It was 1 o'clock in the afternoon on a sweltering Wednesday in late June and Catherine couldn't sleep any more. Rather than tossing and turning in bed she decided to do something productive. Since it would be over and hour and a half before Lindsay was dropped off from school, she decided to start sorting through the boxes in the spare bedroom. They hadn't been touched since Eddie moved out of the house and if she was ever going to re-paint that room they had to go.

Catherine sneezed as she opened a box on her past. When she had thought of the idea, she never figured cleaning out the back bedroom would be so onerous, until she faced the wall of un-opened boxes that hadn't seen the light of day in years.

She rubbed her nose in frustration as she looked in the first box to see wedding photos. Catherine shuddered as she looked at herself, artificially happy at a time when the only choice she had was to play the happy bride.

Further pictures did not improve her mood. A picture of her, the happy mother, her face strained into a smile. This made her sad. She cherished every moment she shared with Lindsay, but many of those moments had been tarnished by Eddie.

She threw the picture into a box marked `keep'. She was purging her house of unwanted stuff. The only problem was some of that `stuff' was too painful to remember. Not sure if she could continue to sort, she sat back and softly touched a picture that depicted one of the last times that she and Eddie were truly happy together.

It was a group photo of the finalists for a `best lap dance' contest, with her and Eddie holding the trophy. Looking at this time in her life, she huffed a defeated sigh. She should have known they wouldn't make it together, with a child or not. Now her cheeks merely flamed with shame, not pleasure.

Catherine wiped tears and dust off her cheeks as she continued to toss memories into the box as she thought. "Why me? Why do I choose all the assholes of the world?"

No one answered and Catherine lashed out. A cheap frame smashed against the wall spilling the hated wedding photo into a heap behind the dresser. As the silence of the neighborhood closed in even tighter she thanked her stars that Lindsay was still at school and wasn't seeing her in this state.

It had been over a year since Eddie's death and close to one since Catherine had learned the true nature of her father's identity.

She had been fighting acknowledging both for so long, she no longer knew what part of her life was real.

As she covered her face and curled up on the daybed like a wounded animal the phone started to ring.

Catherine turned away, intending to ignore the intrusion into her personal hell, but it wouldn't stop.

She heard the machine pick up the phone. She expected to hear a telemarketer hang up, but instead she heard the soft concerned voice of Gil Grissom on the other end of the line.

"Hey, I'm just calling to see if um. Are you okay?" His quiet voice asked. "You seemed distracted at work and that's not like you. Please call me back, I'm at home. Call me any time."

At the sound of Grissom's voice, Catherine crushed the paper she was holding and ran franticly for the phone in the living room. "Grissom? You still there?"

Her heart lurched, but eventually his voice filled her head. He hadn't hung up. "Catherine, I was wondering. Um, would you like to join me for dinner later. Um, we both have tonight off and I was just wondering . . ." He stuttered to a stop.

Catherine tried to control the excitement in her voice. "Sure, I'd love that, but um, It's a little late to get a sitter. Why don't you come here?"

As he responded, Grissom sounded as happy as she felt. "I was thinking I could pick up some Thai and rent a DVD. What would you like to see?"

Catherine could barely keep the silly smile from her voice, but didn't want to scare the living daylights out of the poor guy. For as long as she had known Grissom, he rarely asked anyone out and she didn't want to mess up.

Her life had been in transition for the better part of a year and if change was good, Catherine suspected the title of that book of change was `Grissom'. She agreed that he should come over around 8:30 and that `Kill Bill' was a movie she definitely wanted to see.

With a new sense of purpose she dove into sorting the remaining boxes and tossed the last disturbing memories of her life with Eddie in the box marked `dump'. She started to hum as she tidied the living room in preparation for the first good evening of the rest of her life.