A/N (06/25/15): Hello friends! As hard as it is to believe, it's been about two and a half years since I last updated one of my stories. My sincere apologies to all of my loyal readers for essentially dropping off the face of the earth, and thank you to everyone who kept reading, reviewing, and messaging me while I was lost in "real life", whatever that is!

I am working my way through this story, tweaking it slightly to take it in a direction that will better bring it to the conclusion I always intended it to reach. I'll be posting the updated versions of the existing chapters in batches until it's all caught up and we get back into new material. Most of the changes are minor in the first 15 or so chapters, but there are a few slightly more substantial changes in the later chapters of this new version. So even if you've read the story before, I encourage you to start at the beginning and work your way forward - I'll date all the updated chapters as they go up, so that it is clear what has been updated. Thank you all for your patience!

For a few seconds, Meredith and Annie stood in silence on opposite sides of the doorway, each one seemingly waiting for the other to make the first move. Meredith had the eerie sense that she could very easily be staring at herself twenty-three years earlier, when she had stood anxiously on the front porch of her own father's house. She'd been pregnant, scared, emotionally drained – much as Annie appeared now – and had waited expectantly for him to react to her presence, just as her daughter was doing.

Spurred by that odd sense of familiarity with the situation, Meredith took a deep breath and did exactly what she'd secretly hoped Thatcher would do when she'd showed up on his doorstep all those years ago. Taking a step forward, she wrapped her arms around her daughter and pulled her close, holding on tightly as she felt Annie's shoulders start to shake and her tears began to fall.

"Oh my baby," Meredith whispered, gently running her hands through her daughter's hair to soothe her, just as she'd done when Annie was a child. "It's going to be alright."

Eventually, when she felt the tears start to subside a bit, Meredith pulled back slightly and led her into the living room.

"I'm sorry, Mom," Annie said quietly as they settled in on the couch.

"It's not important right now, sweetheart."

"No, it is…you have to know, Mom, I'm so sorry. I should have listened to you, let you explain…you tried to talk to me and I shut you out. Maybe if I hadn't, this whole thing could have been avoided."

"So you did see Derek."

"How did you know that?"

"Cristina called me."

"I told her I didn't see him. Did she not believe me?"

"No, no, she did. But even if it's been four years, I know you, Annie. You're my little girl, and you're far too much like me for you to have given up just because he wasn't there. And if you didn't want to talk about it, I figured it must have gone badly."

"I still don't get why you didn't tell us, Mom," Annie said. "He's a jackass, but how could you know that? How could you know that he wouldn't even give me the time of day? That he'd blow me off like I was some psycho off the street?"

"Oh, sweetheart…" Meredith sighed and shook her head. "I'd hoped you'd never have to experience that…"

"Mom?" Annie looked concerned as she put a hand on her mother's wrist and watched her start to cry. Her mother had never been an emotional woman, and Annie was pretty sure she could count on one hand the number of times she'd ever seen her actually cry.

"I'm sorry," Meredith whispered, wiping the tears from her cheek. "It's just…when you and Evelyn were born, I made a promise to both of you before I brought you home that I was going to do everything in my power to make sure that you grew up knowing what it meant to be loved and to be wanted. I never had that, not from my mother and not from my father, but I swore that the two of you were never going to know what it was like to be rejected by your own parent."

"Oh my God," Annie shook her head in disbelief as the realization hit her. "Mom…did he know about us?"

Meredith closed her eyes, unable to look at her daughter as she nodded.

"Oh God…" Annie leaned back against the couch, completely in shock. "He wasn't just a one night stand, was he?"

Again, Meredith shook her head.

"What was he to you, Mom? Were you guys dating? In love?"

Meredith sighed. "I'll tell you what…why don't you wait until Evelyn gets home tonight? When both of you are here, I promise to tell you whatever you want to know about Derek Shepherd. Okay?"

"The truth this time? No more lies?"

"No more lies," Meredith agreed. "I just don't know if I have the strength to go through those memories more than once, so we should wait for your sister. But I promise, it'll be the truth. No more lies."

Addison slammed the door to her office closed and turned to face a man she had thought she'd never see again, now standing somewhat sheepishly just in front of her desk, an ice pack on his right hand.

"You have exactly thirty seconds to explain yourself or I'm calling the police."

Mark shrugged and slowly walked over to take a seat on the small couch against the wall. "Not much to explain, honestly. Derek Shepherd is a jackass."

Addison shook her head. "Mark, Derek and I haven't seen or heard from you in over twenty years. You show up out of the blue, punch Derek in the face, and that's the best you've got? He's a jackass?"

"Hey now, don't make it sound like I'm the one who dropped off the face of the earth," Mark protested. "You're the one who went off on some soul-searching, marriage-saving safari. You two are the ones who disappeared."

"We what? Oh for God's sake, Mark, I told you before I went to Seattle that I had to follow Derek and at least try. I owed our marriage at least that one last effort," Addison insisted. "Is that really what this is about? It's been twenty-three years, Mark, don't you think it's time to move on?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Addie, this has nothing to do with you. I moved on a long time ago."

"Then my statement still stands," Addison said, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket. "You've got thirty more seconds to explain exactly why this hospital's chief of staff is having his face stitched up as we speak, or I'm filing assault charges."

"I didn't come here to hit him," Mark said. "I came to talk to him, but when I saw him…I don't know what happened, I just got so angry, thinking about the way he broke my little girl's heart, the way he made her cry…I just couldn't help it, Addie."

"What the hell are you talking about, Mark?"

Mark sighed and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "Last week, my niece came out here to see Derek, and…well, I don't know exactly what happened, but he didn't react well to her visit."

