"Jesus Christ balls!" Meredith yelped. She managed to throw herself at the wall to keep her fall over the threshold from being a total shitshow, but her keys had gone flying, and her rolling suitcase had turned itself upside down. She wouldn't be shocked to discover that the backpack that'd balanced on the case all the way up the front steps had dented the hardwood, but she had (huzzah) kept her grip on the grocery bag that was clinking enough to give the impression that all it held was booze. That was untrue, and it wasn't the impression she wanted to make on the woman standing in front of her.
Like a scent hound, though, Meredith's mother could hone in on her disasters. "What is this mess?" she demanded, with no hint that she could hear the screeching security alarm. Meredith could, and any minute the service would call to tell her it hadn't been turned off. Not a great solution when she was a state away, but that's what the other disapproving faced woman was for.
"Four, ten, seven, eight," she murmured. Had she chosen that to be sure that Mom held onto her birthday as long as possible, now, no matter how many times it'd slipped her mind in the OR? Absolutely. One day it might have to be changed to something from the first quarter of her life. Once she'd forgotten she'd had a daughter, just like she'd always wanted to.
"Meredith Grey, get this stuff picked up! I'm needed in surgery." They weren't there yet. Meredith managed to sit the bag on the hall table and catch her shoulders.
"Hi, Mom."
"Get out of my way."
"Ellis, that's not very nice." Both Greys turned to the woman hanging an apron up in the kitchen. She was about Mom's age, which had seemed old to Meredith right up until Meredith had sat in an office full of boxes in New York and heard the words, "I've received a diagnosis of Early-Onset Alzheimer's." Other than that, the woman's wild salt-and-peper curls and wide smile were nothing like her charge. Especially with the Christmas tree earrings.
"What are you doing in our house?" Mom demanded. Meredith had the same sentiment, even though she'd hired her via a very laggy conversation on a computer lab webcam.
"Lila's…She's the housekeeper, Mom." Technically, her title was home health aide, but outside of her highly-vetted circle of doctors Mom had conniptions at the idea of anyone in the healthcare field knowing her diagnosis. Prevarication had become necessary.
"Right." Mom touched Meredith's cheek. "I have to go save a life. Be good for Lily and I'll tell you the whole story."
The crappy egg sandwich she'd gotten from a drive-thru that morning turned over in Meredith's stomach. This was almost worse than not being seen. "M-Mom… Mommy, it's Christmas Eve."
Mom's expression shifted, exasperation that Meredith believed held fondness, to total dismissal. "What have I told you about sharing your imaginings?"
That presenting them as facts is lying.
"I'm not ly—!"
"Miss Grey—"
Mom whirled on the woman to deliver a spiel Meredith had heard a thousand times. She took advantage of Mom's distraction to key in the security code again.
"—and even were I not a doctor, hasn't Gloria Steinem made it clear enough—"
"You think Gloria Steinem is a loudmouth, because you're a hypocrite," Meredith interrupted. Another "Miss Grey" got Mom to flare her nostrils. Meredith closed her eyes for a second. She missed the days where Christmas highlighted her mom's failures, not her own. She opened them to the present, and manhandled Mom to the door.
She fought. Of course she did. "Get off me! What are you doing?"
"You need to go to the hospital, right?" Meredith grunted, winded from an elbow to the gut.
"Oh. Oh, yes, of course," Mom had obviously already forgotten her initial delusion. She started straightening the hem of her sweater, and changing her posture. Meredith vaguely remembered the routine from Mom's early days trying to prove herself equal to the men. She hadn't done it where Meredith could see in twenty years.
"Miss Grey—?"
"I got her!" Meredith snapped, at the same time as Mom told the woman to go take someone's vitals if she had time to butt into other people's business.
Mom yelling at someone she believed to be a nurse wasn't good. Resident, yes. Nurse, no. She always said to be nice to nurses; not for any feminist, altruistic reason, but because they were a surgeons most important longterm asset.
