Motherhood shifted your thinking. Meredith had anticipated that, but she never stopped being surprised by which thoughts were changed. It wasn't that she was less apathetic to the idea of tradition, in general. She'd never be traditional. It would be easy to let all of them slip away in a new environment, especially the ones that weren't bolstered by the outside world. But those were the traditions she and Derek had created, and she'd do anything to continue; to keep building on. She might not be creeping into Zola's room at first light, but she made herself go to the kitchen when it would've been simpler to stay in bed, leaving Zola asleep on the silk pillowcase next to her—those had been ubiquitous in their house for several years, now. Zola couldn't keep a night cap on overnight to save her life.
Meredith took one of Sadie's pills with an inch of orange juice before filling the cup and putting a lid on it. She dreaded Zola offering to share in her special breakfast and seeing her recoil; there was too much of a chance she'd think it was her fault. Then she maneuvered the industrial stool that'd been left in the bathroom closet by a genius former tenant, and carefully took down the lockbox and the three store-wrapped boxes hidden behind it. Derek used to do the stashing. It'd been an easy division of labor; she'd wrapped, he'd hidden. If Meredith had accidentally hid them from herself, they'd both panic over a simple human foible.
On a day leading up to every birthday or holiday, she'd spread the wrapping supplies out on the bed; Derek lying on his side next to her, complaining about this being the activity she'd locked the door for, unquestioningly putting a finger down whenever she asked. Somehow being shocked the times she purposefully taped a bow on him and not the gift. Once he'd returned from hiding the goods, she'd reward his patience..
"Finger," she'd murmur, and he'd joke about learning his lesson and her exact folds before taking direction. They would've lived an entire day to that point. Surgeries, ER shifts, follow-up appointments, hikes, zoo trips, meals, stories, bath-time, bedtime. The extras were done with the last dregs of energy she could scrounge. She'd never have given them up, but she'd have fallen asleep the second his arm rested over her torso.
She couldn't imagine adapting any of it to her current life. Not having the energy. Not having the task laid out in front of her. All the hours of wakefulness she had to herself, and she dreaded the idea of filling them. Buying pre-wrapped gifts for Bailey's birthday had been easy. To keep up Family Day traditions, she'd made alternate arrangements.
Breakfast was a similar situation. Without the brain surgeon who could move around the kitchen like a ninja; she'd had Sadie pick up her special-ordered takeout and bring it over along with Fati's expertly wrapped packages. Last night's hand-off in the parking lot of the building had brought back memories Meredith preferred not to visit, and the thrill in Sadie's eyes hadn't helped help. She felt like an enabler in a way she hadn't since…since the last time she'd seen that look.
"Grey, come on. Apply those Gender Studies classes you claim you took? Betty Friedan wrote a manifesto to save intelligent women from the shit you think a 'normal mom' should do. You went to prep school, I'm sure everyone around you was getting guilt-gifted, but I got all the brand name gadgets, and the time with my parents. I can absolutely promise you they want that more."
Funny, how much she'd fallen back to advice that came from Callie. She'd never told her that she regretted the times she'd laughed at her with Izzie. There was probably some psychological explanation that the former rejects slipped into the mean girl roles. Whomever Callie had been in high school, Meredith thought she'd probably have gotten along with her. She was loyal. Tough, but willing to show vulnerability.
They'd been getting closer since the girls were b—came into their lives. Since the mornings they spent preparing for Meredith's boards, pushing strollers over common ground that had been there all along. Since Cristina left for Rochester with Meredith in her rearview.
Like you can judge. She got to Seattle from Zurich in eighteen hours, and you can't pick up a phone. You don't deserve to call any of them your best friend.
Meredith wasn't deluded; she knew what she was doing looked a lot more like Izzie's departure than Cristina's temporary move. Except, she hadn't looked anyone in the eye and told them she'd grown past them. Two and a half years, the gift of a wedding, almost destroying five careers, meant nothing. To Meredith all her friends had done from her meant too much. They'd pulled her up off the bathroom floor too often; she'd stand in front of them again once she could stand on her own.
The beeping microwave startled her. She jabbed at the keypad to silence it and held her breath. Nothing from the hall, and no reaction from the monitor. She moved the reheated waffle onto a plate. Her deep dive into Yelp reviews of San Diego breakfast joints had paid off. With the brightly colored fresh fruit and homemade whipped cream, it didn't take much effort to create a plate Zola would exclaim over.
Her heart seized as she shouldered the door open. Zola, starfished across the warm spot Meredith had left, and the lovey she'd brought to Meredith's bed in the witching hours wasn't the floppy frog that'd had all his fur robbed off, or Rawr, or Anatomy Jane. Clutched in her fist was the giraffe she'd had the day Janet had taken her from Meredith's arms.
Zola shifted again, no longer a baby, and right there with her. Meredith balanced the tray on the foot of the bed and sat down. "Zo-Zo, it's time to wake up, brilliant girl."
Zola cracked her eyes open and then yawned, looking just like her baby-self for that breath. "Momma?"
"Do you know what day it is?"
Zola rubbed gunk out of her eyes, lines forming between her eyebrows, and then she shot up. "It's our Family Day!"
"That's right. It's been five years since your daddy and I met you." Meredith turned her focus to setting the tray within Zola's reach. Her smile exploded as she took in the Belgian waffle and the crazy straw in her orange juice, but she was four, and her hands reached for the packages stacked next to her Mickey Mouse plate
Derek had been all for taking any opportunity to shower their kids with gifts, but Meredith had put the kibosh on that while they were sorting through Zola's first birthday presents. "I get where you're coming from," she'd said. "I saw it all the time in school. Parents who grew up without much, giving their kids what they didn't have, way beyond necessities. It didn't make them better people. And we won't be the only ones buying her things. All your sisters, aunts, uncles. The whole hospital invested in our drama. There will be way too many presents in her life. What we give her needs to matter."
At some point in her late-night parenting book, blog, pamphlet, whatever, reading, she'd come across the want, wear, read, need model, and on Christmas and birthdays they'd used that as a baseline. Family Day was different. It wasn't a celebration of Zola's adoption—Meredith had read those blogs, too—It was about the unlikelihood of how they'd come together. About the start of their family.
"The blue is Bailey's?" Zola asked. "Because it's his now-favorite?"
"Yup."
"Mine is the purple. My birthday I liked green."
"Go for orange on Christmas, and you'll have gotten all the secondary colors."
Zola gave her the side-eye. "You say weird things, sometimes." Well. Derek had called her out on that, too. She couldn't take over everything he'd done herself.
"That is what mommies are for," she replied.
Zola stripped a chunk of paper off her first gift. They'd given her the book I Don't Have Your Eyes on her first Family Day. Derek used to say it'd been written for them, because Zola definitely had her way of looking at things. This year, Meredith's trawling on Amazon had led to The Colors of Us.
