A/N (05/19/16): 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!

Derek absentmindedly flicked on the light in his hotel room that night, tossing his jacket on the back of a nearby chair before looking up. When he saw the figure on the edge of his bed, he nearly grabbed the jacket and walked straight back out the door.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Aw, it's nice to see you too, Derek. Merry Christmas, by the way, little brother."

"Megan, I'm serious. How the hell did you get into my hotel room?"

Derek's sister grinned, holding up a key card for him to see. "I slipped the guy at the front desk a hundred bucks," she said proudly. "Oh, and you owe me a hundred bucks."

"I'll have to have a little chat with hotel security in the morning." Derek sighed and sank down into the same chair he'd used as a coat rack a few seconds earlier. "You still haven't explained what you're doing in Seattle, though."

"You missed Christmas."

"I've missed holidays before, Megan."

"Not when you weren't working," Megan said.

"I wasn't sure I'd be welcome this year."

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"No matter what, we do Christmas as a family," Megan said. "Every year, no exceptions unless you're at the freaking hospital saving lives. You were expected to show up, Derek. Did you know Mom made us wait hours to eat and open presents because she was sure you were going to be there at any minute. The woman's in her eighties, Derek. How many more Christmases do you really think she's going to get?"

"That's low, Megan, even for you."

Megan shrugged. "It's the truth," she said. "It's also the card I used to get Addison to tell me where you were."

"How did Addison know where I was?"

"Beats me," Megan said with another quick shrug. "But when I told her that you'd missed Christmas and that your assistant said you'd called in and cancelled your whole schedule until the new year, she said you had to have gone to Seattle. I swear, Derek, that woman knows you better now than she did when she was married to you."

"I still don't understand why you're here."

"Are you kidding me? What part of you missed Christmas did you not hear? For God's sake, Derek, Mom has been worried sick about you! You can't possibly have thought that the girls and I were going to sit around and not doing anything after you didn't even so much as call her on Christmas. For all we knew, you were dead on a slab in some city morgue!"

"So you came here to yell at me?"

Megan sighed. "No," she said. "Derek, we're worried about you. You've been distant ever since you came back from this dreary place twenty years ago, but you've at least shown up."

"What do you want from me, Megan?"

"Well, there were plenty of things I wanted when I got on the plane," Megan said, slowly reaching behind her and picking up a stack of papers. "But right now, I'd really just like an explanation for these."

Derek paled slightly, reaching out and grabbing Meredith's letters from his sister's hand. "What were you doing going through my things?"

"I'm your nosy little sister, that's my job."

"You had no right to read these, Megan. They're mine, and they're private."

Megan crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. "That's it? That's all you have to say for yourself?"

"What exactly do you want from me, Megan? I assume you pried the whole story out of Addison already."

"Ha," Megan scoffed. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to get her to admit you were probably in Seattle? I'd still be sitting in her living room if I'd waited to get any more information out of her. Wait, did she know about this?"

"She…"

"Hold on, don't tell me keeping this a secret was her idea! I know you were still married when this…this Meredith person wrote these letters, but even Addie wouldn't be so low as to ask you to turn your back on your own children."

"No, you're right, she wouldn't. But I wouldn't have even if she had."

"Oh really?" Megan asked skeptically. "Because these letters seem to indicate that your little Seattle fling had children. Your children. And yet, this is the first I've heard about them. So either you did exactly that and turned your back on your children, or you've been hiding them from your family for almost twenty-three years. Which is it, Derek?"

"Neither," Derek said. "Those letters have been sitting in a box since I got them, sealed and unread. I opened them last week, after one of the twins came to see me."

Megan stared at Derek incredulously. "Damn it, Derek."

"I know."

"So what are you doing about it?"

"Well, I'm here, aren't I?" Derek said. "I don't know how, but I'm trying to make things right. I'm trying to find a way to have a relationship with them…with my daughters. If they'll let me."

"If they'll let you?" Megan asked. "Derek, they're children. You don't give them a choice."

