Meredith hadn't been able to believe the time on her phone, but it must've been accurate, because she found five Shepherds gathered in the kitchen, boosters and high-chairs engaged.
"Auntie Melia made us Fronch Toast," Zola said, while Bailey was still emitting his good morning squeal. "And Grams did Christmas Cream." She pointed to two bowls of whipped cream, one red and one green.
"Fronch Toast, huh?" Meredith asked, fiddling with her phone to snap a picture of Zola's powdered sugar mustache. Amelia shrugged. As usual, any regret she tried for was belied by her smirk. How long had Auntie Melia been home before she started on that Fronch Toast?
"You were still snoozing, Momma. Grams, that's our nice way of sayin'—"
"Did you say thank you to Grams?" Meredith interrupted. There was comfortable with her mother-in-law, and there was wanting to discuss her snoring, nicely or not.
"Just some Christmas magic," Carolyn said. "I'm an early-bird. Not as early as some. Her wry expression was aimed at Amelia, who focused on the crust she'd twisted around her finger. Meredith was sure that Amelia had been caught coming in, and wouldn't be shocked to find out she'd put the pieces together. She surprised herself by raising her eyebrows at Derek, who stood at the counter pouring coffee. Before he looked up, she remembered he had no idea about Owen and his sister. She straighten her face, but didn't turn away fast enough to avoid catching his eye. He smiled.
When had he gotten up? It must've been early to intercept kids who were used to crawling into her bed in the pre-dawn gray.
"Grams did the sinny-mom, too."
"One mistake, thirty years ago," Amelia groused. "Honestly, people, it's nutmeg you shouldn't trust me around."
Derek smacked his sister lightly on the back of the head while he put a mug of coffee at Meredith's spot. She noticed Amelia's tongue popping out, and heard Carolyn lamenting the example her children were providing. In the back of her head, she noted that this was the Shepherd vibe she'd been sold. Most of her was preoccupied by Derek's lips landing on her temple.
"Your plate in the oven," he said. "I like the hoodie."
She glanced down. She'd been so anxious to see what was going on in the house that she hadn't paid attention to what she'd put on block out the cold. She'd also thought she'd returned his Bowdoin hoodie to the hamper Thursday morning, instead of leaving it draped over the nearest piece of furniture the way she had since taking it out of the laundry. Crap.
"It's warm," she said, shoving the sleeves up to wrap her hands around her mug.
We match. Momma," Zola said. "We've both have fuzzy braids." Her sticky, syrupy fingers left a white dot of sugar behind on her head
Meredith smiled into her coffee. "We do, baby. You want to watch a Christmas movie while we style yours, later?"
"Yeah! The Muppet people one."
"Muppet people?" Derek and Carolyn asked at the same time. He put a plate down in front of Meredith, and then pinned her with one arm when she reached for the fork. "Hold on."
" Muppets and people. She means The Muppet Christmas Carol, not A Muppet Family Christmas.," she explained.
"Family Christmas only has a person," Zola said. "And there's 'only one more sleep 'til Christmas," she sang. "But…but they're both Christmas Eve. Can the family watch Family Christmas?"
"I'm up for anything except the Star Wars Holiday Special," Amelia said.
Derek paused in doctoring Meredith's French toast. "You loved that when it aired. Mark and I spent half the broadcast pulling you away from the screen."
"Whoever wrote that had had some sugar, that's all I'm saying." She tapped the side of her nose. Meredith's coffee threatened to come out of hers.
"Hey!" Derek nudged her. "If you don't remember the seventies, you don't get an opinion."
She rolled her eyes. It wasn't the first time he'd made that claim. "I've seen it! Alex has a bootleg."
"Have you?" Amelia asked. "Seen it as an adult?"
"Well…no, but…Mom, you watched it with us. Was it bad?"
Carolyn's lips twisted, and Meredith could almost hear her say, what does it matter, Derek? You hate Star Wars!
One night in the spring of her second year, they'd treated a crash involving two limos full of teenagers. The glances their way had been as exhausting as the work.
"I was horrible," he'd said that night, lying next to her in their bed. "Not…. Before I followed you into the hallway. Addison said something about her prom date, Skippy Gold.
Meredith had snorted. "Short for 'the fourth person to have this name since it changed at Ellis Island?'"
"That Boston prep school did teach you the important things." That he hadn't laughed had been telling. "Apparently Skippy was a Star Wars fan. Considering the timing, and having heard the name once or twice before, I'd wager the Star Wars Roleplaying game, specifically."
"Yikes."
"What's yikes is that rather than sympathizing with that, I said, 'I hate Star Wars,'"
Meredith had taken a breath to laugh, and hadn't known what to do with it, though at that time she'd been less concerned than confused.
He'd rolled over. "I don't. Obviously." She'd exhaled, but the hair on the back of her neck had stayed raised. Her trust had been fragile then. She'd only expected it to get stronger. "She knew that. She knew I'd seen the first one with my dad. She might've thought…. What happened with Burke…it did make me think of him. It could've been why I shut the topic down. I did hate the second one for a while. Dad told us 'Vader' meant 'father,' and it was going to mean something. We gave him so much shit about just wanting the cool costume." He put his hand over her heart. "But Addison also knew that along with it being a dad thing, it was a Mark thing, He was obsessed." Meredith had snorted. Discovering that Mark had a past wasn't as weird as it had been with Derek, and what it said about Lexie's taste only made it funnier. "I absorbed the details through osmosis He's like Karev; read all the books, collected crap. He could only get so far with the other hardcore fans. He thinks Jar-Jar Binks is hilarious…. You do too, don't you?"
