Meredith considered keeping the kids with her through the end of the summer to be one of the better decisions she'd made, and if asked, she'd have to give credit to her four-year-old. They might've been satisfied if the cycle of beach and playground had continued, but they were living in a city of theme parks, and if they didn't go to any of them would probably come up as neglect in their therapy sessions one day—And my therapist would kick my ass for that thought—August wasn't the best month for it, but while she was planning on being there in the off-season, she would also be much more pregnant.
The pop happened midway through the month, between her twenty-week ultrasound and a call with Carolyn, because of course it did. It took ten minutes for her to arrange the laptop so that wrangling her tiny humans into the frame wouldn't accidentally reveal her abdominal cavity. She'd put the odds of Zola letting something slip at about 60/40; owing more to her need to recount the morning's trip to LegoLand in exuberant detail than their conversation about surprises.
"Whoa," Meredith said catching her daughter's head before it collided with her lower lip. "I can't suture myself, Zo, so let's not.
"Sorry, I just gotta tell her about all the things!" Zola slumped against her and hooked an arm behind her neck in a very twisty embrace. "They had bouncing, and flying, and dinosaurs."
"Dino-roar!" Bailey agreed and held his arms up for Meredith to lift him into the frame. "Fi-yah."
"That's dragons!" Zola snapped. "Dragons breathe fire."
Bailey's shrieking giggle made Carolyn lean back from her speaker.
"He's trying to rile you," Meredith told Zola. "Guess how many times we've been through that exchange," she added, making eye contact with the webcam. Carolyn laughed, thankfully; it wasn't the tone she usually took in these conversations.
"A bazillion." Zola held her hands out to illustrate the concept.
"Raaaaawr!" Bailey pretended to blow an arc of fire, moving his whole body in the process.
"Sorry. They're a little overstimulated."
"Perfectly understandable. They've had a big day."
"We've done many big days," Zola said. "We went to this one museum—"
"All done," Bailey announced. "Say bye-bye, Gwams." Meredith decided that could count as a farewell, and lowered him, moving Zola into the center of her lap.
"— but we're not goin' there, because Mommy doesn't like big water, and 'asides we have a pool, and a ocean. We went to an-other beach, too, next to the Bay, because they had a awesome playground. Still, we're going to the zoo, and the Nature-al History Museum, and Mommy knew all the things at the Science Center."
"Sounds like you'll have a lot to show and tell about in preschool, won't you?"
"No, I have a lot to tell my Sofia."
"Oh?" Carolyn's eyes widened. "Are you going back to Seattle for the school year?"
"Nuh-uh." Zola picked up one of the smaller Lego sets they'd acquired over the day and started combing through the box. "We're not goin' back 'til after…." She stopped and looked to Meredith; her expression as guilty as it would've been if she'd actually blabbed.
Meredith rubbed her arm reassuringly. It wasn't fair to ask her to keep quiet; not when she didn't totally understand what made a surprise different from a secret, but telling Carolyn too early, letting her hope…. It felt cruel.
"I told HR I'd be gone up to a year," she said. "We're going month-to-month right now."
"I see. Well, there are always plenty of new students at the beginning of a calendar year, so as long as—"
"Got dragon! Rooooooar, fi-yah!" Bailey was reaching up as high as he could to stick the head of a dinosaur toy in his sister's ear. Zola shrieked and batted at the toy. When he brought it up to her face again, she snatched it and flung it over the counter into the living room.
"WE DON'T T'ROW!" Bailey screamed, before Meredith could do more than open her mouth.
"You're not the boss! You're not even gonna be the—"
"Oh-kay!" Meredith interrupted. "No tossing, no bossing. Here's what we're going to do. Zola, you're going to say goodnight, and get ready for bath time."
"But—"
"If you're a good listener, we'll watch the video the librarian told me about after we do your hair."
"The Sesame Street one?"
"Yes." Several books and a note with the link had been waiting with Meredith the requests she'd put in online after deciding that she wasn't ready to attempt a third visit to the Children's Library, and she might never be.
"Fine." With a performative sigh, she returned her attention to the laptop. "Grams, it's still evening outside, but Momma says I have to tell you good night. You'll talk to me soon."
"I look forward to it, sweet girl."
Meredith managed not to snort while helping her down. "Go. Bay and I will be there in a minute." When she turned back to the screen, Carolyn was smiling in a way that suggested she'd been laughing to herself. "Sorry about that."
"You ain't seen nothing yet, kid."
"Oh, I have. I was. At fourteen, not four."
"If it helps, the pre-k princesses don't usually become the teenage rebels. At that age, Amy…. Actually, you haven't heard from her, have you?" A bevy of concerned wrinkles appeared on Carolyn's face.
"No. I haven't been in touch with anyone from Seattle, but she hasn't tried to contact me since…." Since. Since Derek died. Since she left. Since March. "Since. Everything for the house comes out of our—my account automatically. I could maybe see if the security company could find a reason to go out?"
"No, no. It's not the first time she's gone radio silent, and it's not always a sign of impending doom."
Meredith wondered if Ellis said things like that about her, or if she didn't notice the periods Meredith didn't want to have anything to do with her.
"She's…She was…Owen Hunt was staying on our land, but the one message I had from him said he resigned as chief of surgery and re-enlisted. They are—were…friends."
"With benefits?"
"Uh." The sound came out as a squeak.
"I'm old, dear, not completely disconnected. If something…happened, I imagine I'd hear from the hospital. Richard Webber called me when you disappeared, you know."
"No. I didn't." Bailey returned from retrieving his dinosaur, and she ran her hand through his hair before picking him up. "Sorry, if you were worried."
"We've gone through that, haven't we? I'm in no place to judge a widow for her decisions." Widow. The word echoed in Meredith's head. She'd had to face it on forms at the OB's office, but that was it. "You did what you felt you needed to do."
"Momma!" Zola appeared at the end of the hall, her dress off, but her sneakers still on. "My laces got all knotted up!"
Meredith didn't bother asking why she'd bothered untying her slip-ons. "That's my cue."
"I'm glad I got the chance to speak with you. You look like you're feeling better."
"Uh. Yeah." She'd done her best to appear with it on the days the kids chatted with their grandmother, but there were things she couldn't hide. Not without more skills with make-up than she had, or the will to bother with them. "I am."
"Good. I'll—"
"See?" Bailey interrupted, holding his toy up. "Grams see dino?"
"I do! Did you get that today?"
"Yeah, I climb!"
"They have a kiddie rock climbing wall," Meredith explained. "It was a hit."
"Momma not climb, too. Careful baby."
"Bai—" Zola started, but Meredith held her hand up below the counter. Carolyn hadn't reacted.
"You do have to be careful, that's right," she said. "You don't want to fall down."
"Yeah, down," he agreed, pointing his feet toward the floor. "Night-night."
"I'll talk to you next week, baby boy."
"Issa baby girl!" he declared, delightedly, a second after the window went dark.
"When did you become the blabbermouth?" Meredith asked, before she blew a raspberry on his cheek. He cackled.
