A/N: Hello friends! As hard as it is to believe, it's been over three and a half years since I last updated this story. 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!

"I can't believe you're actually going."

Annie jumped and nearly dropped her purse on the floor at the sound of her sister's voice behind her, whirling around in the entryway to find Evelyn standing in the doorway to the kitchen, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Jesus, Ev, are you trying to send me into early labor?" Annie paused and looked her sister up and down, taking in her sweat pants and faded t-shirt. "Why aren't you dressed? It's nearly noon."

Evelyn shrugged. "My shift starts at five. I'm being lazy until then."

"Yeah, but you can't go to lunch looking like that. Hurry up and get changed or we'll be late."

Evelyn rolled her eyes and leaned against the doorframe. "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not going."

"I don't get you sometimes, Evelyn," Annie said in annoyance. "This is important. Do you not care about our family?"

Evelyn's eyes narrowed as her posture straightened and she started at her sister. "How dare you," she snapped angrily. "You think you can just parade in here on your high horse after all this time and lecture me on caring about this family? You wouldn't know the first thing about it."

"Evelyn, whatever you think about him, Derek is…"

"Just stop," Evelyn interrupted, holding up her hand. "I don't want to hear about it, especially not from you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Annie asked angrily. "I've had just about enough of your attitude! I don't know what your problem with me is, but it's got to stop, Evie! I have gone out of my way to be nice to you, and you've done nothing but avoid me or snap at me. We used to be close, and I don't know what the hell happened to us, but whatever you're mad at me for, I need you to grow up and get over it."

"Well, it's all about you, isn't it? What you want, what bothers you, what I can do to make you more comfortable. God forbid I should expect that for once in your life, you might ever think about what someone else needs!"

"What the hell are we even talking about?" Annette shouted in exasperation.

"What are we…? Oh my God, you are so fucking clueless! What are we talking about? Derek Shepherd. The last nine months. Jackson dying. Your four year temper tantrum. You take your pick!"

Evelyn pushed passed her sister and practically ran up the stairs, nearly running Suzie over in the process.

Annie shook her head and smiled as her younger sister stood at the bottom of the stairs, turning her head back and forth between her older sister and the landing where Evelyn had disappeared. "And I'm supposed to be the hormonal, irrational one."

Suzie just frowned and shook her head as she sat down on the bottom step. "She's not wrong, you know."

Annie furrowed her brow in confusion and stared at her. She noticed for the first time just how much she had changed since the last time she'd spent any significant time with Suzie. There was a seriousness about her that hadn't been there four years earlier, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her smile.

"How's that?"

"She's right, you are clueless."

"Were you eavesdropping?"

Suzie scoffed. "I didn't have to. You two were yelling loud enough half the neighborhood probably heard you."

Annie sighed and ran both hands through her hair. "I just don't know what her problem is."

"Okay…" Suzie said slowly. "I don't completely believe you, because you're not stupid, Annie. But if you really don't know, are you going to ask me to tell you or are you just going to stand there and stew about it?"

Annie crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her sister, glancing briefly at her watch before nodding. "Fine, I'll bite. Please, would you be a dear and tell me what I could possibly have done to warrant hostility from my own sister?"

"No."

Annie groaned. "Seriously?"

"There was no need to be nasty and sarcastic, Annie. You're acting like a teenager."

"Well, so are you!"

"Duh. I'm seventeen. I am a teenager. What's your excuse?"

"Oh for crying out loud! Susan Louise Avery, you tell me what is going right this instant or I'm telling Mom!"

"You weren't here," Suzie said quietly. "Dad died, and you weren't here."

"That's not true, you saw me at the funeral, I…"

"Showed up late and sat eight rows behind the family. Yeah, that was a great support for the rest of us. Really showed how much you were hurting."

"Suzie, you know Mom and I were…"

"Did it ever occur to you that it wasn't about you and Mom that day? What about Jack? What about me? What about Evelyn? Maybe we needed you there with us, Annie."

"I was there."

Suzie clenched her jaw in anger. "You sat the through the church service and left. You didn't even bother coming to the reception, let alone sticking around to find out how the rest of us were doing."

Annie had the decency to glance down at her feet in shame – or at least, what she could still see of her feet at the start of her third trimester.

"He loved you, Annie. Dad loved you and Evelyn just as much as he loved Jack and I, there was no difference to him. You didn't just break Mom's heart when you left, Annie, you broke his too. And the way you've been acting from the moment Aunt Lexie called to tell you about the shooting, it's like he didn't mean a damn thing to you. And now…now you're rushing off and replacing him with this Derek guy?"

