She woke up alone. No long, big-girl feet pressing into her side. No baby-who-almost-isn't exhaling into her face. The last wisps of her dream echoed in her head.
Derek is worm food. The thought sent her stumbling into the ensuite; another asset she'd assumed they wouldn't need. Sometimes it wasn't about having her own bathroom as it was having one more door in the middle of the night.
The kids weren't there to follow her this time; only the image of her husband decaying over the next twenty years because her mother-in-law had beliefs Meredith never expected.
"I know she's insane," Amelia had said, sprawled across the foot of the bed Meredith could barely stand to touch, but wasn't ready to leave. "I've read Jessica Mitford, rah rah natural burial, if you really can't get your head around cremation. And if I believed in a sees-everything afterlife, I'd be totally on your side. He'd want to be here, on the land, with you. But I don't. Mom does, and she believes that for him to be at peace his body needs to be buried, and to do that with a whole horde coming in from New York, it has to be embalmed."
Meredith had taken the point. Cremation would've been selfishness; it wasn't as though she actually thought she'd be keeping part of him with her. Did she?
She believed in something; whether it was the last flashes of a desperate mind with a lot of drugs being pumped through her system,or an actual afterlife, she couldn't be sure. It wasn't angels and trumpets, or whatever, it had been peaceful. She'd returned to consciousness sure her mother was at peace, and she believed Derek was at peace. His mother deserved that, too. Meredith just had to deal with her active imagination utilizing years of studying and practicing medicine to cobble together imagery that bypassed her tolerance for the gruesome.
It'd outdone itself that night. Even with the door open to her empty bedroom, the walls of the ensuite were closing in on her. She couldn't go back to a bed that was quickly becoming as associated with Derek than the one he'd slept in. Neither child stirred when she peeked in on them, depriving her of her usual distraction. Without anyone to soothe except herself, she stared out the picture window in the living room. The ocean looked so calm, but really it was exactly how she felt; unaffected and rippling on top with a whole world of death and disaster underneath.
She couldn't simply throw herself out the door screaming the way she felt like doing, for the same reason she couldn't—didn't, I'm making a choice—grab a bottle of tequila and drown in that. The monitor set-up had been the one thing she'd taken charge of while they were shopping for the condo; the one she'd read fine print on, and that made an obvious difference in Fatimah's opinion of her sanity. No matter how close their rooms were, or how likely they were to end up in her bed, she had to able to see her children at all times, to know they were breathing. The receiver she clipped to her pajama pants belonged to an updated version of the model Callie had used to monitor Sofia from Mark's old apartment across the hall. Five years ago, Callie had been as likely as Cristina to laugh whenever Meredith snarked at hover mothers. Then, Sofia came early, and Zola developed a hernia after her shunt insertion, and they were comparing Amazon listings.
Her foot slipped on the deck as she was pulling the door shut and considered the half-life of the sleeping pill in her system. One of the reasons she kept taking them was that she could stay asleep past sunrise. That she'd fallen asleep before the birds woke meant she'd absorbed some of it, but until she remembered to replace her travel-sized tube of toothpaste, she'd have to take them after brushing her teeth. She'd been able to tolerate Zola's bubble-gum flavor that morning but trying Bailey's grape hadn't gone her way. What had in the past year or so? Outside of the OR, not a whole lot.
The flat rock had probably been created in a factory somehow—her four-year-old had a better grasp on geological science, since she'd devoured a dozen videos from the kid-friendly channel they discovered while searching "What is Sand?"— but she could pull her legs up on it, and it was within fifty feet of the rental's door.
How far away were Madeline McCann's parents?
She got up to check the lock. The image of a shattered sliding glass door lingered even as she arranged herself to sit facing down the beach; the ocean and the condo both in her periphery. She'd have to figure out programming the alarm; she hadn't watched Sadie demonstrate it. At the time, the idea of going out without the kids seemed ludicrous.
She drew her knees up to her chest, and wrapped Derek's flannel around herself. There were so many stars here. She used to tease him, asking if he'd seen a star before college. They'd been city kids who viewed the outdoors as somewhere to play and explore; everything he'd known, and she didn't, had been learned intentionally. Even his stories of family camping trips, and weekend trips to go fly -fishing with his dad, had the air of adventure that she associated with the weekend camp Boston Prep had sponsored every August for the middle grades. His goof-ups, the diagonal porch, the weekend's provisions eaten by a bear, made her hopeful that she could learn that stuff, too. Then again, the man had made her feel the same way about brain surgery.
Which she had learned, just hadn't pursued. She'd made a choice.
The night air made her tears cold on her cheeks; a nice relief from the heat she'd gotten used to. They were slightly less constant, if only because she'd been working harder to find distractions. Logging into her medical journal subscriptions on her tablet had been a failure; the words shifted in front of her eyes, no matter how far in or out she zoomed. She could see them, and she didn't have any issues with the kids' ebook collection, which had been built up over nights of on-call room sleepovers. It was more like what she'd imagined the few times Cristina had brought up what she saw if she didn't use the adaptive methods she'd mastered to deal with her dyslexia. Like her brain was refusing to translate anything complicated.
Outings were a good time-suck, and that could be as simple as taking sidewalk chalk to the deck. The kids never tired of the closest playground, and Google had helped her discover a second that was walkable with the stroller. It had both a swing and a "wobbly, pirate bridge," which meant Zola considered it worth getting excited over. Their building had a pool, and taking them in was a goal she'd acknowledged only to herself. She couldn't expect the kids to understand "one step forward, two steps back,"—not when Zola was still asking "can you explain me what 'switchbacks' are again?"— and Bailey's birthday was a far more pressing endeavor.
She refused to not celebrate. Not with Zola old enough to remember. She had to remember more about Derek than Meredith did about Thatcher, she had to—And Meredith wanted to celebrate her baby becoming a "tot-ler". Her last baby.
Derek's suggestion that they try for another had been a shock; because of the timing, and because after all the disappointments they'd stopped discussing how many kids they wanted. Bailey had been totally unexpected, and his birth had been traumatic for her already-hostile uterus, but that wasn't the only way. Maybe if he hadn't still been a baby, she'd have felt differently, but until this point, she hadn't thought of her youngest as her last. They were complete; that didn't mean they'd been finished.
Her rational side wanted her to acknowledge that her last with Derek didn't mean her last. But even if she got to some point where the older two were self-sufficient enough for her to imagine adding another. The point of having another was mixing her DNA with Derek's, not simply creating a human to add to the population. She couldn't imagine going through the ups-and-downs of trying to adopt on her own—especially a baby, when she'd been graced with two, and there were so many foster kids needing homes. That left the old-fashioned way, and the idea of some nebulous Meredith-and made her head swim. For all Meredith didn't want to believe in soulmates; she was lucky to have found one man whom she loved that way, and who loved her as she developed as a person, a woman, and a surgeon.