An hour or so later, she was sitting on her bed. Zola sat in front of her, patiently clicking colored blocks together while Meredith twisted her hair. "Thank you for not telling your grandma about the baby."
"It's your body," Zola said, echoing what Meredith had told her the night before.
"Right. But we don't keep secrets about our bodies. We tell a grown-up like a doctor or a mommy."
"Grams is a mommy. To Daddy, and Aunt Amy, and all the other aunts."
"Yes, but she's not my mommy."
"Your mommy died, when you were a grown-up."
An adult, at least.
"She'd be Aunt Maggie's mom, but Aunt Maggie was 'dopted like me. Would she like me?"
Meredith wanted to pretend not to understand. Aunt Maggie loves you. To lie. Of course! Who doesn't love you? Blunt honesty was not a choice. No, because you're under four feet tall. "She didn't get to know you. But she liked people who were smart, curious, and creative, and you're all those things."
"So, her soul probably likes me. And maybe Daddy talks to her about I'm that."
Not laughing was going to make her break a rib, and maybe Sadie would shut up about trying the ocean. That statement was one she'd record. A few weeks had passed since she started the note on her phone, and it was already getting too long to scroll through. There were so many details she could've been sharing with Alex, Callie, Webber…. Other people who loved them, but probably wouldn't be her biggest fans if—when?—she returned with three.
She didn't want to care what people said. For years "what will people think?' was something her mother said. If anything, she tried to make her say it. If she spotted someone from MGH in the neighborhood she'd up the ante of whatever she was doing, because it meant she'd been noticed. It wasn't the same when a hospital was watching her, and she was the person actually facing the whispers.
How many times could you be called dirty without coming to believe you were?
Through the half-hour video, Meredith kept drifting back to the hours she'd spent letting her mother plait and undo, plait and undo. A child's way of ensuring her mother kept breathing? A mother remembering why she'd stayed? Was it all simply Ellis having something to do with her hands, the way it'd been while her wrists healed? Was it ever that? The thoughts that came to her were of trying to explain the whole literal-metaphorical drowning thing to Beni.
It took until the last clip of a group of Muppets singing for her to remember the small TV that sat on the dresser across from the bed she'd sat on with her mother. She could remember at least one time where Big Bird had been on the screen. It only meant that Ellis turned it on to make her stay still, but if there was one time, there might've been more. It was nothing, but it was something.
She doubted that there had been follow-up questions.
Every time Meredith paused the video to ask something like "what would you say to Elmo?" she thought of Cristina mocking her, like she had the parents on the pediatric floor.
Was she doing Owen's thing? Making assumptions because Cristina didn't want kids? If her mother, who'd openly objected to whimsy, had understood the educational value of Sesame Street, why wouldn't her kids' godmother? If Cristina had wanted to be a mom, she'd have rocked it. She'd have—
She'd have been better. Crap. That's what it was. She was judging herself, based on the belief that Cristina would find a "better" method. That wasn't how this worked.
"Elmo's cousin Jesse has hair kinda like mine," Zola observed after the video ended, snuggling up under Meredith's arm. "Can I make my hair pink?"
"When you can clean the bathroom up yourself." Meredith's only other choice would've been never letting her see pictures of herself between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. In San Diego, that possibility existed, but if—when—they returned to Seattle, she didn't want to hide her past. She'd done that for long enough. "Until then, we can put in pink beads and clips any time you want."
"I like butterfly clippies. Um, but, my daddy wasn't a solndier."
The film, When Families Grieve was originally part of an initiative to provide resources for military families, and in between scenes featuring Elmo's family dealing with a death, it spotlighted real-life families where the father had been killed overseas.
"No, but you know what? Your dad's daddy was, for a little while, before he had children."
The service had paid for Carolyn's nursing degree, but of the five Shepherd children who'd become doctors, no one had enlisted. Meredith wondered if there was a reason. She couldn't imagine being in a position to ask Carolyn. Amelia would've been too young to know if Christopher had had PTSD, and Meredith wasn't sure she would've been told. They might have simply all chosen not to.
She didn't need to know, but she wished she'd asked Derek more about his dad. She'd thought that, like her, he didn't want to talk about the parent who hadn't been there. She might've messed that up.
"And Uncle Owen…was." Not going there. Not after a video about soldiers dying. "Elmo's uncle might've died in a car accident. They don't say what job he had."
"They said he was cheesy like Daddy, but my daddy didn't have chattery prank teeth."
He hadn't, but the dead Muppet—that was a weird thought—had also put spring-loaded toy snakes in jars, and she would bet good money Derek had done something similar to a sister.
Meredith was starting to think that might be all she got out of her for that night when Zola asked, "Is pre-k gonna be like day-camp?"
It felt like a non sequitur. Meredith didn't think it was. "How do you mean?"
"Miss Yvette said I'd be a good helper in second session, because I'd already done a lot of the stuff they were gonna do."
"I see. Let's think about it. Pre-k is going to be all about making sure you're ready for elementary school. There will only be four and fives in the class, no threes. You'll do more songs about days, and weeks, and months. At day-camp you did lots of crafts, and you had outside time. You'll still have that in pre-k. I think there will be more seat work. More story-time, which you like."
Zola's eyes were wide, and her thumb rested on the edge of her lip.
"Maybe we could go by one day and meet with someone who could tell us more?" A small, weary shrug. "Love-bug, is there something specific that you don't want to do again?"
Zola looked to the left. "If you don't meet my eyes, I will assume you're lying to me." Meredith had heard that so many times while she tried to figure out how to tell the truth. Sometimes Ellis's eyes were too hard to speak to, and other times she'd been afraid of being mirrored in them.
"I don't wanna do Daddy's Day."
"Daddy's—do you mean Father's Day?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, the first thing I can tell you is that Father's Day only happens once a year. In June. At the beginning of the summer," she added. They'd gotten the days down; reciting them was something she'd been able to do while she was essentially a slug of a person. They needed to work in months.
Meredith had known the address of the apartment in Everett. She doubted her aunt had been the one to teach it to her.
"Will we be home in June?"
"Probably. No matter what, we'll try to skip the day you're doing those activities. Miss Lena said there'd be some other kids who had a hard time with those activities, and I…I should've talked to you about it more. I'll be more prepared next year. Did it make you sad?" Another shrug.
"I can't read your mind, Meredith! Use. Your. Words."
"I'm sorry that wasn't a good day. I can think of a few reasons it wouldn't be. I know why I didn't like it, but I don't know your reason."
"You didn't like Daddy's—Father's Day?"
"No." My name is Meredith Grey. My mother's name is Ellis. My father's name is Thatcher. I live…. Had that been how her mother found her at the carousel? "You know Aunt Lexie and I had the same dad, but different moms?"
"Kinda like adoption?"
"Mmhmm, sort of. I only knew our dad until I was five. My mom and I moved to Boston, and I didn't see him again until I was a grown-up."
"But he didn't die?"
"No. He met Aunt Lexie's mom, and Aunt Lexie was born, and her sister M—your aunt Molly." That wasn't something she'd said often, if ever.
"Did you miss him?"
