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"But what were you doing there at that hour, anyway?" Weiss frowns, accepting the cup of coffee she hands him. "Thanks, Addison."
"I mean, it's nowhere near the hospital..." Weiss continues. "Or your practice."
"I was going to see a patient." Derek says smoothly, waving away a fussing Savvy. "An old patient."
"In the middle of the night?" Savvy asks. "Wow. That's...dedicated."
"He was on his way back." she supplies when Derek seems at a loss for words. "He was on his way back home from seeing his patient...who's doing really well, by the way."
"Excellent recovery." Derek agrees. "He wanted to thank me."
"You didn't go?" Savvy scolds her. "Addie, you should have."
In the past, if this lie they've spun were true, she would have been with Derek. She's met many a grateful patient of her husband's, and vice versa, listened to his praises being sung, smiled graciously, wished them fast and complete recoveries. In the past, he would have introduced her to this patient.
He hasn't done that in a while. There was a time when he used to know her schedule, when they took the effort to puzzle out free moments between surgeries and consults, when every moment not spent working was with each other. There was a time when her husband sat in the gallery to watch her operate and then took her to dinner afterwards - a time when he actually, voluntarily, acknowledged her existence without her having to beg.
"Addie?" Savvy calls. "You really are a million miles away, aren't you. I was just saying, this is the perfect excuse to get rid of that awful jeep."
Ah, yes. Derek's beloved, smelly, rattly jeep. He bought it secondhand without telling her - you know you wouldn't have let me, Addie - and claimed it was perfect for summer trips at the beach house. Its seats stood up well to damp swimsuits and sandy feet, panting dogs and dripping popsicles and clamoring nieces and nephews. It was always Derek's, though, she's never touched it. He used to park it at a garage a few blocks away, and it always looked so out of place next to her sleek Mercedes.
She wonders if it would have made it all the way to Seattle.
"It wasn't the cars' fault." Derek says mildly. "Right, Addie?"
"Addison."
She startles a little at the sound of her friend's voice, the glass in her hand almost slipping into the sink. "Sav. You scared me."
Savvy stares at her with piercing blue eyes. Her oldest, closest friend. They shared a room and then an apartment in college. Savvy was her wingman, her confidante, sounding board, cheerleader, protector and sister rolled into one bright, feisty package.
Savvy was the first to know it when she lost her heart to Derek at Columbia. Savvy was maid of honor at their wedding, as she was at Savvy and Weiss' wedding.
Savvy knows her best.
"You've been jumping out of your skin since I got here." Savvy says quietly, clasping her elbow so she can't move away. "God, you must have been so scared, Addison...why didn't you call me?"
Scared? She remembers sitting huddled at the foot of the stairs, wet, shivering with cold and fear, fear that cut so deep she felt it in her bones. Fear that she had ruined her marriage, that she had ruined Derek and Mark's friendship, fear for her future. The heartstopping terror of that phone call, the blank, white sensation of horror in the hospital when she saw him for the first time.
The constant, low grade tremors that have rocked her since he was discharged. The uncertainty about the life she's bringing her unborn child into. Scared doesn't begin to cover it.
And yet... He doesn't want anyone to know.
Let's see you lie, he said.
"I wasn't thinking straight." she admits, turning away to grab a dishcloth. "I...called Mark."
"You must be so relieved." Savvy shudders. "He's looking so much like himself already, isn't he?"
She hums noncommittally as Savvy chatters on, automatically starting to dry the glasses she's rinsing. They had this routine in college - she was premed and Sav was pre-law, and they worked hard, but in the evenings after dinner they always stood beside each other, one washing and the other drying, swapping tidbits about classes and friends and cute boys and not-so-cute boys.
"...but Weiss says I should," Savvy trails off, looking irritated. "Addie!"
"Sorry?"
"I was just...you know what, never mind. There is obviously something on your mind. Spill."
"You mean, other than the fact that my husband was seriously injured in an accident and that his dominant hand may never be the same again?" she asks wryly.
"Yes." Savvy says obstinately. "I know you, Addison Adrienne Forbes Montgomery. There's something you aren't telling me, and we might be closer to forty than twenty, but I'm not above getting you drunk to make you talk."
Nancy was happy, but the knowledge of her pregnancy in Nancy's hands feels like a grenade. Derek's reaction...was what she had expected, but not what she had wanted. She wants one, just one person to hear this and be happy for her. She could use the optimism.
"I'm pregnant." she blurts, lowering her voice so Derek and Weiss, ensconced in the family room, can't hear.
She muffles Savvy's resultant shriek with her wet dishcloth, earning herself a pinch.
"Darling, that's amazing." Savvy is gasping, her blue eyes shining with tears. "Oh my god, a baby."
See she thinks silently. Amazing.
"Sav." she says, alarmed. "Are you..."
"I'm so sorry." her friend sobs. "I'm happy for you, really I am."
"Savvy, what is it?" she asks gently.
"My aunt," Savvy whimpers. "Aunt Cecilia, you remember her, she passed. Ovarian cancer."
Her aunt...along with her other two aunts, her mother and a cousin.
"I'm getting you tested." she says firmly. "And then you'll know for sure."
"It's not that." Savvy sniffles. "I mean, it's that too, but...we were finally settled, you know? We decided we were going to try for a baby. Weiss was so excited...and now this."