"This is all about mixed-up families like ours! I can read it to Aunt Maggie." Zola said, flipping through it. "Can we read Crazy Cakes to Bailey later?"
"That's a great idea." Including Bailey in this day was something Meredith had stressed over to the point where she'd almost decided maybe it didn't have to continue past the first year. That'd been the first truly good day in the aftermath of the plane crash, even with the bittersweetness of having planned it with Lexie there. But then Bailey had come in May and celebrating their family had been a way to reinforce that Zola wasn't any less special to them. Last year, she'd happily helped tell Bailey about "the big thunders" while he was born, and Meredith had been sure that celebration would be the model for years to come.
This year, she'd known they needed the reminder that they were as much of a family as ever, and she'd considered letting the day pass up through the previous weekend.
"Thank you, Mommy!"
Meredith blinked to see that Zola had cleared the paper from her second gift, and was holding her arms out for a hug. She sprawled out next to her to squeeze her close, and then propped up on her elbow to watch Zola investigate her gift.
"The box is so fancy." She lifted the wooden lid carefully. "They're thin markers!" she exclaimed. "Grown-up ones!"
"Yup. You've gotten so good at coloring in the lines, and those are better for writing."
"I'm gonna write lots of stuff. I can write my own family book for next year and do the pictures!"
Meredith leaned over, pressing her forehead to the crown of Zola's head. "You are so creative, Zo. So smart. You are an incredible big sister. A good friend. You're kind, and brave. Your coming to us was the best thing ever, and Daddy and I love you so much.."
The last words were a variation on what she said every night tucking her sleepy girl in, but being wide awake in the daylight must've made Zola hear them differently, because she frowned. "Uh, Mommy?"
"What is it, sweet girl?" Bailey was beginning to stir, and she could tell Zola's concern was big. "I can only answer what you ask." An Ellis-ism, but one that she'd used before, and it hadn't seemed to traumatize her.
"How do you know?"
"How do I know what?"
"That it's true for Daddy?"
"That…that he loves you?"
Biting her lip, Zola nodded. "'Cause of he's dead," she elaborated.
"Right. I…."
Meredith wanted so badly to lie, or at least fall back on the authority of being Mom. "Because I know, and I don't have time to explain."
"I guess I don't know. I believe. Some things are science, and some things are belief. Science means something can be sensed. Things that keep being true no matter what. Those are facts. Like, it's a fact that you have on Doc McStuffins PJs. There can be new facts. We learn new things. Like…you used to say you hated cheeseburgers, but it turned out you didn't like the mustard. That's a fact about you."
Zola made a face that made it impossible not to kiss the bud of her nose, but her solemn listening expression returned quickly.
"Beliefs aren't proven," Meredith continued. "They're different for different people. They can become facts. But until something can be proven—until it's something that can be seen or measured, it's a belief. I believe that there are dogs on the beach today. I could go look out the window, and see, but until I do that, or I hear one, I don't know. That's a fact I can prove. Some beliefs can't be proved. We haven't seen everything in the world, or the universe. A lot of things people believe have to do with what happens to…to who we are when our bodies are dead."
"Like souls?"
"That's right. Sometimes lots of people believe the same thing about that, and about how we should act as people. That's what religion is, and it's…." She considered how to explain without sounding disdainful. "Your grandmother believes that someone's soul gets… to go somewhere special if you follow certain rules while you're alive. There are different religions that have different rules. Like how at Sofia's house, you take your shoes off inside, but at our house you can wear them.
"I don't have proof Daddy can still feel things. But he told you he loved you that morning, right?"
Hadn't he? They made a point of it. He'd been out of the routine for a while, but home for a week at least—twelve days—so….
"Uh-huh. He said he'd one day teach me to be a driver. "
That, too, now lay on her horizon. "Well, there's your answer. Daddy always loved you, and he would always love you. That wouldn't have changed if he hadn't died. And if he is somewhere, with us or not, nothing you ever do will change it. The same as I will always love you, even when you're so big you reach the end of the bed."
Zola sighed; already too mature to be reminded that on her third birthday she'd looked at her big girl bed and asked: "Will I still fit it when I'm four?"
"People have lots of different beliefs, and as long as they're not hurting anyone that's their business. But no one else's belief needs to change what you believe. Not mine, or Grams's, or anyone," Meredith added.
"I believe I'll be a soul because I'm nice. And Daddy was nice, so he's a soul with us."
"And we love you."
"Yeah. Open." Zola held up her laden fork, and Meredith took the bite to keep the strawberry chunk on the end from falling. "Good eating, Mommy." That was her "feeding Bailey" voice, and it was precious and guilt-inducing.
We want her to be empathetic. Compassionate. Understanding. But didn't she also need her remaining parent to be infallible? Hadn't she needed it so much that she'd blocked out anything else? Thatcher hadn't died, but more and more she saw how similar it'd seemed. She'd never dissuaded her classmates from thinking it; no one expected the deadbeat there, and she'd seen what adults' faces did whenever she said he'd left. Saying her mom left him led to different assumptions. Different facades of sympathy, and implications that'd felt disingenuous to take on, considering that the one thing she remembered her father as was "soft." Funny how that'd turned out.
"Are you ready to look at pictures?" Meredith asked. Last year, Bailey had been on top of her pointing baby fingers sticky with fruit juice at this point. Something had distracted him, which made Meredith concerned about what she'd find in his room, but Zola was pressed against her, her big mind churning in her little body, needing her undivided attention this time. She hated coming up against these single-parent speed bumps.
"Yup," Zola said, and then giggled as she pulled air from her straw. Meredith picked up the small album, the kind that had come with developed rolls of film and flipped it open.
"Who's this?"
"Me as Zola Limbani." As, like it had been a role she'd played. It resonated with Meredith; she hoped it was healthy developmentally. "In Malawi."
"That's right."
"It was my turn to cry a lot," she observed, touching the wailing infant in the photo.
The difference between this image and the baby Derek had handed Meredith was palpable. She could usually accept that things worked out the way they had to, but this was when she wished they could've helped her sooner, even if they didn't have Zola. She'd been so bright, mere hours after Derek purposefully repositioned her. Until Meredith had seen the pictures, it was unfathomable that Zola had spent any of her short lifetime in pain. It was almost worse that there might've been times when she'd been propped in a way that drained the fluid until it built up again. It would've been so confusing; made her world so harsh.
"I was sad," Zola continued. "I didn't have a you and Daddy yet. That's like the opposite of a dying."
"Good point."
"I had spina water in my brain, but I don't remember, because there's a tube that drains it, and if my head hurts tell a grown-up, because a doctor like Daddy needs to fix it. Not Daddy because he is my daddy—and he's dead," she added. "And not Aunt Amy, she is family too. And in Seattle." Seattle. Not Sattle. When did that happen?
"Excellent." Meredith flipped the page. "What about this one?"