"I…I did. My mom didn't like to talk about him much, so I didn't get to remember him the way you remember Daddy." Please, please, please keep those memories.
"Did it make your momma too sad?" Funny story, that would be Maggie's daddy.
"It was more…. Sometimes people have a baby, and time passes, and they aren't as happy with each other. Sometimes—most times—a kid in that situation spends some time with their mom, and some with their dad. Or their mama and their mommy, like your Sofi. But there are kids who stay with one parent. I only lived with your grandma Ellis in Boston, which is all the way across the country from Seattle."
"Like D.C.?"
"Not too far from there. Maybe we'll go one day." If she was able to face Seattle again, she'd definitely be able to handle Boston. "So, that was…how it was for me. I didn't really know what to miss." It sounded like a better deal. It hadn't been.
"The some kids are like that at day-camp," Zola confessed "They didn't know their mommy or daddy, or not their mommy and daddy."
"That can happen."
Zola played with the ring around Meredith's neck while she spoke. "I felt bad about it."
"About the other kids?"
"It's like they said on the Sesame Street, it's not fair. I get mad-and-sad about Daddy, but I get happy, too. I have happy memories, and happy pictures. Even Bailey did too, had Daddy. The baby girl won't know daddy, but we'll tell her, and she will know lotsa other people. The some kids aren't lucky like me."
Meredith heard Derek's voice again, and this time the exasperation was fond. Is there any doubt she's yours? Ours, she would've replied, but it was true that the tendency to prioritize compassion over sorting through her own emotions was her trait. Not a bad one, if they worked on the also-feel-your-own-emotions thing.
"That's true," she said. "I'm proud that you thought about that on a day where it would be easy to only think about your own sads and happys. That's okay to do, too. It can be hard to think about others when we're having big emotions."
"Mmhmm. That's because why I drew the picture of Uncle Mark and Aunnie Ecksy. Sofia maybe doesn't remember her daddy. I only know pictures of him, and I think Father's Day probably makes her be sad too."
"She'll be a good friend to talk to. I'm sorry you weren't with her this year."
"I don't wanna upsettle her."
"No, hey. Remember, Elmo's daddy said maybe Jesse didn't want to upset her mommy? What do we say about that?"
"Everyone gets upsettle—upset sometimes, and it's not my fault, it's because remembering, or hearing bad things can be hard. But, um, my Sofia is a kid, not a mommy."
"She is. What do you think you'd do if she got upset?"
One night, during a talk with Lexie, Meredith had wondered when the inquisitive furrows started appearing between her eyes. Seeing them on Zola's face made her wish she'd gotten around to asking.
"If she was sad, I'd say, 'do you want a hug?' and if she got mad, I'd find her a pillow to hit. She hits hard on accident."
"I remember." That discovery had been a memorable sleepover moment for everyone. Not all that unlike the day Zola broke down at the beach store, except Sofia had been the one who hadn't meant to hurt anyone.
"Mmhmm. And I say, 'you can tell me what makes you upset, because I am your bestie friend, even if I lived in Sun Daygo.'"
"That sounds perfect. I don't think Sofia will mind talking about daddies with you. She loved your dad, too."
"Yeah, he dropped her at the trampoline park, and she bounced up so high." Zola's giggling was almost bright enough to keep Meredith from wincing at that memory. Derek had been against taking the kids to "one of those places." She'd been the one to deliver the rebuttal. They had to learn to take risks, it was far safer than a backyard trampoline, Callie would be there to set any broken bones immediately, blah, blah, blah. Then, he'd tripped carrying Sofia up to a ball-pit.
"That was pretty funny," she said, because it was; although, if Sofia hadn't thought it best thing that'd ever happened to her, Meredith might have never won another argument.
In a way, she'd won the war. And then they both got bombed out by an uninterested third party.
"Momma?" Zola said, sleepiness tinging her voice. "The some kids at daycare who are adopted, or not yet, they lived in a buncha homes with a buncha parents."
"Foster homes?"
"Uh-huh. I was a foster before I got adopted?"
"For a little while." The longest four months of my life, baby, and the last four have been very, very long.
Zola yawned. "Will that happen to me and Bay if you die?"
Meredith had anticipated this question. She had. That didn't make it any easier to answer. "You'll…, Right now, you and Bailey would go to your grandma's, in New York. But it's a family decision, and you're big enough to have a say, if you want something different." She didn't think Carolyn would sue. If she did, well, at that point it wouldn't be Meredith's problem. And how upsettled would it make you to watch, Dr. Grey?
"New York is far away like D.C. and B-Bossy-town?"
"Between them."
Meredith could see where Elmo was coming from; she too wished there was a way to call the dead on the phone, if only to know what her mother would think of that mispronunciation. Ellis had been a big proponent of "big girl words," but she'd have agreed with the sentiment. It was a bossy town.
"I don't think I want to go far away. I only know here and back to Seattle."
"We're not going back there, Meredith. No matter how much you beg. No matter how much you cry; it won't change anything if he doesn't want you."
"Mommy? Mommy, I didn't mean to upsettle you. Can I give you a hug?"
If Zola hadn't said "upset" the way she did, Meredith might've stayed stuck in the memory. She'd forgotten her mother's exact words and been certain that her father didn't give a shit about her.
"I'm okay, Zo. I had a…well, a strange thought. You didn't do anything wrong. And you can always hug me. I am the exception to the 'ask before you touch' rule."
"I know," the little girl admitted. "I was practicing."
Meredith laughed and kissed both of the eyelids Zola had just batted at her. If only there was a way to make sure her kids only heard things that they couldn't misinterpret.
Her mother had been talking about Richard. "He" was Richard. "You" was Ellis. Or maybe "you" was still Meredith. If she had thought Richard didn't want Meredith, or Maggie, or both, or either; she'd never said, "Thatcher can take Meredith."
Ellis hadn't been willing to give Meredith up to keep Richard.
Would knowing that have changed anything? Maybe she wouldn't have told Derek to pick her. That'd been begging and crying. She'd known her mother wouldn't have approved, though. It'd been a desperate act. She'd hoped that maybe if she spelled things out—She'd never been honest like that, or not since she was fourteen and the newly active parts of her heart hadn't been broken. She'd cobbled together clichés she barely understood, because he was cheesy, and he spoke in analogies. She'd grown up with the wrong parent for that. If she'd known her mother said it wouldn't work, she might not have done it. Until she'd left Seattle, her intern year was when she'd mirrored her the most frequently. She'd been desperate, then, because she thought no one had ever chosen her, not even her mother.
Her mother had chosen her.
Specifically, her.
If she'd known that, she might not have drowned. She and Derek might not have come close to collapse so many times. There might have been more light, regardless of whether or not she'd been wired for darkness.
But assuming there'd been a "her and Derek," wouldn't he have died the same way? If she wasn't used to it, this might've been the time she got lost to the dark; the time she rejected everyone. That could've included her daughter. Maybe nothing Ellis did would've kept Meredith from making her mistakes, only which ones she made. What would she think of that?
Yeah, Meredith was on Elmo's side about the phone thing.