"Except they're not, Megan. I missed their childhood," Derek reminded her. "They're twenty-two, almost twenty-three years old now. They're grown women with careers and families of their own. I can't just waltz in and start demanding rights. It doesn't work that way."

"Well, it should," Megan said. "Have you at least met them?"

Derek smiled and nodded. "They're incredible, Meg. Annie looks a lot like Meredith, with her blonde hair and her nervous smile and her eyes…she's got Meredith's eyes. She's got some of me if you look for it, I guess, but it's not obvious. But Evelyn…she's a Shepherd if I ever saw one. It actually took my breath away the first time I saw her, it was like stepping back in time. She's the spitting image of Amelia was she was that age. And she's got the stubborn streak to go with the looks, too. I almost couldn't help thinking that it was like talking to Amy again."

"You mean it was like talking to a brick wall?"

"Meg…"

"She was my sister too, Derek," Megan said pointedly. "I loved her, and I miss her, and it breaks my heart that she's not here to kick your ass over this whole situation like you know she would have, but she was absolutely impossible to deal with. You can't deny that."

"I suppose not," Derek agreed reluctantly.

"Anyway, that's not the point," Megan said quickly, wanting to avoid the painful subject of the youngest Shepherd sister. "We were talking about your daughters, not our sister."

"They're both beautiful, Meg, absolutely beautiful," he said. "After all these years, though, it's hard to get my head around it. I have children. Heck, I have a grandson."

Megan stared at him incredulously. "You have a what?"

"Annie is married and has a son," Derek said. "And a daughter on the way."

"Oh. My. God," Megan breathed. "Derek, she's twenty-two years old. Isn't she a little young for that?"

Derek shrugged. "Mom was twenty when she had Nancy," he pointed out. "Twenty-one when Kathleen was born."

"That was a different time, Derek," Megan said. "People don't do that these days unless…wait a sec. This isn't a religious thing, is it? Don't tell me they grew up in some sort of cult?"

"Megan, you're making it a much bigger deal than it is," Derek said wearily. "It's not a religious thing or any other weird excuse you can think of. From what I can tell, she fell in love young, got married, had one baby, and now there's another on the way. It's not my place to judge right now."

"What about the other one? Evelyn?" Megan asked. "Is she barefoot and pregnant too?"

"Not that I could see," Derek said. "But she wasn't there today."

"Why the hell not?"

"She's, uh, not exactly my biggest fan, I guess you could say."

"Why not?"

"If I knew that, things would be a whole lot simpler," Derek said. "As it is, all I can do is give her time to come around…which may be a lot more than couple of days I've got left in Seattle."

Early the next morning, Evelyn took a large sip of her coffee before setting down the mug on the bench in the busy locker room to pull her hair back into a ponytail and button up her uniform shirt. She glanced up at the sound of the door opening and nodded briefly at the young man who'd walked in.

"Parker."

"Grey. Just coming on?"

Evelyn nodded as he passed her and stopped at the locker next to hers. "Yup. Don't think I saw you at the shift change meeting, though. You coming on or off?"

"Off. You know I hate those stupid meetings."

Evelyn laughed and shook her head. "Can't say I blame you for that. You have a nice Christmas?"

Matt Parker shrugged as he grabbed a fresh shirt from his locker. "Guess so. Could have been better."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, well, there was this girl I wanted to spend it with, but she blew me off at the last minute."

Evelyn blushed and looked down at the bottom of her locker. "I'm sure she had her reasons."

"Yeah, and I'm sure she'll make it up to me somehow."

"Oh really? Just what makes you so sure she's going to do that?"

Matt glanced around, making sure the few people remaining in the nearly empty locker room were looking elsewhere before he tipped Evelyn's chin up with his index finger, leaned over and kissed her softly. "Because you love me, that's why."

Evelyn rolled her eyes and stepped away. "I was thinking more because I still want my Christmas present."

Matt opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the sound of an alarm ringing over the loudspeakers.

"Saved by the bell," Evelyn muttered, grabbing the last of her gear from her locker and slamming it shut.

"Be safe," Matt said, kissing her cheek before she grabbed her coffee and hurried out of the locker room with a quick wave back in his direction.