In the first week of October Meredith brought up Halloween on the car ride home from Pre-K and glorified daycare. "I need to know what you want to be so we can make your costume."

"There's a Spirit store by Cal's house. She said they have lotsa costumes. She and Mari are gonna be Sammerson sisters."

"Sam— Sanderson sisters? Cool, that's a really good movie. I saw it when it came out." It'd been weird, a Halloween movie in July, but it'd been 1993, the summer she spent in Seattle, and that'd all been a little surreal. "I think you're old enough for us to watch it, Zo."

"It's not scary?"

"Not too scary."

"Momma have you ever made a Halloween costume?"

Technically, she'd made every Halloween costume she'd ever worn out of shit from her closet, thrift stores, and occasionally the closets of the queens who lived next door. She'd been their doll for a few years, until Curtis, aka Yoko Bono, sat her down, and said, "Merry-Berry," he'd said, using the nickname no one from another address dared use. "I know you have to get all gussied up for your mom's charity functions, but tell me true: you're not a fancy dresses girl, are you? It's okay. There's no wrong type of girl to be"

"I like 'em! Sometimes. For pretty."

"Not as much for fun?" he'd suggested. "There's no reason to keep quiet about that. We'll let you hang around until you decide you're too cool for us. Now I've heard some rumors that you're nine and claiming you're going to turn down free sugar. I can only think of one reason why that might be: Who do you want to be for Halloween this year?"

She'd been Jareth the Goblin King. It'd been her best costume, but her classmates hadn't known how to react—in retrospect the codpiece had probably been inappropriate, but the point had been accuracy— Then, the virus spread; she spent her time at the house learning all the ways people fought disease without going to med school. On Halloween, she'd made do with witch hats and fishnets.

"I made Jackson into King Tut once."

"Our Jackson?"

"Dunno if he's ours, but yes, the Dr. Jackson Avery you know."

"Avery, a very. He's a very good doctor! That's silly, huh?"

"Silly and smart. When you use words that sound the same and mean different things, it's called a pun. Sometimes also a dad joke."

"Why?"

"I guess a lot of dads like puns. Yours did."

"Is he punny?"

Wishing for Derek to be in the passenger seat was a constant; it lessened only slightly with Sadie or Fati there, but there were moments like this when it became all-encompassing, and she could only clench her fists around the steering wheel, and drive, and let the wave crest and break, and breathe, Meredith, keeping breathing. She'd thought, recently, watching the ocean in the early morning, that the reason they calmed her when being in the water did the opposite, was the reminder that every wave, no matter how huge, broke eventually.

"He was, baby."

"Yeah. I think so. Momma? Who's King Toot?"

That time, having Derek there would've only made it harder not to laugh, but really, why shouldn't a doctor's kid be okay with potty humor? He'd always claimed to like how unabashed Meredith was about that stuff, be it farting in front of him or puking up the one-shot-too-far that happened when her tolerance changed at all; her lack of body weight did not allow her much leeway.

"Bodies do what they do," she'd explained once, lying with her head in his lap in the master bathroom of the old house. He had a way of massaging her temples that kept hangover headaches at bay far better than Aspirin with a banana bag, which had only made that comment more asinine. "It's when they do it wrong that's the problem. Suppressing stuff only causes damage, and you end up more fucked in the long run."

"You realize—"

"I'm a total hypocrite? Waaaay ahead of you, buddy."

The thing was, she'd determined, long after that night, was that she'd basically treated emotions the same way, ignoring them until her body insisted on forcing them out. By the time that happened, the damage had been done. Learning to determine when her brain needed her to give in had been a whole new skill, one she was still learning.

"King Tut was a Pharaoh," she said. "Which is what they called kings in Egypt, then. Because of their beliefs at the time—" not unlike Gram's. "They wrapped up his body with bandages, and…they embalmed them. Differently than we do now, but same idea. They didn't bury them, they put them in a big hiding called a tomb, except these tombs were pyramids that took twenty years to build…and…we'll get you a book," she decided. There had to be something that made anthropology like that cool, without taking the side of their phrenology-focused forebears.

"Ok, but um, Momma? What'd you do to Jackson?"

"What are you tryong to say here, Zo? Do you think I embalmed him?"

"No!" Zola giggled. "Just, you're a doctor. Bandages is easy for doctors. To make him that you didn't do a lot."

"I wasn't then. I was twelve. I think he was eight."

"But your mommas were doctors."

"They didn't help. He must have a picture; I'll ask him. Sometime."

"When we go home?"

Meredith swallowed. She couldn't answer her own questions about this. "Yes."

"When?"

"After the baby comes."

"The next day?" she asked, answering every question Meredith had about what she remembered. Bailey's prematurity hadn't held him in the hospital for as long as protocol should've kept Meredith, but Derek supported her AMA, and they'd discharged as a family.

"Mommys and babys stay in the hospital a few days and going back won't be as easy as leaving was. We have a lot more stuff, and you'll have school, and… I'm not sure exactly how long it'll all take, sweetie. But we'll make a note to ask him for a picture. And once you know what you wanna be, we'll make you the best whatever we can do, with the resources and skills we have, deal?"

"Yeah, deal."

Meredith heads to the kitchen, and he's standing in front of the stove flipping a pancake. "All right, we've got a dragon here, who wanted a dragon pancake?"

"A'ight, Daddy." Bailey waves his hands in the air.

"There we go. Yours are on the table, Mer. I tried Lexie's recipe. It uses lemon rind. They're good. Zo, you want a lion?"

"Yeah, like Rawr!"

"Derek, they're gonna be really disappointed when you're gone again, and I can't do this."

"What?"

She shrugs, her shoulder pressed against the wall in the hallway. "You're dead. You'll disappear again."