"The norphanage ladies. But that," she pointed to the bottom photo in the spread. "Is my bi-ick…bia…bio-log-ical—" She said "log" like the wood, but her pride in the big word was too much to spoil. "—mama. She didn't have the resurfaces to care of me." Meredith had a moment to process how Zola told her story like it was just that, a story to recite before she added, "Is that like reminders?"
"No. Resources are things like money, and food, and medical care. Makena—" Meredith pointed to the caretaker "—says you lived somewhere very far from a good hospital. Your biological family couldn't travel their easily, and they knew you'd need one surgery, and maybe more than that, so they took you to the orphanage."
"For someone who wanted a baby to take home?"
"Mmhmm." They'd have a more nuanced talk about that when she was older. She deserved to know everything they could tell her, even if might've been easier if they didn't have the information they did,
"But I cried a lo and had water. So, Makena and Alex brought me to Daddy to fix."
"That's right."
Meredith let Zola process, picking a shred of strawberry off the plate. If Alex hadn't taken on bringing those kids to Africa. If Arizona hadn't gone in the first place…. There'd be no Zola here, no Sofia in Seattle. She was grateful for all of it, but especially the mother who'd known even an orphanage would be a better environment for her baby, in spite, or because, of all the love she'd had. Were Maggie's parents this grateful for Ellis's decision?
Zola's mother made her choice based on circumstances a white, American doctor would never have been in; Maggie wouldn't have gone hungry or had untreated medical needs, but there would've been stigma. Meredith had experienced it as the daughter of a single mother to whom she looked identical. Maggie would've faced worse; the questions asked of her would trace back to Richard. None of it life-threatening, but if it hadn't been made up for by warmth…. Meredith had to believe Ellis loved them both, but beyond that she couldn't imagine how her mother would've been different.
"It's kind of like a death, too."
"What?" Meredith didn't think she'd missed something Zola said, but she didn't always know.
"To my bi-uh-logical family," Zola clarified, her pronunciation already improved.
"A little, maybe. When Daddy went to D.C., it wasn't like a death, because we knew—" believed "—he'd be home. That he was safe and doing things he loved…. He was just doing them somewhere else." Possibly with someone else.
"But what he does now, and if he sees us is a belief, and I can't know 'til I'm dead, so that's sad," Zola reasoned.
"Mmhmm. One day, when you're big, you could maybe go to Malawi, and meet your biological family. It's not like that when someone dies."
"What if I don't wanna to that?"
"That'd be okay."
"My biological mama won't be mad and sad?"
"She isn't ever going to be mad and sad at you," Meredith ventured, and Zola's shoulders relaxed visibly. "And your d— I will be there for you every step of the way. I'm always going to be your mom, Zo, even if you get to meet your biological mom. Daddy will be your daddy, no matter what. You're ours, and Daddy is ours. Our family will only ever get bigger, even if that's hard for anyone else to see."
Zola flipped to the next picture, which featured the whole group who'd traveled through the Namboze Clinic. "And in Seattle, it's not like we're dead?"
"No. I'm sure they miss us," she added, as much to Alex in the picture as Zola. "But they know we're healthy and safe."
"I was sometimes upsettled when Daddy was in D.C., and I get upsettled 'bout Daddy being dead."
"Me too. The difference is the…the possibility. We'll have a chance to be with our…our people again. Sofia might be upset. Maybe it'll feel like it's at you, but it'll just be because she missed you. It won't be forever. And you have something else going for you."
"I'm nice and creative?"
"You are. But you can also tell her it was all my fault."
"I won't do that." Zola turned to another page from the day the rest of the group left for Malawi. "My Sofia's daddy died when she was a baby, so maybe she doesn't know about reminders, but I think there would've been too many in Sattle." That she slipped back into her old pronunciation made Meredith pretty sure Zola was expressing her own emotions as much as attempting reassurance. She pulled her in again, hoping the strength of the hug would express everything not even a grown-up had the words for.
"Too-dah!" The gleeful exclamation came from the doorway, which framed a beaming Bailey. He was wearing Tigger pajama bottoms that didn't belong to the set she'd put him in—please have left the diaper on— the Buzz Lightyear top that did; one arm in a sweater she barely remembered packing, and the blue tutu Zola had picked out from a rack outside the grocery store. To take a step, he had to use both hands to tug up one of the Hunter boots she had no use for here, but she kept by the door due to lack of storage.
Zola fell over laughing. Meredith grabbed her phone, getting a full-length photo before swooping him up—the shoes screamed potential ER visit—and plopping him onto the bed.
"You came on a dark and stormy night, bud," she said, handing him a fork so he could destroy the half a waffle she'd put on his Toy Story plate. "You think that's why you're such a ray of sunshine?"
Eventuallyshe had to wrestle him out of his "boot-feet," and he mixed up the colors in his new Play-Doh while Zola drew pictures. If Zola noticed that they didn't continue to the pictures featuring a three-person iteration of their family, she didn't point it out.
To the outside, they were down to three again, but Meredith couldn't make herself believe it.
"Hold your sister's hand!"
"Why don't you ask your sister to read that?"
"Let your sister have the rake!"
Meredith sat forward on the beach blanket, ready for tears. Bailey's lower lip popped, but he picked the toy up from a stash by his leg and handed it off.
"Here go, Sissy."
Zola took it with a fast thank you and ran to the structure she and another pair of kids from two spots down were consulting over. Meredith praised Bailey's sharing, teased him about his pout, and made silly sad faces with him for a minute. Then he went back to whatever experiments he was running with the three-pack of shifters he'd gotten for his birthday, and she wondered how many times a day she said "sister."
More than one of her college professors had gone over the way no two people understand a word the same way, because their associations with the concept was different. It was like the riddle she'd told Fati; hearing "surgeon" most people thought of a man. "Red" was everything red they'd ever seen, and maybe a Taylor Swift album. The amount of words a language had for variations on a hue could affect how a speaker saw color. There was contention over whether there was a biological reason the Ancient Greeks spoke of "wine dark seas," or if that, along with the epithet calling Achilles fair-haired were simply literary conventions hadn't been passed down.
That something as simple as a word couldn't be shared made sense to Meredith.
Experience changed cognition. To a hundred others, the visible section of the Pacific nudging up to this stretch of beach was welcoming. If she was quick Meredith could glimpse the sparkling blue and hold that feeling for a breath, but then the emotion would sink into a charm inside her, and she'd be left with the churn of waves keeping her below the surface.
For most of Meredith's life, the word "sister" had meant largely nothing. A sister was something other people had, and if it meant Nancy, she was okay with that.
And then there was Lexie.
And then she was gone.
Life had gone on. Meredith hadn't considered getting off the carousel, but there had been moments that it stopped.
It'd happened on a Sunday morning, while Derek and Amelia argued over the best bagel place in Manhattan. Meredith had slammed a container of lox down on the table, which was anticlimactic because it was plastic. "It's in the damn water. All Manhattan bagels are superior; some of us grew up in bagel deserts, can you shut the hell up, now?"
