Disclaimer: Characters contained within do not belong to me.

Author's Notes: Everyone still floating on the high from THE episode? I know I am;) Enjoy and thank you for everything.

I Loved Him First

by Kristen Elizabeth

Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing. -Toni Morrison, Beloved

I was the first woman in his life, but I certainly wasn't the last.

From the moment I woke up in the hospital and saw his little red face, lost in a sea of blankets, I loved him. Oh, I loved him with my whole heart and soul. He was perfect. He was my Gilbert.

I could still hear certain frequencies back then and his first cries of hunger were like music to my failing ears. For the rest of my life, I could instantly and vividly recall the shrill sound of his wails. It was the only time I would ever hear my son's voice. By the time he learned to talk, I was completely deaf.

I had my son's undivided affections for five and a half very short years. Women, especially deaf married mothers, didn't work in those days, so I spent all of my time at home with Gil. We did everything together-baking cookies, washing clothes, watching soap operas, gardening.

Every day, we took a walk around the block and as he got older, Gil would let himself run further and further ahead of me on his endless quest for bugs. But there was still a part of him that got anxious when too much space separated us. He would come running back to me on those chubby bow-legs, proudly displaying his latest catch.

But eventually it was time to send him to school. I packed his lunch, helped him put on his brand new clothes and tried to comb down his unruly curls, all the while fighing back tears. When the school bus came for him, it nearly broke my heart when he eagerly boarded, without so much as glance back at me.

I love you, I signed to him when his beaming face appeared at one of the square windows.

Gil just waved and the bus lurched off, taking my baby away.

When he returned six hours later, he was in love.

Her name was Miss Evans and it was her first year teaching kindergarten; I figured she was no more than five years younger than me. She had pretty blonde hair that she wore in a modest ponytail and what would have been a perfect smile if not for the slightest gap between her two front teeth.

"Gil is a very special child." She actually spoke to me and not the translator who had come in for our parent-teacher conference; I appreciated that more than she would ever know. "He's extremely bright and he's already reading on a first-grade level." Miss Evans paused for a second. "I do have some concerns about how he fits in with the other children, though."

Is he causing trouble? I asked with my hands.

Miss Evans shook her head after the translator finished speaking. "Oh, no...nothing like that. He...well, he doesn't seem interested in talking to them at all. There's a big ant hill on the playground and that's where he spends recess. Just sitting next to it, watching the ants. I worry that eventually his classmates will notice how he separates himself from them. And kids can be very cruel, Mrs. Grissom."

I took what she said to heart and spent many sleepless nights fretting over her words. Gil, fortunately, was oblivous to any of our worries. As far as he was concerned, Miss Evans knew everything about everything. She was the sunlight in his world and I was just the woman who made him finish all the peas on his plate.

Miss Evans got married that spring and left the school. My little boy was crushed until his father took him on a trip to Redwood Forest. He came back with a huge preying mantis that he had captured and named Spot. Miss Evans was never mentioned again.

The first time he mentioned Nicole Daley and how she liked ladybugs, I was immensely relieved that he'd finally found a friend. His second grade teacher, Mrs. Stock, was much older than Miss Evans and far more blunt in her assessment of my son.

"He's a loner, Mrs. Grissom. The other children call him names. Creepy Gil is their current favorite. It doesn't help that he is so much smarter than most of them. Frankly, I'm surprised he hasn't started getting into fights, but it may just be a matter of time."

Now I had new worries keeping me up at night, namely the fear of seeing my only child beaten up and broken down.

But Nicole Daley gave me hope. Maybe Gil wasn't a loner. Maybe Mrs. Stock was just a mean old lady who didn't understand that being different wasn't always a bad thing.

Suddenly, though, everything became about Nicole. Nicole's favorite food was peanut butter and jelly, so Gil started asking for peanut butter and jelly. Nicole read Nancy Drew, so Gil read Nancy Drew, although he had enough of a sense of self-preservation to hide the books behind the covers from his Hardy Boys mysteries.

"It's his first real crush, Betty," my husband told me after Gil told us he needed more allowance in order to buy a Beatles record. "It'll pass before you know it."

One day, about four months into Nicole-mania, I was dressing for a party at the university when I noticed that my mother's wedding ring was missing from its usual place in my jewelry box. Three days later, after I'd turned the house upside down and shed more tears than I cared to admit, my eight year-old son sheepishly admitted that he'd given the ring to Nicole.

I'm sorry, Mom, he signed and from the look on his face, I knew he was telling the truth.

Honestly, I was just happy the ring hadn't been lost, but I asked him, Why did you do it?

Because you can't ask a girl to marry you without giving her a ring.