"They made a mistake, Mommy," Zola gestures with each word, not quite making it to exasperated over cute, but trying. "We told you."

"This isn't real. We don't even have room for you here."

"Maybe we should talk about going back to Seattle."

"Yeah. Seattle!" Zola exclaims. "Bay wants to go back to Seattle, right, Bay?"

"Sat-ul."

"I'm not ready for that."

"Why?"

She brings a hand to her abdomen. It's flat. "Wait. What…? Where's the baby?"

"He's right here, Mommy."

"N-no, not Bailey. The girl. The baby girl. I was pregnant."

"You must've been dreaming, Sounds like a good dream." Derek says, coming over to kiss her on the cheek. "If you're ready for another, we can work on it."

We won't. I'll wake up. You'll be gone.

"Run this by me again?" Sadie requested, and Meredith was pretty sure she was being mocked, but whatever. She was a grown-up; she could take it. Plus, the more Sadie mocked her, the more confident she felt on her firmer grip on…what? Not sanity, just not being on the edge of a constant breakdown.

"There's nothing to run. I learned to knit from Izzie. I wasn't great at it, but it's good for dexterity. The celibacy stuff was just…I dunno, desperation." Meredith pulled into a parking space in front of the Mission Bay yarn shop. It looked like it'd been a beach cottage once, but walls had been taken down to make the bottom floor more open. Sun provided most of the illumination, and a gathering of some sort was going on at a table in the corner. There were a bunch of kids there, so she let Zola pull her over.

Her daughter sniffed out the store's in-charge grown-up through what seemed like pure instinct. "Hi, I'm Zola, what is going on for kids over there?"

The woman glanced at Meredith who shrugged. She really didn't mind having a kid who did the talking. "That is a class we're doing this morning for boys and girls who want to learn finger knitting. We ask for a five-dollar donation for supplies, and that parents to stay in shop It takes half an hour."

Zola leaned backward to look up at Meredith. "You wanna try it, Zo?"

"What about Bailey?"

"Let's ask. Um, that one is with us," she pointed to where Sadie had moved the stroller in front of a display of "blue-blue-blue" and was letting him feel the different textures. Meredith fumbled with her phone, managing to snap a photo for Fati while speaking to the shopkeeper. "He's a little under two and a half, but if Zola's with him he'll stay where he's put, and he's good at following directions. I don't know what level of fine motor skills you're looking for…."

"He'd be a welcome addition! Even if they end up just knotting up some yarn, we're more interested in getting kids comfortable working with fiber."

Meredith's inner-Cristina desperately wanted to know if this woman had gone to Berkeley. She'd nailed a patient's graduation year once, and Meredith had pointed out that she had also gone to Berkeley. "Judge not…" she'd sing-songed catching up to Cristina in the hallway.

"You're throwing the bible at the Korean Jew?"

"Is that where that's from?" Meredith had asked. If she couldn't pin it to Shakespeare, it usually was. Cristina used her stepfather and her bat mitzvah to make people ditch their assumptions, when Meredith had seen waiters in Hanover stare at Korean families praying over meals. The Moonies had pulled a lot of people from Korea in, and they claimed to be Christian at the base. What did they think all those ancestors of theirs who'd gone off on missions to convert had done?

"Man, I love your agnostic WASP contradictions." Christina had crowed. Meredith hadn't tried to contradict her. She did believe there might be something out there in the universe, but not a single puppeteer.

She settled both kids into chairs and handed their ten bucks to the woman before heading back to Sadie. "Thirty minutes. If you want—"

"Mommy!" Zola came running over, and Meredith could see Bailey on his knees on the chair, watching to see if distress was warranted. "I need the Daddy Phone."

"Zo-Zo, it's only for a little while. You're going to be too busy for it."

Zola's lower lip poked out. Pouting wasn't usually her style, which made it much harder to resist.

"I'll put it in your pocket, okay? It stays there until the class is all done."

"Not a long time?"

"One Daniel Tiger."

"Okay, that's not bad."

Meredith pulled the phone from the interior pocket of her purse and made sure it was on airplane mode. Zola grinned at the lock screen which now had "the best me and Daddy picture" from her fourth birthday. Her fifth would be come in a bit over a month. Five years since a baby was born in a country Meredith had barely known anything about and set her life on a new path. Four since she'd come home for good and became a beacon for her mother. If not for her, Meredith might be alone in the darkness.

"That's new," Sadie observed, making it seem like she could be talking about one of the skeins of yarn.

"Yeah. I'm choosing to believe it's a good sign that she wants the reminder, and the photos get Bailey more interested in hearing the stories."

"Seems logical. How're you doing?"

"I dunno," Meredith admitted. "Relatively, I'm good. Better. But Halloween…two years ago, on Bailey's first? I was stressed with work, starting as an attending, but we were so happy. Cristina and I were approaching a major blow-up, I needed time for research that science isn't there for yet; and he'd promised to take up the slack with the kids. And…and he was already ensuring that whenever it was possible I could spend time with them. He knew it'd eat at me if I didn't. This time last year, Maggie told me who she was in a parking lot, and I was pissed enough to run her down. Her, Ellis, Richard…. Cristina and I were fine, but she'd left. Our friends were in counselling that led to divorce, I was withholding…." Meredith bit her lip and glanced at the table of kids, now covered in brightly colored yarn. "Grown-up candy. Everything was tangled. My research, Maggie, his career, it all seemed so impossible to balance, and I dug my heels in to stay in Seattle. Now—"

"You're not who you were a year ago," Sadie said, gently, like she was saying something that wasn't simply the truth.

"No, but I'm not working! I'm schlepping around the condo barefoot and pregnant! I spent July in bed!"