Agreeing to come to Sadie and Fati's "small" end of summer cookout had been way too optimistic. If only Meredith had realized that before getting out of the car outside their beach-house with two very excited kids. At twenty-two weeks she was obviously pregnant, and she knew how the small talk would go.
I left Seattle to avoid this shit.
Okay, she'd decided to not return until the pregnancy was over to avoid this shit, but same difference.
She was still considering bailing and dealing with whatever whining and tantrums followed when they got up the steps to the door. Maybe Zola could see that, because without a word she balled her fist and knocked, a louder sound than it seemed like such a small hand could make.
There was still time to teach her children the fun of ding-dong ditch. How many random buzzers had she and Sadie pressed to get let into an apartment building? Derek and Mark had probably been worse, so he couldn't object wherever the hell he was—what if the afterlife was somehow tied to the hospital? He'd have no clue where they were. Or. Shit. What if it was where you died? Fucking Dillard —
"Get your ass in here, Death."
Meredith's short spiral made her miss the door being opened. That was not something she could do in surgery. Definitely needed to work on—"Ow!"
"Walk, then," Sadie ordered, giving Meredith her arm back only once she crossed the threshold. "I was starting to think you got vamped and needed an invite. This guy would be the cutest vampire ever, wouldn't you?" She took Bailey out of Meredith's arms, along with him any security she'd felt at all.
"Wrong small blonde. Is there something that needs to be chopped? Diced? I'm very good at—"
"Mer. It's going to be okay. You know at least a third of the people here."
"I do?"
"Lena's posse runs deep. You've met all her kids, right? And her wife?"
"Seen them at least. At the Fourth."
"BOOM!"
Meredith took an inordinate amount of joy from Sadie's startled expression. "Good memory, Mr. B."
"Not really," Zola cut in. "He makes Mommy read him the fireworks book a billion times a day."
"Don't be silly, Zo. It's a quintillion. I bought our own copy so we wouldn't wear the library's out."
"Fireworks a good book. BOOM!"
Sadie flinched slightly less that time, but Meredith would take whatever amusement she could get. It was still a bit of a novelty.
"Everything's out the back." Sadie led them straight through the kitchen and living room to a balcony. Meredith tried to look around, to spot Sadie in the decor, but they were moving too quickly for her to register much. Except… "You haven't trashed the chair?"
"Why would I ever?"
"Because it was ancient when we picked it up off the street, and that was fifteen years ago."
"And whoever put it there made a huge mistake. It's the most comfortable chair on the planet," Sadie insisted. "Want me to take that bag while you go down with him?" Their house was a story up, with a pool on the deck, all of it within spitting distance of the beach.
Bailey did need stair practice, and considering the last time she'd fallen down stairs had led to losing her spleen and labor, she took the offer. And because entire countries could be conquered in the time it took a toddler to clear a staircase, Sadie had joined a conversation by the time they made it down. Meredith knew her game. She was supposed to ask for it back and be dragged into the circle. When they were eighteen and her tactics had involved kisses in corners with just enough light to make Meredith think she wouldn't mind being seen. Pulling her into her lap to get her to talk to a clueless guy's oblivious friend.
"Can we go?" Zola asked, pointing to where a handful of kids were playing.
"What are the big rules?"
"Tell the life-guarder who we are, and we aren't swimmers. Don't go to the water. Always be able to see you."
"Okay. Go get the bag if you want the sand toys. What about you?" Meredith asked Bailey while Zola went over to Sadie.
"No water. Stay with Zoey." They were drilled responses. However, many adults were stationed within three feet of the kids, she wasn't planning to actually take her eyes off his neon L'il Swimmer.
Sadie frowned, but she handed the bag down. Ha. Team Meredith for the win. She took out the mesh bag that had the buckets and carefully chosen selection of sand toys, watching them take the offering over, before she followed the smoky air over to where Fatimah stood over a round charcoal grill.
"Nicely handled."
"Ah. You, er… Do you know how old that armchair in your living room is?"
"Neither of you are subtle, and you're both a little manipulative. Ssorry if you didn't know that."
"I did. I do. Never claimed it. Subtlety, I mean."
"You are freaking out—" Fatimah put a hand to her mouth which only made the burst of laughter louder when it escaped. "—over something normal."
"Great. I'm glad I can provide entertainment."
"Don't be pouty. Here." Fatimah took a kebab off the grill and held it out to Meredith.
"Who's manipulative now?" She snatched the stick and bit off a hunk of chicken. "Mmm, really good, though."
"I'm not going to apologize for sticking food in your hand for the next four months, especially not when you do more than stare at it. What I meant was that you're freaking out over something everyone freaks out over. Being in a new environment with new people. It sucks. Plus, you're trying to figure out how this is Sadie's scene when it feels a million miles away from who she was five years ago."
"I, uh….That's how she felt in Seattle, isn't it?" Meredith's gaze swept over all the pastel and khaki around them. "I took her out to the property, once. She was off from the appendectomy, we hadn't spent time together, and maybe I was a little bit trying to signal that if she'd come for me, it was too late. So that may be why she…she hated it. I picked a trail Derek and I ended up walking it a few times during my recovery from the liver thing—not strenuous. We went about this time of day; I figured maybe we'd stay out until the stars came out. That was a thing while we travelled. Every other destination had to be somewhere we could see stars. But she wore these ridiculous boots, and…anyway, she bitched the whole way up.
"Maybe the woodlands of Seattle are further from strip volleyball in Tuscany than here. Maybe it looked like I'd changed a lot too fast, but we weren't…whenever I'd been home since Amsterdam, I'd be desperate to blow off med school steam, and it'd be Die and Death ride again. But I didn't need Die so much as I wanted to stay friends with Sadie, and…. I-I'm sorry. This is probably crossing a line. I don't want—"
Fatimah grasped her arm. "It's okay. I have Sadie's side of all this. I can know yours too without going mad with jealousy."
"It's just that she saw me settled with Derek and acted like I'd changed completely. I hadn't. I always wanted something real. Someone who'd stay. Of the two of us, Derek was the runner. That's a recent psych breakthrough."
"That hasn't changed for her. The traveling is as much coping as work. And most of the people here are my colleagues. The house lends itself to things like this, and I seem more social than I am. A couple people from the clinic are coming later, but you're a bit of a bridge, with kids at the school."
"A really rickety one."
"Mommy! Cal will take us in the water!" Zola ran over, smooshing her face into Meredith's side. She'd been reassured that squishing the baby girl didn't have to be a concern, but apparently not enough to buy it. Behind her was Lena's daughter and another boy who Meredith guessed was Mariana's twin. He was carrying Bailey, who wore an expression of absolute hero worship.
"She said she's never been in past the shoreline, so I thought…. we wouldn't take them farther than we can stand, and we can get our sibs so it'd be, like, five on two."
"I completed lifeguard training," the boy added. Cal gave him a look. "What? I did. Chicks dig lifeguards. But that was when I went off my meds, and my ADHD went nuts during the final test, and I never got certified."
"Jesús!"