"I'm not…"

"That's what it feels like," Suzie said, standing up quickly. "But hey, that's just what I think, and what does that matter? You're going to go ahead and do whatever you want, without giving a second thought to how it might affect anyone else, just like you always do. Mom may be willing to forget the last four years, but the rest of us aren't."

An hour and a half later, Annie looked across the table between bites of a burger and caught Derek staring at her. "What?" she asked innocently. "I'm eating for two."

Derek laughed and shook his head. "I know," he said. "I'm really glad you came today."

"Yeah, you said that a few times already," Annie said. "I'm sorry Evelyn's not here too."

"I didn't expect her to be," Derek said. "She wasn't exactly thrilled to see me the other night."

Annie shrugged. "If you makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure she's not so thrilled that I'm around either."

Derek frowned and looked at her curiously. "Are you two not close?"

"We used to be," Annie said. "Not so much recently, though. We haven't really spoken much over the last four years."

"Why not?"

"It's a long story," Annie said hesitantly. "Mom and I kind of had a falling out, and I guess Evelyn decided to take her side instead of mine. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. She was always Mom's little girl, but I really thought she'd be just as upset as I was that time."

"Why?"

"It was when I found out about you," Annie admitted. "I had to get my birth certificate when I got married, and that's when I saw your name listed. Before that, Mom had always said she didn't even know your name."

"That's what Mark told me. What did you do when you found out?"

"A lot of yelling." Annie shook her head and let out a dry laugh. "A lot of yelling. I waited until a few days after the wedding to confront her, but it was a bad fight. I told her that she was a terrible person, a horrible mother, that I hated her…I think I said every awful thing that I could think of, and then I just left. I moved to Chicago, and until last month, I hadn't spoken to her since that fight."

"Can I ask you something?"

Annie nodded. "That's kind of the point of this lunch, isn't it?"

"Right," Derek agreed. "If you've known for four years, why didn't you reach out to me sooner?"

"I don't know." Annie sighed and poked at her French fries. "Lots of reasons, I guess. I was eighteen, I'd just gotten married, I was trying to figure out how to be a wife and a mother in a brand new city. I kept telling myself it wasn't the right time, that I was busy and my husband finished his semester, or when the baby was a little older…and if I'm being totally honest, I was a little bit scared."

"Of what? Me?"

Annie nodded. "I think, even if I would never have admitted it, I knew Mom well enough to know that she wouldn't have kept us away from you without a reason. I had this image in my head of who I wanted you to be, but I was afraid that if I met you, I'd find out you really were the sort of man a mother would keep away from her children."

"And then you met me, and I blew it," Derek said.

"Well, I didn't exactly explain it very well, either," Annie said. "If I had told you who my mother was, would you have reacted differently?"

Derek paused and thought for a moment. "Yes," he said. "I think I would have."

"Did you love her?" Annie asked. "I mean, I know you were married to someone else, but did you love my mom?"

Derek smiled sadly. "Yes, I did."

"You sound really sure of that."

"I am," Derek said. "I loved your mother probably more than I even knew at the time, and there hasn't been a day that's gone by since I walked away that I haven't regretted that decision. I was in a very bad place when I met Meredith, and she turned it around for me. Your mother gave me hope, a sense of life…she was like coming up for air when I was drowning."

"So why the hell did you leave?"

"I've asked myself that same question for twenty years, and I still don't have a good answer," Derek admitted. "When Addison - that's my ex-wife - when she first showed up in Seattle, I told her to take a hike. We were through, and there was nothing she could do to get me to forgive what she did."

"What exactly did she do?"

Derek hesitated. "I, uh, caught her in bed with my best friend."

"But I thought Uncle Mark was…oh."

"Yeah," Derek nodded. "When I saw them together, I thought I was done. I didn't even pack a bag, I just turned around, walked out of the house, and went to the airport. An old mentor of mine had called a week or two before to offer me a job at Seattle Grace, and although I'd turned him down initially, I knew he'd still give it to me. So I got on the next plane and thought I'd never look back."

"But you did."

"Yes, I did," Derek agreed. "Addison just kept showing up on my porch every day, begging me for a second chance, trying to remind me of all the good times we'd had…and eventually she got to me. I started thinking about what I was doing, trying to make sense of the situation. And even though I had this incredible connection with your mother, it didn't make sense."

"I'm not following you," Annie said. "What didn't make sense?"

"The connection. We were complete opposites. I was an attending, she was an intern. Don't take this the wrong way, but she was the sort of woman who would pick up a guy in a bar for a one night stand without thinking about it, and I'd only slept with two women besides my wife - and both were long-term relationships. Our families were different, our goals were different…we shouldn't have worked. We didn't make sense."

"But if you were happy, who cared about making sense?"

