"Yes, well, Sam didn't watch ... " She lets that thought trail off, sighing with exasperation.

She turns back and gives him a long look. "A little less than a year. And we'd had a case just weeks before -- it turned out just as awful as anything I'd ever seen. Car bomb. Left a twelve year old girl orphaned, and her godfather having to suppress her father's murder-suicide confession from evidence. He didn't want the girl to know what her father had done. That he'd intended to murder her as well."

Alex's voice breaks and she lowers her gaze to her drink. "It hit me hard. And I suppose you took pity on me."

She didn't feel like it was pity at the time, but it's so much easier to put into words.