"That's the thing: had there not been that trigger, had you not been spiraling into the dark place; would you have been content with that? You'd be going out of your mind, here. You needed a break, absolutely, but if you'd gone along; would you have been able to watch him make progress in the field you wanted to work in long before you met him, even before college? Staying home with the kids or starting over in a new hospital….

"Y-you knew that?"

"For fuck's sake, I had met you. I'd heard all the ramblings about the mysteries of the brain, and how it's electricity, and chemicals, and flesh. It controls us, it is us, and we know so little about it." Sadie clasped her hands under her chin to portray an excited teenage Meredith.

"But every kind of surgeon works with it, in a way. General gives you more variety, it's a more interconnect system."

"I could see it. I didn't have a preference."

"Yeah. So, fine, I would've totally been jonesing to be in on his work, and I definitely wouldn't have had such a good few months in the O.R. Just sometimes I think: if I'd agreed to take a year off, we'd all be together.'"

"You think he would've agreed to quit, then?"

"I do. Whether the sulking would've come in January…depends on if there was gonna be a baby. He could've died there. It was painful thinking of him at Bay's birthday last year, but not having anything but dark looks and that I was getting my own…candy in the shower. Regrets are worse."

She picked up a ball of yarn and squeezed it, amazed that anything in the world could be so soft. "This is the one the internet lady recommended. It feels like what babies deserve. Like their whole world should be, when so much is hard and bright and loud."

"Hey, Mer?"

"Yeah?"

"If anyone ever makes you question your mom-ing ever again, punch them for me."

"Mom was different when I was little. Worse, in some ways. I have an instinct, I just— what if she did, too? Zola's five next month…."

"And you're gonna turn into her at midnight? What if she did? She might've been better at it later if she'd bothered to focus on you ever, at all. Trust me, focus can be bad. Seems to me that what's important is that you care about them, and whether or not you're screwing up. Caring has never been your problem."

True. She cared about too much: fairness, and justice, and protecting people who were at a disadvantage. Derek's way of caring had been different, more about changing things on a macro-level. They'd complemented each other, until the macro and the micro collided.

She collected the yarn called for by the simple blanket pattern she'd found, with an extra skien of each color for her inevitable screw-ups, and then got the salesperson at the register to help her with the needle thing. She had a feeling that Izzie's well-meaning decision to start her on huge, wooden needles might've been a bad idea. She was used to working with small, metal instruments, and even holding metal needles in her hands felt more natural. She spun one of them idly between her fingers while scanning the store's bookshelves. The internet had all kinds of videos that would help her refresh her questionable knowledge, but she'd taught herself more skills through books. Having one to reference was reassuring, and she was learning to allow herself those small kinds of comfort.

"Still think you should be taking up sticks again instead of needles," Sadie commented. "Not as fiddly, but you made your fingers work for you up there. Even taking up piano again—"

"Absolutely freaking not."

"Yikes, tell me how you really feel. You're a percussionist; you're good."

"My mother…." Meredith clenched her jaw, and then cleared her throat. Why did this matter more than junior high swim meets, or grade school Parents Night, National Honor Society Induction, or the Senior Banquet for freaking Key Club? She'd never expected Ellis to praise her for the occasional award—Latin, Anatomy and Physiology, Most Improved because Junior Year had gone a little off the rails—but Ellis had written checks to the same former concert pianist for years, had had the flyer for the Christmas Concert replaced with the one for Spring Recital cycling on her fridge, had had Meredith sneak into her office and put it in her planner with a Post-it alongside it. The structure was always the same:

MOM,

I KNOW THEY'RE BORING, BUT I'D REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR ATTENDANCE AT MY SPRING RECITAL THIS YEAR.

I KNOW YOU HATE FORCED CELEBRATION, BUT THE CHRISTMAS CONCERTS ARE USUALLY FUN.

Followed by

I'M GOING….

FIRST SO YOU CAN LEAVE A.S.A.P.

LAST SO YOU CAN COME IN LATE

BEFORE INTERMISSION. DOESN'T MATTER.

I'M ASKING…

FOR IT TO BE ON SUNDAY B/C YOU'RE LESS LIKELY TO BE ON-CALL

ALL HER STUDENTS. NO ONE CARES IF YOUR PAGER GOES OFF

WHY MAKE ME DO THIS FOR SO LONG IF YOU NEVER CARED?

I KNOW…

YOU'RE BUSY, BUT IT'D MEAN A LOT TO ME.

ADMITS GET WORSE AT HOLIDAYS AND GRADUATIONS.

YOU WON'T COME EVEN IF THE E.R. IS EMPTY.

I…

WORKED REALLY HARD

AM NOT BEGGING. I KNOW YOU HATE THAT.

WILL NEVER HAVE ANOTHER RECITAL AFTER THIS.

PLEASE CONSIDER

-M

"My mother," she repeated, her hands on one of the shelves. "Never heard me play a note."

"At all? How? You had a keyboard in the apartment!"

"Headphones. She said she could drown out the stereo once my door was closed, but she didn't want to listen to a bunch of scales and missed fingerings."

Sadie blinked at her, all but verbally trawling through her memories and then said, "No wonder didn't know how to show off."

"I did order an electronic practice pad. Not like I'll be doing stick tricks with scalpels, but hand-eye coordination and all that."

"You are getting bored."

"It's kind of amazing. Annoying, but amazing."

"I won't ask again if you don't want, but would you like to come do a few clinic shifts? Before you have an addition to the flock?"

Sadie's padding made Meredith think she expected a hard no. She didn't get one. "Uh…Maybe. That might be….."

"Mommy! Come look!"

Meredith had started for the back table the second the voice registered as Zola's, and only determined she wasn't hurt halfway there. She slowed her pace, going for casual not hyper-alert, crisis prone.