"What? I take them now. Besides, ADHD helps me gel with little kids. Right Bailey-Buddy?" He swung Bailey up and then caught him in a way that remided her viscerally of Alex.
"Hey, Jesús?" Hey, hey-zus. "Uh, sorry."
"I get that a lot."
"We have a Hey-Zeus, and a Hey, Jude," Cal said. "We're all used to it."
"Better than being called Jesus. First time that happened, I didn't get it, and the teacher was just up there like, 'Jesus? Jeez-us?'"
"What he's leaving out is that he used make a crack about how he'd rather be the god of bringing the thunder, and then Mama heard him."
"Yikes." Meredith laughed. "So, Jesús, you a wrestler?"
His face lit up. "Yeah, actually! Me and my girlfriend. How'd you know?"
"My, uh, my best friend wrestled in college. There's a stance."
"Yeah? That's awesome. Moms worry, but I love it. Keeping it up in college would be really cool."
"Mommy, isn't Aunt Stina your bestie friend?"
"Alex is, too. You can have more than one."
"Like a boy bestie, and a girl bestie, and non-biary bestie?"
"Was Han in your camp group?" Cal asked.
"Uh-huh, they get to pick. Or not be a girl or a boy."
"You're so hot dressed like that, babe, just don't be too obvious while we're out?"
"Anyone can do that, Zo, if they don't feel like their heart matches their body. Han's mom and dad decided that they didn't want them to be seen as one or the other until they knew for sure what they felt."
"What about the baby girl?"
Fatimah let out a tiny squeak. "Sorry, don't mind me, gender is a construct."
"It is," Meredith agreed. "Zo, when a baby is being formed, we can see which parts they have. As they get bigger, there will be other things that go into being a girl or boy; and growing into a man or woman. Some people are both at different times. Some don't want to be either, and they're nonbinary. We know being a boy or girl doesn't mean you can't do or like something, and if the baby tells us they're not a girl, we'll change what we say.
"Uh huh. Can we get in the water now?"
"I…." Funny how she could find all the words on a topic that wasn't —well, it would be important, but it wasn't a pressing matter—but that question washed them all out.
"Something up, my babies?" A blonde woman with a buzz cut came over and put one hand on each of the older kids' shoulders. Their movements were subtle, but they. both relaxed in a way Meredith saw time and time again with peds patients. This was Mom.
"They were just telling me how careful they're going to be taking my bab—my kids out in the water."
"Ah, I see. Well, this one has lifeguard training, and this one —" She rubbed Cal's arm and smiled at her "—is the most protective person I know except for maybe myself. Gonna get Mari and Jude to go with you? B's dad just came to take him to his lesson."
As Cal nodded, Meredith caught the expression on Bailey's face. "Aunt Sadie calls you B, huh?" she said.
"B for Bailey Shep'erd."
"My B is Brandon. He's spending the night with his daddy."
"Daddy, him die. Bad truck."
"That's a sad thing to happen, huh?"
"Yeah, sad. Going to water."
"You'll hang onto Jesús very tightly? I bet you're so strong." Bailey made a muscle. "Oh, yes, very."
"Going be fishy."
Zola pulled on Meredith's arm, and maybe it wasn't best manners, but Meredith bent down to let her whisper in her ear. "He remembers!"
"Seems like it, Zo." Did he? Or had they talked about going fishing with daddy enough for him to absorb it. Did it matter?
"That right! Daddy took you fishing." Zola chirped reaching up on tiptoe in front of tall Jesús to pat Bailey "But we're not fishing here, Bay. We're swimming in the Bay."
"Don't confuse him on purpose," Meredith warned. "You know so many more words than him because you're the big sister, but that means you have to be patient to be the best big sister."
"I'll watch him in the water, Mommy."
Meredith's pulse had spiked when Zola asked permission to go in the water and it shot up again. She fumbled behind her, grabbing the handle on the grill. Good thing that wasn't hot. Or maybe hot would've been better; the sensory input might've overwhelmed the messages her brain was producing itself and sending through the same system—fine, there was auditory input, but Zola's words weren't as directly responsible as a burn would've been. She didn't want to pass a PTSD-whatever onto her kids, and her adrenaline went straight to the baby. Her epigenetics were probably all kinds of messed up already. Did therapy have in utero waitlists like the insanely expensive preschools?
She swallowed, straining to keep her voice, at least, steady. "Come talk to me for one second, Zo."
Zola retraced her steps across the sand and stood in front of her, smiling. How old would she be when she responded to that with one-one-thousand-okay-bye? Four and ten months, maybe?
"You let the big kids look out for you, okay? You either hold onto someone, or they hold you. They are in charge. You're a great sister, but you are also little. Understand?" Zola nodded. "Tell me."
"I gotta hold onto a teenager, and they are the bosses of Bailey. And me."
"Okay. Good. Okay. And Zo? If something happens, and you're not holding on—"
"I will, Momma."
"If something happens, you keep swimming. Whether or not you can get to the surface, you swim. Someone will help you. Someone will be coming, but you have to-to do everything you learned in your rescue lessons so they can, okay?"
"I'll be Dory!"
"Yeah." The laugh the word rode out on was too breathy, too high-pitched. Two forward, one back. She pressed her forehead against Zola's. "You be Dory. I love you. Have fun."
"We will!" Zola ran, churning up sand, but she grabbed Cal's hand on her way past. Cal glanced over her shoulder at Meredith, and for one heartbeat Meredith saw Lexie in her face. Really, all they had in common was coloring, but something about her we got this smile reminded her of her sister.
Jesús started to follow. "Hey," his mom said, drawing the word out as she grabbed his arm. "'Zeus."
"Ma, what?" She jerked her head at Meredith. It took him a second, but his eyes widened with understanding, and he came over to her.
"You tell your mom we're gonna have fun, okay buddy?"
"I Bailey."
"Buddy Bailey."
Bailey giggled.
"He's a squirmer," Meredith warned. "He hasn't had any kind of lessons, either, so—"
"I'll hold onto him. We'll be good." He really did remind her of Alex. They had the same outside bravado, and the eyes that showed he understood more than he let on. At sixteen. Half the age at which Alex started leaving the shields down.
"All right. I love you." She leaned in for a kiss and got a mouthful of toddler drool for her troubles. "Have a good time swimming."
"A'ight! Swim," he agreed, flailing his arms in a rough approximation of a stroke. Meredith watched the way Jesús's hold shifted with him. It was better than she'd be able to handle out there.
"You good?" Fati asked as the boys headed for the surf.
Meredith grabbed another kebab from the plate on a table next to the grill. "Not in the slightest. Still, better than I was a month ago. Last week, even."
"Cheers to that."
She held the stick up, toasting Fati with it.
"Sorry if my kids were pushy," the blonde woman said. "I'm Stef, by the way."
"Meredith."
"You're Zola's mom."
"That's one title I go by, yes."
"She made quite the impression on my Mariana at the egg hunt. Not in a bad way." She held up a hand to stave off Meredith's apology. "Mari came to us at a little older than Zola is, and it took a year or so to see the attitude under the shell. Easter afternoon, she told me that she's happy to see little girls like her comfortable enough to be determined."