She toyed with the ring that hung just above her clavicle. If you didn't wear the ring all the time, when did you stop wearing it at all? Outside of work, she'd kept it on her finger more in the past year than the five prior. She wasn't sure what about "a kid pulling her to the right, a baby screaming on the left, and a ringing phone in her hand,"said "totes single" to men in Seattle, but she knew from interested eyebrow raises, and damn, boys. Sometimes, she'd wanted them to be explicit, just so she'd be justified in helping them see sense. They didn't. If they approached, they offered to help, like she was going to let them touch her baby, or tried to make small-talk, which would've been strike one if they weren't starting at strike negative-infinity—thank you, Zola. The longer Derek had been gone the less amusing it'd gotten.
Here, she'd kept the ring on its chain for the most part. It made it obvious if her hands were shaking, and while it'd been sized to half its original diameter for her, it'd been threatening to slide over her second knuckle.
Whenever she washed and combed out Zola's hair, she didn't make a pretext of putting her down in her own bed. The other night, she'd been snuggled in, rotating the ring between her fingers when she'd interrupted her own dissection of an episode of Peppa Pig to ask, "Momma, why do you wear your wedded ring as a necklace?"
"Well, I started doing it because you can't wear a ring under surgical gloves. They could break and let germs through. Some surgeons take it on and off every time they scrub their hands, but…."
But I'm not a ring bride, and my husband was attached to my hand often enough to make the symbolism unnecessary.
But I could hear Mom telling me I wasn't a possession to be taken. I wasn't "his." Now, I want to be his.
"I never wanted to lose it." I never wanted to lose him.
"I know why else."
"What's that?"
"You wear it here," Zola said, touching her chest. "'Acause Daddy's in our hearts. And our membries," she added, ever the surgeon's daughter. "What you feel in your heart is a lot caused by your mind."
"I like your answer better," Meredith had said.
It really wasn't surprising it was the item that she used to keep herself in the present. It was the piece of her relationship that she had with her constantly, wherever she was, wherever the kids were. It was a reminder of who she was. Some would see it as a symbol of the past, but to her it was everything she'd done to let her past be the past. It was proof she could move forward. Proof that everything Derek had said the night he'd tried to make her flee had been bullshit. Proof that he'd accepted her, loved her darkness and all.
Carolyn still wore hers, didn't she? Carolyn would have answers about widowhood, the way she had about colic and teething; about Zola's first word coming late, and Bay walking early. Meredith had sent her a CVS Easter card, maybe half-hoping it'd end up in a box with whatever condolence cards had been sent "back East."
All it'd had said was, "we're safe & we'll call soon."
She probably should've made contact on Mother's Day. Since the day she'd come home for good, Derek had Zola "call" once a week. Meredith wasn't there yet. While they were little, she accepted that she'd have to do the "Grandma is Daddy's mom, so she's a mother"stuff. Derek had wanted her to give—accept, in his opinion—more than that. They'd had variants on the conversation from the Post-it day on, but especially around the finalization of Zola's adoption.
"She's my mother-in-law. That barely means anything, and it definitely doesn't make her my mom."
"That's not how she thinks of it. She still talks to Addison. She practically raised three or four of our friends; one of whom was Mark, so you don't need to know how to have a mom, or whatever your argument—"
"I had a mom."
"You—"
"I had a mom. She wasn't a great example of one. She didn't give a crap about handwritten Mother's Day cards. She wouldn't have ever won Mom of the Hour, let alone anything more than that, but she was my mom. Thanks to her and Susan, she was the only parental figure I had. I'm grateful that your mom actually convinced a man who loved me that I was worth it, but I don't need or want anything more from her."
He hadn't pushed it as much after that, and she'd made a point of acknowledging Carolyn as the kids' grandmother, showing that she wasn't shutting her out of a role she was entitled to. Meredith could convince herself that didn't have to include Mother's Day this year, but Bailey's birthday wasn't about her.
The card had had a postmark. She wasn't going to coach anyone on not saying "beach" or "Sunny Day-go." Carolyn was a savvy woman. Meredith's whereabouts could be revealed. And if they were? If Alex showed up in a day or two saying, just get in the car, Mer, or even Cristina, with the eyebrows—she sometimes gets why Mama Burke took the eyebrows before a ceremony that required sincerity—would Meredith be willing to stand her ground? Or would she give the whole thing up as a failed experiment, and return to Seattle where ghosts lurked around every corner?
She'd have to be able to resist the trigger phrase. Isn't this what your mother did?
It was, after all.
But I'm learning from her mistakes. I'm answering their questions. I'm paying attention to them. They've been registered with doctors. They've got appointments with a child psychologist. I called the neurologist.
When was her first doctor's appointment in Boston? The time she had pneumonia was…winter of first grade? Actual first grade, or…? She stared out at the ocean, letting the wariness the waves caused anchor her as she thought. Her aunt hadn't been there. It'd been Mom taking her temperature and reading to her, over one of the few weekends they'd made plans for—she'd still never seen Young Sherlock Holmes—a standout in a lifetime of disappointed hopes.
They'd ended up in the ER because her fever got high, but… Mom had had an argument with the Meredith doctor first. Thirty years later, she was suddenly awash with the mix of fear and awe she'd felt watching her mom insisting she might not be a pediatrician—it'd taken Meredith another few years to hold onto that word consistently. Until that point, doctors were surgeons or "Meredith doctors"—but she knew when chest films were necessary.
That'd come before the ER, but it'd been at least a year after Maggie was born.
It doesn't matter. She rested her forehead on clasped hands. When Ellis did what doesn't matter. At least, it didn't matter enough that she'd be contacting MGH's records office. Just… She took me. She must've wanted some responsibility for me.
She pushed around thoughts like that for a while, interspersed with things Derek had said over the years, because he was always there. She'd never been able to tell if he was more or less charitable toward Ellis than Meredith was. Before she died, he'd been too willing to dismiss Meredith's claims about her mother, but he hadn't been wrong. She hadn't been evil; not even when Meredith was sixteen, and a raw nerve of anger and neediness. After, it was like he wanted to blame Ellis for all Meredith's pain, and, well, she was dead. Meredith could let it go, right? Not have new damage from that disastrous "gift" of a day. Never knowing if it could've meant there'd been improvement—that should've sparked his professional interest at minimum, but he'd been desperate for her to move on from the negatives in her history, the way he believed he had. Everything that had happened with her father had been proof that she couldn't.
If she and Derek hadn't been so drawn to each other, she might have sealed herself off at that second break-up. Hadn't it proven she' been right about "happily-ever-after?" Their first two months seemed so much brighter in retrospect, but fundamentally what had been different? All she'd been able to see was that she'd been coming straight out of med school. Four years of focusing on what she could do, and nothing else. But buckling down on surgery hadn't been enough. She'd wanted to take the next steps with him, but it'd taken longer for her to believe someone could want to take those steps with her, specifically. It'd turned out he'd needed to realize that, too. Loath as she was to admit it, as much as she wanted to go back and reclaim that time, relive every moment she could with him, it'd been necessary.
Was she meant to have thoughts like these? It seemed healthy to counter if only I'd/he'd/we'd gotten it together earlier with reminders of why that wasn't true. She didn't buy the "don't speak ill of the dead" bullshit, but…was idolizing someone a way of moving on, and that was why her dead mommy stayed in her thoughts? Did she want her out of them? No. No more than she wanted to stop thinking about her dead husband. No euphemisms, no exaggeration. Just less tears. Less tears would be great.