"I did, unfortunately. I just…I don't know, I was over thinking it, I suppose. I thought maybe it was a rebound feeling. On paper, Addison and I were the perfect couple - we had similar backgrounds, we were at the same place in our careers, we'd always shared the same interests. And we had eleven years of history at that point. I knew what life with Addison was like, and I guess I chose that safety over the risk of something new."

"And how'd that work out for you?"

Derek almost laughed at the snark in her tone. "Not well, obviously."

Annie sighed as she sank down onto the bench at the edge of the deck on the ferry boat and rested a hand on her swollen stomach. "So," she said slowly. "Tell me about yourself, Derek."

"About myself?" Derek repeated, somewhat startled by the question. "Like what?"

Annie shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "But I feel like I don't know anything about you, except that you're some big-shot neurosurgeon, and you were supposedly in love with my mother twenty-three years ago. Fifty percent of my DNA is from you. I feel like I should at least know your parents' names or something."

Derek smiled. "You want facts."

"I want facts," Annie agreed.

"Alright," Derek nodded. "Christopher and Carolyn, those are my parents. What else?"

"I don't know," Annie said. "Mother's maiden name? Are your parents still alive? Siblings? Favorite ice cream? What should I know?"

"My mother's maiden name is Maloney," Derek said. "My father died when I was eleven, but my mother is still alive. I had four sisters, but my youngest sister died a couple of years ago. I have, uh, nine nieces and five nephews. I like coffee ice cream, single-malt scotch, occasionally a good cigar. I like to fly fish. I cheat when I do the crossword puzzle on Sundays. And I never dance in public. Um, favorite novel - The Sun Also Rises. Favorite band - The Clash. My favorite color is blue. I don't like light blue. Indigo. The scar right here on my forehead, that's why I don't ride motorcycles anymore. And I think anymore than that, you'll just have to wait and find out over time like anyone else."

Annie smiled and nodded. "I can live with that."

"What about you?" Derek asked.

"Me?"

"Turnabout's fair play, you know," he said. "After all, you've got half my DNA. I want to know what you've done with it."

Annie smirked. "Okay," she said. "Well, you already know my parents' names, and my twin sister. I also have a little brother and a little sister. No nieces or nephews, Evelyn's not ready, and the other two are way too young. Uh, strawberry ice cream. Irish whiskey…when I'm not pregnant, obviously. No smoking anything, Mom would still wring my neck. I don't do crosswords, but Evie does. She does them in pen, and she never needs to cheat. Favorite novel, Pride and Prejudice. Favorite color, yellow. No scars."

"None?"

Annie shook her head. "Not a single one," she said. "I was always the good kid. Straight A's, captain of the cross-country team, editor of the yearbook. I was valedictorian of my high school class…although I'm pretty sure they would have taken that away if they'd known I was two months pregnant when we graduated."

Derek frowned but didn't say a word.

"You can ask, you know."

"Ask?"

"How it happened," Annie said. "I know you're thinking it. You're wondering who dropped the ball - was I rebelling against an unhappy childhood? Did I not have proper supervision? Did no one give me the appropriate sex talk?"

"I wasn't…"

"Yes, you were," Annie interrupted. "And it's okay. You should ask. Get it out of the way early."

"I'm not judging," Derek said carefully. "It just seems unusual, that's all."

Annie sighed. "I know," she agreed. "But it wasn't any of the things people think when they think about a teenage pregnancy. I knew the risks. I knew all about sex and birth control and the rest of it. I just…I made one mistake. I think everyone does something they're not supposed to in high school, only Will and I ended up with it being obvious to the world. I was a good kid who made one mistake. There was nothing Mom or Jackson could have done to stop it. Believe me, they did everything parents are supposed to do, but it happened anyway."

"Jackson?"

"My stepdad."

"Right," Derek nodded thoughtfully. "I did notice your mother was wearing a wedding ring the other night."

"I noticed that too," Annie said. "I guess she'll probably take it off at some point, but who knows? It's only been nine and a half months. Grandma still wears hers, and it's been twenty-two years since Grandpa died."

"Wait…your stepfather died?"

"Uncle Mark didn't tell you?" Annie asked in surprise.

Derek shook his head.

"He was shot," Annie said quietly. "I don't know all the details, I was in Chicago when it happened and Aunt Lexie was so upset when she called to tell me, she could barely get the words out. I guess he and Mom were at the bar across from the hospital, celebrating a new grant she'd gotten for her research. I think the news reports said the guy came in looking for his ex-girlfriend, and when he found her out on a date, he pulled a gun and just started shooting. Jackson was shot in the chest. The bullet nicked his aorta, he bled out in minutes. Died right there in her arms, from what I heard. She doesn't talk about it."

"No," Derek said quietly, leaning back against the bench and staring out at the bay. "No, I don't imagine I would, either."