"That's really sweet."
"I thought so. I did reminder her that not all kids in mixed families are adopted."
"She's right, in Zola's case."
They hadn't really been anywhere except the hospital with Maggie, yet. What assumptions would people make about her, her mixed-race sister, and her Black child? Would everyone simply assume she was Maggie's, no question, no relation? Probably. It was nice to think that maybe some wouldn't. That others knew complexity existed.
"She came to us for good a little under one, and our court date came a week after her birthday."
Sadie and Fatimah's other guests were starting to come down to get food. Meredith went over to the table to fix a plate to put aside for the kids. The potato salad must've come with Stef and Lena, because it was the same recipe they'd had at the school on the Fourth. She put some in a bowl for Bailey, and hoped she'd remember to put a lid on it when the kids came back.
They'll be back.
Lena was standing next to Stef, now, and caught Meredith's eye. "Zola's mom!"
Meredith had a flash of seeing a sign that said Dr & Mrs. Shepherd. Why did that feel offensive, but she didn't mind being known as Zola's mom at all?
"I know we've barely talked, but I feel like I know you. Or your family, at least," Lena admitted. "Zola can be talkative."
"Oh, I just bet."
"All good things. She's very proud to have a family with a diverse makeup. I'm not sure I've tracked it all correctly, but it sounds nearly as complicated as ours."
"Nearly?"
"Mm." Stef took a sip of her soda. "During their adoption, Callie and Jude discovered they have different dads, and she has a nearly identical half-sister. The twins' bio-mom recently showed up again. They have a newborn sister. Lena's half-brother is a white P.O.S., and my ex-husband is my partner on the force."
"And that's the quick version." Lena laughed. "At Anchor Beach, we've started teaching the kids about grafting before family trees."
"Oh, I'm stealing that metaphor." What kind of fruit would the Grey tree grow? Limes maybe. Not apples, for sure. Lexie would've loved this little gathering. She'd be down there playing beach volleyball or frisbee with the kids one minute and making nice with parents the next.
A shout came up from the water, and Meredith's eyes shot to the kids. She could immediately spot Bailey's bright blond hair, and Zola's purple swimsuit. She let out her breath.
They waded back after another twenty minutes or so, and for a while Meredith kept busy; deconstructing the kebabs to pick out the chunks Zola would eat, getting Bailey into a new Li'l Swimmer and out of the potato salad, re-inflating the floating devices they'd brought to confine them to the pool.
At one point, she found herself alone in the living room, and she drifted to the bookshelf. Sadie was never a reader, but the books she loved, she loved. They'd both identified a little too much with The Bell Jar, and Meredith should've paid more attention to how many times Sadie read Girl Interrupted. It was there on the shelf, the same copy she'd borrowed to read in '95; close reading lines to see if they gave her insight into Sadie; not understanding how much insight she could've been getting if she pulled back a little.
She ran her fingers over a few other spines, and then tugged out Annie On My Mind.
Die,
I really think you'll like the descriptions of New York in here, and maybe you'll realize think about the time we pierced our ears in that MGH exam room.
Happy birthday!
Death
December 25th, 1993
She could see the indent where she'd almost written "I love you" instead of "happy birthday." She had put it in The Price of Salt.
"Which dykey book are you getting me this year?"
The messed-up part was that Annie On My Mind had reminded her of being with Layla, not Sadie. In December of '93 she'd been hoping to see Layla again in the summer, and if she had she would've said they'd been girlfriends the whole time —unless Sadie had given her any real signs. Poor confused kids. None of them had been older than the girls who were playing Chicken in the pool with her small humans on their shoulders.
The psychiatry books were Sadie's, and well thumbed. A glance at the DVDs and records on the shelf—of course they have a fancy turntable—and she was satisfied. Sadie was there. She'd just taken longer to leave Neverland.
Outside, Chicken devolved into Marco Polo. Zola couldn't stop peeking, and she might never get Bailey to stop shouting "Polo!" Eventually, all the kids piled into the living room to watch Tangled, and Meredith was at loose ends. With several adults, and the four teenagers inside, Meredith felt safe going outside. If she hadn't called Sadie, or let Fati set them up with day-camp, even for only six weeks, how much harder would that have been?
As the sky began to shift from blue to brilliant oranges and pinks, she walked down the steps again and out to the beach, looking for Sadie. She found her sitting at a fire pit a little way along the beach from the grill. The circle she was with must've been clinic friends. Meredith hugged the flannel she'd let herself bring for the evening chill around herself. They did remind her more of their crowd in Boston—but her friends. Sadie had attracted other heiress daughters who wanted to feel like they were being "bad." Meredith sort-of qualified, but being the heir to a name in medicine was different than being heir to a finance empire.
"God, Mer, you really are a queer."
A breeze wafted a scent toward her at the same time someone nudged Sadie to point her out. "Death!" Sadie reached toward her, and Meredith let her grab her wrist and pull her over. "Put it out, Reilly. Baby on board."
A woman with an undercut across from them stubbed out the joint. Sadie manhandled Meredith until she perched on the arm of her Adirondack chair.
"The infamous Meredith," said the woman in the next chair over.
"Infamous?" Meredith asked, looking down, trying to read Sadie's eyes. They weren't bloodshot, but that'd never been her tell. Sometimes she hadn't had one. Meredith would only find out later that she'd been dealing with stoned Sadie, high Sadie, drunk Sadie. In the last year in Boston, she wasn't sure she'd ever gotten sober Sadie.
"Always, babe. Death, this is Pegs, who runs the clinic's IT." the woman who'd spoken, a larger woman with waves of red curls.
"Tatiana, Head of Nursing." A Black woman with her hair in Bantu knots. "Maro, they run my life."
They saluted her with two fingers encased in fingerless motorcycle gloves. Their wheelchair had massive rubber wheels, specifically for moving on the beach. Meredith glanced back up at the beach house stairs.
"I have offered to remodel," Sadie asserted.
"You're not going to overhaul your damn house for me. I have been up once, it's nice. I went through your records, stole the good ones, and it's never happening again."
"Ah, no, actually, I took the good ones twenty years ago," Meredith corrected. Their voice was familiar. Why was their voice familiar?
"Nice. She can afford to replace them, right?"
"I'm Reilly," cut in the woman with the undercut, whose outfit basically matched Meredith's, except the flannel had likely not belonged to a dead husband, and bathing suit underneath their shorts was actually stylish. "I'm their partner. This debate happens every time we visit."
"It happened at the clinic on Tuesday, too," Maro snapped. "She's not that rich."
"I am, actually."
"You are, actually." They run my life. "Really, I'm not gonna be the excuse for putting Fati out for that long. She's much nicer to me."
"Wait. You're Sadie's office manager." There had been dozens, maybe hundreds, of times Meredith had wished to just disappear into thin air, but she wasn't sure she'd ever, in her darkest, twistiest times, wanted it this much.
"Mer?" Sadie murmured, flattening her hand against Meredith's back. "You okay?"