All four people at the table had stared at her.
She hadn't been able to do anything except continue to cut Zola's bagel "with the purple gel" yanking drawers and thumping the knife handle against the cutting board.
With an open-concept, you couldn't storm off to hide in another room without having to retreat to a bedroom and sulk like a teenager.
He'd handed the plate with Bailey's broken up blueberry muffin to Amelia, and the wordless exchange made Meredith's spine go taut. He'd come over to her, and she'd jerked her shoulder to shrug him off, but he kept his grip on her arms. "What's wrong?"
"Right now, it's that you're pinning me to the counter."
"You love it when I pin you." He'd kissed her, halfway between her earlobe and the nape of her neck. She'd stiffened. "Weekend truce."
"Not everything is about your job," she'd grumbled. "I'm so tired of listening to you snipe at each other. You really sell it, you know. How having family shouldn't be taken for granted. Then one of them shows up, and it's like you're trying to drive her off!"
"You're one to talk,"Amelia commented, coming over to slide the contents of the cutting board onto Zola's plate. "It took a day for yours to try to resign." Meredith turned to her, not realizing she was still holding the knife until Derek took it out of her hand a little too casually.
"This isn't about Maggie." Derek had taken the words out of Meredith's mouth. "Mer, you didn't take Lexie for granted."
"What else do you call it? I expected her to just…just be around for the rest of our lives!"
"Yeah," he'd said. "Me too." She'd caved and let him wrap his arms around her waist. "But I call that loving her."
It'd stopped on an ordinary Thursday night, when she'd been putting up laundry in Bailey's room, and Amelia had shouted, "Meredith, your sister's here with the scans!"
It hadn't made sense for her to freeze and think Lexie. The life of the baby unpairing socks and putting them on his hands hadn't overlapped with hers. They'd lived in a different house. And yet.
It'd stopped at some point during one of the ten nights Derek had been home, when Meredith had admitted that she missed being a big sister. "I'm older than Maggie, and Lexie wasn't a child, but…it's not the same."
"I stand by saying that you can only benefit from having more family—"
"'Cause mine tend to die. Or move to Switzerland."
"— but even putting in the effort, it's is different. You were building your life then. You're an attending, and the friends you have, you've had for six or seven years. You and Lexie were also…. She needed someone to take care of her. You needed someone to take care of."
She'd pushed up on his shoulder to look down on him quizzically. "Me?"
"You. Think about it on your own time; you'll get there." He'd stuck a hand under her armpit, tickling her until she fell against his chest, his heartbeat a steady drum against her ear. "Maggie needs someone, but she's been an adult for a while. She's used to being on her own. She's not in a cardboard box in front of the hospital."
"She doesn't do the eyes."
"God, the eyes. Can you imagine if she and Mark had had a kid? Between his silver tongue and the eyes?"
"I can't imagine it. I mean, I can, I…"
He'd run his hand along the length of her spine.
She'd reminded herself for the nth time that he was home long-term, and she could rely on that. She could be vulnerable and not worry about how much worse it made slipping back into the fight. "I wanted it for her. I wanted to raise our kids together."
"I know." She'd expected him to mention Mark, but she was grateful he didn't. She knew what she'd had with Lexie wasn't anywhere close to losing the lifelong best friend, the real brother, and sometimes she needed to feel like one of them wasn't making the comparison.
"You know what's strange? I don't understand why I'm getting this; the happily ever after, and I think it's crazy, because I never believed in it. Lexie…I made so many assumptions about her. I still think her life was pretty charmed up until Susan died, but whether or not she believed in getting the happy ending, it wasn't her goal. She wanted it with Mark, but it wasn't something she clung to her whole life. That was Molly. Lexie wanted surgery."
"She was brilliant."
"She… She would've remembered it all. After the crash. She would have remembered that…. Those days. The rehab. I don't think it's better that she died. I'm not saying that. I just…it would've been hard. I mean, she wouldn't have been alone. I would've been with her. Whatever she needed. Even if she didn't want me there, I would've…."
"Of course you would've. Mer, you loved Lexie. You would've been by her side every step of the way if she'd survived. What…is it just Maggie, or…did something happen?"
"Something doesn't have to have happened for me to think about her."
He'd moved his hand into her hair, smoothing it to calm her, the opposite of the way he'd muss it to turn her on. "No, it doesn't."
Tell me, she'd thought, with as much desperation as she'd said it with a week earlier, but she couldn't voice it this time. It felt wrong to reference something that could take them to the place they'd left behind. He hadn't said it to her, which made it harder to bring up and harder to dismiss. Tell me I'm not terrible at sisters.
She'd listened to his heartbeat, waited for a change in breath that would mark the moment he put it together. It didn't come; he didn't have enough pieces to put the puzzle together, and it wasn't the type he'd need time to consider.
"I miss her," she'd said, and left it there. They'd had time, after all.
She wasn't entirely sure about his judgement that she'd needed someone to take care of as early as the time Lexie showed up, but it was possible she'd needed someone, period. She'd been almost completely unmoored without Derek or her mother, or even the visits from Susan. She'd viewed them as intrusions, but months in there'd been grocery items she bought in the pantry. The sinking feeling of standing in that OR would come back, followed by the memory of pain. It wasn't that unlike the flashes of going into and coming out of the water that came right before she fell asleep.
It was possible she'd mistook not knowing how to take care of Lexie for not having the instinct or desire. Lexie hadn't been much better, really. Meredith might've made eggs in ignorance, but Lexie had eaten them. All Meredith had been asking for at the time had been someone to tell her how to be what they wanted her to be.
She hadn't known that everyone else was as lost as she was.
A tone sounded from Meredith's phone, and she tapped it off. "Zola!"
She got a dark look from the "castle" that looked more like a fairy ring made up of the single towers, but Zola made her way over, dragging her feet and moving like she was weighed down by the hassle.
"I'm bu-sy," she complained as Meredith took the spritz bottle and kiddie sunblocks out of her bag.
"I'm interested in you not getting melanoma."
"Is that a doctor thing? I'm not a doctor, I'm four."
"Thanks for clearing that up. Make the color disappear. Bailey, come here." Because Bailey was two and squirmed like she'd poked him with a needle every time she touched him with sunscreen on her hands, Zola was standing with her hands on her hips by the time she finished.
"Hurry up, I gotta do the moat."
"I don't think your new friends are going anywhere," Meredith commented, nodding toward the festoon of umbrellas and coolers that the kids' family had set up.
"That is not the point. He—"She pointed at one of the boys "—wants to do it wrong, and I have to do it right, 'acause then I don't have to fix it."
Meredith stared at her daughter. She'd said far challenging things, and Meredith had figured out what to say. This, she was sure, was more or less a quote from her or Amelia. It sounded like something that needed to be rephrased to be considerate, but she couldn't do it. The boy was maybe six or seven, and while she was working on bossing little kids, she couldn't bring herself to tell Zola not to be "bossy" in this situation.