The haze of dawn was visible when a beep from the monitor receiver drew her attention. Zola was up. She slid off the rock and followed her own footsteps across the beach.
"Mommy! Where are you?"
Crap. The key and latch took her a second of fumbling. Good, if someone else tried to get in. Bad, because she needed to get in.
"Coming, Zo-Zo— Ow, shit!" She kicked Bailey's ride-on train through the living room into the kitchen. If she was going to come through here in the dark, clean-up time would have to become a bigger priority. The four-door hallway seemed impossibly long. She took a bet on turning into her room, and bingo, Zola stood next to the bed, Rawr's tail clutched in her hand.
Meredith dropped to her knees, hissing as the sting of bruises she'd accumulated from the bathroom floor. "Momma's right here, sweet girl. What's wrong? Does something hurt?"
Zola shook her head, but her sobs strengthened. A hint of light was coming in through the curtains. Bailey could wake up at any point, and eighteen out of twenty times he cried if Zola did. Even "I Don't Wanna Share with Bailey" crying could get them both going.
Meredith pushed herself up on the bed, and then lifted Zola onto her lap to rock her, the same way she'd done since day one. Back when she'd considered herself alone and lost with four doctors in the house, and her not-dead husband a ferry ride away. It'd turned out that the maternal instincts she'd disparaged hadn't been that bad. Years later, the routine was more or less the same; verify that their physical needs were met and hold them until the tears ebbed. At Bailey's size, the problem was usually solved by then. Now that Zola had words, she also had more complicated emotions. She couldn't be rushed into explaining, either. Bailey could tantrum for an hour and have absolute breath control—choosing to hold it until he went blue, for instance, an incident that was up there on the list of worst few minutes of her life— but long before she'd seen Meredith shed a tear, the breathless way Zola cried was one of those things that made it easy to believe she was meant to be theirs.
"Slow, deep breathes, Zo-Zo," she said, drawing out the soothing s-sounds. "It's okay, sweetie. You're right here safe with me." She pressed Zola's hand to her chest to help her feel the rhythm of her breathing.
Zola slid it further, planting her palm firmly on Meredith's heart. "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy."
"I'm here. Did you have a bad dream?"
"No. I wake-ed up, and you weren't here, and you were dead. You were just a dead, too, like Daddy and Aunnie Ecksy."
"Oh, sweet Zo-Zo, I'm right here." The knife of her making those connections was twisted by the confirmation that she understood that "Aunt Lexie who died" with "Aunnie Ecksy" who used to play with her were the same person. For a while, she hadn't been sure.
"You were gone."
"I was outside. I'll show you in a minute, okay? Then, you'll know where to look if I'm not in here." I should be able to tell her I'll always be there. I should be able to breathe in a bedroom that was never ours.—"This is a situation without 'shoulds.'"—Shut up, Beni. "If you ever can't find me; that doesn't mean anything bad happened. You know what it does mean?"
"What?"
"That I am doing everything I can to be with you as quickly as I can."
Meredith wished she could make firmer promises, but she couldn't bring herself to lie. She was afraid that if something did happen, Zola would blame her for not preparing her. For letting her believe the world was fair—maybe even kind. Was that too Ellis of her? With all Zola had already faced, she didn't think so, but she wished she had someone, Derek, or Cristina, or even Alex to confirm it.
"Daddy is gone, but he won't come back."
"Daddy is dead. That's different from someone who's alive being gone."
"He got too hurt for surgery," Zola stated.
"That's right. The brain is very fragile; that's why we have a big solid skull around it. Even then, it can heal. If it'd been anything less; if he hadn't been able to walk, or talk, he would've still come home and been your dad. We could've done everything we could to make that happen. But his brain was hurt enough that it couldn't do the things it needed to do to keep him alive."
"Where did he go, Momma? Grams said heaven, but the cousins said under the ground is a bad place. " Zola bit her lip, and Meredith put the pad of her thumb against it the way Derek used to do for her. "I don't want him to be gone in a bad place."
"I don't either, love.But he—the way he was hurt, his brain stopped being able to think, or remember, or imagine before his body died." What if he could only remember? Was that a life? Alive? Beni had implied that could've been significant in her difference of opinion with her mother—It hadn't only been not wanting to live through Ellis's death twice, or to watch her die for good over two decades later. "He wasn't in the body we buried anymore, so he's not underground now."
It'd be nice if she could listen to her own reassurances for once.
"Where he is…. I don't know. No one does, so people believe different things that help them be less sad and afraid about their loved ones being dead. Some people believe our personality, all the thoughts, and memories, and imaginings—they don't need a body to exist. They're a separate part, called a soul. You'll have to ask Grams more about it, but what she believes that the souls of the people we love go somewhere very nice called heaven."
"You think so?"
"I think the brain is pretty powerful; it uses a lot of energy, and when we die that energy could keep existing."
"I think with us is very nice for my daddy soul," Zola said, twirling Roar's tail. "So, probably, he didn't go somewhere else."
"I know he didn't."
"You said no one does."
"Not totally. But the parts of your dad that we love; what he said, what he did; what he taught us, all our memories—that's with us. It's with all the people he helped. With all his friends and family. If there's more to it than that; if souls go somewhere else, or if they're all here watching us, what matters is that they're not hurting anymore. They're at peace, because even if they see us doing silly things, they know we'll be with them again, too."
"If you were a soul, would you be with Daddy, and Aunnie Ecksy, and your mommy?"
"Maybe. I don't know for sure. I hope so." Unless I get Alzheimer's in which case, sure probably. A thought that could've been reassuring had never been so terrifying.
"But if, would you be happy?"
"If that happens, one day, I guess, but…. Oh, baby, I'd be sad, too. I'd be so sad without you and Bailey."
"But Mommy, you're not happy. And, um. You'd be happy."
"No, no, no, Zola." Meredith had to stop and breathe, returning to rocking her daughter for her own sake. "Zola Grey Shepherd, you listen to me better than you have ever, ever listened. I am sad. I have been sad about Daddy, and that might be true for a while. But you and your brother make me happy. You make me so happy, and you're the most important thing in the world to me. I would not be happier with Daddy and not with you. I would be so much sadder, and madder, than I am now."
"Madder?"
"Yeah. Because even if I got to watch you grow up, I wouldn't be with you. That'd make me so mad. And you'd be sad, which would make me sadder. It'd be a lot of sad, Zo."
"Yeah. You'd probably cry all the hours, not a lot of them."
"That is probably true."
"Do you think Daddy is mad?"
Meredith hadn't considered that, and she should have. She'd always been more prepared for the eventuality of death than Derek, like losing his dad made him all the more determined to experience the rush of life—she'd seen that after he was shot. To have had this happen, a death he didn't get to fight…he'd hate it. Sometimes it amazed her that he'd been certain about being unplugged. She hoped he hadn't chosen it for her sake.
"No 'who knows where technology is going?'" she'd asked, the first time it'd come up.
