A/N: Thank you again to everyone who has been looking for updates and reviewing! It seems that emails are slowly coming back, although so far, I've only received the back emails up through most of the chapter 2 reviews. Hopefully the alert for this chapter will go out quickly!

Karen Harper looked up in surprise as Meredith Grey walked silently into her office that afternoon and sat down on the couch across from her. Meredith's silence was slightly disconcerting to her therapist, who had grown accustomed to Meredith's straight-to-the-point style of starting every session. As the minutes ticked past and Meredith still didn't speak, Karen grew concerned about whatever it was that was on Meredith's mind.

"You know, Meredith, this works much better if you and I actually talk," Karen finally said. "As much as I don't mind just sitting here and relaxing, I'm fairly certain that isn't what you're paying me to do."

"I…I went to the hospital this morning," Meredith said.

"Is anything wrong?" Karen asked in concern.

"Oh, no, not like that," Meredith assured her. "I was bored, so I was visiting my friends. My sister Lexie, she had this patient…this little girl. It was just…she was so…I'm sorry, I don't know what exactly I'm trying to say here."

"This patient, did she upset you?" Karen asked.

"In a way," Meredith said. "She was just…it was liking looking at me when I was younger."

"She looked like you, then," Karen said questioningly.

"No, not physically…she just, she reminds me of who I used to be," Meredith said. "She's a foster kid, you know. Ten years old and she already thinks having hope is pointless."

"So which part reminds you of yourself?" Karen asked.

"All of it," Meredith admitted. "Except I was seven when I was a foster child."

Karen sat back as she absorbed the information Meredith had just shared. Even she, who was used to seeing people with a myriad of past issues, hadn't seen this revelation coming.

"You've never mentioned being in the foster care system," Karen commented.

"Yeah, well, what fun would this be if I told you everything all at once?" Meredith asked. "I just…over the years, I've gotten really good at pretending those six months never happened. I talked to that little girl today and told her about how I was in the system. That's the first time I've said it out loud since, well, ever."

"You've never talked about it with anyone?" Karen asked.

Meredith shook her head. "I've told you how my mother was hardly ever around. And when she was home, she acted as though nothing had ever happened. As though a court had never deemed her temporarily unfit to care for me, as though a social worker had never had to drag me kicking and screaming out of the hospital. She…honestly, I don't think she really cared what I went through. She made it perfectly clear that it wasn't something she ever wanted to talk about, so I never brought it up."

"Do you know why you were removed from your mother?" Karen asked. "There must have been a compelling reason."

"She tried to kill herself," Meredith said. "The next day, she checked into an inpatient psychiatric facility. There weren't really any relatives to take care of me – my mom had an aunt in New Hampshire, but she was something like eighty years old and living in a retirement home. Not exactly the best environment for a seven year old."

"What about…"

"My father?" Meredith filled in, laughing dryly and shaking her head. "He didn't want me."

"Do you know that for sure?" Karen asked.

Meredith nodded. "He had more important things in his life by that time. They called him but he wouldn't take me…"

"Now, Meredith, you have to calm down," Greta, the social worker assigned to Meredith's case, said as she set her in a chair outside her office.

"Call my daddy," Meredith sobbed. "He'll come get me. My daddy loves me, he'll come get me. I know he will. Just call my daddy."

"Meredith, I need you to calm down, okay?" Greta pleaded. "One of the other social workers, she found your daddy's phone number for me. So you wait here, and I'm going to go call him. Everything will be fine, sweetie."

Meredith sat alone outside the office for several minutes before she heard Greta's voice carrying out her end of the conversation.

"Yes, Mr. Grey, I'm with the Massachusetts Department of Social Services."

"No, Mr. Grey, this is about your daughter, Meredith."

"Sir, your ex-wife has been deemed temporarily unfit to care for your daughter. As her father, custody reverts to you. We just need you to come to Boston to pick her up."

"What do you mean, what happens if you don't take her? Mr. Grey, this is your child we're talking about!"

"Look, Mr. Grey, if this is about coming out here, we can arrange it so that Meredith is flown out to Seattle and you can pick her up there."

"Sir, I don't think you understand. We can't do that. Sending her back to your ex-wife is not an option at the moment. If you don't take her, she'll be placed in the foster care system, but it could be weeks before we find an available home. In the meantime, she'd have to live in a group home."

"Mr. Grey, what are you talking about? What could possibly be more important right now than caring for your child? Mr. Grey? Are you there? Hello? Hello?"

Meredith heard Greta sigh heavily and slam the phone down on her desk. A few minutes later, she walked out into the hall, a fake smile pasted on her face, and took Meredith by the hand, leading her back to her car and then on to the Boston Children's Home, Meredith's temporary place of residence.