"At nineteen, as comic relief a movie I saw to avoid my mother's house after a year of freedom I did. Boston prep school wasn't so great with 'things that are racist. And I loved seeing how red-faced those fans would get about it if I said that."
"I love you for that. The night I started debating Karev about the whole Clone War thing, It was…automatic. I didn't think about why I knew it all. It was…I wasn't great about your friends in those days, but the times where it didn't matter that you guys were interns, and I was your attending? Where we were all just…people? That was…it was something I didn't know I'd been missing. I'm not comparing it to anything—"
"I know," she'd interrupted. "When your friends were here, it was weird, because it seemed like there was this side of you I didn't know. Turnabout is whatever, but I thought you had a better handle on Meredith who was Death. Still do. But it was the details I didn't know. I'd seen you like that. I'm starting to see it more. I think…it might've been a Mark thing, too?"
"Fair bet." He'd nudged her shoulder with his nose. "He didn't go with us to Return of the Jedi. I saw it with him, but my sisters and I went first. Amelia was twelve. I don't know if she remembered seeing the first one with Dad, but if she did the rough moments didn't affect her as much. It made it exciting again. She crowed about the end of the empire for weeks. Still calls tumors 'the Death Star' sometimes. So, I can't hate Star Wars, it's a Dad thing. A Mark thing. An Amy thing. A you thing." She'd groaned, burying her face under the quilt, until he tugged away. So, she'd bought an ornament. That was how you got them, wasn't it? She'd remembered how he'd been that night with Alex, too. It'd been one night in the latter half of her intern year where she'd been able to imagine them spending evenings that way for the rest of their lives. "It was a me thing. I didn't think I could be that person anymore. I didn't know who I was. Not without you."
"Explains why you were dancing in public," she'd said, before climbing on top of him. Maybe she should've said more, but she wouldn't wonder about that for a long time. Right now, while she wasn't sure if she didn't know him, or she knew him too well. She could almost believe he'd used knowledge gleaned from Mark's obsession in a bid to impress her, a small lie to distract from the big one. She hated him for reviving that feeling.
"I…I may've come in and out," Carolyn hedged. "Who can remember? I wasn't as fluent in Star Wars as I would be after Mark, Squared, Mariah—"
"Don't forget Lucas," Amelia cut in.
"How could I ever forget our very own Skywalker?"
"He's the one who named his dog Threepio?" Meredith asked. All three Shepherds raised eyebrows, and she might've been offended if the moment had lasted any longer. Derek talked about Luke more than any of the others; the nephew who was called "Shep," more than his cousin who'd been christened with his mother's maiden name.
"Has he changed his mind about being a pilot?" Derek asked. His mother shook her head, and Derek slumped. Meredith squeezed his shoulder without thinking. He turned a soft smile on her, and kissed her hand. Her ring caught the light, and her mind drifted from the teenager who, until a plane crash killed one man he called "uncle" and almost destroyed the career of another, had talked of nothing but getting his pilot's license, to the thin cotton under her fingers. She could feel Derek's muscles ripple as he returned to whatever the was doing to her food. It went against years of instinct not to move closer to take in his warmth, and let her lips run along his stubble while she had the chance. Once he shaved today, she wouldn't have truly disheveled Derek again until the twenty-sixth.
After Christmas.
"Luke changed his mind about being a cowboy, too," Carolyn said, gently. "Not unlike someone else I know. Two someones, actually." She eyed Amelia. She went red, her fingers curling at the back of her neck, but her muttered "cowgirl" was said with a smile. "Daddy liked Star Wars, because it was the closest your generation had to Buck Rogers. "I was thrilled that you were still excited about something you'd planned to experience with your dad, and the program wasn't unusual for the time. Every variety show was cheesier than the next. Drop that smirk, Amelia, you loved them all. Last summer, I paid Elena to digitize all of my memories, and we have footage of you singing along with Donny and Marie. Mock your brother's taste in terrible TV specials at your own risk."
"Terrible?"
Meredith swallowed another bubble of laughter at the pitch of disappointment in Derek's voice, and the horror on Amelia's face. She'd never heard them talk about simply being kids like this. "It's okay, Derek," she added. "Everyone loves ridiculous things around that age."
"Tell us about that, Punky." Amelia grinned, and leaned back in her chair. Meredith shrugged. She had been into Punky Brewster in grade school. That her mom might ditch her in a supermarket hadn't seemed that impossible.
"Your dad would have loved this little cowboy," Carolyn added. "He showed me how he rides the rocking horse this morning, didn't you Bailey boy?"
"Ho'se!" Bailey clicked his tongue.
"Momma, look it!" Zola pushed up on the table to point at Meredith's plate. "Daddy made you a wreath like us!" She followed Zola's finger down. "And you got a lotta sugar."
She stared at the blobs of whipped cream shaped into leaves and three red berries, with actual slivers of sliced strawberries creating a bow at the base. Derek was steady-handed, and she thought their work was an art, but he wasn't any kind of draftsman. The warm surface of the bread was already causing it to melt, the berries bleeding into the leaves. The food coloring hadn't saturated the whipped cream to the degree needed to be a Christmasy green, and the shade it'd achieved wasn't entirely appetizing. It should've been gross.