Gil returned the ring to me the very next afternoon. I never found out what Nicole said when he asked for it back, but his eyes were red, like he'd been trying not to cry for hours. That night, I discovered the Beatles record and the Nancy Drew books in the trash can. But he still asked for peanut butter and jelly for lunch the next day.

Men, after all, have needs.

It was another nine years before I had competition again. After my husband passed away, Gil and I only had each other. And while I never asked for or even wanted him to give up any moment of his fleeting childhood for my benefit, I won't lie and say that I wasn't a little bit glad that he chose to be at home so much.

He turned seventeen that August and he had already decided that after graduation, he would live at home and commute to UCLA, a plan that suited me just fine.

Then Patty came along. I didn't like Patty. Gil met her during a tour of the campus for prospective students. She was an older woman, even if it was only by a year, a sociology major and a budding feminist. And while I was all for women's liberation, and was even considering taking some classes myself when Gil started college, I wasn't about to burn my brassieres or stop shaving my legs.

But something about her captivated Gil. I never understood what, though, because when Patty was around, my extremely smart and highly educated son became a drooling mess of hormones. Did he actually like the way she ordered him around? It baffled me.

She's really great, Mom. You just don't know her like I do.

I can't say for sure, but I think my son lost his virginity in the backseat of Patty's Volkswagon. Maybe it was a good thing she was a feminist; I slept easier knowing that she was most likely on the Pill. I wasn't ready for grandchildren and I never would be if she was their mother.

Patty never directly talked to me. In fact, I think my condition might have actually repulsed her, as if deafness was contagious. Women of the world, unite...unless you can't hear.

Fortunately for me, Patty liked to entertain other men in the backseat of her car. Gil was too angry and, frankly, too private to tell me the whole story, but from what I gathered, she admitted to cheating on him and she wasn't even sorry about it.

He was too old for hugs and kisses and cookies, so I poured us both a very short glass of Scotch and we sipped in silence.

If Gil didn't lose his virginity to Patty, then it probably happened when he was in collge. I knew from taking classes with them that girls had changed since my day. Free love had turned into casual sex and no one seemed to care about waiting until marriage anymore.

A mother tries not to think about such things, and yet I wasn't enough of a prude to imagine that Gil was living like a monk. He had grown into a very handsome young man with curls and blue eyes and a cleft chin that reminded me an old movie star. Even if he could be cool and standoffish with his peers, surely some girls would have put up with the stories of his road-kill autopsies in order to spend time with him.

But they must not have mattered much to Gil because he didn't bring anyone home to meet me until he was twenty-six and he met Marie in Minneapolis. I had never been thrilled about his choice to take an internship halfway across the country, but if my son was determined to work with the dead...even after earning all those degrees in biology, the study of life...then at least something good came out of it.

Marie was sweet. Petite with dark hair and innocent eyes. Clearly, she adored Gil and claimed to have fallen for him the moment they met at the coffee shop where she worked. It was like she was the polar opposite of Patty. Gil was the sun in her world and I admit I found that refreshing. My son deserved a good woman.

I like her, I told him after Marie had gone to bed on Christmas Eve. Gil was setting up a makeshift bed on the couch. There would be no hanky-panky under my roof until I saw a wedding ring. Is she the one?

Gil frowned. He hated personal questions, but asking them was my perogative as his mother. It's not that simple.

And it wasn't. By Valentine's Day, he stopped talking about Marie. All he would say in his letters when I asked what happened was that she had a lot of problems.

I've never been good with people, Mom, he wrote. Marie's going through a lot and I can't be the one to hold her hand during it. She deserves better.

It was the first time I had ever been truly disappointed in my son.

I moved to Las Vegas because the city boasted one of the best deaf colleges in the country and I wanted to teach there.

Gil moved to Las Vegas because of Lilah.

He liked to say that his sudden interest in the city was solely based upon the fact that their forensics unit was considered second only to the FBI itself, but I knew better. Yes, Gil wanted to work in the crime lab...but he also wanted to be with Lilah.

He was thirty-three and he'd spent the past few years cutting up corpses and writing papers on dung beetles. I wanted him to settle down and start a family and if it happened to be in the same town where I was working, then so be it!

But Lilah wasn't right for him and Gil should have known that. I certainly knew, from the moment I met her. First of all, she had a mobile telephone that she carried wherever she went. Being a lawyer meant that her clients had to be able to reach her any time, any place.

At least, that's what she claimed. Truthfully, I think she just liked how important she looked lugging that heavy phone around.

But she was important to the most important person in my life, so I tried to find common ground with her. Our communication barrier was hard enough, but when we were able to share our thoughts, I quickly realized that Lilah cared about exactly two things: money and herself.

