until she started going through the mass of photographic evidence did she realize exactly how much time her family had spent at the beach over the years. Thomas began leafing through the photos as she surveyed the damage. “Man… For a bunch of people living in the desert, we sure go to the beach a lot.” He set the plates down when he found a scrapbook page that looked completed. “Wow!” He grabbed the page and took a closer look. “Honey, this is fantastic!” Stephanie moved to stand beside him so that she could see what he was talking about. |
| It was a picture of herself, Sara, Greg’s wife Kirsten, their good friend Sandi Phillips, Lilli and Greg’s oldest daughter Birget as they stood side by side, staring off at the horizon over the surf. With that picture, she was granted a view into her son’s future, and it gave her the tiniest glimpse into how the supposed black sheep of her family looked at the world around him. Giving him the camera for his birthday had been a last minute decision on her part. He had been tinkering around with an old camera he found in a drawer some weeks earlier, and delighted in the fact that he finally found something to allow him to connect with the world. Her little Piglet had been the source of great concern in the time leading up to that fateful trip. Jimmy was smaller than her other children, had suffered through intense bouts of respiratory ailments early in his life, and often seemed to feel like the odd-man out in most things with the family. He was the spitting image of his father, only in miniature, but even that made him stand out from the other kids. He had two tall, blonde, strong, athletic and outgoing older brothers. Even his little brother was taller than him by the age of five, and with his shock of deep red, curly hair, it only served to make Jimmy stand out even more. No, Jimmy’s saving grace had come in the form of his quiet, introspective, slightly obsessed cousin Max. Max was nearly a year younger than Jimmy, and still managed to get three grades ahead of her son, but the two shared a special connection over the years. Jimmy saw himself as Max’s protector in all things, even when Max grew taller than him by the age of thirteen, he was still making sure his “little cousin” was okay. They were good for each other. Max helped Jimmy when he struggled in school, and Jimmy often forced Max from living inside of his own head a little too much. Warrick often referred to them as Mutt and Jeff, because of their incredibly dissimilar appearances, and their unbreakable friendship. Stephanie was taken out of her thoughts as Thomas commented on one of the pictures. “I love that picture of Jimmy and Max together.” He put an arm around his wife’s back and added, “Mutt and Jeff ride the wild surf.” She smiled at her husband’s mention of Warrick’s little joke. Before they could get too far into the trip down memory lane, she heard the garage door open, and they both knew they had run out of time. Surveying the situation, Stephanie declared, “It’s useless… Let’s eat in the solarium?” “Good plan.” He dropped the page carefully back on the dining table and kissed his wife on the cheek. “I’ll go blast the chiller in there and set the table.” The change in location also meant that there would be a change in serving as well. So she went to the kitchen to prepare the salads herself, instead of hauling the big bowl out to the small table in the solarium. Before the twins left for college, they decided to give their mother a graduation present, and converted the barely used slab of patio into a fully enclosed solarium. They installed plant boxes throughout the room, and set up a watering system for her as well. The twins were old enough to have remembered visiting their grandmother’s garden in San Francisco, and they knew how much their own mother missed being able to garden, simply because she lived in the desert. They had even traveled all the way to San Francisco and back, in order to remove the sweet peas from the old house (with the current owner’s permission, of course) so that they could transplant them in the solarium for her. She was completely blown away by the care her boys had taken to provide her with a little space, and piece of her childhood. It also made their departure bittersweet, but in the end, she knew that they had managed to raise two fine young men to send out into the world. When Thomas returned to the kitchen, his task complete, both he and Stephanie looked to the garage door, and then their watches. Thomas was the first to speak. “They haven’t come in yet?” The moment the words left his lips, the door was flung open and a small man carrying several large bags came bursting into the house. “Hey, sorry for dropping in like this, but Emily had a last minute meeting with a client and couldn’t get me from the airport, so I just cabbed it over.” With great effort, he turned and somehow managed to lift his foot enough to push the door closed. “Cab fare to my place would’ve been a nightmare, and besides, Devon is having a slumber party tonight, so I figured I could just crash here. You guys don’t mind, right? Since Em was just bringing the whole crew out for the BBQ tomorrow anyway.” James O’Halleran found both of his parents staring blankly at him, and he was forced to wonder about the reason for their vacant looks. “Mom? Pop? Is everything okay?” His mother was the first to break the spell. “I’m sorry, Honey… Yes, everything is fine. We were just expecting someone else, and you hadn’t called, so we didn’t even know you were getting in today.” Stephanie and Thomas stepped forward to help their son with his cumbersome bags. “It’s good to see you, Jimmy.” “I was beginning to think I did something wrong again, with the way you guys were staring at me…” He stopped himself and then looked up at his father as the man helped him to remove the large duffle strap thrown over his shoulder. “But I did call… I talked to Danny-…” He shook his head in disgust when he realized what had happened, “Little ferret didn’t tell you I called, did he?” Thomas laughed at his son’s question and answered, “That would be a big no.” He turned to his wife and remarked, “And