"It is a little powder-heavy," Amelia said. "But that, Zoie-Zo, is mistletoe."
Blow would've rhymed, too. But that Christmas special took drugs stronger than coke. Speaking aloud, she would've sounded like one of the Shepherd sisters, or even Derek when he was angry, but she couldn't truly blame Amelia's broad references to her history. They were the kind of thoughts she would've let fly to distance herself from a cutesy gesture like the one that had been created in front of her.
Sometimes they were as trite as her mother had insisted—whimsical, sentimental, commercialized—but with Derek she'd realized that she didn't always have her mother's "believes." What Meredith had always resisted was that they represented time spent on her.
"That's the kissy flower!" Zola proclaimed.
"It is." Meredith tilted her head back to meet Derek's eyes. From this position, it would've been especially easy to see only the smugness there. She'd burned with fury over that less than two months ago—He'd been in practice before she went to med school; of course his career had progressed further! She wasn'tasking for a presidential appointment, just the time to establish herself without picking up and starting over—But smug wasn't all there was in the lines of his face. Reading the set of his lips, and the small movements of his eyes flickering over her face, she could see something similar to what she'd been feeling; like he didn't know how she'd take it, or what she wanted, but he was doing the normal things. The ones that said he loved her.
"Merry Christmas," he murmured, close to her ear.
She reached back to pull him around for a kiss that wouldn't make her Mary-Jane to Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man, and held his stubbly face in her hands to get the point across. This wasn't just about mistletoe.
"Merry Christmas, Derek." She swallowed, trying to push away the memory of saying that for the first time.
"Kiss-mwahs!" Bailey squealed. "Mwah, mwah, mwah!" Yeah, he definitely thought this was a red and green Valentine's Day. He'd learn, she hoped, that it was far superior.
Had the Meredith who'd watched Derek head out for Christmas with his wife thought that?
As she dug into her bread coated with green cream, snow and "sinny-mom," Derek kept his arms looped around her. He wouldn't do that if he was unsure about them. Not even to impress his mom.
The rest of breakfast felt like a dream, even when Amelia started eating spoonfuls of Christmas Cream, and Zola knocked over her unlidded Olaf cup in her hurry to imitate her aunt. Meredith might've been worried that it was, if her dreams were anything close to merry and bright.
"We usually do all the decorations earlier than this," Meredith said, opening one of the ornament boxes Derek had brought in from the shed. "But it's sort of Derek's thing—"
"It's a family thing," he interrupted, coming in with the last box. Bailey pushed the door closed with a two-handed bang. His sister had taken opening it just as seriously.
"You had to teach me how to do it!"
"Well.…" He turned his head toward her midway through putting the box down on the coffee table. The baleful expression said I had to teach you how to Christmas, but I'm not conceding.
"Mom and I just…didn't." She shrugged. "The tree at the hospital was always beautiful."
"At our hospital, Momma?"
"Um. I'm sure there was one, but I don't remember. I meant the one in Boston. Remember, where I lived with Grandma Ellis? We moved there when I was just a little older than you. "
"Surprised baby Mer didn't come across the decorations in a closet somewhere and have her own Christmas in July," Derek said.
"It's possible."
"Nah, Richard would've told me."
She put a hand on her hip. "Would he?"
"Absolutely. You're holding the kid safe box."
She swung the hooked and fragile ornaments up to the stool they'd dragged over from the kitchen counter. Carolyn had taken over in there, after chiding Amelia for not using the family's cookie recipe. Meredith had been the one to point out that last week's activity had been decorating cookies, which you couldn't really do with their ingredient-heavy drop cookies.
When she turned around again, she found Derek standing in front of her. She held up a hand with ornaments hung from each finger, but he still blocked her path to the tree. "Thank you for waiting to do this."
"Real hardship, not spending hours hanging baubles on a tree." Crap. She didn't want to be such a Christmas critic. She wanted him to quit acting like she hadn't wanted him here for everything. "It had lights, I was happy."
"Mommy surprised us," Zola said..
"She does that," Derek said, just as Zola dropped rocking horse ornament she was hanging clicked to the floor. She picked it up, and that was it. No upset over broken ornaments. The kid's box had been her idea while they decorated Zola's first tree, and stressed over what she'd be able to reach if she tried to pull up on it, like she was doing with anything that looked vaguely stale. Separating them out had been a pain initially, but as long as they didn't care about having fragile ornaments on the lower half of the tree, it worked out.
"We boughten a tree, and Mom said it was sleeping outside, and we'd do it up later. We woke up, soon days later, and it was up with the pretty red rug and flashy lights!"
Derek frowned. "You put it up alone?"
Across the room, Amelia let out a bleating ha. "Worry not, bro. That was a 'how many surgeons does it take...?' joke. We weren't going to let her get crushed by a fir."
Meredith wanted to defend herself, but it was true that Owen and Amelia had held the tree steady while she and Alex worked the stand, and there'd still been some confusion about how to lock it in, and where to pour in the water.
"And we got it at a lot," Meredith put in. "Not that I coupldn't have managed if we'd gone up to the farm."
Derek shook his head. "You give the woman the axe once."
"I chopped down the tree!"
"You made the last cut, and that was because you were too small to hold it for me."
"Mommy chopped down a Christmas tree?" Zola asked, awed.
Derek scowled. it took a heartbeat for Meredith to be sure it wasn't a going-to-storm-off scowl, but she did, before he shrugged, and said, "Yes, baby. girl. She did a great job."