"Yeah…No. I mean, it wasn't…. I, um…when I called you the first time?"
"Oooooh."
"I don't know if you—No, I'm sure you…. I'm really sorry."
"No big."
"But —"
"Dr. Grey." Maro's smirk made Meredith sure they remembered every word she'd said, which was more than she did. "I promise you weren't the first person to swear at me while trying to reach Harris."
Meredith dropped her head into her hands.
"Hey, no hiding," Sadie said, poking her. "You were not yourself that day. I'll vouch for it."
"I was a bitch."
"I said 'not yourself.' Sit up, we're not done with introductions. You're being rude to Wanda."
"Rude's got nothing on me," she muttered, sitting up.
"She does things with numbers, and she dated a psychiatrist who is no longer with the clinic. We kept her in the divorce."
The woman on their right rolled her eyes behind cat's eye glasses, and held her hand out to Meredith. When Meredith offered hers, instead of shaking, Wanda flipped her hand and examined it.
"Hm. Harris claims you played drums for Rowena Shane's college band."
"Er, yes. I haven't picked up a pair of sticks in ten years or more. Different calluses these days." She ran the index finger of her right hand across the opposite palm. The bumps from the repetitive pressure of surgical instruments weren't as solid as they'd been five months ago, when she'd been in the longest streak of her career.
"Are you go-?" Tatiana stopped mid-question. Meredith followed her confused expression to Sadie in time to catch her in the middle of a throat-cutting ix-nay motion. If she and her kids were this obvious, she was hiding nothing from Carolyn.
"What?"
"Going…going to… Harris, I got nothing."
"Can't believe you haven't asked her yet," Reilly added. "It's next month."
"What's next month?"
Sadie groaned and put a hand on Meredith's knee. "Death, I was going to tell you after this once you were cool with these dumbasses. Did you hear The Panty Hos reunited?"
"Seriously?"
"Mmhmm. They're doing a limited West Coast tour. Six cities, something like that. They'll be here next month, and I…I was going to say Fati and I have an extra ticket, but the truth is I bought it for you. You don't have to come with us, or even decide until the day of —"
"No. Yeah. No. I mean, yeah, I'll—I want to go. I'll need to figure out what to do with the kids, and I'm reserving the right to cop-out, but I haven't been to a gig in…a very long time." There'd been one time that Derek got Symphony tickets from a patient, but it'd felt so much like being her mother's plus-one at those kind of events that she hadn't been able to stay past intermission.
"Excellent." Sadie's smile was soft and a little shaky. It wasn't one Meredith had seen many times, but it was always honest. Then, she exhaled, and it solidified and spread. She turned away from Meredith to the group. "She said yes. Huzzah."
"Huzzah," they chorused, and the sparks coming off the fire could almost be all of the invisible strings that connected them. In Seattle, Meredith had far more of those than she'd ever thought she would. Had she slashed all those by coming here? She'd put Derek ahead of her job again, on purpose, for the kids, but how long would it take the ripples to settle this time?
The question reminded her of the reason she'd come down here; not that it had truly slipped her mind. She stared out at the Bay. The water and sky were a mix of dark oranges and blues. Bright lights shone on the surface out past the boat dock that marked the edge of the property. She had no illusions about how far down the beams penetrated.
"Death?"
Meredith slid off the arm of the chair. Her lower back had been threatening to scream, anyway. She'd gotten old. And there was a fetus throwing different parts of her out of whack in a daily basis. She couldn't forget that. She couldn't. "Come with me."
Old habit, or old instinct, made her slip her hand into Sadie's.
"I don't like girls, they like me. I like you."
"See you at the concert, Meredith?" Reilly asked, the roach she'd snubbed out already pinched between two fingers.
"You will," she said, hoping she'd be as confident whenever the show came around. If she wouldn't have to figure out what to do with the kids, she might've asked Sadie not to tell her the date, so she couldn't work herself up about it.
"Do you have a suit on under that?" she asked.
"What?"
"Do you?"
"Yes."
"Are you sober?"
"Yes. We can go get Officer Foster to test me if you want." The words felt like a taunt, but Sadie's face was serious. She had at least some idea of what Meredith wanted.
"I believe you." Meredith slid Derek's shirt off and set it on the planks of the dock. She let her shorts fall and stepped out of them along with her sandals. "We need to talk," she said. "And I want to go into the water."
Sadie stared at her for a moment, and then undid the belt securing her wrap dress. "How do you want to do this?"
"I…I don't know."
"We can wade in, take it slow. We can drop off the side of the dock, or…."
"Or jump."
"Yes."
"If I were a patient…?"
"If you were my patient? We wouldn't be this close to open water yet. If you were my patient, I'd be doing CBT, and doing everything gradually. But you aren't my patient. You're my very stubborn friend, and I'm taking your lead on this."
"My..." Her voice cracked. She swallowed. She needed to do this. "Let's, um, let's walk in? I don't think I can…the drop. The drop was…." Every time she blinked, she felt an arm slamming against her.
"Come on. I've got you." Sadie took her hand, locking her arm in front of her, the way she had in the hotel bathroom the first night; the way she'd done on countless other nights, starting when she discovered the only alcohol Meredith had ever consumed was wine, poured by her mother the previous Christmas. It took her a while to understand tolerance, and longer than that to care.
The sand was wet. The sand was wet and there was water. The sand was wet, and there was water, and it was pulling. "Stop!"
"It's done. You're good. You're doing great."
"Talk to me. T-tell me about Seattle. About when left."
"Exposure therapy for two? Sure thing. Um, Stevens did that stupid contest, and O'Malley caught me listening to Lexie's answer. Said that either I tattle on myself, or he would. I told him I'd rather be known as a quitter than a cheater."
Meredith stopped. She stopped, and it had nothing to do with the wave hitting her calves. She cupped her hands over her mouth and laughed. It wasn't right; it wasn't fair to Sadie, who'd confessed once while she sat on the couch, glassy-eyed, staring and not seeing her. Hearing and not feeling. And now, she was laughing at her, and the water wanted to drag her out with the sand around her feet. She grabbed for Sadie who clutched her hand again, like she hadn't just —
"Stop it. Stop saying you're sorry, Meredith. You are not the sorry one. You never have been. You're so strong. So damn strong, and I promise I'm not going anywhere, okay? You can laugh at me, you can yell at me, I'm going to stay right here."
"I didn't—I didn't even know I was doing it."
"That makes it worse, you know. So, let's see, I was a total hypocrite, but the thing is, Himself never knew who did my trigonometry homework."
"Or wrote your lit papers. You had so many damn lit papers."
"Not my fault they were teaching me to think and you to take a multiple-choice test. Thanks to me you got an edu—okay, it's okay. It's not strong enough to hurt you."
"Can we…can we just stand here for a second?"
"Sure."
The water lapped against the bare skin between the halves of Meredith's bathing suit; skin that was taut, and a little tender, and she was so hyperaware of it.
"I cleared out while you were still at work," Sadie continued. "Thought about staying at the Archfield. Kind of wondered if I could convince anyone I still worked at Gra— Grey+Sloan. God, that's weird."