"I do know," he'd insisted. "We're not getting there in our lifetimes." Brain death, the only death a neurosurgeon had to accept.
"Daddy would be so mad," she confirmed to Zola.
"Momma?" Bailey appeared in the doorway of his room. She'd put him across the hall so he wasn't likely to wander when he got out of the toddler bed she'd moved him to earlier than planned. "Mommy laughin'. Zo-Zo so funny."
"I am," Zola agreed.
"So-so, Zo-Zo," he repeated, climbing up with them. "So-Zo."
Meredith shook her head. She was having to balance carefully on the edge of hysterics, but at least a little of that was good hysterics, if those existed. Astonished hysterics, over how lucky she'd gotten. How her winding, rocky path had given her these funny, bright, resilient kids who loved her, and let her see she was her capable of loving them back. She would never stop working to make sure they knew how much.
Meredith had mostly gotten over the belief that a birthday cake had to be homemade after Sofia's second birthday party. "It blows that your mom didn't even do that consistently, but all of my were purchased, and I lived. Sofia's not getting that Ace of Cakes shit I got, either.
The skill of the Angelina Ballerina cake had belied that statement, but it was possible bakeries that pushed simpler options didn't survive in Seattle. Zola had been happy with sheet cakes taken to day-care—"for everyone to share it!"—and at her party this year, the bakery closest to the hospital had won her heart with butterflies.
However. Baking took Meredith out of the condo once to buy groceries and didn't involve having to speak to people during business hours. As a bonus, Zola had even more patience for the task than she did, making trial and error a feature, not a bug.
Her strange waking hours also proved beneficial when it came to collecting deliveries from the communal package room and stashing the pre-wrapped gifts. Without a partner around to intercept a light sleeper, that was one of the things that felt like pulling off a heist.
"It's just going to be us, and Sadie, and Fatimah," she reminded Zola on the afternoon of his birthday.
"I know."
"Sofia, and her moms, and all Bay's daycare friends would come, but they're in Seattle."
"With Alex, I know, you 'splained it a million and one times."
"Repetition helps us remember. Okay, let's…let's do this. Bailey come sit on my lap so you're in frame."
Meredith tapped the screen as soon as the toddler—officially—was positioned, and her plan actually worked; his smile was the focus when Carolyn accepted the call.
"Mere—Hi, there, oh hello birthday boy, it's so good to see you!"
"Bailey is two now, Grams!" Zola announced, leaning in.
"He is, isn't he?" Carolyn dabbed the side of her hand below her eye. "Goodness, I'm sorry."
"It's okay. Mommy cries lots." Not coaching her had seemed like such a good call.
"Big emotions have to come out, like yelling if you're angry."
"Ahhhhh!" Bailey added. "ROAR!"
"No, angry isn't scary, it's just upset, 'acause someone did something you didn't expect or want."
"Scary, grr!" Bailey hooked his hands into claws, and Zola looked at him like she couldn't believe she'd made it through two years of this big sister gig.
"Oh, look at all those scary teeth." Carolyn said, redirecting them skillfully. "I think you have more since I saw you!"
Meredith made herself speak up. "We've had some drooly days. He should have them all, for now."
"He drooled like ocean waves, Grams, and I know, because the Spuh— Paf—Pacify— Mommy?" Meredith whispered the word in her ear. "Puf-ci-fic Ocean is right out there," she pointed at the window. Carolyn's face changed, like she hadn't expected Meredith to give blatant permission for revealing where they were. "They have beaches, and trails, and—" Meredith suddenly expected her to say 'and Blue Dicks,' which would've been horribly hilarious. Maybe that was what she shouldhave coached her on. "— we did an Easter egg hunt, and it's good there's not so many de-minders since we already miss Daddy an overwhelming lot."
"Daddy not DeeCee," Bailey added, which was becoming a more common statement than "Daddy DeeCee," but not by much. Meredith didn't know what else to expect with him. Once the birthday was done, she'd double-down on research. Get through this, first. Get through this first birthday since Derek died. Bailey's first birthday since Derek died.
"…heaven." Meredith jolted back into the moment; ears pricked for definitive statements.
"Mommy says what is impor'ant is he's at peaceful," Zola said. "And I think so too 'cause injuries are big hurts."
"That's very compassionate, Zola. What else are you doing down there? Do you have a new school?"
Zola looked up at Meredith with an expression that said there are schools here?
"We haven't gotten to that yet," she explained. Bailey started squirming, and she bounced him up higher. "There might be a summer thing? Where we did the egg hunt, Zo. But I'm fine having them with me…."
"All done. All done, Gahms!"
"Ow! Mommy, he kicked me with his shoe!"
"Move over to this side, then, Zo—whoa, shi—oot." Bailey's wriggling to get down pushed her far enough backward that she almost lost her balance on the stool. That would've been a great impression; watch your errant daughter-in-law concuss herself seven weeks—and two days—after your son died from a major brain bleed.
"Are you all right?" Carolyn asked.
"Sure." Meredith would've forced a smile at that point, once. Back when impressing Derek's mother…. It still mattered. Wasn't that why she'd done this, while still isolating herself from everyone she cared about? She had to, and not because of anything to do with Derek's possible soul-energy.
Meredith knew, logically, that a lot would have to happen for her to be deemed unfit. The whole fleeing-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing put her a step closer than she wanted to be, and that was what Carolyn had seen.
"Bailey, I'll put you down, but first say a nice good-bye to Grams."
"Down. Bye-bye, Gams. Bye-bye, DeeCee?"
"No! Grandmas lives in New York, and we live in Seattle and Sunny Day-Go, and no one is in D.C.!"
"Great summary, Zo," Meredith said, putting her hand on Zola's tensed shoulder. "Go get him playing with the trains, and then we'll show Grandma the coloring you did today?"
"Zo-Zo color water bew!" Bailey revealed. "Lotsa bew."
"Spoiler alert," Meredith quipped as she helped Zola down. She tugged Bailey off toward the pile of metal trains they'd started amassing from the grocery store
Carolyn's smile was indulgent. "They're doing very well."
"They are. They're great."
"And you?"
"Me? I'm f—"
"Don't say 'fine,' I know better. I've been there."
"You…you had it worse. Christoph—Mr.—your husband's death was…was violent, and the kids saw…."
"And I had a neighborhood's worth of support."
Meredith bristled. "I…I'm not great at relying on people, but the ones I have, they're good. They would've done anything…Cristina flew over from Switzerland, and she would've come anyway. They'd been through stuff together. Just, I don't think she liked him so much by last year. Sorry."
"I know he wasn't universally adored. The next-door neighbor's cat holds a long grudge."
"Seriously? Wish I'd known that; sounds like something he'd have hated to be reminded of."
If she couldn't get Derek's side of that one, she hoped she'd remembered to ask Amelia. She couldn't begrudge Mark for not being around; not if he might be somewhere with Lexie—as well as the fact that losing Derek would've killed him— but she'd missed having that alternative perspective. She was going to miss it all the more without the first-person point-of-view.
"Come to think of it, Cristina is not un-catlike…. My point is, they'd be there for me, and I needed …something else."