They hadn't had a lot of free time while he was busy trying to create instruments that would let him treat a little boy's AVM, and she was planning their first dinner party. A week before Christmas Eve, thy'd been leaving work, and he'd asked, "What's on your list of Christmas stuff you haven't done?"
"I don't have that."
"Meredith."
"I don't know what people do!"
"Really? In capitalist America, where Christmas is worshiped in and of itself, you haven't seen traditions you'd like to experience?"
"I...well..." Only in the past year had she really let herself recall being in elementary school, too young to lie to herself, and listening to her classmates recount weekends and holidays. She hadn't wanted to be jealous; it wasn't their fault her home had broken. She'd been sure it was hers. The simple division of labor allowed by having two parents wouldn't have put her family together again hadn't occurred to her. She'd had some of those coveted experiences with her friends. Theoretically, she could've asked to spend Christmas Eve decorating cookies or making gingerbread houses, but she couldn't imagine doing those things. The holiday was a backdrop to a day out; the one concession being her mother routing every walk and drive through neighborhoods with lots of lights. She never said that she knew Meredith liked it, except for once noting, "this is the longest you go all year without commenting on my driving." Maybe it had just been a way to delay arriving at her sister's. "This may just be a Northeast thing, but...are there places to cut down Christmas trees here?'
"I'll find out," Derek had proclaimed.
"Have you...? You wouldn't have done it in Manhattan."
"No..." The white cast of a parking lot flood had illuminating his face just long enough for her to catch the pink gathering in the tips of his ears.
"But?"
"Ah... Well... The statute of limitations is probably... Bowdoin is famous for its pine trees, but there are some firs. Junior year, the girl I was seeing was hosting a Winter Wonderland party in her room. It was the last day of and I were finished, and she didn't have a car, so we took it upon ourselves to do her shopping. Being college students, we left it to the last possible minute. When i tell you the liquor run alone took three hours—She wanted this cocktail with multiple liqueurs. In a college town. In 1987."
Meredith laughed at his exasperation. She'd downed some fancy drinks in her time, but she preferred not to bother disguising her poison. Derek wanted commitment. A misunderstanding in their first moments, but there they were, tangentally discussing their own Christmas party, where she'd be mixing egg-less eggnog for her sister, and a boozeless version for her...men who'd loved her mother.
"Long story short, by the time we'd gotten that, the groceries, and the decorations, every Christmas tree lot had shut down for the night. I didn't want to go out again the next day—I think it was supposed to snow, but also I...I was determined to get it into her common room and decorated before she woke up in the morning."
"Awww."
"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled, like he wouldn't have done the exact same thing decades later. "We went to the dorms to deliver the orders we'd picked up for a few other end of exams celebrations, mostly the hockey team, and I told everyone about my intense despair. As you can imagine, most of the guys gave me shit, but then our goalie, Handy—His last name was Johanssen. Coach hated the nickname, for the very reason that you are snickering like that. but he couldn't deny that he was always finding a bent screw in the bench door, or fixing the Zamboni—Handy comes out of his room with an axe, looks at me, and says, 'Well, come on.'"
"No way." She almost couldn't get the words out for laughter. "You did not. You, Derek Shepherd, did not cut down a Christmas tree on your college campus."
"Meredith, my dear, I cannot tell a lie," he said in a warped accent that must've been meant to be George Washington. "It wasn't very big. Kind of a Charlie Brown tree." He side-eyed her, but didn't go as far as suggesting she hadn't spent most elementary school evenings in front of the TV. "He knew all these trails through the woods, could name off every plant. I thought I'd misremembered and he was an Environmental Studies major, but no. Sociology. He led me right to this little copse of firs, we cut one down, and dragged it back to the dorms. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life."
A few days later, she'd had a similar experience. They'd driven up past the snowline, with Mark, Lexie, and Sloan Riley in the car behind them. Lexie had been grumpy; yanking the axe away from Sloan, even though she could barely hold it with her bandaged finger. Eventually, Derek's arm around Meredith's waist had turned them down a path perpendicular to the tracks of Mark's sled. He hadn't been along for the Charlie Brown tree expedition, she'd remembered.. Maybe he'd just wanted to escape the squabbling reminiscent of his sisters, but she thoght it was one of those times where he made a point of seperating himeslf from his friend; boundaries he hadn't had in New York.
Throughout the experience, from tromping among rows of sweet-smelling trees that stretched up toward the star-coated sky, to rejoining the others for hot chocolate, she'd been overcome by the wonderment that brought many doctors to medicine; the one she'd wondered if her mother had ever felt. She'd thought the OR would be the only place she'd find it as an adult before she'd met him.
"Could I be a tree chopper?" Zola asked. It was incredibly simple for Meredith to imagine her and Bailey all bundled up on one of those sleds sled, the density of perfect trees leaving them awestruck.
"You'll need to be a little taller to help with a tree this size," Derek said, and Meredith focused on picking through the box. "But maybe next year Momma can show you how it's done."
She jerked her head up so quickly that the ornaments on her fingers clinked. They couldn't do that on the twenty-second, could they? If there was an answer in his face, she hadn't found it before Zola added, "She's so the best with tree stuff, Daddy. The bows were an other surprise. Me and B.B. spent all the night in Mommy's bed, and still we didn't know they were there. I thought Auntie Melia came home, and no, Mommy just did sneaking. Good sneaking," she added quickly. Their natural tattletale never wanted anyone to be in trouble.