"Why not?"

"Because she's his daughter."

Addison stared at Mark for a moment before laughing and shaking her head. "Mark, Derek doesn't have a daughter."

"No, he's got two, actually. Twins, but I guess he never told you that, did he?"

"Have you lost your mind?"

"Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I said to Meredith when she first told me the truth."

Addison frowned and held up a finger to silence Mark before he could continue. "Wait just a minute. Meredith, as in Meredith Grey?"

"How'd you know that?"

"Because I know that after Derek found about my…well, our affair, he ran off to Seattle and had a very brief affair of his own with a young intern by the name of Meredith Grey."

Mark nodded. "They were only together for a month, but he managed to pretty well upend her world in that time."

"And you think that Meredith Grey had twins that are Derek's children?"

"I know it for a fact," Mark said. "Meredith would never about something like that."

"You seem to know this woman well."

"You could say that, yeah," Mark agreed. "The winter after you and Derek left New York, Richard called me out to Seattle for a consult. I was only going to stay a few days, do the job, and get the hell out of there, but on my first day, I met Meredith…"

Mark paused at the end of the hallway and looked around, his gaze falling on a young woman leaning against the nurses' desk, studying a chart on the counter. Her light blue scrubs hung loosely around her hips, spurring his imagination as he walked up behind her and read the chart over her shoulder.

"The guy's pretty much a goner, right?"

She turned around slowly and offered him a half-smile, looking him up and down as though silently sizing him up. "Sensitivity. I like that in a stranger. Are you new here?"

"Visiting. Confounded by all the rain, and it's only my first day in town."

"You get used to it."

"Makes me wan to stay in bed all day."

"We just met and already you're talking about bed?" Meredith shook her head and bit back a smile. "Not very subtle."

Mark grinned. "Subtle has never been my strong suit. So, do you ever go out with coworkers?"

"I, uh, make it a rule not to."

"Then I am so glad that I don't work here."

"Are you hitting on me? In a hospital?"

Mark had to smile at the genuine surprise in her voice. "Would that be wrong?"

He knew he'd finally hit home when she returned his smile and stuck out her hand. "Meredith."

"Mark." He quickly shook her hand. "So, Meredith, now that we've established that you date non-coworkers…"

"Hold on, as I recall, all we've established is that I don't date coworkers."

"Well, if you don't date coworkers, and you don't date non-coworkers, that doesn't leave a whole lot of selection for you, does it?"

Meredith shrugged. "Maybe that's the point, Mark. Maybe I've sworn off men entirely."

"You're much too pretty for that."

Meredith blushed and looked back down at the chart.

"Oh come on, whatever your last boyfriend did, I'm sure it can't be bad enough to swear off men forever. We're not all jackasses, you know."

"Is this the part where you tell me to trust you, that you're one of the good ones?"

"Hell no, I'm a man whore. I find the good ones boring as sin, but I'm sure there's still some of them out there somewhere."

Meredith cocked her head slightly to the side and stared at Mark out of the corner of her eye. "Tell me, Mark, do you have a secret wife on the other side of the country?"

"I don't think so." Mark paused for a moment and appeared deep in thought. "There are a couple of drunken nights I don't remember, but I never woke up with a ring, so I'm pretty sure the answer is a 'no.'"

"Well then, you're already one better than the last guy."

"Ouch, the old secret wife card, huh? What else did he pull?"

"You don't want to know."

"I asked, didn't I?"

"Fine, but I don't want you to know."

"Why not?"

"Because this flirting thing we're doing, you pretending to be interested in me, this is fun. You're the first guy to flirt with me in months, but as soon as I tell you the worst thing the last guy did to me, you're going to freak out and run for the hills and regret picking me to flirt with. You won't even want to know me."

"Stop rambling and try me."

"Okay, but I warned you." Meredith took a deep breath and seemed to concentrate her gaze even harder on the chart in her hands. "Six weeks ago, I gave birth to twins. Preemies. At twenty-eight weeks. Three days ago, their father sent me a letter saying he wanted nothing to do with me or them. He called them a mistake. A freaking mistake. My babies are in the NICU fighting for their lives while he's off gallivanting around God-knows-where with his wife - who I'm sure is freaking gorgeous, by the way - and he has the nerve to tell me my children are a mistake?"

There were tears in the corners of her eyes as she turned her head hesitantly to look at Mark. If there was one thing that Mark Sloan hated, it was crying women, and under normal circumstances, he would have muttered some lame excuse and walked away as quickly as possible. Something about Meredith had caught his attention, though, and he tentatively reached out a hand, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Meredith said, wiping her cheeks with her palms. "I told you I didn't want to tell you."

"You did warn me," Mark agreed. "But you were wrong."

"About what?"

"I still want to know you."

"So you hooked up with Derek's intern," Addison surmised.

"Nah." Mark shook his head and laughed. "We came close once or twice, but Meredith was always way too smart to sleep with me. We were never anything more than friends. Good thing, too, because if I had slept with her, it would have been incredibly awkward when I married her sister."

"You got married?!"

"Hey, stranger things have happened."

"Maybe," Addison said skeptically. "But seriously. You actually got married? Of your own free will?"

"Yes, of my own free will," Mark said defensively. "Come on, let's get it over with. Pigs are flying. It's a cold day in hell. No, she wasn't pregnant. Go on, get creative. I dare you to come up with one I haven't heard in the last eighteen years."

"You've been married for eighteen years?"

"Yes."

"And your wife's sister is Meredith Grey?"

"Yes."

"And Derek and Meredith have twins?"

"Yes."

"I think I need to sit down now," Addison muttered as she sank into the chair across from Mark.