"I understand. I may not have moved across the country, but I did upend our lives. The store wasn't my dream. His family wanted me to take it over, and they didn't think the timing could be better. I'd left the service after Saigon; I had our pensions. But I would've been miserable trying to keep it up, and none of the children would have wanted it in the end. The oldest two had their lives planned out, Liz has my head for business, which is to say, none at all. Amelia couldn't walk in the door, and Derek would've kept it for the wrong reasons. Continuing in nursing was the tight decision, I paid for five children to go to medical school with minimal loans, but balls were dropped. You're already paying attention to which ones you need to keep in the air."
"Grams, lookit." Zola climbed up a rung of the stool, and Meredith wrapped an arm around her to keep her steady. It put the little girl's face in front of hers. One of the hair puffs they'd combed out for the day tickled her nose, bringing the familiar, real smell of the conditioner they'd used since she left the hospital.
"That's lovely, Zola! I love all the fish you put in."
Carolyn might have issues with how she'd raised her own children—and Meredith had no doubt there was far more to her relationship with Amelia—but she'd become a stellar grandmother. Would Ellis have tried to be different for the little girl in her daughter's arms?
"We gotta finish writing on the cake 'afore Aunt Sadie gets here. She's not a 'ninternship friend."
Crap. "We grew up together," Meredith interjected. "I didn't come here… She owns the apartment we're in, and she…she's coming over for his birthday."
"That's nice. I'm relieved that you're not totally alone. You're going to need time to yourself."
Meredith nodded, because that sounded true. She just didn't want it. Not yet.
Several hours later, she would've been happy to never have anyone extra in the condo ever again. She flinched every time an adult body approached; her heart rate increasing like something in her hindbrain had thought maybe…no, he's gone, without her consciously being aware of the thought. Accepting Fatimah's offer to cook had been an obvious choice, but she hadn't considered how little that would leave her to do. Whenever Derek cooked, he walked her through sous-cheffing, and it'd been long enough that she didn't need instruction so much as for him to point her where he needed her. Sitting at the counter watching Sadie pop vegetables, and the pangs that came when the women moved perfectly in sync were chest-shattering. And she would know.
"Fati, does your school have a summer thing?"
The three adults in the room looked over to Zola. She was balanced on her knees on the second stool being held steady by Meredith while she very carefully painted melted butter over French bread. She'd already surprised Meredith by lasting this long. Bailey had been allowed to open his presents and was happily stacking Duplo. She'd eyed a couple of his louder crashes, but they hadn't been enough to tempt her away from listening to the adults.
"We do offer several day-camp programs."
"Is that something you want to do, Zo?"
"Grams said you're gonna need by yourself time. Bailey and I could go to the beach school, and you could pick us up and take us to the park after."
"You really think things through, Z," Sadie observed.
"I've got a good 'magination. I like bein' home with Momma lots, but school is good, too. I'll go to kindergarten when I'm five."
"That's right." Fatimah checked the tomato sauce, and then gave Sadie a look Meredith couldn't parse. "Can you tell me some things you liked about your school?"
Zola started talking about Sofia, but she'd moved onto dress-up by the time Sadie took the sheet of garlic bread from her and popped it in the oven. "Bum on the chair," Meredith murmured. Zola changed position without stopping her story.
"Death, with me for a sec?" Sadie nodded toward the door. Meredith followed her out onto the deck.
Her feet moved automatically toward her rock. She stopped herself on the other side of the deck railing and leaned against it. "Didn't think you still smoked."
"I don't. Here." Sadie reached into her purse, and even within seconds of the last exchange, Meredith expected her to take out a pack of cigarettes and the engraved Zippo that'd been an eighteenth birthday present. Does she still have it?
It didn't matter.
What she held out was an orange pill bottle. Meredith laughed, and it was the shrill laugh that she didn't like, but she couldn't stop. "Seriously? You're supposedly a responsible adult, and you're still a fucking pharmacy?"
"It's an anti-emetic!" Sadie snapped. "You were looking at the garlic bread like you thought it might bite you, and I don't care how long it's been, I know you're not okay. Drunk, sober, hungover, flu, whatever, cold Chef Boyardee was your comfort food. You consumed enough wine in Italy to concern me, because you were making up for it in pasta. You drank tomato sauce."
"That was a bet!"
"And you puked it up the second those guys were out of sight, and spent the cash on cannolis, which I think supports my point."
Meredith looked away, out at the orange sky. Bright orange? It still looked dull to her. Burnt orange, maybe.
"We should go to Tuscany," he'd said, handing her a glass of wine in the kitchen of her mother's house.
"I love Tuscany."
"Oh, yeah?"
"You sound like you're shocked."
"You never talk about your Grand European Tour."
"That's not the only time I spent in Italy. Besides, that was closer to Eurotrip. More bars and youth hostels than museums and bus tours…."
A breeze caught Meredith's hair and blew it over her face. She swiped at it and noticed Sadie's raised eyebrow. "Sorry."
"Why? You only zoned out for half a second there."
"Really?" Meredith groaned. "Seemed like it'd take longer to get where I got from Italy."
"Oh?"
"Mmm. Remember how you called me Garfield for, like, three years?"
"Yes, because I still have the marks from your stupidly sharp elbows."
"His dad's store had a lot of Italian customers, I guess, because after the funeral they had lasagna in the freezer for so long that they could tell which extended family it came from based on the sauce. His sister Amy won't eat it, now. Found that out the tried-to-cook-for-her way."
"I can see how you'd get—"
"Their dad died the year I was born. Shot in his store, in front of two of his kids. I'm not sure what month, which I should know. Before school started because they didn't send Amy to kindergarten. I probably existed in the world. One day Zola or Bailey could end up falling in love with someone who wasn't on the planet at the same time as Derek. I thought it was jarring to get married and have kids after the dead mom thing, and….
"It doesn't matter. That is the most ridiculous thing. It absolutely does not matter that my four-year-old could end up with someone born in 2015. But it's what I'm thinking about, because what I should be thinking about is that two years ago, I was having my spleen cut out, in the dark, but it didn't matter. I'd seen Derek's face looking down at his son—our son—and I knew—the only time I've gone through a life-or-death situation and known—it'd be okay.
"And last year, seeing him holding Zola while he watched Bay faceplant into his freaking smash cake…I didn't think things could ever get better, but deep down, I did.… Except, they couldn't. They wouldn't. No matter what happens to the three of us, life with the four of us wouldn't ever get better than it was right that second."
She didn't know at what point Sadie put her hands on her shoulders, but she must've gone from making-a-point to flailing, because Sadie was bracing her. "Mer," she said. "Is it possible that it's a good thing that you know that? That you can point to that moment, and tell them, that this was the happiest moment, and it belonged to all of you?"
Meredith wiped her face with the sleeve of Derek's flannel. It'd totally lost his scent, but she wasn't ready to unpack another one. "Maybe…but, what if they want to know why that was ten months before he died? I mean, there were…right after he decided to quit D.C., I thought…no, they were better…they were gonna…. I… I used the word 'blessed,' Sadie. I…I…."
