Meredith was sitting on the now empty front steps, her coat draped beside her. True to her word, Lanie kept walking and headed back to the car, giving the friends a few minutes alone.

Addison sat down on the steps beside Meredith, picking up her coat and laying it across her shoulders.

"Has it really only been…this is only the third day," Meredith murmured.

"It feels like forever," Addison answered.

"It has been forever," Meredith amended. "It's like being in hell. This is hell."

"Oh, sweetie, I…"

"I just want to cry," she broke in. "I just want to cry, but I can't cry anymore. I don't have anything left in me. At the end of the week, I'm going to bury my son, Addie. A parent's not supposed to outlive their child. It's not supposed to happen this way. I don't know how to go on without him."

"I don't think you really go on without him…" Addison hedged. "The memories will always be with you, no matter what."

She shook her head. "Not now, not yet. I can't think about him without feeling intensely sick. I've tried, and I can't."

"You'll get there. It takes time."

"Lanie…Lanie is a beautiful girl. And I love her with everything, but…looking at her, looking at all of the other kids…it reminds me that he's…Rich isn't coming back, ever."

"I'm sorry, Mer," Addison whispered. "I'm so sorry. I wish that I could do something more, but…"

"I know," she answered, drawing her coat tightly closed around her shoulders to brace against the slight wind.

"None of this feels real. If this were anything else…if it had been anybody else…Izzie would be here with us right now. It's still hard to absorb."

"I miss her," Meredith replied, quietly staring ahead. "But it would hurt too much to see her. She reminds me of…him. And…he reminds me of Rich."

"She understands," Addison answered, even though she wasn't sure that Izzie really did.

"It's just…that…When I got up this morning…Do you want to know what my first thought was?"

"What?" Addison asked, even though she was pretty sure that she had a good guess.
"What to make Rich for breakfast. It's still not sinking in…like I'm waking up and starting that day, the day that it happened, over and over again. I don't know how to make that stop."

"It takes time," Addison replied, trying to shade the uncertainty from her voice. "It takes a lot of time."

"None of know how much time we have," Meredith argued gently. "We could die any day."

"You can't talk like that," Addison protested.

"It's true," she whispered.

They joined hands, sitting in the quiet on the church steps with only the wind rushing around them.