you thought Bethie was a phone hog?” “Ah, yeah… She could be on her cell, the land line and then I’d get a call on my cell from somebody trying to reach her at the same time, because she’d maxed out the lines on the other phones. That girl is the reason conference calls and multi-line phone systems were invented.” Once he was free of the bags, Stephanie stepped in and placed a kiss on her son’s cheek before drawing him into a hug. “You are welcome to crash here whenever you like, Jimmy, but we need to clear this crap out from in front of the door before your brother gets home.” “Screw him… Danny can trip over all of it for not telling you guys I called.” James winked at his father to show that he was only kidding, mostly. “Wrong brother…which is why we should get this stuff into the guest room, son.” Thomas walked off toward the back of the house with the large duffle and the smaller backpack. “Did Tammy finally kick Paddy out of the house for some peace and quiet, or what?” James picked up the remaining bags and headed in after his father. “Strike two… Good thing you only have three brothers, because you’d be out.” Stephanie retrieved the jacket he had dropped onto the floor and went to hang it up in the hall closet. “Now I know why you went with swimming instead of baseball.” As she was about to turn and head back into the kitchen, Stephanie was smacked in the back with the garage door. “Mom… Pop left the garage door open again and there’s a bun-.” Michael found the resistance to the door and stopped suddenly. “Oh god! I’m sorry, Mom… Are you okay?” He slipped in through the opening, careful not to push the door any further into his mother. “You got the most padded spot, so I should live.” She pushed aside her son’s concern immediately with her broad smile. “I’m sorry, Momma… I should have been more careful.” He looked her up and down to make sure she really was okay before he turned back to the garage and said, “Is there a reason Pop left a bunch of boxes in the middle of the garage, and can I move them to get the car in?” “Good Grief! How much stuff did your brother bring home, anyway?” Stephanie marched right into the garage to inspect the problem. “I’ll get ‘em, Mom…” Michael quickly followed behind her, confused by her response and worried that she would try to pick up the boxes herself. “They’re really heavy. Did Danny start packing bricks, or something?” Just as he suspected, she instantly bent down to lift one of the boxes out of the way. She looked around the garage and found a good spot for the box. As she walked to the bare corner, she said, “Danny’s at the hospital… These are the work of the Munchkin.” He grabbed a stack of the boxes to keep them out of her reach and followed her movements. “Jimmy?” “Yeah, he got back early and is spending the night.” She turned to find him right behind her. From inside the house she heard fast footfalls on the wood flooring and a holler came out. “I’ll get ‘em, Mom!” James and his father were outside in an instant, once they realized that Stephanie had gone into the garage. The last thing anyone wanted was for her to pick up a heavy box from the floor and hurt her back. When their youngest child was born, Stephanie suffered from some complications with the epidural, and it did a minor amount of nerve damage. The result was that she would occasionally get a shooting pain through her back and her legs would simply crumple beneath her. After several such episodes, they finally understood that they would happen most frequently when she tried to pick things up from the floor, especially if the items were heavy. As they all met around the last stack of boxes, they were joined by a fifth person. “Can I help?” Understanding flooded James’ mind as he saw the looks on the faces of his family. Not willing to wait on formalities, James put out his hand and offered, “Hi… I’m the midget younger brother, James. Nice to finally meet you.” “Thanks… Judging by the boxes from Kodak, I’m gonna take it you’re the photographer one?” James laughed and nodded his head. “That would be correct… And since my brother seems to have forgotten his manners, these are our parents.” As his father stuck out his hand in greeting, Michael finally snapped out of his stupor, and tried to recover his bearings while his father spoke. “I’m glad you were able to get away for a visit. We’ve been looking forward to this…for a while now.” Before his mother could begin to speak, Michael found his voice and moved around to stand in front of his family when he finally took control of the conversation. “Mom… Pop… Jimmy… I want to introduce you all to…” He paused for a moment and turned to look into the softest brown eyes he had ever known, and where he found the courage to finally say it. “…the one.” He squeezed the hand that was slipped into the one that hung nervously at his side. “Geoffrey, these are my folks.” |
| He was carefully examining the page she had created with some of the pictures of her uncle and his family at the beach over the years. Her favorite on that page was the one of her uncle standing next to the ice cream truck. Whenever they all went to the beach, they knew, without a doubt, that if Uncle Gil was nowhere to be found, he must have heard the bells from an ice cream truck. When the kids were younger, he usually had a little crowd with him as well. She also thoroughly enjoyed the picture of Sara and Lilli walking back to the parking area after a white water surfing trip in the mountains. To her, that picture epitomized the relationship between the mother and daughter. As alike as they both were, they were still individuals with their own way of doing things, even if they shared common goals. However, the picture that always captured her heart was one that her son Jimmy had taken when he was still very young. That one sat at the top of a stack of photos on the other pages of beach paper. |
| The continuing years of the Discovery Series storyline as the family gets ready for a big event. The family storyteller gathers up some photos and shares a perspective on the past. (including a "photo album" scrapbook) GSR/Yo!Bling/Etc. *Rated PG for Most Everyone. |