"You didn't do anything. You didn't jinx anything or do anything wrong. If they ask, by the time they ask, they'll know no one is perfect. You were what, five, when you knew that? It'll take them longer, because whatever was going on between you and Derek, I'm sure they didn't know. I'm sure because of the way Zola talks about how much you loved each other. Love may bring happiness, but it doesn't always bring it. People who expect that…they don't do well with relationships." Sadie's blue eyes glistened in the waning light. "They'll understand. Who knows, by that point Zola may be a cradle-robber, dating all those 2015 babies and— Ha! Made you smile."
Another gust of wind came up from the water, and Sadie caught the chunk of Meredith's hair that blew up between them. She pulled out the elastic that was just barely holding the ends of her hair together.
"Hopeless, Grey. Take one." Sadie shook the antiemetic bottle at her. "I'll fix this rat nest, we'll let it kick in before you have to face the garlic again." She pushed Meredith over to her rock, and then watched her dry swallow a tablet. "These shouldn't make you drowsy. If they do, and it's a problem, we'll try another compound. I 've seen a lot of people who've dealt with nausea as a side-effect of psych meds. It's a balancing act. How's your sleep? Taking the pills?"
"Don't pretend you don't check the bottle whenever you come over. I get it. I'm not suicidal this time. I get it, because I just said 'this time,' but I've got two shrinks butting into my life. I'm not hoarding sleeping pills."
"Fair. You want to give them another go, and see if you've finally got a circadian rhythm going?"
"There's always a first time."
"You know, there would be some people who'd be amazed at the way your daughter's hair is always impeccably styled, and you're a white chick with a loc going on. I know I brushed this out, what, last weekend?"
"You were in Taipei last weekend. I went out with your girlfriend."
"Yeah, and speak of, if you want to practice medicine, we can always use volunteers at the clinic. Could even pay you, but I figure flexibility is key."
"I…I should—"
"No shoulds."
"You are not my therapist, stop it. I should miss it. It scares me that I don't. A lot. I'm supposed to be a surgical junkie. Do you know how hard maternity leave was for me?"
"What else did you have to deal with at that point?"
"I had a kid on top of me twenty-four/seven. Oh, wait…!"
"Meredith."
"Richard making me his medical proxy, and flat-out telling me we weren't family. My hospital being flattened by the storm that could've killed me and Bailey. One of our interns did die…." Meredith lowered the hand she'd been counting off on. "I got what you're saying, I do. Psychologically, or whatever. I only…it's been fifty-two days. I…I didn't take off that long after the crash, or- the other crash. He got shot and neither of us—"
"Look, I'm not gonna tell you that you're doing this wrong. I have seen wrong, and the only thing you are doing wrong is your hair!"
"Piss off."
Sadie laughed, dodging Meredith's elbow. "I do like the brown, but it surprised me that you'd go dark again."
"Black may match my soul, but it's not my color," Meredith agreed, shuddering at the memory. It'd taken a long time for trims and highlights to fix what she'd done in two hours at nineteen. "It doesn't make me feel invisible the same way it did, but it's not my favorite. Derek lo—loved my hair. He said it was a reflection of who I was…how I shined. This year, that started to feel like a mandate. Once he left for D.C. it reminded me of him—everything did, but my hair I could control….Suits me now, I guess. Dull and messy."
She played with the end of Derek's flannel. The buttonhole was wide enough for her to put a finger through, and she kept doing it over and over. "He was the opposite. Good with his own hair, bad with hers. Not purposefully, just…. He learned, but I…well, I started with the basics. You remember Raine?"
"No, I've totally forgotten your junior year girlfriend. God, I was so jealous of that girl."
"See, if you'd used your words at the time…."
"We all have our regrets." Sadie shoved her shoulder, just teasingly enough to rekindle Meredith's wish that they'd had a period of something named. It wouldn't have lasted. Growing up enough to call Meredith her girlfriend wouldn't have gotten Sadie to where she needed to be to make her internship work.
If they'd had that time, though, and she hadn't been at Joe's to meet Derek…the world in her head tilted out of alignment with the real world, and her skull was too small for her brain, and…
"I used to go over to Raine's on Saturdays and hang out while she and her sisters had their hair done. You're not the only one who noticed I have nimble fingers. I mean— Not that her mom— She didn't know we were…."
"Psh, anyone who knew you at seventeen knew."
"Mom didn't."
"Knew you, I said."
"Fair. Mrs. Pearson may've seen me more frequently than she did for a couple months. She taught me to do their twists once someone got them started. From there…I've told you how we got Zo?"
"Mmhmm, you said Karev brought her in with a whole group of kids?"
"The year before the boards. We were all trying to be impressive. I was starting to study, choosing…gonna be choosing a specialty, and then suddenly there's this baby. None of the fertility stuff mattered. I wasn't going to have nine months to prepare. Some stranger— probably some straight-laced, straight, old man—was going to decide I was qualified to have her? No way. I was scared to go into her room. Derek loved her so fast, and I… He was big on knowing. He never doubted himself. Maybe that's why with him I did know…something…not that morning on the floor of my mother's house, even though he swears he…he swore he did. Seeing him at work, though, even with how close Joe's was, it felt…unlikely. Intriguing.
"With Zo, I…it's not that I wasn't all in…but even once we.…" She could pinpoint the start of the shaking this time; did that mean anything? "We got married. Without her, we wouldn't have been legally married. We had…when Izzie died—almost died—we did paperwork, and I signed stuff when he was shot, but —but his mother got called, too, and I dunno if…fucking Dillard might not have…. They might not have…. Damn it."
"Breathe, Mer. You're okay. C'mon, don't puke up the puke pill, that's just sad."
With her face buried in her hands, Meredith snorted, and almost thought she was going to choke on snot. This grief thing was so gross. "My mother-in-law…five doctors. Her kids are doctors, and she's still…really Catholic. Amy…she's the neurosurgeon…the two in the store became neurosurgeons…. But she can't hide the fact that she worshipped Derek, and he'd have specialized by the time she finished med school, so I don't know if…."
If he'd died from that bullet, Carolyn would've made that awkward call to Michael Boetcher's mother, because his Post-it wife didn't know him well enough to know it was necessary. She'd gone years assuming that the bullet that killed his father had lodged somewhere almost reachable, almost survivable, and then last year he'd admitted to major trauma that he framed as a deep-dark secret. She hadn't asked if that was why he went into neuro, because it got too close to Mer, did you really consider specializing in plastics or cardio? and she'd have to—Amelia, she was talking about Amelia.
"She…she would've understood the scans, but she's the baby, and she's been in and out of rehab, which is enough for them not to listen to her. The first sister I met gave me the 'slutty intern' moniker; I don't think any of them like me…I'm not sure they'd have listened to me. If a marriage certificate hadn't been a way to look better to the straight-laced, straight old man, Derek could be hooked up to a vent somewhere, in whatever limbo there is, and it's only been fifty-two days, his internal injuries could still be. He could be…."
He would be gone. She knew that the way she knew that where his body was in reality didn't matter, but it did.
"They're not, D. He's not. He's not in pain. You made the decision he wanted you to make. He's gone, and it's awful, but it's not like that."