"Taking care of your body is important." she said instead. "Spritz time. On my count. One, two, three." Zola flinched, like she always did. She let Meredith resecure her hat, and it didn't change the enthusiasm with which she ran off toward the construction zone.
"Me spritz," Bailey demanded, stepping into the footprints Zola had left. Meredith took off his floppy hat and squirted him. She knew he didn't react because she'd barely pushed her finger down, but it was also his delight in doing anything his big sister had done.
Not long before the crash, Lexie had come down to the living room while Derek was working late and asked, "When did you know you wanted kids?"
Meredith had put down the medical journal she was reading and indicated the spot beside her on the couch. Lexie had been in pajamas with her hair braided, and Meredith had been able to picture Lexie at eight or nine, tossing and catching a softball while Susan tried to braid her hair. What'd made her smile more was that she'd also imagined Lexie securing the elastic on the plait of her own kid, who'd be a constantly moving, mile-a-minute talker.
Her face had made Meredith wonder if she'd been sleeping. Lexie hadn't had the kind of insomnia Meredith struggled with for most of her life, where she subsisted on a few hours of sleep and existed in a state of tired to exhausted. Lexie slept like a normal person most of the time, a normal surgical resident, anyway, and nothing was like the time after the shooting, but sometimes Meredith would come downstairs in the morning and know Lexie was stressed about something, because she'd alphabetized the bookshelves, or memorized something she found on one of them. Other times, it was just a certain manic energy she gave off, and a jitteriness that said that if she'd been in bed, she'd lain there reliving something—be it the trauma of a bad surgery, or a series of junior high embarrassments —not sleeping.
"I might disappoint you," Meredith had said. "There's a lot of this I didn't expect, want, or believe in." She'd gestured around the room, which held dozens of markers of her family, from Zola's toys to her mother's med school textbooks. "But I always liked kids. I didn't necessarily know what to do with them. Not like I shared a lot of interests with the average six-year-old. I didn't babysit. My mother had opinions on girls first jobs being preparation for homemaking, or whatever, but I was never the person who didn't want them It might've been biological, or wanting to do what my mother did, or what she didn't do."
Lexie had bitten her lip and stared at the opposite wall. "Did Derek…? He and Addison didn't have kids, so…was he, like, really ready, or…?"
"He didn't pressure me. I was the one who brought it up whenever we talked about it. It probably did help that he'd adjusted to maybe with her, but…if you only count from the candle house, we planned on having kids from the start."
"Is that where you count from?"
"No. And yes."
Lexie laughed.
"I told you I'd disappoint you."
"You didn't." Lexie pulled her legs up on the couch. "I don't know why I'm thinking about this, exactly."
"I'm assuming Mark has something to do with it."
"He's with Julia."
Meredith shrugged. "Derek was with Rose. It's a pretty similar situation, Lex. It doesn't have to turn out the same way if you don't want. It might not even if you do want. But you and Mark didn't work out because you weren't ready for the steps he's taking. That's okay. You don't have to be. This thing with the eye doctor though…. You ever been in the same room with Derek and Mark when they really get going, and forget you're there?"
"Kinda…?"
"Yeah, you're not quiet enough."
"You are not quiet."
"I can be. I didn't talk in elementary school for most of two years. Confused the hell out of Mom, because quiet was not what she got at home. She believed in answering questions, which is how I got away with not saying anything at school. My academics confused the hell out of them."
"Have you told Derek this? Because I find it comforting to know the 'you being confusing' started well before me."
"Anyway, Derek and Mark; he's not in love with her, Lex. He might be happy enough. He might love her. Mark loves fast. He loves women in general. Nothing wrong with that. But…I've seen Mark in love twice. That's when he stops saying things like, 'a woman loves…' There are things he's never going to do. He's never going to stop comparing himself to Derek. He genuinely loved Addison, but I don't know…."
Lexie slipped her hand in between Meredith's, grasping the fingers she was twisting. She held on a little more tightly than someone else might've, but Meredith did, whenever she noticed Lexie worrying the skin over her knuckles.
"Supposedly they got caught the first time, and I think that it might've been a revenge thing. I think they all started off wanting to save the world, and became repressed, Upper East Side assholes. Addison could fill the role the best; she might've suited it the least. Derek resented that she could, resented that he could, resented Mark, because wanting money was wanting to be Mark. Ten years in, he's dark Derek, she's watching every woman in Manhattan get pregnant; maybe part of loving Derek for her was loving a family man, but he's not coming home. To Mark Addison's the ideal; second maybe to a sister, but they're all married or Amelia. I don't know when he fell in love. Could've been after Derek did the unimaginable and left; could've been five years, ten years earlier.
"Mark can wait. Doesn't seem like he can. Seems like he's the most impatient guy you've ever met, but nah. You don't have absent parents and not learn to wait."
"So, why's he moving so fast with her?"
"Well, from his perspective Derek and I were married within a year. Oh, he knows when we met, but that's an abstract. They've known each other, what…?" Meredith pretended to think about it, but she knew. It was the same amount of time Zola had been home. She didn't want to mention that to Lexie. "Six months? Candle house to proposal."
"But, what, I'm the closest thing to a Shepherd sister now, so he cares less if it takes longer?"
Oh. Oops. It was strange how Meredith could forget that Lexie was her sister at the times when Lexie was the most her sister. "Exactly, that's why he dumped you when Derek told him not to screw you. Wait….Wait a second, is that not what happened? It's not?"
"Shut up!" Lexie was laughing, and then Meredith wasn't sure if she was laughing or crying because she had her face in her hands, and so she put a hand on her back and let her do whatever she was doing.
"Did those two probably fantasize about marrying sisters? Absolutely. I hung out with a lot of guys in my teens and early twenties—not the ones I slept with. Alexes— They're horny and stupid until they're…forever, but especially at that age. But you're not a Shepherd. Derek doesn't treat you like his little sister; he treats you like a little sister. Is all you got from Amelia's visit that Mark slept with her? Derek…he loves his family, but I think he came out here to be an entire country away from them. He's proud of her, but he also hates that she's a neurosurgeon, because there are five of them and no one gets anything to themselves. Except he's got a cock, so he expected to be the one who did. It's...honestly, I think it might be better to meet your sister when you're twenty-four."
"Hey! I was twenty-three."
"Twenty-four by the time I liked you." Meredith nudged Lexie's shoulder, and she sat up. Her face was red. She had been crying.
"My little sister has two kids. Why can't I deal with the idea of…of pouring cerail breakfast for a little baby? A sweet little baby, whose moms are great, a couple times a week? I do that for Zola. I didn't…when you asked me if I'd take care of her if anything happens to you? I didn't question. Didn't think about it."