"Here." Meredith yanked the door open, letting the cold blast them both. It was rainy, the snow piles showing a week's worth of dirt and slush. The limited light had triggered the sensors on the lights the city strung up in the trees lining the city's sidewalks.
"Oh," Mom murmured. "It's Christmas?"
"Eve." Meredith confirmed, gently tugging her out of the doorway.
"What could Harper have been thinking? Everyone knows I take Christmas off."
That's right, Mom." She shut the door and put the code in again. "You'll have to remind him on the twenty-sixth."
"I certainly will."
"Did something happen, sugar?" Lila cut in. "You were meant to be here hours ago." She'd put Meredith's keys into the bowl, which meant leaving the rest was her drawing lines. She needn't have bothered. The next time Meredith was home for any length of time, she'd be matched, and they'd be moving on.
"You were free to go at noon. I told you that."
"I wasn't going to leave her…this way."
"Who's this?" Mom said, this time sounding like she'd run into someone she knew from the hospital on the street and couldn't make the contextual leap. "Where's Rachel?" She turned to Meredith, and blinked, not unseeing, but confused. Seeing Mom anything other than fully confident brought back memories that she didn't want to face, while Mom didn't have a choice.
Asking about Rachel meant she'd expected to see Auntie at her side, but in a Dartmouth hoodie and ratty jeans, Meredith didn't resemble her mom's older sister at all. More and more Mom wasn't fazed by those tells, and Meredith took that she was as a good sign.
"Go sit down, Ellis," she said, trying to wield the authority Auntie had claimed, simply by nature of being older.
"I know, I know." Mom put up her hands, but followed the direction. "Enjoy your time off; you get so little of it. As though I don't hear what you're really saying."
Meredith watched her leave the foyer and turn into the living room. Their floorplan was nothing like the tiny apartment Auntie had had in Everrett, and if they'd been there, the halls would've been fully decked. How did her brain navigate one while seeing the other?
"They don't recommend that, you know. Confronting someone who's time-shifting."
"They don't recommend leaving seven-year-olds home alone, even if they're asleep, and you're sure you'll be up when it's time to walk to the bus stop. She owes me a few 'not recommendeds'"
She'd crouched to put her backpack on again, and she closed her eyes, inhaling shakily through her nose. Twenty years. The memory of that terror should not have put her closer to puking hash browns onto this woman's hiking boots. Mom had left a note to serve the same purpose as the current alarm system, and it was far from the last time Meredith and her Cabbage Patch doll would spend a night curled on a single cushion of the couch—Granted, she'd sleep through most of them—but unlike time times she'd gotten lost, Mom hadn't mirrored her terror at all. It was the opposite of what they'd said in that child psych class she'd found time for in college—there'd have been more if that prof wasn't a freaking morning person—about how a parent's upset over a fall could make it worse for the kid. If Mom was afraid, Meredith could be, too.
That didn't make it easier to see the terror of confusion on her face. Whatever she said to Lila, being the one to cause it made her feel like a total bitch. Sometimes, she didn't know what else to do. She didn't think you were supposed to understand your mom like that until you had a kid.
Dragging herself to her feet, she cursed at the weight of the textbooks inside. "I apologize for holding you for so long, Lila," she said. The older woman's lip twisted. Would you have preferred Miss? "I'm sure you have somewhere better to be than listening to my mother spew vitriol on Christmas, and she hasn't done much else for…most of her life, actually."
"She's reacting to the stress," said the woman in the holiday-themed scrubs. "She thought you might've run into ice on the roads."
"She's one to talk," Meredith scoffed, kicking her suitcase over. "They'd have been justified in taking her license away long before she had symptoms, and she lied to me when they did it. She tell you that?"
"It's in the care notes. I'd prefer not to disclose what I speak to clients about. It helps them trust me."
"She bitch about her sad-sack of a daughter more than she calls you a controlling bitch, or is it a toss-up?" Those were not the words of a mature fourth-year med student ready to start her shift as Mom's warden. If she was sufficiently responsible, or had the spine to stand up to her mother, she'd be at one of the facilities that could offer her on-site therapy, and socialization. It'd be better once they where somewhere that the neurologists had no reason to recognize her name—in the Greater Boston Area, and probably the whole Eastern Seaboard, the surgeons made her name known—for good or ill. Until then, she could justify the small deceptions to keep Mom from realizing that her "housekeepers" worked on shifts subsidized by MassHealth.