"Good sneaking," Derek agreed, and tilted Meredith's chin toward him to kiss her. Nine. When would she stop counting? "Always a good sneaker."
She blushed, and also wanted to stomp like Zola did whenever it was Bailey's turn for something. They needed to remember that they'd been that couple, infatuated with each other enough that they'd created a private world without caring that it might be breached by anyone in front of a house holding third of their coworkers. She needed to know that he didn't see her as that intern—that her career was no longer his to impede, or enhance, or dictate. She didn't need him there to be successful, to be comfortable in who she was as an adult. Being his wife at work was easier without him around. That didn't mean it was better.
"It was so beautiful," Zola enthused.
She wished that he'd been there. Zola had been ahead of them on the stairs, even with Meredith carrying the baby to move them along. She'd come running back, and then darted around doing a full investigation to determine if Amelia was there, or could've come and gone—"Is she on a call? Surgeons on a call don't go home. You really did that? By your own? But we didn't wake up at all! Did you wake up, B.B.?"—Her expression had been so wide-eyed and delighted. Bailey hadn't truly understood what the deal was, but he'd gotten excited about the tree's existence anew every morning. that It'd all reassured Meredith that whatever the Santa situation might be, her children believed in Christmas magic.
"Here," Derek said and took several of the colored balls Meredith had hooked over her fingers for easy transport to the tree "You're going to get tetanus." There was a beat of silence while she tried to figure out if she should say not if you make sure I get my shots once I'm cuckoo now, or in front of Carolyn."Hey, Ames, how much faster would we be able to string with these hands on our team?"
A bowl clattered on the counter. "Holy shit, I'd go upstate to see that."
"Amelia!"
"Relax, Ma. Zoie-Zo? Tell Gram about grown-up words."
"Words are a way we show who we are, and grown-ups will think we're real bad if use cussed words. It's easy manners while we learn not to hurt with the words we have."
Meredith snuck around to the far side of the tree to carefully determine if the branches could hold the heavier ornaments she'd picked out. They didn't actually swear all that much in front of the kids; they didn't make a big deal about it. Once you knew that most of taboos were from people being uncomfortable with their bodies, that seemed more important to avoid.
"They're less curious about them than I was, that's for damn sure," Amelia said. "Medusa, quit hiding. She can't turn you to stone.
"What your husband is scheming about is that we might be the last family in the world that makes garlands of popcorn and cherries, and we do it competitively to keep there from being too many cooks in the kitchen. But Liz hates having us on the same side. There's no way she'd let us bring in a third surgeon."
"Wasn't Addison on your..?"" Meredith trailed off, and then finished the sentence so far her words slammed into each other.. She didn't censor her kids, she didn't need to do it herself for someone else's mother.
Amelia cackled, "Are you kidding?"
Derek rubbed the back of his neck. "Addison and I were more like you and Cristina than…than you and me."
"Oh." Meredith tried to think if she'd ever seen a particular amount of competitiveness between the two. That was easier than considering what parts of them he meant by you and me. Not because she missed being in the OR with him—she did, but their synergy had become part of raising their children. She preferred that. She thought he did, too, but if she'd been able to stay in the lines, challenging him in the OR without taking risks that put him on the line, could she have inspired him enough to make him stay in Seattle? Would it have made going with him the logical next step in her career?
Whatever. That wasn't how things were. And as for Addison, the race for Chief wasn't a situation where she and Derek would've been pushing each other forward. Meredith thought of the waspish way they'd insulted each other on either side of the attempt to make it work. A hateful jealousy…. Had it gone sour, or had it always been like that?
Were they that different?
"How bad did board games get?"
"Oh, sweet Jesus, you have no idea," Amelia responded.
There must've been times in the past six months where Derek hadn't argued with something she said, but it felt like forever since she'd seen the combination of a sheepish one-shouldered shrug and the quirk of his lip on the same side. Meredith touched his shoulder on her next trip to the ornament box. "And you say you don't know where Z gets it."
"Amy was just as bad!"
"Lies!"
"You were a Go F—"
"Buzz!" Meredith sliced a finger across her throat, looking over to see that Zola was involved in slipping an Ewok onto a branch. (Their third Christmas.)
"…cardboard fishing…shark."
"I didn't.…" Amelia's lips twisted. She'd been the one who had to explain what made playing with a dreidel different from the game Zola had called "Winner Gets Halloween Candy." The day-care hadn't discovered it until small toys and figurines were trading hands, had insisted on calling "betting." It'd hadbeen close to a pee-wee gambling league. They tried not to bring it up, because Zola could tell if you were secretly proud. The preening expression that would appear in her eyes was not unlike the one currently in her father's.
Carolyn braced herself on the counter, looking around at all of them. "I'm thrilled that the three of you get along so well, but—"
Meredith turned to Derek, who swiped a sculpted ornament from the adult box. "Hey, Zo, have you seen this?"
Meanwhile, his sister leaned over to whisper to her mother, possibly the closest they'd been during the visit so far. Meredith couldn't hear her explanation of Zola's shining future as a blackjack dealer, but she could tell when a Shepherd was thinking I'll have to see that for myself. Excellent. They had a shill. If they got her to play enough rounds with the Doc McStuffins Uno deck going into Zola's stocking, it could then become a special occasion toy.
"Momma, is this really you?"
"Hmm?"