"I…I know. I do. I just…she…." It wasn't supposed to be like this "Zola told her today…Carolyn…that he's 'at peaceful.'"
"I like that. Keep telling me about her. Tell me about about Zo,"
"Sorry. Guess my thoughts are as tangled as my hair …."
"Cute. Don't apologize to me."
"Um. We did that. The…legal thing. Got home studies, which…baby-proofing must've gotten lost in 'starting an internship with a three-month-old' because there's the seventies, and there's Mom and Thatcher didn't care if I was gnawing on uncovered wires."
"Can't blame 'em. I couldn't hack internship without that nonsense."
"It took me a while to bother doing the math, but five years of residency, five years of Meredith. April-May-June. Three."
"If you don't want to be the pregnant intern, and you don't want to wait until you're thirty..." Sadie said, tying off the braid and sitting on the rock next to Meredith.
"She did that, too. Ellis Grey had to do it all." It was deeper than that; as deep as the ocean stretching out to the horizon, and she wanted to dive into it just as little. "Except baby-proof. We did that. Covered corners, got baby gates, installed new fire alarms, and then focused the home inspection on the house-in-progress, because it was still safer.
"Zo was in the hospital a month. Derek went to see her constantly. He thought I didn't want to get attached. But I…I would take whatever I was studying for the next surgery, and for my meeting with the social worker. I'd read them in her room. Just…watching her. Letting her be real. They had me give her her bottle a couple of times because I was there. She wasn't just a patient, but I couldn't let her be mine until that meeting. The social worker did did not end up being my favorite person, apologies to your lady-love, but she reminded me that the world isn't all soccer moms and Ellis Grey. That night, I picked her up, and…Derek had mostly been the one to hold her, so it was new, but…right. Like she fit. I told her… I told her I was hoping to be her mama.
"I'd been reading all this stuff about being a mom, but that's when I really understood I had to be Zola's mom. The mom she needed. This little human who'd been toted halfway around the world, in pain; who'd had all these confusing things happen and been left in this sterile building—I've seen pictures, her orphanage was as homey as it could be. Not like all that footage that came out of Eastern Europe whenever the Berlin Wall fell, or whatever—but in her mind, she was abandoned in an institution with strangers for the second time in her life, and this time almost everyone looked totally different than she was used to… And I had to… had to figure out…how to be her mom." And then, to her mind, she was abandoned again.
"A lot of shit went down at work right around then. I'll tell you some other time, just know I was about to be on Miranda Bailey's shit list, but before that, she found me organizing about a dozen printouts on hair-braiding and skincare, and she said she appreciated why I hadn't come to her first, but really, nothing pertaining to my little girl would be as stupid as the questions I'd asked her about surgery.
"Derek.… He wanted to be a dad, and he loved Zola, but he didn't think about the complexities ahead of time. The interracial stuff, the adoption stuff. He was a 'deal with it as it comes,' person. I went in early to study for the boards and came home night to find Miranda giving him the lesson she'd given me. She took a picture before she started. The man could wield all kinds of men's haircare products, but he didn't pay attention while I had her trapped in the high chair every morning."
"Supposedly, that's a dad thing, not just a negligent-dad thing."
"I guess. Don't think Thatcher ever did mine." Did he learn to do Lexie's? Seems unlikely. "Lexie could braid, but I'm sure her mom taught her."
"Himself never did that's for sure," Sadie said. "We should probably head in. Think you can tolerate dinner?"
"I can try."
"That's all anyone's asking." Sadie held out a hand to pull Meredith off the rock, and didn't let go until they were in the house. Meredith wanted to be strong enough to jerk away, to not need the support. She wasn't. If you hadn't recovered from one fall, wasn't it better to avoid the next one? Or should she be letting it happen, and learning how to get herself back up?
It's dark. She's on top, and she's almost there. She tries to stretch her legs out further to each side to bring herself close to him, but they're blocked on either side. Added to the cushioning that has added spring as she bounced this equals something, but she can't hold the solution in her head. Her palms have been on her breasts, but she can only tolerate that for so long when she's this close, so she moves them down, starting at his abs, and sliding them up. She's almost at the base of the Y-shaped incision when the reality of the path she's following hits her. She fists her hands, and closes her eyes, hard, willing them to adjust to the lack of light. When she opens them, she can make out his face. His eyes are black with only the smallest rim of blue. His mouth is a thin, pressed line, and she understands right as she hears the first thump above her. There's no way they were in a space this enclosed a minute ago. She can't sit up all the way. She slams her hands against the lid of the coffin, but the thumps of dirt hitting it from the other side are far louder.
Having Bailey's birthday over wasn't the watershed moment Meredith had thought…hoped… it would be. The next morning, she sat on the sofa staring at the spread of toys that hadn't been there twenty-four hours previously. Zola asked for cake for breakfast. Meredith ate half of the slice she split with Bailey before the frosting began to feel too thick to swallow, which could've been a good sign, or a fluke. That day moved forward, followed by another day. And another.
Shouldn't she want to have her life back? Even sitting on the rock at night, combatting the strange mix of disgust and desire caused by the dead-Derek in her dreams, she couldn't decide whether she wanted things to change. Shouldn't she mind that none of the light spilling in seemed to touch her while she pushed the stroller into the massive, glass-walled Central Library? If it did, wouldn't that mean she was moving on? She didn't want that. Not yet.
Did she? If it meant going back to work, back to Seattle, taking her kids back to familiarity, shouldn't she? Questions like that were what sent her to the first library that came up on Google Maps, because Beni sure as hell wasn't giving her straight answers, and the internet as a whole was equally frustrating.
Zola was thrilled about the outing and spent the car ride coaching Bailey on the correct pronunciation of "library." While there were times Bailey definitely thought he was going to be trapped in the car-seat for days every time he got buckled in; although there were times he definitely did, and she couldn't find the trigger, he'd mostly accepted that it wasn't likely.
"Mommy, the wall-windows look kinda like the hospital," Zola said, as Meredith navigated them toward the Sanford Children's Library on the ground floor. "Bailey-bird, library books are to take home, but they are not yours, so you can't color 'em. Even if they don't have color pictures."
"That sounds like someone has learned that lesson the hard way," commented the staff-member who'd opened the door for them. Meredith pushed the stroller through and turned it around so Zola could own up. As someone who'd hidden her reading habits from both her mother and her friends, Meredith appreciated libraries. That she hadn't explained that rule definitively enough on the first go was a major regret. Zola's first library card had been a big deal to her, even when Derek pointed out they could buy her all the books she wanted.
"— and it looked like a coloring book, but it wasn't, and if it was, it wasn't mine, because other friends might want to pretend their own colors."
"Other friends will." The librarian grinned. "If it's a good book. I'm Regi. He/him." He tapped the name badge around his neck. "I'm here to help you find whatever you need."