"She's hardly responsible—"
"She never is. Like I said, I'm sorry. Is there something you need signed?"
"No, no, that's taken care of." Lila walked to the hall tree like she was slogging through the snow outside, and Meredith was sure she was missing something. "Everything on your list is in the freezer to be reheated. The notes from Mrs. Mendleson were very helpful, although, I don't think I was their target audience."
Meredith bit her lip. She'd wanted to bring Ms. Mendleson back on after moving Mom back from New York, but the first time she'd had to hold her back from storming down the sidewalk without shoes, she'd realized that the actual housekeeper, who'd only been coming in weekly when Mom started renting the place out, wasn't the answer. The binder in the kitchen was the one she'd taken to Dartmouth as a freshman. Until a couple of months ago, Mom had been able to follow the recipes.
"Thank you," she offered. "I know anything more than light meals for the two of you is out of your purview, but I burned or undercooked everything last year…and the year before…and since we'll probably be moving, I thought it'd be a bonus to…." Crap. Between paying for gas, her version of staples that would never bave been on Ms. Mendleson's list, and the giftcards for her classmates, she had maybe twenty bucks to her name, and no idea where Mom would've hidden her checkbook this time. Making her put Meredith as joint on her account was on her to-do list for this week; there'd been too many times where she'd said she paid the kid who shoveled the walk, or the power bill, and someone else had to rat her out. Once that happened, she'd wire Lila a bonus.
Desperately, she nabbed one of the bottles from the grocery bag. It could be replaced. She'd avoided the nearest liquor store since it'd bought out her favorite Italian place, but hey, it was still locally owned!
"For your trouble," she said, holding out the brandy.
"Oh, I can't."
"Seriously, you're not—"
"No, I can't. My husband's been in recovery since '87. Our Christmases are dry no matter what the weather does." She laughed midway through the sentence, the way you did when you'd delivered the line so many times you barely knew what it meant.
"Do you have kids?"
"We weren't blessed with children, no," she said, wrapping a candy cane striped scarf around her neck. "We have godkids back in Hot Springs. We'll see them next year. Maybe the next."
"Isn't that where Clinton…?" The woman's face already reminded her of a bulldog, and at the allusion to the former president something dark appeared in her eyes. Meredith's gut lurched again. Either Mom was too far gone to care about her daytime aide's politics, or she didn't want to bother Meredith. Both possibilities were unsettling. "So, what's the point?" she pivoted. "No kids, no booze?"
"The point is spending time with each other while we can. Certainly you understand that, sugar?" Meredith shrugged. She doubted this woman had ever thought that going home for the holiday was just what you did. "And we volunteer over at the Salvation Army in Cambridge. You've never seen more bright and shining faces than those boys and girls. If your mom's in a good mood, you should come down."
Meredith put the bottle behind her back to hide her white knuckles. "Has she been in a good mood, lately?"
"Oh, you know." Lila's hat had elf ears on it. Of course it did. It made the thin veneer of her smile all the more obvious. "I get frustrated if I can't find my eyeglasses. I can't imagine losing my identity."
Meredith put her hand down on the marble top of the hall table. Every time she thought she'd adjusted to this, an MRI tech, or a caseworker who'd never seen Mom in a mood other than infuriated or frighteningly docile said something like that.
Lila's sympathetic expression was turned on her, and before Meredith could object, she'd been pulled into a hug. It didn't matter that she went stiff, the woman hung on, and then pulled a looped piece of hair out of the neck of Meredith's hoodie.