Derek stood, intercepting another handful of ornaments. "Next year, we're going to find a garland, wrap it around you like a scarf,.stick one of sticky bows on your nose, and call it a day."
"It's conservation of motion! And those things are for cheaters. If you're gonna wrap something—"
"The least you can do is tie some ribbon around it. I think I've heard that somewhere, from someone," he said airily, and kissed her where he'd threatened to put the adhesive. Was that ten? Did the tip of her nose count?
Zola pushed herself between their legs and held the ornament up to Meredith. It tipped into her hand as two pieces. "I'm sorry! Did I break it?"
"No, baby." Meredith crouched by Zola, and almost immediately had both kids leaning against her. "I know this one." She moved the loop that'd popped off up so that she could close it in her fist, and then took the bigger section between two fingers. "That is me. It says, 'Baby's First Christmas 1978.' My birthday is in April, so how many months would it be? May…June…." She listed off the months while Zola counted.
"Eight!"
"Baby!" Bailey added, pressing his finger against the glass.
"That's one month older than you were this time last year, bud," she said. "At Christmas, you were nine months old."
"And a human bulldozer," Amelia added.
"He just wanted to hug the tree. From his walker. At full speed." It'd been exhausting at the time, but now she couldn't believe he'd been that small.
"Here you are, Bails." Derek scooped Bailey up to help him hang the picture.
"What months was I, Mommy?" Zola asked. Meredith searched through the box until she found the bear-shaped 'First Christmas Home' ornament. She'd spent over an hour scouring boutiques with a baby who'd strongly objected to the stroller—and loved grocery carts, so they were sure the issue was not seeing their faces—before ordering it online.
"You're a month over one, here. That's thirteen months."
"What about in my n'orphanage pictures?"
"You moved there in January. That's after Christmas. It will be January again next week."
"Did my bi'ogical family have a decoration of me?"
Holy crap, how heartbreaking would that be? But to Zola, Christmas was the best part of the year, and they told her all the time that her biological family had loved her. Having memories of Christmas with a baby you loved was good. And maybe it was. Meredith couldn't remember if her mother had been more into Thanksgiving before Maggie had been born. Giving her up a month before Christmas must've been difficult, even for her mother. Meredith doubted a "Baby's First Christmas-1983" ornament would've made anything easier. Finding it in a drawer while moving their stuff sure as hell would've thrown Meredith for a loop.
She put her arms around Zola, still holding up both ornaments. "I don't know, love, but I think you were a gift to them, just like you are to us."
"Even if they weren't doing Christmas people?"
"Absolutely."
"On their tree?"
When Izzie had found her ornament, she'd assumed it was Thatcher's doing. But the first time she'd super-glued the top on, she'd slipped the hinge on the back and discovered her mom's handwriting."Meredith, 12.30.78." It was a studio portrait, but her few photos from the day weren't dated. It was too bad Thatcher had proven that he couldn't be trusted when it came to photographs—or much of anything
Meredith kissed the top of Zola's head. She still smelled like syrup and sugar. "I don't know if celebrating Christmas in Malawi means having a Christmas tree, or if they have picture ornaments, or if the Limbanis could buy them. I don't believe they need one to remember you, or to love you."
"But they couldn't take best care of me."
"That's right. I think they'd love how happy you are about Christmas, and be happy that we don't just take care of you, we love you more than anything a pizza man has ever delivered."
Zola giggled.
"More than any Christmas present," Derek added.
"I don't know," Carolyn put in. "You really loved the bike you got the year Amy was born.".
"I did get some good hauls," Meredith mused. Ellis could use a catalog. Internet shopping might've truly made Meredith as spoiled as her classmates. She been told she was, but that'd been one claim she'd been able to contradict. Her mother hadn't seen inside her classmates' rooms, playrooms, garages, and dens.
"When I think about it..."
Zola looked between them smiling nervously.
"We wished for you pretty hard..."
"And you don't get flat tires."
"Daddy!"
"What?"
"I'm not a bike! I'm not even big enough for a two-wheeler!"
"Hm….in that case, you're probably—."
"—definitely—."
"—the best gift-"
"-ever!" Meredith kissed Zola's cheek as she said it, and Derek swooped down on the other. Zola's laugh rang out just as it had the first year, when she'd only known they loved her and wrapping paper was amazing.
"Kissmas!"
"They made you, B.B.," Zola informed her brother. "You were my present, kinda. 'Sept not at Christmas. And I only maybe play with Joanne more. And I had Rawr already. But you're my best brother ever! That's B.B.s too!"
Bailey grabbed an ornament. "Grover!"
"Aunt Lexie gave us that," Meredith told him. "She said one day I'd end up with Elmo on the tree, and she was getting me used to the idea."
"Is Elmo bad?" Zola asked.
"No, bug. See, he's right there." She pointed to the figure of the red guy covered in Christmas lights.
"Ah'mo!" Bailey clapped his hands. "Ah'mo!" Even-maybe especially—after Zola's prime Elmo years, Meredith could've given a list of reasons why the thing was annoying. How it did not hold a candle to Grover. But considering Bailey's gifts, she'd have to officially call a truce with the squeaky Muppet or tomorrow would be rough. Truces were so easy when they were one-sided. Elmo, after all, loves you!
Derek loved her. At minimum, that was becoming almost impossible to question.
"Can you fix your decoration, Momma?"
As fixes on her to-do list went, that was also the easy one. She'd been wrong to think the holiday would be the hard part of this week.
"I'm going to do that now."
