A/N: Sorry for the delay in getting this up! Do you ever get that feeling when you come back from vacation and feel like you need a vacation to get over it? Or that everyone else in your office simply forgot how to function while you were gone? Getting back to "normal" is harder than it sounds!

Anyway, enough excuses and on with the story! This chapter starts immediately after the last; it's one that I've been wanting to write for quite some time, exploring more of Derek's history and the things that have happened to him.


Derek smiled as he woke up to find Meredith sound asleep in his arms. He was relieved to find that it hadn't been a dream, that she really was right there, right where he wanted her for the rest of his life. He silently ran his fingers through her hair, listening to the light snores that filled the room. In spite of the noise that had once kept him up at night, Derek had to admit that he had had the best night of sleep he'd had in more months than he could count.

Hearing the phone ringing down in the kitchen, he reluctantly slipped out of bed, being careful not to disturb Meredith. Hurrying downstairs, he grabbed the cordless phone off the wall just before the answering machine picked up.

"Hello?"

"Ah, Derek, it's so good of you to finally pick up your phone," a female voice said on the other end of the line.

Derek laughed as he carried the phone into the living room and settled in on the couch.

"Hi, Mom," he said. "You do realize it's only 6:30 in the morning here in Seattle, right?"

"It's not my fault you moved to another time zone," Maggie Shepherd said. "It's a perfectly reasonable hour here in Connecticut. In fact, I've been at work for nearly two hours. Besides, you're a doctor, aren't you supposed to be up early?"

"Not on my day off," Derek pointed out.

"Oh," Maggie said guiltily. "Sorry. But how was I supposed to know if you haven't called me in weeks?"

"I'm sorry, Mom," Derek said. "I just got really busy with work and things. I was going to call you today, I really was."

"Of course you were," Maggie said disbelievingly.

"I was," Derek insisted. "I wanted to let you know that Meredith is going to be coming back to Connecticut with me at Thanksgiving."

"Oh, you mean I'll finally get to meet her?" Maggie said. "I was beginning to think that perhaps she didn't really exist."

"And just how would you explain the fact that both Nancy and Kathleen have met her?"

"Kathleen would say anything you asked her to, I can't take her word for it," Maggie argued. "And I have no doubt that there was, at one point, a slutty intern who Nancy met. That doesn't mean she's still around. For all I knew, you were making this relationship up to cover your guilt at throwing your marriage away for a gold digger."

"Mother!" Derek exclaimed.

"Don't get me wrong, Derek, I want you to be happy," Maggie insisted. "But really, I don't know how I feel about this on-off girlfriend of yours. I mean, how can you expect something that started as adultery to become a lasting relationship?"

"Mom, I love her," Derek said. "I love her more than I thought it was possible to love someone. Without her…well, there is no without her for me anymore. That's not an option. So either you and the rest of the family accept her, or…"

"You'd better not be threatening me, Derek," Maggie cautioned.

"Just promise me you'll be nice to her when you meet her, Mom," Derek sighed.

"I'm always nice, Derek, you know that."

"Right," Derek scoffed. "Which is why you made Addison cry the first time you met her? Or why you refused to allow Tom in your house for an entire year after he and Kathleen got married? Or why you referred to Nick as 'that real estate guy' the entire five years he and Nancy were together?"

"I'm protective, Derek," Maggie argued. "There's nothing wrong with that. I'm looking out for my family. I just want you all to be happy."

"Well, Meredith makes me happy, so you're just going to have to get used to it," Derek said. "And so help me, if you do anything to scare her off while we're visiting…"

"Don't you dare use that tone with me, young man," Maggie interrupted. "I can and will return the gift that's sitting on my kitchen table."

"Mom, threatening me with my birthday presents stopped working when I was a teenager," Derek laughed.

"Fine, well, I'd better go, I'm at work," Maggie said. "I just wanted to check in. I really am glad that I'll finally get to meet this girlfriend of yours."

"I love you, Mom," Derek said.

"I love you too, dear," Maggie said. "Have a good day."

"You too," Derek said. "Try not to be too hard on the kids today."

"You take all the fun out of it, Derek," Maggie laughed. "I'll talk to you soon."

"Bye, Mom," Derek said, hitting the 'end' button to hang up the phone.

"Am I causing problems?"

Derek jumped slightly at the unexpected voice behind him. "Good Lord, Mer, you scared me," he laughed.

"I'm sorry," Meredith said quickly. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop…I just woke up and heard you down here, so I came down…and I was going to go back upstairs, I really was…but I heard my name, and I know that doesn't give me the right to listen in, but I just couldn't help it…and I need to know, because it sounded like you were arguing with your mom…am I causing problems in your family, Derek?"