"Lookit," Zola had a strand of unevenly knit yarn in front of her, that still looked better than most of the kids' attempts to an untrained, biased eye, but she wasn't pointing to her own work. She was pointing to her brother. One of the shop ladies was next to him, indicating where he should loop and grab, and a long piece of what had to now be considered fabric, not yarn, trailed down the back of his hand.

"Momma, I knotten. I do it!" Bailey said. She started to crouch by his chair and remembered that was a no go. Zola pulled her to her vacated chair, before arranging herself primly on Meredith's increasingly limited lap space.

"You are knitting, baby. You're doing so good."

"He's got those long fingers," the shop lady commented. "Oop, no, this one, sweetie. Good job. Piano player's fingers."

Meredith winced, but before she could politely agree, Zola said, "In our house those are surgeon's fingers."

"You're going to break your fingers banging on those things, and then where will you be? Not a surgeon, I can tell you that!"

"Those," Meredith said, running the pad of one of her own fingers over the back of his hand. "Are whatever Bailey wants to do with them fingers."

"I knitten-knotten."

Meredith reached for the nearest hunk of yarn. "All right, Zo," show me what I'm supposed to do here. Agile as he may be, Bailey wasn't yet two and a half, and she was going to have to be ready when the movements slipped from his busy little mind. It'd be a good dexterity exercise, in more ways than one.

"Thank you for sharing that. Are you ready to talk to me now?"

"Yeah. I guess that…that memory is proof I wasn't…I wasn't the worst spouse ever."

"What had you so convinced?"

"If it'd been me…. He was twelve years older, but I'm so used to thinking it'd be me who died first. We probably both did. I'd die, or disappear, mentally. Derek and I planned for it... I wanted him to just euthanize me. He…he promised he'd remind me of who I was every day— Jeez, Derek. Your freaking words…. I'll have more people than Mom did. Even with that, Mom's was forty-eight at onset. This baby could be twelve when I start—and they diagnose it in younger patients every year, and I still…I still zone out."

"You are using the grounding techniques we've worked on and improving. Significantly. That wouldn't be the case if you were showing symptoms of Alzheimer's."

"I know that. I do. I lived with a neurosurgeon, and I was gonna be one, could be one, whatever. He hadn't wanted to know, but I needed it, after Lexie. I'm glad I do, now. I can't assume someone will step in if something happens. I have to really think about who could take in three of them, and not make Zola grow up too fast, not tell Bay he's the man of anything…. Derek wasn't a planner, and he'd never dealt with that kind of—he's said Amelia could be pretty nasty on a bender, but that doesn't last. And he knows…knew, crap, Zola's got me doing it, that I'd be panicked once it got obvious. Sometimes I'd lose my keys, and I could tell he was thinking Am I losing her? But even without the Alzheimer's. I leap before I look. I have a history of near-death experiences.

"I know what losing my mother did to me, whether or not we were technically close, and I was almost thirty. And my father…. Derek was better than him, so much better. Him dying has been monumentally harder on Zola than leaving Thatcher was for me, and to lose both of us would be…That's how we got through it, in the woods. We couldn't die; she needed both of her parents. It worries me sometimes that she hasn't shown any of the behavioral issues I did. We had the six-month follow-up with Dr. Okorie the other day, and she said there weren't any concerns. That she's thriving. I don't know how—"

"Can't be that she has a mother who's acknowledging that something horrible happened? That has done everything she could to ensure that loss didn't become trauma?"

"Not everything. This summer I wasn't… I wasn't who I wanted to be for them."

"Which you recognized. It can be difficult for someone who lost a spouse to be as considerate of their kids as you have. Yours are so young that their plasticity, what often leads to their resilience, can be a frustration. I've been impressed by your patience."

"Oh. Mostly, it was reassuring. I've always been amazed the way kids can be kids no matter how dark the world is. I didn't want to take that from them. And whenever I…. During my internship, I had to be alive enough to work, and it wasn't like I could get away with expecting anyone to pick up my slack, except there was a level at which I could…. I can't say I did the bare minimum. Everything was new, and as interesting as it was terrifying. I didn't want… couldn't let anyone suffer because of my misery. This time there's no one else. I made sure of that—tried to—and maybe that was unnecessary. As it was, my children needed me, more than any patient, and if I'd screwed up, it would've been obvious, and so unfair to them. To Derek. To me.

"Just being alive and shunting back my feelings wasn't enough for them. I had to be…wanted to be more, because they needed more, but they… I couldn't detach the way I did back then. They saw too much. I checked out on them too often, but I…I kept them safe. And so far, I've succeeded in countering any damage I did, then, which…it's amazing. They're amazing.

"Everything is new for them, and interesting, but it's not terrifying. It's captivating. Dazzling. That's a phase of life I barely remember, except for every once in a while, I turn a corner in the hospital, and…maybe that's a benefit of my weird memory, because for as little as I've retained of the time before I was six, in those flashes, I am three or four again, in the place that I know best. The place where I'm the most comfortable, and everything is magical.

"I understand what my mom went through more now, with Maggie, and this, but I had a decent handle on it by the end of my intern year. I don't think I'll ever get how she could look at a child and do the things she did. Not just the pseudo-suicide. Her patience was always thin, but when I was little, it was a scrim. She had moments where she'd listen and take care of me…. My whole life, there were moments. But one reason I loved the hospital, was that there were places to hide once the patience ran out. I've snapped at the kids. I've lost my temper with them. I…I really hope I wouldn't have, but if I hadn't been able to see a world where I would've been so afraid of my own darkness that I avoided them, I might've stayed in Seattle.