"Need a hand?" Derek asked.
"No, but it would go faster. I've told you about all these, right?" she asked, spreading a paper towel to serve as an ornament-gurney.
"You have."
"Most of the others we found are way worse. I should just toss them; they're older than I am... Just they're older than I am." Derek covered her free hand with his.
"Not to butt in," Carolyn said, and Amelia snorted. "Didn't you just say your mother never have a tree?"
"Ma—"
"Derek. Not after she left my father, and we moved east. We spent Christmas Day with my aunt, and she had a fake one. I put up paper chains at home, but we didn't really decorate. Mom wasn't a holiday person. She'd lost a lot."
"Christmas makes you want to be with the people you love," Derek said, with more solemnity than he'd displayed all morning. And he's here.
"Yeah. I knew she'd lost her parents suddenly, because she and my aunt were always at each other over the will. I imagine if I hadn't been around they would've been estranged. I thought my father left her, but it turns out that was Richard. And then, there would've been Maggie…. I don't know what Mom felt about that over time, because I didn't know it happened, but at some point she pictured a life where they raised us together."
"He's no Shepherd, but he's a Christmas person." Amelia noted.
"You're a Shepherd," Derek pointed out.
"I'm here, aren't I?"
There was a beat while this was processed. Carolyn and Derek had joked about Amelia running off, but they seemed to have missed that she really could've blown town for the weekend.
"Anyway, the move was sudden, or she hadn't expected to do it alone—I've never been clear on when Boston came into the plan, but…" She turned to Derek. "Last year…do you think Richard would've mentioned her having an offer from Harper Avery?"
"Given the…. What he said, it seems likely."
A hateful, hopeless jealousy.
"So, for her to hide out for five months—I think they must've had offers here that everyone assumed they'd take, but instead she went to MGH." Meredith sucked the inside of her cheek. She hadn't done the opposite to split their paths, but it must sound—
"—and he ended up at Pres," Derek continued, with no sign that his thoughts had detoured. "He was established by the time we met in the early nineties. Regardless, I doubt he and Adele moved fast enough to leave anything behind, but Ellis…pretty much anything sentimental stayed here. Anything sentimental from Boston got shipped back here while Mer was in college."
She hadn't thought of it like that. All those boxes in the study had been sent to storage here. Mom had intended for one of them to come back, eventually. Telling Meredith not to go to Seattle Grace might not have been about Meredith at all if she just hadn't wanted to be seen at her lowest by people she'd proven herself to thirty years earlier.
How much had just been her taking every affront out on the person who was there?
"My….We…. The ornaments stayed in the house. Some movers or renters must've dropped them. They've been falling apart since we opened the boxes."
"That's unfortunate. We lost some of my mother's over the years, certainly."
"Miracle It wasn't more," Amelia muttered into the batter she was abusing with a wooden spoon. "Derek fell into the tree."
"Mark threw the ball!. I was trying to intercept."
"You always have good intentions," Carolyn said, and there was another beat before Derek took the glued-together ornament.
"I'll hang this front and center."
"Show them yours," Amelia suggested.
"Daddy has one?" Zola squealed. Meredith got the sense that she was helping him make an escape, and she was missing subtext, and a little afraid that she wasn't.
"Yeah, your aunt does, too."
"I'm much cuter!" Amelia caught Meredith's eye. Aside from the goofiness of a baby in a bowtie, Derek had been eleven months by his first Christmas, and he looked it, whereas Bailey had been small for his age. It'd be a good spectrum for Zola to see.
The ornaments were another thing that made Meredith wonder about Amelia's relationship to Christmas. The Shepherds all took those ornaments on graduating from college, and if they went to The Pen adding them to the tree was a whole thing. Amelia might've skipped that for most of her adulthood, but she'd never lost track of it.
While Meredith was throwing away the ornament gurney, Carolyn asked "Is she always that patient with him?"
She'd been inordinately patient with Derek at times, but the reverse had been true—Reverses: he'd been patient with her; neither had been patient with the other, but where they were, this compromise, truce, stalemate, whatever, wasn't about patience. Being patient meant knowing what you were waiting for.
It took the continuing silence for Meredith to realize her mother-in-law wasn't making an aside to Amelia about her. Carolyn was looking out toward the living room, in the direction of the tree. The tableau played out again: Zola walking Bailey to the kids box and holding up figurines for him to pick one-Lightning McQueen, Mickey, and brother-sister pair Max and Ruby—all characters that he loved. Together, they went to the tree. She held the branch for him, and when his fingers got tangled in a twisted loop, she freed him and let him try again, never entirely taking over.
Meredith was sure that the zoo animals, the Dora and Boots, and all of Zola's other favorites were already on the tree. She estimated that were about six left that specifically catered to his interest, and Zola might still get tired of the gig before they were all hung. Nonetheless, watching them made her feel as melty as the chocolate chips in the oven.
"She is," she said, without a caveat. She saw it during play dates. Sofia loved her little cousin, but her attitude was more he can play if he can keep up than I'll help him keep up so he can play. Interacting on his level was more of a chore, but Zola often did it without prompting.
"They're two and a half years apart?"
"Closer to the gaps between the girls, Mom," Amelia said, with an amount of reassurance Meredith wouldn't have anticipated.
"Mm. I suppose. Meredith, are we speaking gibberish to you, now? Please tell me Derek and Liz weren't bickering the whole time she was here."
