Addison walked through the door of the New York Brownstone after being on call all night. She and Derek were interns, they had gotten used to schedules that didn't fit together. They got used to balancing off their time between work and their family. Most other interns had it easy compared to them. The were surgical interns, the toughest internship to survive. Unlike most interns in any field, they had a family to think about. A child to consider before anything else.
"Derek?" she called out while making her way further into the house. She saw Derek sitting at the kitchen table with Ella on his lap, they had her backpack on the ground beside them and a bunch of papers spread out on the table. He was dressed and ready to leave for work the second she got in. Given that she was on call all night, she had the next day off but he didn't.
"Hey. Will you help her with this, please?" he asked, setting her down on the ground so he could get up. "I don't know what to tell her... or how to explain it."
"Yeah, sure." Addison answered and took his seat. She picked up the sheet of paper explaining the first project assigned to the second grade class. "But it's 6 in the morning, Derek, why is she up so early?"
"Project is due today, I decided we should leave it to the last minute and it came back to bite me in the ass. She was so nervous about not having done it that she barely slept. I promised her that she didn't have to go to school today so you could help her get it done."
Ella stood close to Addison as she read the instruction. "We have to get a board and find a picture of me and you and Daddy and we have to explain who I look like the most. Like who's eyes I have and who's smile... get it?" she explained to save herself time. "Daddy already took me to buy a board."
"How long does the essay have to be?" Addison asked.
Ella's eyes narrowed. "What's an essay?" she replied curiously. "We have to write two paragraphs. One about our similarities with our dad and one about the mom."
"Oh, well that's not too bad." Addison smiled. "You look a lot like your Daddy. You've got his eyes and his smile. You've got the same skin tone and your hair is wavy just like his."
"Yeah, I know!" Ella whined. "That part is easy. I know I look like Daddy, but I don't look like you. I can't write the second paragraph if there is nothing to write!" she was just seconds away from crying when Derek picked her up and sat her down on the kitchen counter.
"Ella..."
"I'm blond! Neither one of you is blond! Am I adopted?"
"No, Ella, you are not adopted. If you were adopted how could you look so much like your father?" Addison answered, assuring the child that she had nothing to worry about.
"Than why don't I look like you?" she continued to whine that high pitched tone that no one could ignore.
"Your uncle Archer is blond, El." Derek answered before Addison could come out with the truth. "And so are Bizzy and the Captain. That gene just wasn't dominant in your mother but it was in you. Understand? You are like her in other ways. You almost have the exact same personality. You're both funny and sarcastic. You both get this weird satisfaction from shopping. You both scream the exact same way when you see a bug. And I love both of you."
Ella sniffled, wiping her eyes forcefully while looking at her parents. "Does that count?"
"Of course it counts." Derek insisted. "Physical similarities are not the only things you inherit from your parents. You get the psychological aspects of them too. And I say that as someone who knows more about heredity than a second grade teacher."
The only time that Addison tried to tolerate Derek was during the once a week court ordered therapy session. She needed to make it look like they were trying to make things work. If their act didn't pass off than it could end up taking a lot more than six months to get through with the divorce.
Derek knew it was all an act but it was the most affection and attention he got from her all week. He would never admit it but therapy was actually the one hour a week that he look forward to.
"How long have you two been married?" the therapist asked, sitting across from them with a note pad on his lap and a pen trapped in his tight grip.
"12 years." Derek answered. "As of four days ago." he added, looking over at Addison with a smile. Truth was, they didn't celebrate it, it wasn't even mentioned. But they both remembered it against the other one's knowledge.
"Oh, well Happy Anniversary in that case. What did you guys do to celebrate?"
"Nothing." replied.
"We couldn't do anything. I um.. I had work all day and I was on call that night so we couldn't do anything. We were thinking to do it this weekend instead." Addison lied. She was busy that day, only because she was the one that took on every single case that she could. She overcrowded her own schedule on purpose.
"That's good, that's something. Are you planning on taking your daughter with you?"
"She's not our daughter." Addison replied. "She's his daughter, I never legally adopted her after we got married so...I'm not her mother."
"But at some point you did consider yourself to be her mother, despite the fact that she wasn't legally or biologically yours."
"Yes, I did. That before I found out that I was alone in thinking that." she replied. "She didn't know that I'm not her mother until recently. Now she does now, and now she doesn't see me as her mother."
"Does it really matter what she thinks?"
Addison laughed incredulously. Of course it mattered. How could she be a mother to someone who she thought didn't respect her. She couldn't force a bond to exist with someone who as of recently barely tolerated her. "Who the hell have you a license to practice?" she responded to the question instead of answering it with her direct thoughts. "I mean... is that even a serious question? How could it not matter?" she raised her voice and yelled believably.