She reminded Meredith so much of Auntie that she wondered if she was on her way to becoming the youngest Alzheimer's patient on record. Mom's sister had died in Meredith's sophomore year of college, and for the past year or so she'd suspected she'd been prescient. She'd bent over backward to help whenever Mom could bring herself to ask, it made sense that she'd had enough. That didn't mean Meredith didn't resent taking over, or that she didn't resent this woman who didn't take her client's words personally, because she could pretend they were symptoms. Meredith knew better. The plaque in Mom's brain hadn't gotten to the base of her personality, yet. It'd destroyed her façade.
"It really would do you both good to come by tomorrow," Lila wheedled. "Seeing those bright little faces getting their presents is the kind of medicine only God can give."
"Nothing happened to me on the road. I overslept this morning, because I had a shift last night," Meredith snapped. "I'm doing my oncology rotation. I saw some very bright little faces. Their dad got the best medicine we can give, but God must've run out of his. One of the kids, the five year old? He's heard that dumb song on the radio so many times, he asked his papa if they should've bought Daddy Christmas shoes instead of chemo."
Lila's eyes were wide, and Meredith could've sworn she could see her words being converted into a math problem. "Two dads," she confirmed. "Three kids. Both dads are in finance. Financially, they'll be okay. But if they weren't? If they applied for your holiday relief program, would their application be considered?"
Lila's patience seemed to have reached its limit. "I'm a volunteer. That's a decision the front office..."
In Meredith's head, whatever else she said was drowned out by the chants she'd learned at her first protests. Just because she'd spent the past decade running from her future, and helping Mom hide from her past, didn't mean the world had changed that much. Silence might not be death directly, but it was culpability.
"I'm sure your husband is waiting for you," she said, jabbing her birthday into the keypad hard enough that she felt the corners jabbing into her fingers. "Do you need a hand hailing a cab?"
"I'll manage. You two have a blessed holiday."
"Right back at you," Meredith muttered, thumping her head against the closed door. It was Saturday. What were the chances she could get the agency to hook her up with a new round of interviewees before she was expected back on the second, and that they wouldn't be twenty-three year olds more likely to be called "Meredith" than she was?
She got her boots off and lugged the bag of egg nog ingredients and cookie dough she wouldn't bother baking into the kitchen, and noticed the basket of medications next to Mom's pill organizer. She didn't think she'd missed any changes, but she should probably double-check the contraindications before offering her a holiday cocktail. She grabbed the small spiral notebook tucked in behind the vials and went into the living room.
Mom was staring blankly at the TV. Meredith hoisted herself up over the back of the couch.
"Meredith Grey! What are you doing?" Mom snapped before her body hit the cushion.
Meredith sucked the corner of her lip. She'd never thought she'd be happy to hear that tone. "Treating the furniture like gymnastics equipment. It's going to collapse, I'm going to break my spine, and…and…." She couldn't make herself say the rest, and for once she wasn't chastised for stammering. And see if you'll be there to wipe my ass for me.
She flipped through the notebook to the last entry she'd made, on a twelve-hour visit in October. The unfamiliar handwriting below it blurred, and she let the notebook fall onto her lap, resting her forehead on her fist. The TV was tuned to a Christmas movie marathon.
"What kind of cancer?"
"Oh, um…." She hated that it took her a moment to adjust to the shift to lucidity. She dreaded the day when Mom would be gone more than she was there, even if being here meant berating Meredith more, not less. She almost never engaged her about her studies, except to remind her that she couldn't do her residency east of Kansas. Meredith didn't blame her. It must burn to watch her flop of a kid starting out when she hadn't been ready to finish. Still, she hated that the novelty made her sound so clueless. Twelve hours ago, she'd been able to recite the details of Adam Thewlis's chart, and it was taking her almost full minute to come up with "Glioblastoma multiforme."
"There wasn't any hope, then."
"That's not entirely true. Y-Yeah, it has a one-percent survival rate, and…but it's the most common brain tumor in adult, so being…being lethal in most cases…statistically, there's a chance. It's getting better. They're doing fluorescence-guided resections, and advances in molecular gene—"
"I wouldn't know anything about advancements."