"Come here," Derek said softly, holding out his arms and motioning for Meredith to join him on the couch. As soon as she was settled in his arms, Derek kissed her forehead and continued. "You are absolutely not causing problems. My mom's just…well, she's always been a little overprotective. That's all this is, just Mom being a mom. Trust me, as soon as she meets you, and she sees how amazing you are and how happy you make me, she'll welcome you with open arms. I promise."

"You can't promise that, Derek," Meredith said. "You can't guarantee that your mom is going to like me. And what about your sisters? I mean, Nancy already hates me…what are the others going to think?"

"I know my mom, Meredith," Derek said. "So, while you're right that I can't absolutely guarantee that's how it will go, I'm fairly certain it'll be that way. She's like this any time one of her kids brings home someone new. And my sisters, well, Nancy's the toughest. She can be the most caring person – if she likes you, she'd go to the ends of the earth and back to help you. But the problem with Nancy is that she doesn't really like all that many people. She's got these walls that she puts up, and she doesn't like to let people in. She's sarcastic and mean and sometimes downright rude, but that's just who she is. To be honest, if she wasn't my sister, I probably wouldn't have much to do with her, but she is my sister, and even if I don't always like the way she acts, I love her."

"I think I can handle one sister hating me," Meredith said. "But how are the others going to react?"

"Well, I think we've established that Kathleen adores you," Derek pointed out. "Abby's a sweetheart. She can be a bit catty sometimes, but she basically likes everybody, so I don't think you'll have a problem with her. Beth might be a bit tougher; she's got the whole overprotective mother thing going on, even though she's younger than I am. Give her a little time, though, and she'll adore you too. It'll help a lot that Mark likes you, because Beth and Mark have always been pretty close."

"Okay, but if they all hate, you have to protect me, because I don't want anyone killing me in the middle of the night," Meredith teased.

"You've got a deal," Derek laughed.

"So, other than the fact that she's overprotective, tell me about your mom," Meredith said.

"What do you want to know?" Derek asked.

"I don't know," Meredith admitted. "I just feel like, you know all about my mother, and Thatcher, and you know all sorts of things about my childhood that no one else knows. I just want to know the same stuff…what's your mom like, what sort of childhood did you have, stuff like that."

"You want details," Derek surmised.

"And no leaving out any secret wives this time," Meredith teased.

"You wound me," Derek laughed, placing a hand over his heart in a melodramatic fashion. "Let's see…well, my mom comes from a big Irish Catholic family in Manhattan, as did my dad. Mom's the principal at the local high school in our town in Connecticut."

"The same high school you went to?" Meredith asked.

"Yes, but she wasn't the principal when I went there," Derek said. "Back then, she was just a teacher. She taught biology and chemistry for nearly twenty years before she went into the administration side of things."

"I guess science runs in your family," Meredith observed. "Was your dad into science as well?"

"No," Derek said, his voice suddenly become very quiet. "Dad was definitely not into science."

"Derek?" Meredith asked cautiously. "You can talk to me about him, you know. You can talk to me about anything. I don't always have to be the one who needs supporting…I think maybe I could do supportive pretty well too, if you want to talk about it."

"You're rambling again."

"Sorry."

Derek nodded and took a deep breath. "He was a construction worker," he said softly, holding Meredith's hand tightly in his for support. "He finished high school, but never went to college. He was one of nine kids, and my grandparents didn't make a ton of money, so college was out of the question, they just couldn't afford it. He was a hard worker, though. He never complained and he was proud of the work he did. Sometimes, I think he felt guilty that he didn't make more money, just because my mother came from a family that had so much more than his family ever had. When they got married, my mom's parents bought them a brownstone on the Upper West Side. Granted, it wasn't the greatest part of Manhattan back then, but still, it was a lot more than his family could afford to give them. So I think he sometimes felt badly about that, that he wasn't able to provide that for us on his own…but he was always happy around my sisters and I. He worked long hours, but he always made time for us. We always knew, nothing was more important to our dad than us."

"He sounds like a great guy," Meredith commented.

"He really was," Derek agreed. "The house we're going to, the one my mom lives in now in Connecticut, he actually built that house himself. They wanted to have a place with a yard, the whole white picket fence, American dream thing. It was supposed to be a weekend house until they retired, and then they were going to move out there full-time. After Dad died, though, I think it was just too hard for Mom to be in Manhattan. Too many memories or something like that. So, she moved us out to Connecticut full-time about six months after he passed."

"I don't want to push or anything," Meredith said slowly. "I just…what happened to your dad, Derek?"