"But ignoring them for days on end? Not answering their questions about Derek, or reminding them that they weren't alone? I couldn't take their wonder they have away like that. It's too incredible. Too unlikely. Also, it'd be stupid. They've been the best parts of the past six months. In the past, I've been in a place light couldn't penetrate, and maybe that's where Mom was, but…. I was so afraid of becoming my mother, but I'm starting to think I may've turned out too different from her for that to have happened."

"That's a pretty monumental realization for you."

"I suppose. No, yeah. I hadn't…it's something I've been thinking about, with the baby, and Maggie, and I don't know if once she's born it'll feel different, but so far I can't really… I've considered, but it's not even like…like when I…."

"When you wanted to vanish but only took an opportunity rather than contriving one?"

"Mmm. I've told Zola so many times that adoption isn't like a death, but I think for me it would be. I don't fully… I don't think it'll feel entirely real until she's born. It wasn't all that different with Bailey. The Murphy's law guy—his name is actually de Morgan, did you know that?— He must've had psychic visions of my life, because, the worst thing keeps happening. Even with that…. Something's different. Maybe it's because of the kids or knowing the truth about that day—that year, or having truly had Derek; instead of thinking love would always a lie. Not wanting to vanish. There are a lot of possible reasons for why…. Just… I was always the one who put herself on the line. I would've given my life for him and for Lexie that day in the hospital, and I didn't want to, but I didn't…it seemed fair? But this time, it wasn't me. I always expected it to be me, and it wasn't, and…. What scares me, or-or shames me is that I don't wish it had been me. I-I'm not saying I think it should've been him—he was an established, incredibly talented surgeon, and…and a good person. I'm never sure I'm the one who who could do this best…in terms of the kids. But he'd been gone, and…and losing your mom…. He expected it to be me, so maybe he would've handled it better. And he'd lost his dad. He liked his dad, and lost him, so he would've known…That's…he would've… it's not fair to think this way. It's not like he hadn't been through things, or-or couldn't—hell, wasn't I the one half-convinced he'd already moved on? his is why some people think I don't have emotions. That I'm as cold as she was. Even Derek, sometimes, and it's not like that. It's not."

"I'm not going to judge you for considering things rationally."

"Thanks. But the ways he coped not facing the past, not compartmentalizing, taking things out on people. Not the kids! Never the kids. So, he might've done great. Except, his mother has so many regrets for how she handled things in the aftermath of his dad— I'm incredibly hypocritical, I realize, because I made such a point of not being my mother; why should he imitate his? but their relationship was good. He thought she did things right, but he and his sisters aren't what I…. I would give anything—al-almost anything. The way my life is, some genie should've just popped up offering to trade him for the kids. Myself? If I could, sure. But I don't…. I wish it hadn't been us. I wish my husband was alive. Aren't I supposed to want to have died in his place? Isn't that how this works?"

"There's no particular way that this— "

"That's bullshit, Beni! There is a usual— a general— otherwise, there wouldn't be models, and statistics, and studies. I get that I'm an outlier. I would've taken on the pain after he got shot, and everything with his hand— I would've taken on the dark shit, even if that's what helped him understand me. Not because he took it out on me, or whatever, because I knew how to deal with it, and I couldn't transfer that knowledge to him.

"If it had been me, he would've… he would've said it should've been him. That he wished it'd been him. I never…In the first moment, I wished I'd been in that car with him. Then, I had to tell the kids, and…and I'd done that, so I had to be the one who was there for them, and then.… I wanted to want it. I did. Because he would've. He wouldn't have done anything about it, and I— "

"You didn't."

"No. But even that… I believe I'll be with him one day, or that my dying brain will make me think I am, but…"

"You didn't get that far that night?"

"Isn't that terrible?"

"Not particularly. You're very rational, Meredith, which you know. It doesn't surprise me that you weren't acting in pursuit of a maybe. That's also what you've told me most separated you from your husband.

"Not that you're unwilling to take chances or believe in something improbable. You have the faith you admire in your son's namesake, focused on people, and on science. Derek was more likely to build castles in the air. It led to conflict, yes, when you couldn't match his optimism, and later once your confidence in your abilities led to your dreams running counter to his.

"You were both romantics, in different ways. For you, what is takes precedent over what could be, because you can see the good in what is. You're capable of isolating it, which is why you can see what Derek's limitations might've been. It's not that you think less of him. You question your interpretations of the past, because of the situation surrounding your mother's actions and your sister's birth, but I think that makes you see things all the more clearly. There's nothing wrong with not wearing rose-colored glasses."

"Yeah. Huh. Maybe he didn't have perfect vision after all."

Midway through the afternoon on a mid-October Sunday, Meredith held Bailey on her lap while he chatted with Carolyn. He had DK weight yarn looped around his fingers—she'd become as knowledgeable on yarn weights as suture sizes, too bulky and he couldn't pinch, too thin, and he could pull too tight— The task took just enough attention to keep him still. If he was on his own with supervision, it could take all his focus, for fifteen-minute stretches, longer than any toy. With her intervention, touching the tip of the next finger to move the loop onto and catch errors, he could also listen to Grams. It amazed her and had also inspired her to order a decent suture kit from Amazon, and put more bananas in the kids' lunches and snacks while she practiced stitching the peels.

She'd worked from nine-to-three at the clinic for the first time that week; she hadn't done family medicine since her clinicals, and she'd been sure she'd be faced with something she'd have known about if she'd kept up with the research. It'd been a lot of colds and flus, scripts for diabetes supplies, injuries needing basic wound care. A shift in the pit, without the traumas. Being called Dr. Grey continuously for six hours had been the strangest part.

"What is it you're making there, sweetie?" Carolyn asked, and Meredith very carefully guided Bailey through looping a strand around his index finger.

"I did a bracelet, Grams, see?"

Zola leaned in from the other stool, displaying the product of the short class. She'd done a few more long pieces, but it didn't hold her interest the way it did Bailey's.