"Yeah, but that's a conspiracy to get the house. I've never understood how Mom pulled that off. He didn't get the kid or the house? Come on, dude." Lexie snorted, a snotty, wet sound, and Meredith let seriousness settle over her again. "Lexie, even with how bad my luck is, the chances of you having to take in Zola? They're not high enough for it to be real to you. Not that you wouldn't, or that you didn't take it seriously. It's very real to me, and you're the person I trust to raise my kid, not the way I would…not exactly, maybe closer than anyone else…but in the way that's best for her and for you. That is not the same thing as knowing that the second—" She snapped her fingers. "—you and Mark are anything, your boyfriend comes with a one-year-old. A one-year-old who already has two moms. Dating him will revolve around nights Sofia is at his house. You won't be handing her back at the end of a night, or only doing the cutesy fun shit I can't figure out. And as daddy's girlfriend, and the least experienced, the youngest, you're not going to have much of a say. None of that can matter because it won't matter to Sofia. To her, you are going to be one of her grown-ups, and you have to be all in."
"Meredith," Lexie's voice was clouded with tears, but the tremor was new. "Mom told me. I know it was her fault."
Meredith shook her head. "Thatcher made a choice. She influenced him. Maybe a lot. But he made a choice."
"I'm glad Mark made the choice he did," Lexie said. "Even though it wasn't me."
Meredith put her arm around her sister and Lexie put her head on her shoulder. "I remember what that's like."
"You know what's the worst?"
"Mmm, all of it?" Meredith thought of how six months after breaking up with Derek she'd been with him again, and trying to give off the impression that she was the least messed up she'd ever been, while the opposite might've been true.
"Well, yeah. But, more that… Growing up I thought…Molly got married at nineteen; I got into med school at nineteen. She'd have the grandkids; I'd be the one who had the career. I admire Cristina. She knows who she is. What she wants. But, um. Whenever Callie got pregnant, and Arizona decided that she was in; that maybe she hadn't wanted a kid, but she did want to have this kid, with Callie, I started thinking…no, realizing…I'm like that. I don't know if I want kids, in general. But having Mark's kids? I could do that. I don't mean bringing a kid into the world to be with their dad. That's shitty. I mean…."
"I know what you mean," Meredith said. "IYou have time, Lexie. You might find someone else. You might create a whole life with someone else. But you might also want to think about the fact that you're sitting here crying on my couch and Sofi is a year old."
"You think she'd be a good big sister?"
"I think there's no way to know until she has a sibling. She's pretty great at passing blocks back and forth with Zola. Occasionally, she licks one and the way Zola looks whenever it goes in her hand makes Sofia laugh like it's the funniest thing that's ever happened, but Zola doesn't get to judge anyone's drool production."
"What you're saying is that Zola is a great older cousin."
"I happen to think she's great in all ways, but yes. She is, at eighteen months old. And she will be at eighteen years old. Zo will love your kids if you have them. She'll love them if their dad is Uncle Mark, or some guy you haven't met yet, or a sperm donor. She'll teach them about cookies, or she'll babysit, or she'll teach them to read."
"Does Derek ever talk about all the nieces and nephews?"
"More lately. One of the first times he told me anything it was that he had nine nieces and five nephews. That was all, for a while. I thought that once he knew more about my family, he was afraid I'd be overwhelmed. Now I think it's because he'd only been gone a month or so, still felt like Uncle Derek, and he was guilty. As time went on…was he Uncle Derek if he wasn't showing up at soccer games and gymnastics meets, and whatever the hell Nancy's kids did—equestrian? I dunno, they're grown—because he doesn't want to be home? And if he wasn't, what right did he have to namedrop them?
"He- talked to them all at least once on Z's official adoption day, and I think it helped. The past six months it's been 'When Tyson was teething,' or 'Carly had one of those' or 'Liz never used x-thing, but Kathleen swears by it.' With the older few, he missed most of the baby days between college in Maine and the eight years of vitamin D deficiency that is med school and residency, but yeah. Point is, he does, and I kinda love it."
"Mark talks about older kids like they're a pack. Less baby stuff. Maybe he's—he was—afraid of scaring me with baby stuff. Thing is, I think it should make me feel worse about barely knowing Moll's kids, but…" She shrugged. "Mostly makes me think of our kids being an awesome cousin pack of Sloan-Grey-Shepherds."
"Molly's kids are in Bahrain."
"Yeah." Lexie murmured, and a note in her voice made Meredith pull the blanket off the back of the couch and spread it over her. "I'd go to Bahrain for Zola."
Meredith had rested her head against Lexie's, and sometime later, when she wasn't sure whether or not her sister was asleep, she brushed her lips against the crown of her head.
What struck Meredith on the beach as she remembered that night was that Lexie had also been saying she'd go to Bahrain for Meredith, but she'd known that wouldn't resonate in the same way. Something in Meredith, leftover from years of believing in her own worthlessness, wouldn't have believed it. Not the same way.
It also struck her that this wasn't fair to Lexie.
"Momma?" Bailey stood next to her and put his hands on her arms. When she looked up at him, he was making a pronounced sad face. He couldn't hold it for very long before he burst into giggles. She pulled him against her, thinking of the squirmy, smart child she'd imagined for her sister. Lexie wouldn't have been ready for kids before the end of her residency, if not a fellowship. Bailey would've gotten to be the big one.
Maggie could have kids one day. Amelia. Alex. Somewhere out there, he had a Grey-Thompson cousin not that different in age. All told, her kids were not lacking in cousins. but maybe she wasn't delayed in mourning her sister, so much as she hadn't let herself mourn the life Lexie hadn't gotten to have. That they hadn't gotten to share.
"Mommy, are you okay?"
So much for the privacy of the ensuite. Meredith had managed to drag herself off the bathroom floor, and over to sit on the bed, but not before Zola appeared in the open bedroom door.
"I will be, Zo."
"'Acause…" Zola held up one finger, and then went over to spit in Meredith's sink with a ptt. "You didn't try breakfast, and you're sick."
"I know you pay close attention, and you worry about Momma, but— "
"You weren't having sad thoughts; you were tellin' me to brush my teeth and putting on Bay's socks."
"Sock!" Bailey agreed, coming to stand next to his sister. Although she'd gotten a matched pair, and only a matched pair out of the drawer, he'd wriggled his feet into one green and white striped and one blue with orange polka-dots. "Sock." He pointed to the one he'd found and put on himself. The one she'd gotten halfway onto his foot was on all the way on too. Meredith looked at Zola.
"I didn't help," she said, her toothbrush held up as corroborating evidence.
"You are such a big boy!" Meredith exclaimed, fighting the desire to lie down on the bed, and lunging to lift the baby—her baby—up instead.