"That's the real reason you've always insisted your father didn't fight for you, isn't it?" Karen surmised.

Meredith nodded. "I think I could forgive him for not fighting for custody in the divorce…I mean, he's not exactly the strongest personality, and my mother was a pretty terrifying woman a lot of the time. Even if I didn't agree with his decision, I can sort of understand it."

"But you can't understand this one," Karen observed.

"What kind of father just lets them send his daughter into the foster care system? What kind of a person just walks away when their child needs them the most?" Meredith asked. "I don't care what was going on in his life, there's no excuse for that. None whatsoever. And as much as I try to move past it, I hate him for it. I tried to forgive him…when Susan was around, she made me want to be able to forgive him, but even them, I just couldn't do it."

"Did you ever talk to him about this?" Karen asked. "Hear his side of the story? Find out what prevented him from coming?"

"No," Meredith admitted. "But after I met Lexie, I didn't have to ask. I knew."

"You think your sister is the reason he wouldn't take you?" Karen asked.

"That phone call I told you about, that happened on February 2nd," Meredith said. "Lexie was born on February 9th. I was seven when it happened, and Lexie is seven years younger than I am. It didn't take me long to do the math once I found out how old she was."

"How do you feel about that?" Karen asked.

"I think it's a pretty lame reason to abandon your child," Meredith said. "If anything, you'd think having another baby would make you want to be closer to the one who was in trouble, not shut her out. I just can't understand it."

"Sometimes other people do things that will never make sense to the rest of us," Karen said. "I'm going to assume that neither of your sisters is aware of what happened, correct?"

"They don't have any idea," Meredith agreed. "And they can't know. They can never find out."

"Why not?" Karen asked.

"I don't want them to feel sorry for me," Meredith said. "And I don't want Lexie to feel guilty. She takes things very personally, and this…there's no way she wouldn't think that it was her fault. She might even think that I blame her."

"Do you?" Karen asked.

"No, I don't," Meredith said. "Not anymore."

"But you did," Karen observed.

"When I first found out, yeah, I tried to," Meredith said. "I wanted to think that somehow, it had been her fault. I don't know why, but everything almost made more sense when I blamed this sister I didn't even know than it did when I just blamed Thatcher."

"That actually makes a lot of sense," Karen said.

"How?" Meredith asked. "Because it doesn't make any sense to me."

"Because you have good memories of your father," Karen said. "You remember a time when your father was a man who loved you, who was always there for you. You remember a father who held you when you cried, sang to you when you were scared and who made you feel safe. Even if he had proved again and again throughout the years that he wasn't the same man as the one you remembered, it was easier to put your blame on someone you had no emotional connection to than it was to try to reconcile the father you remember with the father who failed you when you needed him most."

"So that's why you make the big bucks," Meredith sighed. "I don't blame her anymore, though. There wasn't anything to forgive, but I still forgave her and I stopped being angry with her."

"What made you do that?" Karen asked.

"The more I got to know her, the harder it was to be angry with her," Meredith said. "I guess you'd probably say it was because, as much as I tried not to, I was forming an emotional connection with her. And then there was the accident…the accident changed everything."

"Because she was there for you?" Karen asked.

"Maybe," Meredith said. "But I don't think that was it. It was more that the accident was a wake-up call for me. I didn't even realize it as it was happening, but I was turning into my mother – I was burying myself in work, I was pushing away my friends and family, I was holding on to all sorts of irrational anger. I didn't want to be my mother, so I had to forgive Lexie."

"Because your mother wasn't the type to forgive," Karen said.

"Partly, yes," Meredith said. "But more than that, I think it was because my mother was never able to forgive me. She never got over the fact that Richard didn't leave his wife after she left Thatcher, and she blamed it on the fact that she had a child. She never did forgive me for existing. I loved her, but I don't know that she really was capable of loving me, because she couldn't get past the anger."

"And you recognized the parallels to your own situation with Lexie," Karen observed. "She loved you, but you weren't fully able to love her because you were holding on to this irrational anger. You were blaming her for someone else's actions because that was easier, just like it was easier for your mother to blame you than to accept that Richard's love for her wasn't as strong as what he felt to his wife."

"Well, I don't think I thought it through that much when I was lying in my hospital bed," Meredith laughed. "But yeah, that was pretty much it."

Meredith smiled in relief as she slipped into the front seat of Callie's car and took the hot fudge sundae Callie was holding out for her.

"You look like you could use this," Callie said.

"How did you know?" Meredith asked, eagerly grabbing the spoon and digging in.

Callie laughed as she started the car and headed toward the highway. "Molly called and told me that's what you ate after a tough session. You seemed a little off at the hospital earlier, so I guessed that today was going to be a hot fudge day. And from the way you're going at that sundae, I guessed right. Just try not to get any on the seats."