"That's very nice, Zola."

"Pretty, Zo-Zo," Bailey added. "Such good knittin'."

"Listen to you! I like hearing such nice words to your sister. It's important for you to look out for her, and for your mama. You're the man of the house now."

"Please, don't tell him that."

Carolyn's face froze for long enough that Meredith thought Skype might be to blame, and then she shifted her attention to Meredith. It seemed like maybe she'd forgotten the other adult on the call, which was generally Meredith's intention.

"Hm?"

Oh, you heard me. "First of all, he's two years old. It's gonna be a long time before he's any a man by any definition."

"Pider-man!" Bailey interjected. That was Sadie's latest nickname for him, and the kids would never have to know that it'd been in her head before he started constantly having string dangle from his fingers.

"Except Spider-man. You want to be Spider-man for Halloween?"

"No, t'ank you."

"We're cutting it close here, bud. And that's the biggest concern he should have. What costume to wear to beg strangers for candy. Not taking care of me, or his sister, who's bigger than he is, for now —"

"Momma!"

"Sorry, Zo, if he grows into those feet, you don't stand a chance. That doesn't matter; how tall you are, or which parts you have don't matter, unless someone tells you often enough that being a boy means you have to be protective, and tough, and that you're going to be held to different standards than…than you're sisters. He'll get enough of that out in the world. I—my best friend Alex was kind of a jackass when we met—" In the small PiP window showing Carolyn's view, Meredith noticed Zola making the face that told her whenever they saw Alex again "Mommy says you were a jack-a-word" could come up in the first conversation. He'd be charmed. "— and he'd have spent a lot less time repressing emotions and condescending to people if he hadn't believed he had to be a man for his mom and his siblings.

"There was more going on there. Foster care, abuse, he's the oldest, his mom has mental illness…. Not the point. I'm totally fine with the idea of Bailey being into sports, and fly-fishing, and whatever, but I'd be fine with that for her too." She cupped the back of Zola's head, running her thumb over the crown. "You were just saying things to a baby, I get that, and like I said, all five of your kids became ridiculously self-assured, quick-witted doctors, so I'm really grateful to have you as my kids' grandmother. You're far better at it than my mother would've been. I just… I know there are only going to be so many things I can impress on them, and that's…it's important. Sorry that I snapped at you. People started saying it at the funeral, and I think it'd been building."

The apology was a little bit of a show for Zola, who'd definitely overheard Meredith going off the rails more than she'd have preferred in the pre-Derek. Part of it was genuine, though. She'd been projecting, the same way she had on Beni, and she hoped Carolyn got that. The fabric of any relationship developed frayed over time, and with her tendency to ruminate, she knew she'd be discovering broken threads in her and Derek's for as long as she could access the memories. It didn't mean they hadn't been happy, or in love, or that it wouldn't have lasted. There would've been compromises and conversation, growth, together. But now, he wouldn't be there to help her mend the holes. She'd have to come to terms with them herself, because the Derek she'd had was the only Derek there would ever be.

Derek is dead. Derek has been dead. Derek will always be dead.

"You're entitled to make those decisions, of course. You have to fill both roles in their lives, now." Carolyn said. "It's important to lay down the law when you're both mother and father to them."

"I thought that, and there are things I'll have to take on now that I would've let him handle. But they have a father. I can't be him, and I'd rather they know that than think any one person can fill every need they have. There are going to be male role models in their lives, and I will do everything possible to make sure they know how gentle, and encouraging, and empathetic their dad could be. He could also be egotistical, and judgmental, and condescending.

"I've met your daughters, and they're all incredibly intelligent, outspoken, powerful women. They don't—didn't always take his crap, and you called him on it plenty, too. Th…uh. Thank you for sending him back. The last time. I should've…thank you. Um. He was a gifted, successful person who'd been given a lot in the world but seeing him and Mark together…."

"They did behave like brothers. Boys can be rough with each other. The girls went after each other, too. The number of times I had to break catfights apart…."

Was that brotherhood? Meredith cringed, thinking of the times she'd seen Derek put everything on the line just to punch his life-long friend the face. She wasn't a total hypocrite; she'd gotten physical with people in her life, but never to hurt someone who hadn't touched her—that was the one of her mother's standards she'd met.

Symbolism-minded Derek would say Mark hit first, and she understood the anger. The rage. Mark deserved the cold shoulder; as much as she'd liked him, she would've understood if Derek had never spoken to him again. If you considered the second time.… If he didn't approve of Mark's partner, he blamed Mark. He'd been enraged at Addison, too, from what he'd said about the night he walked in on them, throwing her and her belongings out of the brownstone, but he'd striped Lexie of agency. How much of his going back to Addison had to do with his belief that women were powerless against Mark? He'd definitely expected Meredith to be powerless against his charms, and mostly she'd loved it, but occasionally it was patronizing.

"They could be the kind of guys I spent college avoiding. A lot of it was talk, but talk can be all it takes to hurt someone."

Carolyn's eyebrows went up, and Meredith could see Nancy in her taut smile. It might not have meant There were boys you avoided? but she would've put good money on it.

"They could be coarse sometimes, I suppose, but dear, criticizing someone for their language isn't—"

"I'm not talking about the words they used; although, it depends on why they used them." Meredith paused. She deeply regretted having jumped down this rabbit-hole, but she was past the point of no return. There wasn't much these days that she bothered banishing the kids for; she'd rather they be able to ask questions in the moment rather than misinterpreting something major—the root of her early trauma. This, she didn't know how to explain on a four-year-old's level. She wasn't sure it was possible.

"Hey, Zo? Can you and Bailey go play in your room? Just for a minute."

Zola narrowed her eyes, clearly not a fan of the idea, but Meredith countered with a raised eyebrow, and she let herself be helped off the stool.