Was the wave of nausea that came with the movement the same as what she'd been battling for the past eight weeks? The usual exhaustion and headache hadn't preceded it. It could've been a climbing frog thing. She'd already been discombobulated that morning due to a Derek-dream ending before her subconscious realized he was dead. Waking up aroused and then having to face that in the real world was jarring. Less horrifying than the ones where he kept touching her, getting colder and more decayed. One of those might've upended the morning, but after she'd faced the truth in the pre-dawn gray, she'd drifted off again, not waking until she heard Bailey singing his garbled version of Old McDonald—me-i-me-i-Zo —next to her.
She wouldn't have noticed a difference if Zola hadn't said something. It couldn't be that meaningful. She wanted something to pin it one that wasn't confirming Beni's diagnosis; that was all. Did that mean she preferred the alternative? That thought made her stomach clench again, in a way that was far more familiar.
The next day, she was sitting in the pick-up line in front of the kids' school. She'd gotten there early—she really hated daytime TV, and none of the absurd amount of medical channels she followed on YouTube had updated—and opened the book she'd found on the library table. Ten minutes later, she managed to get to the bushes in front of the school before vomiting up the sandwich she'd made herself ninety minutes before and had no problem eating. Fan-fucking-tastic, it's a frog thing. She was making a mental note to text Sadie and ask her if she could get resistant to the antiemetics—shouldn't you know that Dr. Grey—when someone said, "D'you want a mint?"
The girl on the bench in front of the school was dark-haired, and dark-eyed. Coloring similar to Lexie's, but something about her suggested Meredith's darkness. "Um, it's just, when Lena…my mama was pregnant…our grandma gave her these. They've got ginger in them, or something."
"Oh, I'm not…." Meredith walked around to the front of the bench and sat down, her legs shaking more than they had ten seconds earlier. "You're one of Lena's?"
"Birth certificate and all."
"Congrats. I met two of your siblings at Easter."
The girl's eyes widened. "Wait, I saw you! Your little girl was the one who tantrumed at Mariana!"
"She's been going through a lot," Meredith said. Zola deserved the defense; she almost never freaked out in public. She'd hold it in until she could go full tilt on the living room rug. "My husband died in March."
"Oh, shit. That sucks. I was ten when my birth-mom died, and Jude, my brother, he was six."
"I met him. He did really well with my toddler."
"Jude's sweet." The girl smiled, and the mix of love and protectiveness on her face was something Meredith wished for Zola and Bailey, though hopefully without any more loss. "Your kids are so little."
"Don't tell them that." Meredith sighed. "It's good, in some ways. They're bouncing back so fast, but in others…."
"You're afraid they'll forget him?"
Meredith eyed this all-knowing teenager.
"I've been there. It's scary. And you do forget some things. The sound of her laugh. The crinkles beside her eyes. There's stuff you don't know. I woke up in the middle of the night once, totally freaking out, because I didn't know her favorite TV show. In the system, it felt like the details were all I had left. Having a family again…we don't always know that stuff, but we know each other in bigger ways. And even though my moms are my moms, sometimes I'm different from them in a way that isn't, like, a 'six years in the system' coping mechanism, and I know it's her. I wish I'd known earlier, though. That someone could have told me, 'Oh, that's your mom in you.'"
"That's good advice."
"Yeah?" The girl smiled. "I'm Callie, by the way."
"Are you a Calliope?"
Callie's nose wrinkled. "No way. I'm a Callie Adams Foster. Cal, if you want."
"Nice to meet you. I'm Meredith." She had to shift the book she'd accidentally carried with her to hold out her hand.
"I love that one!" Cal said. "She wrote 101 Dalmatians, did you know? It's not as great, not in compared to Castle or the movie. That art is gorgeous."
"Huh. That's one I haven't seen in ages. I'll show it to the kids. If you put a new movie in their rotation, I'm going to be incredibly grateful."
"Be ready to answer questions about the fur trade, I guess, but it's not as patriarchal. Mariana loves Disney, and she's, like, a total feminist. I don't get it."
"Sometimes you can pretend you want things easy; someone making the decisions, protecting you. It's just in real life that usually means losing more than you gain."
"My mom did that for a long time, I think." Ah, the closet case. "She's definitely happier now.
"Hey, have you read Joan Didion?"
"Are you about to be the seventieth person to recommend The Year of Magical Thinking to me?" Mrs. O'Malley had handed her a copy at the funeral. As far as she knew, it was still on the coffee table.
"I don't know that one. I've mostly read her old stuff. But she once said, 'writing is a hostile act,' and Cassandra's kinda like that in Castle, so if you like that... I dunno, just, I was mad when Mom died."
"I bet." Meredith could remember tormenting her aunt. She didn't know when something had been said to Ellis. The lecture on respect and politeness had only worked because it proved her mom was still there. If she'd been in the system for however long it'd taken Ellis to bother retrieving her, angry teenage brat Meredith might've shown up earlier.
"I had to step up for Jude," Cal said. "I think it took me a while to acknowledge how mad I was. I had to feel safe first. Your kids are lucky, they've got that."
"I hope so."
The train of day-campers started streaming out of the school at that point, and Meredith stood up.
"Mommy!" Meredith watched as Zola helped Bailey descend the steps. The toddler class came out last, which meant she'd gone out of the way to retrieve him. Once they were both on even ground, Zola took off, pulling Bailey along, and proving herself to be four. "We did tracing!"
"Wow, sounds like fun." Meredith waved to her new acquaintance, who was looking both chagrined and content under the vice principal's arm.
"Ms. Lena's name is the same as in my new Colors book, and she has skintone like Aunt Maggie's color," Zola pointed out as she climbed into her booster.
"About, yeah."
"D'you think her mommy and daddy are mixed-up too?"
Bailey was straining to reach his milk cup, which she'd forgot to take out after drop-off, and on top of from the 'what kind of Mom? You have zero other responsibilities. Zero' refrain in her head, the smell was definitely nausea-inducing. Maybe it'd crept into the front without her noticing. "I don't know, Zo."
"But, um, we could ask, and she could meet Aunt Maggie. They could be friends."
"Not because of their skin-tones."
"I know that. But mixed-up families is an in common. And they got me an' Bay as another in common."
Meredith got said Bay restrained long enough to secure him, and then grabbed the cup with two fingers. How to dump it without inhaling?
"I miss Aunt Maggie. Can we call her like we called Grandma?"
"No, sweetie."
"Why? I wanna tell her about day-camp, 'cause we are doing a Juneteenth party, and last year, last year we didn't have an aunt Maggie, but Uncle Richard had a party." Meredith held her breath and wrenched the lid off the cup. Globs of milk spilled onto the school lawn, far too close to her shoes. She leapt back, jamming her shoulder against the open door. That milk was from this morning, wasn't it?
"I want to go to it this year and see Aunt Amy."
"Aun' Amy?" Bailey chimed in. "See Aun' Amy?"