"I'll do my best," Meredith laughed. "Did you eat yours already?"

"Nah, I didn't get one," Callie said.

"Um, since when do you turn down an opportunity for ice cream?" Meredith asked. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Of course," Callie insisted. "I'm just trying to eat healthier for a while, that's all."

"Why?" Meredith asked. "And please don't tell me you're trying to lose weight, because that's ridiculous, you look great."

"Well, thank you for that," Callie said. "And no, I'm not trying to lose weight. I just…I'm trying to be a bit healthier, that's all."

"Nope, that's not all," Meredith said. "Come on, I can see you're dying to tell me, just spill already, would you?"

"Fine, but if George finds out you know, you didn't hear it from me," Callie warned. "We're trying not to say anything this time, not until there's anything to tell."

"What's going on?" Meredith asked.

"We're just getting ready, just in case," Callie said. "We're thinking, maybe – and it's still a big maybe right now – but maybe in a few months, after the holidays, we might try to get pregnant. I just want to do everything right, and they say if the mother is healthy before she gets pregnant, everything is easier."

"This is so exciting," Meredith gushed. "Everyone's having babies these days, it seems."

"Who else is having a baby?" Callie asked.

"Well, one of Derek's sisters delivered this morning, and two more of them are pregnant," Meredith said. "Plus my sister is pregnant."

"Lexie's pregnant?" Callie asked in surprise.

"No, no, Molly, not Lexie," Meredith laughed. "Don't go spreading that rumor around, you might give Pierce a heart attack."

"They'd make a cute baby, though," Callie observed. "I still can't get over how perfect they are together."

"They really are, aren't they?" Meredith smiled. "It took me a while to get used to him with Lexie, but he's really good for her. They're definitely not ready for a kid, though."

"Definitely not," Callie laughed.

"So, is George excited?" Meredith asked.

"He really is," Callie said, smiling softly. "Last time we tried, before the separation and all of that, I knew he was only doing it because it's what I wanted. But this time, he's really getting excited about the idea of being a father. Of course, we're definitely not telling his mother for a while, because the last thing I need is another box full of her hand-knitted neutral color baby clothes, infant through toddler sized."

"I'm so happy for you guys," Meredith said. "What made you decide to try this time?"

"The timing just seems so perfect," Callie said. "By the time we get pregnant and the baby arrives, George will be a third year, so even though he'll still be crazy busy, it'll be a bit easier for him to get time off to help with the baby. And now that I'm an attending, my schedule is so much more reasonable for raising a child. Plus, being an attending also means that my surgeries are not at someone else's whim, so I don't have to worry nearly as much about being mommy-tracked."

"Well, for the record, I think you and George are going to have gorgeous babies," Meredith said.

"Thank you," Callie said happily.

"Hey, have you talked to Addison at all today?" Meredith asked. "Is she freaking out yet?"

"Surprisingly, no," Callie said. "I don't know how she's so calm – maybe she's freaking out and just sounds calm on the phone. I know I wouldn't be calm if I were getting married in less than three days."

"Especially if the wedding was going to be at my house," Meredith said, shaking her head. "I don't know how she's managing that. I think when Derek and I get married, I'll be so nervous that keeping my house clean will be the last thing I want to think about."

"When you and Derek get married?" Callie asked, slightly taken aback by Meredith's statement. "Is there something you want to tell me, Meredith?"

"Did I really just say that?" Meredith asked, more than a bit embarrassed by her slip-up. "No, there's nothing to tell, Callie. Just a slip of the tongue, that's all."

"You're clearly thinking about it, though, even if he hasn't asked," Callie said.

"Maybe I am," Meredith said. "But that's a long way off in the future. We're taking things slowly, getting to know each other again. There are still a lot of steps between where we are and marriage, or even an engagement."

"But you think you'll get there?" Callie asked. "It's a matter of when, not if?"

"Yeah, I think we'll get there," Meredith conceded. "I think we're going to have a lot of things to work through, but I do think that someday, we'll reach that step."

"I'd just like to state now, for the record, that I will not wear a pink bridesmaids' dress ever again," Callie said. "So don't even think of asking me to be in the wedding if you're going with pink."

"Um, yuck," Meredith laughed. "I haven't actually thought of colors, but there will be no pink bridesmaids at my wedding, thank you very much. But you know you'd wear it if I asked."

"Only if I got to kill you first," Callie teased.

"You're wearing it for Addison," Meredith argued. "And I talked to her last night, I know she's not dead."

"Only because she was two states away when she told me I'd be wearing pink," Callie said. "Besides, it's not really pink, more of a light burgundy than an actual pink."

"Burgundy?" Meredith scoffed. "Uh huh, you just keep telling yourself that, Callie."