Derek sighed. "To be honest, I don't really know a lot of the details. He was working on an apartment complex in Brooklyn and there was some sort of accident. The building…it just collapsed. Eight workers died. I didn't really ask questions, so I don't know exactly what happened, but I know the owners ended up paying my mom and the other widows a pretty huge settlement, so I guess there was probably some sort of negligence involved."

"Oh, Derek," Meredith whispered, reaching out to wipe the tears from his face. She couldn't remember ever seeing him really cry before, and the sight of it was breaking her heart.

"I'll never forget the look on my mom's face when she called us all into the living room to tell us," he continued. "I never once saw her cry, not even at the funeral. It might have been easier if she had. Instead, she just looked…I don't even know how to describe it…empty, I guess. Like a piece of her was missing and she wasn't sure how to fill the hole. Even now, all these years later, I can still see it sometimes. She still gets that look from time to time."

"She lost her soul mate," Meredith observed quietly.

"I thought you didn't believe in that stuff," Derek said questioningly.

"I didn't," Meredith admitted. "I never had anything in my life to make me even want to believe. Then, out of nowhere, you came along…I guess you might say you turned my world upside down. And you made me believe in all of it…soul mates, fairy tales, happily ever after. You made believe."

"Even after everything we've been through?" Derek asked.

"Especially after everything we've been through," Meredith emphasized. "Derek, if soul mates didn't exist, if there was no such thing as 'meant to be'…well, don't take this the wrong way, but we definitely wouldn't be where we are today. I'd have written you off a long time ago, probably the moment Addison walked into this hospital. And you, well, you'd have been able to let me go, to work it out with Addison, or to fall in love with Rose. But we couldn't do those things, even if we thought we wanted to. I don't know if everyone finds their soul mate, or if everyone even has a soul mate, but I do know that if you do find that person, the one who makes your whole world flip, who fills a whole in your life you didn't even know existed...when you find that person, you can't let go, you can't move on, no matter what happens."

"My mom's never moved on," Derek said. "It's been 28 years, but she's never moved on."

"Tell me about your dad, Derek," Meredith asked. "Not how he died…tell me about how he lived."

Derek smiled wistfully. "He was an amazing man. I wish you could have met him, Meredith. On the surface, he was a man's man…he went to local bar every Friday night to hang out with his brothers and his friends, but he'd always be home before my mom went to bed. He loved sports, especially baseball. That was our thing; he took me to games at Yankee Stadium every chance he got. Kathleen usually went too – she never really went for the girly stuff. She was always a bit of a tomboy, and we both loved going to those games with Dad. He'd have never let it get out to the guys he worked with, but Dad had this huge soft spot when it came to my sisters. I can still remember laughing at him when I'd find him sitting on the floor with Abby and her teddy bears, having a tea party, or helping Beth dress her dolls, or taking Nancy to the theater. He had this big jar that he kept in his closet, and he'd throw all his change in it every day, and then every three months he'd cash it in, and use the money to take my four sisters shopping."

"Just him and the girls?" Meredith asked.

"It was quite a sight," Derek agreed. "My dad wasn't exactly a small guy – you couldn't be, not in his profession. So to see him carrying Abby and having the other three trailing along behind him…I used to ask him why he did all that girly stuff, and he'd just laugh and tell me that one day, I'd fall in love and maybe have a few daughters of my own, and all that girly stuff would be the best thing in the world."

"Did your dad teach you how to fish?" Meredith asked.

"No, he didn't," Derek admitted. "My uncle Joe taught me to fish when I was in high school. My dad was one of nine kids, five boys and four girls. After he died, my uncles tried to fill his shoes, I guess. They took me camping, talked to me about girls, they taught me how to drive a car, hammer a nail, change the oil…all those things they thought a guy should know how to do. And they did a great job, they were always there – birthday parties, graduations, everything. They tried to do everything my dad would've done, but…"

"But it just wasn't the same," Meredith filled in.

"No, it wasn't," Derek agreed. "It wasn't their fault, of course…they just weren't him. Uncle John always tried to take me to baseball games, but I'd never go. I actually haven't been back to Yankee Stadium since the last game my dad took me to. In college, Kathleen and her husband tried to drag me out, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. She even tried again when I was there over the summer, because they're going to tear it down at the end of the season. I probably should have gone…I guess it's too late now, there's only playoff games left. I missed my chance to go back."

Meredith just nodded and laid her head on his shoulder as an idea began swirling around in her mind.

"So," she said slowly, a coy smile playing at her lips as she changed the subject. "What's this I heard about a birthday?"