"She is Daddy's sister. I think she's sad. You should be with family when you're sad, which is why we are together, but Mommy, maybe there aren't as many reminders now, in Seattle, and we can—"
"We're not going back yet!" Meredith burst out. "I'm sorry, okay? I know you miss them. I know I stole you away in the middle of the night, and this is all scary and new, but it's pretty freaking scary and new for me, too, and I am doing the best I can!" She closed Bailey's door, only just managing not to slam it.
Fuck. The one thing she'd managed not to do was take her own emotions out on her kids. She'd pulled an Ellis Grey—not that Ellis ever admitted to being scared. This could be the one thing they remembered. The moment that made four Zola's Year of Trauma. It could. If she was willing to let it.
She wasn't.
They needed to get away from the rot she'd left in front of the school. The drive to the condo took twenty minutes without traffic, and she wasn't going to give the wound that long to fester. She put on Zola's Disney playlist, and then drove through a Starbucks for a Babyccino, an orange juice, and a carton of cold milk. Bribery, to a degree, but also raising blood sugar. In front of the speaker, the strawberry Frappuccino appeared to her as though it was in bold compared to the rest of the menu. Ordering it was a whim—possibly a risk—but for a second, she couldn't imagine not getting it. Like she'd been craving it without realizing— Nope, not going there. She liked strawberry, she had nothing in her system, and she needed the sugar as much as the kids did.
The park five minutes from the school was busier than she preferred, but it was better than driving another fifteen minutes with Bailey shouting the last word of every lyric—"b'inness,""Huns!" "dog'ers!" "sons!"— and Zola holding her mouth pointedly shut. She could've kept it up until they got home. She could probably give the silent treatment all the way to Seattle.
Meredith parked by the picnic tables and dug out the drink carrier she'd bought after she got tired of dropping to-go cups. Unhooking Bailey, she made eye contact with Zola, who wasn't moving. Meredith should've gone to her side first.
"Aun' Amy come us?" Bailey grabbed her finger in an adorable way that made getting to his buckles more difficult. In his other hand, he had the train car that'd been waiting in his car-seat. "See play train?"
"No, baby." She kissed his fist. There were grains of sand on his fingers. "Good talking. Why don't you hold onto that train while we get you a dry bum?" She popped the trunk, where she stored the changing pad in a Ziploc and spread it out on a blanket first. She still found sand on it whenever she shook it out. This life on the beach thing put sand everywhere.
Derek had taken her out to a pond on the land not long after George died.
Prior to coaxing her into the water, he'd driven her absolutely crazy over her suit, insisting that it was in her best interest. "You don't want sand between those folds." She'd been willing to take anything there at that point and pointing out that most women wore thongs to the beach had only felt like taking the blame. To his credit, he'd gotten her off, but proved his hypocrisy by then slipping his finger under the crotch of her bikini. That'd been removed eventually, and no wayward sand had ended up in her cunt. She couldn't say the same the blanket in the back of the Land Rover.
She'd made it to shoulder-high water that day, and it'd seemed like a good step. The next week Thatcher showed up vomiting blood, and winter came, and things happened, and happened, and happened.
She'd sprinkled Bailey with powder when she heard a series of clicks. Apparently, Zola wasn't willing to give up her big girl designation. Her feet hit the pavement right as Meredith closed the trunk. She took Meredith's hand to cross the parking lot without prompting. Because she's good. Not scared. Not of me.
She set them up at a table, and held Bailey on her lap, helping him sip from the orange juice bottle before relenting and putting a straw in the milk he'd wanted all along. "Everyone good?"
"Cow!" Bailey pointed to the cartoon on the carton. "Mooooo," he added, the sound absurdly deep coming from such a small body.
"Good job! You know, while Zola was learning her sounds, she saw a real lion. Remember, Zo? That's when Daddy got you Rawr."
Zola shrugged. That was one of her favorite stories to tell. Meredith took a fortifying sip of her drink. Crap, that's good. Overly good?
One crisis at a time.
"B, Z, look at me." Conditioning be praised, they both did, Bailey reaching up at the same time to grab the string of her Dartmouth hoodie. He liked the way it sprang up whenever he let go. "I love you. I always love you. If I'm mad or upset over something, I love you. I love you so much more than any other feeling, okay?" The sky she was focused on past Zola's shoulder wobbled, and she closed her eyes for a moment. "Tell me you hear me."
"Love you," Bailey responded. "Go play?"
"Just a minute, baby. Here." She handed him his train car, and he squirmed out of her lap, crawling along the bench and using the planks as tracks. "Zo-Zo. I'm sorry I yelled."
"S'okay." She was focused on her cup, her lips pressed close enough to the spout that her reply echoed.
"It's not. Not when you didn't do anything to —"
"I gave you reminders! I talked about Daddy, and Aunt Amy, and Aunt Maggie, and Uncle Richard, and Seattle. Reminders overwhelm."
"Sweetheart, you can always talk to me about anything," she said. "Talking is a reminder. That's okay. We came here to have fewer reminders. In Seattle, we would be overwhelmed by them, because there would be too many all at once. Avoiding all reminders would be forgetting."
"We can't forget Daddy!"
"No. We don't want to forget anyone. Talking about them is a great way to remember. I miss your aunt Amy, too."
"And Aunt Maggie?"
"And Alex, and everyone. I think about them a lot. I'll start telling you more when I do, okay? And we'll talk about going home. Just…probably not soon. Can that be okay? If we stay here a while longer?"
Zola held her gaze, seeming to really be considering it, to the point that Meredith thought she might say 'no.' What the hell would she do about that?
"Okay. Su Li at camp says we gotta see the big fireworks anyway."
The Fourth of July. It seemed impossible that it was less than four weeks away. Last year, they'd hosted a cookout on the sixth, and Amelia had set off fireworks. They'd corralled the kids on the porch. Arrogance considering how many amateur pyrotechnicians they treated every year, but they might never get to see the professional show. Meredith had grown up in a city that went all out for the holiday, and her first time celebrating had been with a friend's family in fifth grade. Derek's expression when Amelia cackled at the first explosion had made Meredith wonder how many celebrations he'd sacrificed to protect his little sister from the boom. That day, she might've been the one most tolerant of the sound. They would still never see the show together, but she could rally if Zola wanted to take this opportunity.
That was next month. Not something she had to worry about, yet.
That June afternoon, she pushed swings and alternated the child on her lap as she rode down "the big slide," which was actually pretty exhilarating. Could she have been going through some kind of adrenaline withdrawal?
No. Not for two months.
Bailey fell asleep in the car on the way home, which gave her an excuse not to run into CVS. That could be tomorrow's Thing. She gave herself one more tormented night to wonder whether her body was tearing itself apart over the loss of her husband, or if it was reacting to something he'd left behind.
A/N: This is part two of three for June; the last part will be posted at the end of the month, as well as a Mer/Der anniversary fic. If you're celebrating Pride this month, check out As Cool As I Am, which can be summarized as "Grey's Anatomy does Pride."
Reviews and kudos appreciated! Follow me on Tumblr chicleeblair and twitter chelseyblair!