Meredith tucked a piece of hair behind her ear—she'd borrowed Zola's doll to practice French-braiding on, and then spent half-an-hour online looking at dolls with more natural hair-types, so not a lot of actual practice had happened—and as her finger brushed the tip of her ear, she realized she'd been trying to reveal the cartilage piercing she'd let heal up. Not that it mattered. Plenty of straight girls had cartilage piercings, now. It wasn't a thing like it'd been for her and acknowledging who she was didn't mean she wanted…. Nope. Not being out in Seattle and not being single were independent things, and she didn't need to start equating them. Not there was a decent chance that she was about to literally worry herself sick in front of the library dude, who was simply doing his job.
"Actually," she blurted. "Is there somewhere they can be in sight and not…?"
"Little pitchers?"
"Mmhmm, wherever that actually means."
"I think they're referring to the way big ears on little heads resemble handles," he said, pantomiming pouring from a pitcher before leading them into the room. There were Dr. Seuss characters painted on all the walls. Meredith had half a second to wish Zola was within her reach before— "Hey, Mr. Regi, did you know he wasn't a real doctor."
"Oh, yeah?" Regi looked over to Meredith, the corner of his smirk almost invisible in his trim goatee.
"No, it wasn't even his real name. It's a soo…soupy-nym. A fake name. But, um, my real name is Zola, and my brother is Bailey, he was two this weekend, and Mommy's a real doctor."
Meredith's hands were white-knuckled on the bar of the stroller, but Zola didn't say anything more while Regi pointed out the play area —"we usually only let babies and toddlers play there, but if there's a friend who can sit with a book, and watch out for the littler kids."
"I can do that! I do lotsa watching Bailey."
"Don't boss anyone," Meredith told her. "Go pick a good book." She lifted Bailey who lunged to the side for a Clifford book on display. "Okay, you too. Oh, thanks." She aimed him so he could take the book from Regi and put him down at the base of the play-area.
"Can I out loud read this one myself?" Zola asked, holding up a picture book that'd been left on the floor.
Meredith flipped through What Do People Do All Day, feeling like not totally losing it at that title was a bigger Thing than being inside the library. "I think you can handle it."
"Good. There aren't enough words in Bailey's baby board book. Baby board Bailey. Mommy, that's all B's!"
"Good spotting. Remind me you noticed that in the car, okay?" If they talked about alteration, making up sentences would take them all the way to the condo, if not further.
"She has sound logic," Regi offered.
"Yup." Sometimes I think my dead mommy cared enough to make sure I got a smart kid so I'd know what she dealt with when she was around. "Not showing off at all," she added.
They walked over to a kid's-sized table, and Meredith found herself sitting on it the way she would've as a teenager. It put her at eye-level, but also free to look away.
"So, what can we do for you?"
"Great question. So, the thing is…. I'm really not used to saying this yet, so, I'll just…my husband died in March."
"Oh, I'm—that's awful."
"It's not fun that's for sure. I'm…I didn't expect to be on my own with them, you know? They're…they're incredible, and my mom was a single mom, but my dad didn't…I have no idea what I'm doing. We've done...we did the book thing about adoption, and when she was going to have a baby brother so, I thought there might be books?"
"Always. I mean…" He smiled and pressed his square framed glasses up his nose. "Let me go pull some things."
"Wait! The other thing is, we're…. Their grandmother is Catholic, but my husband wasn't…we're not. I'm… atheist…or, more ag—no, that's a lie, now. Definitely no deity, and the rest.…" Let's not go into the near-death experience. "Energy, memories, whatever…we don't do the heaven thing."
"I can work with that." He gave her a sympathetic little lip-twist that was honestly better than anything she'd seen at the funeral—don't—and she turned to watch her kids. To her surprise, both of them were sitting on the same level of the play-area looking at books.
She sent a picture to Sadie.
Look at my nerds.
The room was nice. Airy and open, with shelves that you could either see over or through to monitor your kids. Every Dr. Seuss character made her hear Zola's pronunciation of "pseudonym" again.
"Do you over think we're raising her to be too pretentious?"
"Her parents are-renown—"
"Speak for yourself."
"Tumor. Trial."
"I…okay."
"Renown surgeons. She's allowed to pretentious even if she becomes…a zookeeper."
"Press secretary."
"An itinerant farm worker…."
They'd done that a lot; tossed out random jobs to remind themselves they didn't care what the kids did. She loved her career, but ultimately she'd been pressured into being a doctor. He'd never said it, but she didn't think you got five in one family by chance. Their kids would have a choice.
She pinched her thigh through her jeans. It wasn't a trick she did a lot; it could get too easy, but it did bring her back. Regi was a few shelves away, scanning a cover. A paperback sat next to her. She picked it up, idly, expecting the print to swim in front of her.
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where—
"Oh, I Capture the Castle, that's a good one."
"Shi-crap!" She managed not to swipe the librarian with the book, but only just. The instincts born of being a small kid never went away, especially if you kept guys like Alex around. "Sorry. You startled me."
"I, uh, got that. Apologies. Pulled a few titles that might be useful for you. Help Me Say Goodbye in particular has some activities that might be good for…Zola's…four?"
"Going on fourteen, but well-spotted."
"Got that. I Miss You shows death and mourning traditions in different cultures. Lifetimes is more 'circle-of-life'-esque, and if you're a doctor…."
"Surgeon, yeah."
"Great. Um, When My Daddy Died, I… is going to apply to your situation the most. Tear Soup is about all the different emotions grief can bring; the stages of grief, but with a focus on how it's not linear. And The Invisible String is about how we're bound to people we love, whether or not we can see them."
Meredith stared up at one of the windows, waiting to be able to swallow like a regular damn person.
"They're called the May Grays."
"What?"
"It just got cloudy, and you were…We call the clouds the May Grays."
"Huh. So, they clear up in June?"
"Every year I've been here."
"And how many years is that?'
"One," he said, confidently. Meredith brought a hand to her mouth. She wasn't sure if she was smiling or not.
With his recommendations piled in the stroller, she found a chapter book to read aloud to Zola, and a few board books for Bailey, who'd finally stopped tearing them up; and the castle novel for herself. The atmosphere had drawn her in more than anything in months. Regi set her up with a library card— you can have one if we're here in…July, she arbitrated, arbitrarily when Zola asked.
He'd printed out the receipt with their due dates on it and had pushed his glasses up in preparation to say something else when she interrupted. "Is that the date?"
"Did they not update it this morning? Oh, no, that's correct."
"Oh. I… I…have to go. Sorry. Thanks. I…Thank you."
"Do you need a hand?"
"No. I just —"
"Mommy said we need to go. Can you open the door, please?"
Clearly not expecting to be schooled by her preschooler—which, where, had he been? —, he obeyed.
"Sorry, Momma," Zola added, once they were heading for the lobby. "I didn't mean to boss, but he wasn't listening to you."
"Part of being a grown-up," Meredith said, focusing on each word. "Is deciding when you need to take charge. You made a good choice." She got them into the parking garage, into the car, and then she sat there for a minute, on a precipice. If she let herself fall, she didn't know what would happen. Sadie was in Hagåtña. All her boasting about taking care of herself, and she was an inch away from being stranded.
That would've been a far more appropriate way to mark the third anniversary of her sister's death. Anything would've been more appropriate than forgetting it entirely.
A/N: June's section will be in three parts for the sake of "these sections are way too uneven."
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