"Not if you used to think it was 'Seattle Greys'"
"You did not."
"When I…When I was Zola's age."
"That's adorable. I wonder if Lexie…?"
"I never asked her. They went to West, before Molly got transferred to us. If Susan had gone to West…." Meredith shook her head. "You didn't go to The Archfield."
"No. Turns out the only person I could fool was Himself. Black Amex. As long as the charges were coming from Seattle, no one asked questions. I stayed until… O'Malley."
"Wh-where'd you go?"
"Bounced around. Followed a guy to LA, funded a whole group's trip to Vegas, started withdrawing massive amounts of cash. That's when Daddy dearest sent someone to track me down. Revoked the card. Dropped me off at a a state hospital."
"I can move. Um. When did you…? Were…? I swear I'm not trying to be judgy, or accusatory, or anything. I was an iceberg, and the last time we talked about any of this, and I never did anything but enab—"
"Okay, stop. You stop. You reassured me, even though I could see that all that was keeping you from showing us to the door that you didn't care enough to get up. You think I didn't see…? Fati spent an hour talking me down that night, reminding me that you were seeing Beni, and you're an adult, we had to give you space to ask for help."
"I...I didn't."
"Sure you did. How easy would it have been to respond to a text on that phone you were using to scroll the Muppet Wiki site, Mer? That's what the deal was. If you went AWOL, you needed help. I accept that I wasn't who I wanted to be at Grace, and no, I wasn't using there. You didn't miss that. It wouldn't be on you if you had, but you didn't. You didn't enable me when we were kids, either. I all but gaslit you about that shit because party drugs were one thing, but actively using…? You wouldn't have put up with it."
"I'm glad you're sure about that. I'm not. I tried everything," Meredith reminded her. "It's the only way I can say that I was just lucky. And I knew you were taking more than Molly. Maybe not how much."
"It was mostly coke, then. Smack didn't become my drug of choice until after Grace.
"And you got dumped in rehab?"
"Yeah. I lasted a day in that place. They give you your sheets and blankets. Tell you to make the bed, but as you're doing it, your body is—they say it's like the flu, and I guess, clinically. But you feel it getting worse by increments, until you're on the floor at three in the morning, lying in your own puke waiting for some Nurse Ratched to find you, and even then, you get fluids."
"They don't…? I don't know much about our rehab unit, but…methadone, buprenorphine, naloxone…?"
"Mostly it's just Narcan if you're ODing, and I—Whoa, okay. We're good. I'm right here, it just slants down faster here. Let's… okay. We'll stay here until you're ready…. I walked out of there. Kept bouncing. Got arrested for possession in Anaheim. I don't actually recommend being high on a Disney property.
"I've never…. We were waiting for Bailey to be old enough to remember. He…he wasn't old enough to remember."
"Mer…."
"I'm not even a Disney person. I pr-probably would've hated it."
"Not with those two, you wouldn't. Not with Shepherd. God…. Himself sent a lawyer. I got six months, and a diagnosis. Ended up in treatment. BPD…. My med-box is much fancier than yours, but it's mostly therapy. A lot of therapy. Enough head-shrinking that I decided to do more school. Turns out, if you're in it for the right reasons, you actually want to do the work."
"How'd you get through med school?"
"Meredith—"
"I'm not going to report you to anyone. I only want to know."
"I did some of the work. Maybe most of it. But I…. There were…an administrator. An IT guy. A dean. Shit, if I'd thought I could seduce George…but he saw through me."
"My fault. I broke him."
"You did not."
"I cried."
"I don't know that I have that whole story, but didn't it happen the day you found Thatcher? And right after the bomb?"
"Yeah, but I took—
"I doubt you intentionally led him on, did you?"
"I knew he liked me, and that night…he was there, and he was sweet. The good guy. And…this part is fucked up. I've never…. Mom was admitted once before…before the last time. She thought Burke was Richard, which…I mean, they're both Black, but not even…. Burke looked nothing like—anyway, she, um. She thought George was Thatcher."
"And you thought you could reverse it? Date the good guy after the affair?"
"It wasn't—! I didn't know! It wasn't… not until the prom. I didn't know, Sadie. I didn't —"
"Mer, look at me. Cheating's your too far. I know. It's okay. Do you want to go back?"
"I—I wanna finish this."
"Okay. Let's…. I'm fine here, all right? I can tread here for days, and I won't let go unless you tell me to. And if you do, I'm right here. You're not going to be in danger."
Meredith stepped forward, and stepped forward, and slipped forward, and the bottom disappeared. Water pulled at her, and she pushed back.
"Good. You got it. This can be enough for tonight."
"I need to…I need to be able to go under."
"All right. Here, hold my hands. There. I'm not letting go. Breathe. Meredith, you need to breathe. Back up. You cannot do this if you are not breathing. All right, you're standing. You're fine."
"I can't do it. I can't do it, Sades. I want to, but I can't."
"You can. You don't have to."
"I do. I do, because Derek is dead, and the damn librarian isn't gonna take my kids into the water, and I have to…. We live on an island. Zola has a pink fishing pole, and—"
"Zola is never going to care if you can only play with her in the pool. Bailey is never going to be mad if you can't be in open water. You drowned, Mer. You drowned, and that is scary. It is fucking scary, and I didn't…. Just. It's okay to be scared of this."
"Derek…."
"Derek wouldn't be mad, or upset, or whatever. You wouldn't make him learn to shoot, or stand in front of a fake gun, or—"
"N-no. But when Cristina couldn't operate—"
"Did you become a professional underwater swimmer at some point in the past five years?"
"No."
"Some kind of passion or talent you'd be wasting? Any reason to do this other than 'Derek could have?'"
"The kids—"
"Meredith." Sadie turned to the sky in exasperation, and then a small smile crept onto her face. "Look up."
Meredith leaned her head back. The stars were nothing compared to some of the darker places they'd been, but they were bright, sparkling pinpricks in a velvety sky. They were light, not the unending, roiling darkness ahead of her. She heard the rush of water as Sadie moved, felt it swirl around her, but the stars were there, and the water was still.
Sadie stayed behind her as they left the water, holding her steady when waves rolled in, and letting her stop if it pulled too hard.
The sand was wet.
The sand was dry.
Derek's shirt sat on the dock where she'd left it, and she yanked it on in spite of the way the fabric clung to her wet arms.
"Mer?" She turned to face Sadie, who looked ghostly with her white wrap dress billowing around her, and her hair blowing in the night breeze. There was still one question she hadn't asked, but she hadn't gotten underwater, either. Meredith clutched at Derek's shirt, already awash with embarrassment over how pathetic she'd—Were you, though? When was the last time you got that far?
She hadn't. Not since before the water tried to keep her.
Sadie came closer. "No hiding. You did great tonight. We can try again. But you can also never try again. I know you love that land. That you love him. But your life as his wife doesn't have to be your life…."
"As his widow."
Sadie nodded.
Meredith took a long breath and turned her back on the water.
A/N: The Sesame Street video "When Families Grieve" can be found on YouTube