The counselor nodded and wrote something down on the notepad and looked up at them. "I have been doing this longer than you two have known one another. Okay? I've been in this field for 20 years. You may not see it, but I do. You're still in love. It's just that both of you are too stubborn to admit it. So... no matter how much your set on ending this marriage I can tell you that I'm not going to make that easy. You are going to try to work it out, genuinely try. No one gets out until I've seen both of you put actual effort into this. If you skill can't work it out at that point than I'll speak to the judge about finalizing the divorce."
"We need to find a new therapist." Addison declared as they were alone in the privacy of their car.
Derek chuckled, keeping his eyes on the road. "It's court ordered, Addison. We can't choose whoever we want. It's who were assigned to."
"The state of Washington hates us! That's why they assigned us to the worst son of a bitch on the planet! There is no way this is going to work in our favor."
"You wanna stop by somewhere and grab something to eat before we head home?" Derek asked, figuring that the fact that she was talking to him was a good sigh. Maybe it meant that she was okay with him enough to consider spending an hour more talking to him.
She glanced at him and he took his eyes away from the road for just a second to look into hers. "I'm not sure that's a good idea." she replied softly, hating herself for bursting his bubble of fake happiness.
"Why not? It's not like Ella is with us. Just you and me."
"It's not Ella that I have a problem with, Derek." Addison raised her voice. "It's the whole situation that I have to live in this miserable marriage for another 6 months with a husband that's in love with another woman and a child who had no respect for me. That's the problem. I don't want to get attached just to have my heart broken again."
"I'm not in love with another woman. I was..before. But now I'm not. And Ella is dying for a little tiny bit of affection from you. She respects you more than you know."
"She did, in the past. In New York before I fucked her father's best friend, before you guys took off and left me, before she knew that I'm not really her mother. Now it's all changed."
Derek stopped at a red light and looked at her. "Nothing has changed. You're just afraid having what you had before."
Richard Webber was never one to engage in gossip. He was surrounded by it all day everyday, he heard more than he ever wanted to know but most of the time her would pretend he never heard it and move on. He couldn't help but notice that obvious tension between the Shepherd, that in addition to all the talk going around made it impossible for him to avoid the situation.
Of course, he couldn't go directly to the source because they would never confirm it. So instead he went to the one person who always gave him the truth. That was Ella.
"So?" she asked impatiently. She had been in his office for a while now, just sitting there and waiting while he put together his thoughts before presenting them.
Richard had first met Ella when she was in first grade. He was the resident in charge of her parents and somehow managed to land himself the role of babysitter. "What's going on with your family?"
Ella shrugged her shoulders and laughed. "If only I knew." she answered.
"No, seriously... why is your mother here 24/7. She asks if she could be on call. No one in their right mind asks to be on call. Last I remember, she'd do everything possible to get out of here sooner to be with you."
"Yeah, well....things change." Ella answered. "She's not my mother anymore."
"What do you mean? How does someone stop being a mother? It's not exactly a title you shed so simply."
"Addison is not my biological mother, Richard." Ella replied. Richard's jaw dropped. Since the day he met the Shepherds he was under the impression that Ella was theirs. She was just like them. Physically, she was Derek. Her behavior was as if she was a mini-Addison. "And she never legally adopted me. She took on the title when she and my dad got engaged. I didn't know until recently."
"Addison is not your mother?" Richard asked, needing a nod to confirm what he had been told. "That is not possible. Are you sure?"
"My biological mother left me when I was born. My dad raised me alone until I was like four and a half or something. That's when Addison came into the picture."
"Okay..." Richard nodded, trying to digest all the information considering that everything he thought he knew about Derek and Addison had turned on its head. "So what's the problem now?"
Ella looked up at him, taking her time before she could answer his question. "She got tired of me and my Dad. Nothing works anymore. She not my mother, My father fell in love with a different woman. I drove Addison overboard with all my tortuous schemes when she first came out to Seattle. She just couldn't take it anymore and I can't say that I blame her." Ella admitted, knowing that although Addison was responsible for the first blow to the Shepherd family, she and her father were responsible for all the rest. " We're not the perfect happy family anymore. And at this point, it would be smart to question if we ever really were. Or if that was all a very well played out act."
"It wasn't an act." Richard assured. "Addison always considered you to be her daughter to the point that it's hard to believe you're not. And she and your father were blindly in love."
"But things change." she answered, shifting her gaze from the ground up into his eyes. He easily saw the vulnerability that anyone else would easily have missed. She was miserable with the situation her family was in and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't hide it anymore.
More coming in a couple days, as promised. :)
Now you hold up your end of the deal and review. :D