I held my tongue until she started asking Gil for things. A purse here, an expensive dinner there. I knew Gil wasn't making much at the lab, but he never said no to her. It wasn't until years later that I learned he was playing high-stakes poker in order to afford his girlfriend.

When it ended, it was quick, but not painless.

She met someone else, Gil told me.

Who?

Gil avoided my eyes. No idea.

Don't lie to me.

It took him a second to sign the man's name. I only knew who he was because Gil had talked about him before. Ecklie was another new forensic investigator at the lab and a thorn in Gil's side even before he started dating Lilah.

Not too much later, Lilah and Ecklie married. Eight years later she divorced him and took up with a local politician. Gil found a home on the graveyard shift and, as far as I know, never acknowledged that he had ever shared anything with Conrad Ecklie.

I was just glad she was out of his life. Still, he needed someone. He was becoming way too comfortable with the dead.

There weren't a terribly lot of attractive women who had chosen to go into forensics, but five years later, one magically appeared at Gil's lab, like an answer to my prayers.

Despite what her previous profession was, I don't think I would have minded if Gil had fallen in love with Catherine Willows. She was beautiful and vivacious and she certainly would have turned his life upside down in one way or another.

Unfortunately, she was already married by the time they met. But that didn't stop Gil from talking about her whenever we had dinner or lunch.

I've never had anyone catch on so fast. I could always tell when he was excited; his signing got fast and a tad bit sloppy. She has a brilliant mind, but it works differently than other people in the lab. They see science. Catherine sees people.

But you always say that people lie and evidence doesn't, I reminded him.

Gil was a few years away from forty, but he still frowned like he did when he was a little boy and he didn't have the answer to a question. I can't explain it. She just understands human nature and a big part of our job...bigger than I realized...is being able to read a suspect like we read a room.

If she wasn't married, would you...

He cut me off with a dismissive wave. It's not like that. I value her mind too much for that.

But when he invited Catherine and her young daughter to dinner after she filed for divorce from her husband, I saw the way he looked at her very shapely backside.

Seemed like he might have valued more than just her mind.

I am convinced than men and women have a point when they can either become friends or become more, and once one path is chosen, it is almost impossible to go back and try the other path. Catherine became one of the women Gil's life, but I know in my heart that they never slept together or even got close to doing so.

I didn't mind. Gil had made a friend for life and that was enough for me.

He just needed to look outside the lab for his soulmate.

I met Julia Holden when she started working as an adjunct professor at the college. She was educated, beautiful, generous, dedicated and fluent in sign language. Everything I wanted in a daughter. I invited her to lunch and before we were even through with the meal, I knew I was going to fix her up with Gil.

He needed a distraction from his one-sided crush on his co-worker.

To my great relief, Gil and Julia cooperated with my amatuer matchmaking and agreed to go on a blind date. I was sure that I would see them married within a year or two.

Well, they did connect. And Gil seemed happy. At least, he stopped talking about Catherine Willows and the drama that encompassed her life.

But there was something missing whenever I saw Gil and Julia together. It was like the picture they presented was pretty, but ever so slightly out of focus. They could have married and had a perfectly average life together. They might have even had children if they'd both set aside their work long enough to raise them.

Still, they wouldn't have been happy. The marriage wouldn't have thrived. Julia never liked the bugs and the frozen blood and the case files that were such a huge part of my son's life. When they briefly talked about moving in together, she told him in no uncertain terms that anything related to the lab would be unwelcome in their home.

How can you stand to be around so much death? I saw her ask him one night after dinner at my house. It's like you're only happy when someone dies. It's creepy!

I wanted to run into the room to comfort him, but Gil had just turned forty. He didn't need his mother butting into his business...well, more than I already had. He was capable of taking care of his own heart.

What I do is important, Julia, he signed back, his movements rapid and jerky. I solve crimes. I give the dead a voice. I help bring closure to families and friends. How can you stand there and judge my job because you're uncomfortable with it?

When Julia threw up her hands and stalked away, I knew it was over. With Julia went my last hope of ever seeing my son married. I said goodbye to the imaginary grandchildren I'd created in my mind and woke up to a world where mean Mrs. Stock's words suddenly seem prophetic.

My Gil was just a loner.

I'm a old lady. I have a lot of memories, some bad, but most good. I've lost no more of them than the average person, but for the life of me, I cannot remember the first time Gil talked about Sara Sidle.

It almost seems like she was always there, even though I know they didn't meet until 1998, when he gave a lecture in San Francisco. They talked in emails for two years before he asked her to come to Las Vegas.

That's when I knew she was something different. Gil had chased women, dumped women, lost women and pushed women away, but he had never invited one into his life so boldly.