"B, let's take this off, okay? You can have it back after dinner." She slipped the yarn loops off his fingers, a task she'd learned the hard way not to rush. He tried curling his hand, and she ran a finger along his palm, inciting a whiny giggle. "What's the rule, bub?"

"Gotta be with Momma. No gettin' strangled."

"Exactly right." She set him on the floor, and then waited for the click of the door closing. "Derek and Mark were good guys, for the most part," she said, once she knew her daughter wasn't hanging onto words she couldn't contextualize about her father. "But they both…they objectified women. Believed they were entitled to them. Derek wasn't blatant about it the way Mark was, because he actually grew up, and wasn't…. Actually, you know, in some ways he was worse. Mark flirted with anyone with a pulse and boobs, but you knew what you were getting with him. I was a lot like him, for a while.

"Derek wasn't that. He was charming, and persistent, and I'm glad he was, but he used that to get off lightly for dating me…hardly dating at that point. Pursuing me at work, once he knew I was an intern, and I don't blame him. I benefited from it. His arrogance, his entitlement, all of it. But he had a wife. I wouldn't have been thrilled if he'd told me that the…the day after, but I wouldn't have…fallen." Fallen for him and fallen in general. Been anything but an intern with a sick mom. Hell, she'd have been there when he finally got a divorce, if he'd just used his damn words. "And that wasn't…he didn't do it just lie by omission to me, or maybe he did it to me twice, I don't—dammit, I don't know if you even know about the Pl—Rose. He had a tendency to lead women on while he made a decision, and he stretched it out, because he didn't want to hurt anyone—maybe least of all himself—and he got the benefits without the complications, and that's…."

"It's not something you want your son to emulate."

Meredith pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth and shook her head. "In so many ways, I want them to be just like him. He could be so kind, so supportive. Once I could be sure he loved me, that love was the most incredible thing. He believed in me. His confidence made him incredible at his job. I don't know if I can instill that in either of them without there being a certain amount of smugness included. I had negative levels of self-esteem as a kid, and I still would've outright told anyone who asked that I was smarter than my classmates. What I know I can do is make sure my son knows that his sister and I can take of ourselves. He's not beholden to us, any more than any other member of this family is beholden to another. That he knows he needs to work just as hard, and be just as kind, and treat people like they matter. Not just tell them that they matter."

Carolyn's cheek puckered on one side where she'd sucked it in, and Meredith expected to be read a riot act. She'd handled it from the son; she could absolutely take it from the mother. "He always had a way with words. Used it to get out of the hot seat with me, to terrorize his sisters…. Chris saw through it more than I could. I suppose I did have a blind spot towards him as my only boy, especially once Chris was gone. In a way, you're lu— well, I can't say that. There's an advantage to how young they are. Chris never expected me to leave my job, but he was, mmm, I suppose you'd call it patriarchal these days."

These days? The Feminine Mystique came out in 1963. That wasn't a fair thought. Her mother had disdained women who "bought into the patriarchy," and it was a tendency Meredith couldn't always shake.

"He believed in taking care of me—"

"That's not wr —"

"—and being the head of the household. I had quite a learning curve after he passed, and Derek was old enough to see it, and too young to do much else. I suppose he wanted to save me, and I never thought to tell him that he didn't need to take that on."

"He got pretty frustrated if saving someone didn't look the way he thought it should," Meredith said. "Mrs. Shep —"

"For God's sake, Meredith, it's Carolyn. Mrs. Shepherd was my mother-in-law, and, lord rest her soul, she's been out of my hair for twenty years."

"Carolyn. I'm not trying to disparage how you raised him; I could never. There was…I can't catalog what I loved about him. It was all I could think about for months, and maybe I'm swinging in the other direction, I don't know, I just…he was a person, and I think forgetting that…he'd have been thrilled if I could, but it would be unfair to him."

"Christopher slept with another woman the year Kathleen was born."

"Ah, what?"

"None of the kids know that. Very possibly no one else alive knows that. She lived down the road. We got along well once the dust settled. We were jogging partners for years until she contracted gallbladder cancer in '98. I regretted all the times I'd wished her dead very sincerely."

Meredith winced. That was a diagnosis no general surgeon ever wanted to hear. By the time it was discovered, metastasizing was nearly inevitable. She hadn't blamed Addison for Derek's deceit, but for a short time she'd hung her coat on the thought that she was an adulterer and deserved at least the pain Derek had gone through. Would she, now? She'd been in the room with Addison less than three minutes before she officially became the other woman, and her bias had been born from what she understood of her mother's story. That she and Richard had both been cheating on their spouses hadn't been something she'd explicitly understood.

"I won't do her the disservice of saying he seduced her, or anything so gauche. She knew me; she knew about me. And she was the one who told me. So, I know a thing or two about re-examining one's relationship with their husband after he's gone. That's natural."

Oh, is it? The sudden resurgence of defensiveness reminded Meredith of her hot-and-cold feelings toward Richard in the past—the ones that never quite went away. Would she never be able to have a straight-forward relationship with a parental figure, positive or negative?

Maybe not.

"You still haven't heard from Amelia, have you?"

"No, and I check my old phone regularly now. With Zola holding onto it, it seemed...prudent." She could tell, for instance, when Alex was spending a night at Joe's, and she'd been incredibly tempted to get in touch to let him know his niece's reading skills had progressed, and she could sound-out four-letter words. Instead, she locked down the parental controls and kept it on airplane mode twenty-three hours of the day. "Is there…should I…?"

What, call Richard? Carolyn could do that; let Amelia resent her for the rest of time. Then again, maybe it should be Meredith—she was probably on the shit list already.