"Well…surgery makes people anxious. They're never at their best, pre- or post-op."
"Oh, she was," Derek said. "Look, Mer." He held up a Chewbacca figurine.
"It's the big, hairy one," she said, and as always it made him laugh.
"The star of the Christmas special," Amelia added. "Where's Lumpy?"
Derek scowled, but when he hung the ornament Meredith could see that he'd clustered all six Star Wars characters together. Number seven, Yoda, was upstairs waiting to go into Derek's stocking. She'd ordered him months ago, wondering if they'd make it to Christmas.
"I hoped for what you have there with them," Carolyn said. "Kathleen adapted well to having a baby sister. Once Nan was able to play with her, they were good little friends. Too close for Lizzie to work her way in, but we saw that coming. We didn't anticipate having another one quite so quickly, but we thought it would be nice to have an Irish-twin situation. Instead, Lizzie can't remember a day without her brother, and she's never forgiven me for it."
"Or me." Derek was stuffing the newspaper that'd been padding the ornaments back into the boxes, and when he called, "Where are my door-people?" the kids dashed over.
"Or him," Amelia confirmed, quietly.
"Poor boy tried," Carolyn said. "Let her boss her into the ground for a few years. I was afraid he'd think having a younger sibling was his chance to do the same, but by the time you could've been a pawn, he'd met Mark. The two of them palled around with Lizzie for a time, but high school ended that. Eventually they came around to being friends again—or at least not adversaries."
"College," Amelia amended. "It was like they'd always been able to tolerate each other. Confused the hell out of me."
"You weren't alone. They've had their spats since, and it's true that their best involves snipping like old women at the hair salon. I'm sure he thought she'd lord the donation over him."
"There was some of that," Meredith admitted. His concern when they discovered they'd be having a boy hadn't been just that he'd had sisters; it had been that he had one sister, specifically.
"Nan said Liz hardly let it be a discussion. I think it meant something to her that you reached out."
"Me?"
"You're the one who stole him," Amelia said. "But you wanted what any of us would want for him, even if he was being a bonehead."
"Mommy!" Zola came running over and grabbed her arm. "It's the silly song!"
Christmas carols had been everywhere for weeks, and Meredith had tuned them out after subjecting to a rant on "Baby It's Cold Outside" in the last week of November. She'd noticed the playlist Derek had put on after promising Zola they'd watch "the Muppet Family one" once the tree was up. Now, it was playing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer."
Before letting her daughter pull her away from the counter to dance, Meredith glanced at Carolyn. Her mother-in-law raised her eyebrow while biting into a cookie Amelia had just put on a cooling rack. "I have had this sung to me in four-part harmony."
"And yet, I got in trouble for telling Granny I'd learned a song just for her," Amelia said.
"You needed to learn to read the room. Patricia Maloney had no sense of humor."
Zola, who'd been singing along over them, stumbled over the word "incriminating." The next lyrics were more narration than verse, and she opted to listen, a deepening furrow forming between her brows. It reminded Meredith of Lexie, as did the suddenness of its dissolution. "It's okay, Grams!" she announced. "We know many, many surgeons. Mommy saves people who get run over by cars!"
"Phew," Carolyn said, enacting exaggerated relief. "Thank you for telling me. I would've been worried about getting run over!"
"Hoof prints on her forehead is going to be a neuro thing. Sorry about that, Ma. Nelson is—"
Meredith shushed Amelia and looked pointedly at Zola. That was the kind of stuff they didn't want her repeating.
"Auntie Melia, there aren't for real flying reindeer. Sleighs are true. Daddy says one day we'll visit Grams and ride one in the snow."
"He'd better bring you soon, or you'll be to big for your whole family to fit."
The furrow returned and disappeared just as quickly. Before belting the chorus, Zola said, "Momma's grown, and so she will always fit on Daddy's lap."
Carolyn and Amelia cracked up. "Better me than Kris Kringle, right?" Derek said, coming up behind her with Bailey on his hip.
"Definitely." She could imagine it, the four of them in Central Park, getting time away from the family who might have to install a revolving door for the return of the prodigal son. Derek pointing out the carriages. Zola running ahead. Bailey thrilled about horses. Meredith would roll her eyes, because they were being freaking tourists, and it'd be freezing. Giving in, because his expression argued it's an experience!
They won't have a problem fitting onto those benches even if both kids become giants. She was almost sure they put space heaters in the back. That wouldn't keep Derek from pulling her onto his lap "to keep her warm," and gathering the kids in on either side. He'd keep up a conversation with the driver, who'd love getting to talk to a native rather than giving a canned spiel about Astors and architecture. Their voices would be background to Bailey's exclamations, and Zola's questions. She'd tell herself she wouldn't be there without them. That romantic carriage rides were horseshit. But Derek's breath would be fogging against her neck, and maybe there'd be pinpricks of snow on her cheeks, the contrast making the moment more real.
She wouldn't hate it.
She wouldn't hate it at all.
"We just can't help but wonder…" the song said. Meredith couldn't either: would she be on that trip, or would it be the reverse of this year, with Derek and the kids showing up on Carolyn's doorstep?
No. They were okay. She was more sure of that than she had been in months. And she'd never miss the holidays with her kids. She'd made that vow when they were hypothetical. But in actuality, Christmases wasn't the most likely time to find New York blanketed was after the holidays, in January or February, and she had no idea what those months would bring.
A/N: For manips and commentary on this fic, find me on Tumblr chicleeblair
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