"What do you mean, this?"
"I..." Savvy stares at her for a second, her eyes red. "You're supposed to be happy right now, I shouldn't -"
"Out with it."
"I tested positive for the gene." Savvy confesses. "But we're not talking about me, we're talking about you. Derek must have been so happy."
"Yeah." she says. "He was."
She's clearing up after their friends have left, enjoying the distinct silence that comes after guests have left, the windows opened to let in fresh, cold air.
Derek retreated upstairs, surprisingly adept at the crutches PT has encouraged him to use. He's allowed partial weight on the injured leg, and by keeping one wheelchair upstairs and one downstairs for when he gets tired, he can get around the house without much help. Which suits him perfectly and leaves her straining for sounds of falling and slipping.
She got rid of all the rugs, discreetly put away obstructive furniture and she keeps creeping after him until he snaps at her not to, and it's nice to have a moment to herself as she straightens up.
Thirteen weeks today.
Her baby weighs an ounce, is maybe as long as a finger, with translucent skin and miniscule fingerprints. The end of her first trimester, the time she herself would advise a patient her age to wait until she announced it. Her chance of miscarrying is lower now.
She should be happy, like Savvy said. She should be eager and excited.
Since she's thinking about it anyway, she forces down a vitamin pill and eats a banana.
She loves babies. She's stood in the nursery before, filled with a sudden longing, almost a physical ache, as she looked at the squirming pink creatures other people would take home. She's stood with her lips pressed to a pulsing soft spot, her heart throbbing to the beat, wishing it were her own child. But there's never been time. Pregnancy, maternity leave, the constant emergencies that seem to crop up around small children- it would be irreparably damaging to her career. Derek isn't one to step back either, and somehow they've stopped discussing the possibility of children.
And now here she is, pregnant and uncertain, while her best friend who has to choose between being a mother and being alive is trying to make a decision.
Here she is, avoiding the husband she cheated on, while somewhere someone is grieving the young man who died in the accident.
She's avoiding Mark, their friends, their family.
All to keep a secret.
He wonders if it's him. If he's the one driving people away. First Amy, then Addison. Mark. His family.
If he's honest, if he looks beyond the pain and the rage and the betrayal for a moment, he sees them drifting slowly away from him, over the course of years. Every maybe later and I'm busy pushed them a little further.
The thing is, he doesn't want to be honest. It's easier to play the victim, the injured betrayed husband, to sit here and rage at Addison when in fact she was the one who had the courage to actually do something.
He felt it too, the slowly widening rift between them. They could talk for hours, the two of them. Even after a tiring day in the OR, they lay in bed and they would talk softly into the darkness until they fell asleep.
He remembers there were times when he routinely wouldn't see his wife for two or three days at a time, when he had no idea where she was at any given time or what was happening in her life...but he didn't do anything about it. Addison would show up in his office, smiling tentatively, and he would recall coming home to an empty house three times last week and his stomach would twist in an ugly knot. And he would say no, and the infinitesimal dampening of the light in her eyes made him feel a little better.
All the light is gone now, he thinks as he looks at his wife. Her eyes look empty and dull, nothing like the sparkling mischievous gleam he knew so well. When did that happen?
"Why are you in here?" Addison asks cautiously, hovering in the doorway. This was where Amy slept, the ill-fated few months she was here. Addison seems to have managed to restore it to normal - he can't see any of the debris his sister left behind.
"I'm not supposed to be?" he asks. Not what he wanted to say, but it just feels so damn good to watch his words hurt her. She hurt him without saying a thing; this is his way of getting revenge. But revenge isn't making him feel as good as he thought it would.
She falls silent, standing half in shadow. She used to walk straight into any room he was in; she's slipped into his office more than once when he worked too late in the early days of their marriage and perched in his lap. She didn't mind being in the bathroom while he showered, or of joining him if the mood took her. She'd make herself at home in his dorm room, or his library carrel. He never minded - he secretly loved the fact that she would spend time with him doing absolutely nothing.
He fiddles aimlessly with the sheets on the bed, knowing that the wrinkles annoy her. She's forever straightening things - covers, her clothes, his clothes, her hair, things on tables. He can practically feel her fingers itching ten feet away.
There's something between the mattress and the box.
"Derek..." Addison is saying. "Savvy tested positive for the gene-"
"Did you change these?" he asks. He thinks it's ridiculous to have a fully prepared guest room when no guests loom in the future, but his wife has always insisted and it's one of the things he came to accept.
"No," Addison says after a while, sounding...annoyed? "I didn't. Ida did."
"How long have these been on?"
"A week? I don't know." she snaps. "Were you even listening to me?"
He's managed to snag a corner of the object. It's a slim notebook, black fake leather cracking at the spine. It has a small metal lock at the side, the kind of cheap thing his sisters wrote in growing up. Mark showed him how to pick the lock with an unraveled paper clip. His cheek hurt for a week where Nancy slapped him.
Addison is beside him before he can call out, slim fingers tracing the worn cover.
"Amy wrote a diary?"
Reviews are love. I know I haven't updated anything in a while but I had exams and then my phone went for a swim and I couldn't write. I'll have more time now, so please please please please review and let me know what you think!