It was painfully obvious to anyone who was ever in the same room as the two of them that Gil and Sara were attracted to each other. They stood close together, even when there was plenty of space all around them. They laughed at each other's jokes. They had the same taste in books. Most importantly, they were constantly sneaking peeks at each other, as if to confirm that they were each still there.

But Gil is stubborn, a trait people claim came from me. If it was my genes at work, then I owe Sara six years of apologies.

I admit, it took awhile for me to warm up to Sara once they started dating. She was a little bit awkward, pretty, but not in a conventional way, and she had an opinion about everything. I suspected that she was slightly intimidated by me and was perhaps trying to overcompensate for that feeling by asserting herself. In retrospect, I really should have tried harder to get to know her right away.

But I had to make sure she was worth the risk to Gil's career. He had worked too hard for too long and it would have been a travesty if he'd lost anyone's respect because he was mixing business with pleasure.

So, they kept their relationship private to my relief. Until she was kidnapped.

Any mother will tell you that seeing your child in pain is torture. Well, I can tell you that seeing your child in torture over someone's else's pain is just as bad. I didn't see Gil for days following Sara's rescue in the desert. When I finally did venture to the hospital with flowers for her and a hot meal for him, I found my son sitting next to his sleeping, sunburnt, half-broken girlfriend, holding her hand and gently stroking it.

I swallowed heavily and knocked on the door. Gil turned his head towards me; his eyes were wet with tears he hadn't bothered holding back.

He wasn't willing to let go of her hand, so he couldn't sign, but he spoke clearly, so I could read his lips. "They say she will be fine."

Of course she will. I set the flowers down with the others that had been left for her. Have you eaten today?

Gil lifted his shoulders, like it didn't matter. "I almost lost her, Mom," he said after a long minute of just staring at Sara's bruised face. He mumbled his next words. I'm not certain, but I believe he said, "I can't ever lose her."

But he did. Not even a year later, Sara was gone. She picked up and left only weeks after Gil asked her to marry him, this time with my permission and blessing.

I don't think that even having my mother's ring when he proposed would have stopped her. She was just as stubborn as my son.

I wanted Gil to move on. Perhaps he could give it another try with Julia. Or Catherine...she was still available. There was even a woman named Heather that he briefly mentioned once. Surely one of them could have replaced the empty hole Sara left behind.

Gil was just over fifty. I was facing down my seventy-second birthday. This was it. Just as we had been immediately after his father's death, it was me and Gil. I was the woman in his life and it didn't please me in the least.

My nights became sleepless again, because as much as I adored my son, I wanted to see him happy. And he wasn't. He was miserable.

When he took me out to dinner and announced that he was retiring from CSI, there was a hint of a sparkle in his eyes. I figured it was the thrill of adventure and possibility. I had no idea yet that he was planning to leave not just the lab, but the city itself.

What will you do? I asked him.

Travel. Visit the rainforest again. Costa Rica first.

I tried to be enthusiastic and unselfish. I'd had Gil almost exclusively for fifty years; it was time to share him with the world. Why Costa Rica?

Because my life is there.

I might have passed out for a second when I got the letter from Gil that told me had married Sara Sidle.

When I finally focused again, I read the passage over and over again. Gil, my son, my little boy, my only child, had gotten married without telling me, to a woman who had abandoned him, in the middle of the jungle, with only monkeys for witnesses.

We should have waited until you could be with us, he apologized in the letter. But I've spent too much time without her already. I just couldn't wait any longer to marry her.

There was a picture in the envelope. My son's wedding picture.

The photo must have been taken at the moment they turned to each other to take their vows. Sara wore a simple, white cotton sundress that ended at her knee. Her hair was curly and loose around her neck. A single fuschia blossom was tucked behind her ear. She looked up at my son, not with simpering adoration, but with steady and certain love.

Gil wore khaki cargo pants and a dark blue Hawaiian shirt that I'd always wanted to secretly remove from his wardrobe. He looked relaxed, confident and happier than I'd ever seen him.

He's a loner, Mrs. Grissom.

Not anymore.

I was the first woman in Gil's life. Sara was the only woman he ever loved. But neither of us were the most important woman to him in the end.

That honor was reserved for Lizzy.

Elizabeth Lauren Grissom was born on my seventy-seventh birthday and thus named after me, an honor I can't bring myself to believe that I deserve. She was perfect, from her tiny toes to her wispy curls and I was thrilled to be the third person in the world who got to hold her.

I love you, I signed to my granddaughter. Looking at her mother and her father, I made the sign again.

It would never be just me and Gil ever again...and that was just fine with this old lady.

Fin