"No, it's…. I suppose you'll find it silly. I know you don't…. Christopher's birthday is close to the end of the month, and I'd hoped I could get her to take flowers."

"Oh. That. Right. I think there's….I have a whatever…a caretaker's card somewhere, I can…. It may be in Seattle." She didn't think it was. She thought it was in the box in the closet, and it'd been there for six months, so why did that suddenly creep her out? It wasn't grave dirt, and her mother's fucking ashes stayed in her closet for five. Why the hell wouldn't Derek's ashes have freaked out as much a card?

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure she'll call over the holidays. That's usually when she comes out of the woodwork."

"Yeah, um. I can't…I've been on the other side of that. I never ghosted my mother for six whole months, but…." But let me criticize your children again, just for funsies! All both of them I actually like! Okay, and Kathleen. I sorta like Kathleen.

"I suppose I should see it as independence, but mothers worry." Do they? Did mine? Nowhere in the journals or a planner had Meredith ever seen more than "lunch with M." on a birthday, and she knew how many of those had been postponed. "Your decisions for the kids are yours. I'll be the one to learn from my elders' mistakes and be here to support you, not intercede."

"His mom was a winner, huh?"

"Frightful woman. Christopher had his flaws, but if he could come from that shrew…. Well. Bailey will be excellent, with you to guide him."

"I'll go get the kids to say good night." Getting away from the counter without putting the baby on display wasn't an easy feat, but it took her focus from the desire to laugh in her mother-in-law's face. Hadn't that been the problem? Her thinking that having a strong, single mother would be enough to protect a boy from near-constant messaging about how much better they were than girls? That having boisterous, funny, rough-housing sisters would teach him respect? To the point where a truly decent man like Richard Webber—and, oh, he had his own flaws, if anyone knew that it was Meredith—could be so intimidated by a woman's potential success that he couldn't build a life with her? She didn't think it was about a female partner always coming first—her mother would say the men had been prioritized long enough—but to be threatened by the idea...

That wasn't entirely Derek's issue, she noted to herself as she held Zola's hand while she clambered onto one stool and supported Bailey kneeling on the other. He'd been fine with her success—if he'd had Richard's exact issues, he wouldn't have lasted eleven years with Addison—he'd just wanted it on his timeline. He wasn't alone; the time he'd spent worried that her issues had interfered with his race for chief had coincided with her realization that her intern year had revolved around him. They'd figured that out, but how many of their later issues were the same situation playing out again?

It was harder to blame him for his impatience, now; hadn't he been right to fear life would be short? They had compromised, which Richard and her mother hadn't—and if Mom had known the truth? Would she have held back? Would she have become the Dr. Ellis Grey if she had, or would she and The Grey Method have been a footnote, or the section heading that they were by the time her daughter(s) hit med school?—It just hadn't been a compromise that'd worked for them. Whether the next iteration would have, she couldn't say. If she assumed it would have, would that make it easier to forgive the rocky year? And which one of them truly needed forgiveness, when hers was the research that'd stalled?

"You can't look at it that way," he'd said, when she made that observation. "Who knows where that work will go once the technology catches up? Someone else could've filled my spot with the NIH."

"The sensors —"

"Were an issue regardless—and think about it, that was entirely selfish, too. I wasn't thinking of Callie, or—There are other neurosurgeons with my skills. Not many. One or two."

"Such an asshole."

"You love it. Oh, you definitely love it."

"Eh. Your skills are replaceable."

"Exactly. But no one else has your mind, Meredith Grey."

He'd known how many protests she'd have to that, and immediately set out to ensure she wasn't protesting anything. In retrospect, she had even more doubts. Wasn't it her mind that sent her fleeing Seattle, her job, any further research?

Maybe. All she could do was move forward, like she was doing with the kids. He'd believed in her, far more than she'd believed in herself most of the time. It might not be the same as respect, or seeing her as an equal, but as a motivator it was pretty strong.

"Bailey, uh-uh! Mommy! He's touching it!"

"Momma here, I do knittin'."

"She said after dinner, du— silly not-listening…baby."

Meredith glanced at the cleared laptop screen and sighed. If Carolyn had said anything to her, she'd missed it. She could probably expect to find the custody suit papers in the mail. Stupid Mother's Day card.

"Okay, okay, take a breath, guys." She slid the yarn out of Bailey's reach. "You gotta take a break, B, you're going to have your edges done before I get anywhere on the blanket."

"And she's using bigger yarn," Zola added.

"Hey, you're the one who asked to do the short edges," Meredith pointed out, opening the fridge.

"Yeah, because he likes doin' it more than me. When are you gonna tell Grandma? He is not a good surpriser."

"Neither were you, Miss 'Daddy, we bought you a new lure.'"

"I was only little!"

"You were older than he is!" Zola made a face but didn't have an argument. "How long has it been since the last pizza night?"

"Uh. Friday, Cal Day, Sunday, Mon-a-day, Two-es-day, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Cal Day. Nine nights."

"Good counting. One question —"

"Saturdays are Cal Days!"

"Question answered. Pizza and the Muppets?"

"Yes!"

Bailey stopped reaching up to the counter on his tiptoes, and turned big eyes on the TV, like her suggestion should've made a movie play. "Funny Bear do trick-or-treat!"

"Oh?" Meredith picked him up and sat him on the island at eye-level. "You want to be Fozzie Bear for Halloween?"

"Trick-or-Treat, please, t'ank you!"

"What do you think, Zo? Is that a 'yes?'"

"I think he'll make a tantrum if it's not, but, um, he doesn't have more time, so yes."

"What's that about time?"

"Mommy, I have to think about it."

Meredith shook her head. One of Zola's presents for Christmas that year was going to be a kiddie dictionary, and they would look up the word "hypocritical" together. It was one a part-Grey Shepherd girl should know.