Meredith drew her knees up to her chest. She was almost sure the visiting neurosurgeon who'd given that lecture had cited a paper from the late nineties, but she could be wrong. And if she wasn't, Mom had had enough of her own work to worry about then. She didn't have time to read journals in other fields, even without Meredith around to distract her.
Meredith returned her focus to the movie. "We saw this. The year I was ten."
"That's right. I'm afraid I couldn't come up with a better plan this year. I suppose I should get used to repetition."
Meredith choked, and pressed her hand to her mouth.
"I meant that to be funny," Mom assured her, just when she thought her rib-cage might burst.
"Lila wouldn't approve," she gasped, dragging her sleeve across her face.
"I find that her type pretend the reaper will never cough in their direction. Personally, I think ours is the healthier way."
"Me, too," Meredith said, as pleased with the "ours" as she would've been at ten.
Scrooged was followed by It's a Wonderful Life. Meredith got up to make sandwiches, one eye on her mother, who was uncharacteristically fixed on the TV. She'd never realized how many Christmas movies were about workaholics being shown the error of their ways. Was it too late to put on her old VHS of Muppet holiday specials?
This time, her mother looked up when she returned, "I never realized—" she started, and Meredith adjusted her grip on the plate before they slipped. "—how much Christmas relies on delusion. Religion, obviously, but also individually. We all pretend that one day, one epiphany, one moment can change our lives."
"Can't it? If a new surgical technique works, doesn't it change the lives of the patient, the surgeon, and future patients?"
"Psh. Didn't I teach you better than to parrot the Great Man theory?"
"What? I-I didn't—"
"No discovery is made in a second, Meredith. It takes work. Hard, unforgiving, work. Sacrifice of a kind that rarely allows for compromise. Do you truly think you can handle that?"
She could only gape. Did she truly have no idea? How many times in the past three years had she missed out because she had to do something for her mother? She'd passed up opportunities because they would put her too close to someone who might start asking too many questions. Even accepting her place at Geisel, rather than casting a wider net once she knew she was worthy had been a result of her mother reeling her back in.
As usual, Mom took her silence as proof that she was right. it would've been the same if she'd argued.
Late that night, she adjusted the volume on the side of the alarm before keying in the code. Mom had only gone to bed half an hour ago, and she didn't know how quickly the meds she took at night worked in combination. She'd taken the pharmacopeia off of the bookshelf, but that had been before dinner.
She'd made a salad to go with the pizza she ordered, and almost been ready to declare Christmas Eve a success when Mom had said, "You knew what you were talking about this afternoon."
The tomato Meredith had been stabbing had splattered. "Y-Yeah, I told you, the effect of radiation on—"
"About the gays, not the cancer."
People called this woman elegant. The contradiction almost made Meredith crack up, but that wasn't actually what was causing the hysteria crawling under her skin. "I…. Um…."
Did she know? Had she known the whole time? About Sadie? Or was it the time she'd come in to find Rain in Meredith's bed, and not indicated that she knew neither of them were clothed? Was it actually not too late for her mother to know her? She'd hoped that once she was in med school, she wouldn't just say really, Meredith, I knew you couldn't make up your mind, but this is beyond—She'd hoped, but she'd dreaded the idea that she might, or that she wouldn't, but then when she forgot, and Meredith told her again—If she didn't know? If Mom looked at her like she didn't recognize her, without the blankness that Alzheimer's brought to her eyes? Could she live through that? Really, Meredith, must you be so dramatic?
"I, uh…Tucker. You remember…?"
"The boy who spent a winter break eating my groceries?"
"Your…? Yeah. He did a master's thesis on why LGBTQ people tend to end up living in poverty, and conservatism in supposed charities was a big part of it. He gets especially riled up about the 'bell-ringers' because they're so…everywhere, and they started out as a radical group in England. All about helping the marginalized, combatting phossy jaw…. Apparently, there it's still pretty liberal…."
Her mother had kept staring, and her fingers had started to ache from holding onto her fork to keep herself from continuing to babble. Finally, she'd pursed her lips on the rim of her water glass. "I see. As usual, you are most passionate while quoting someone else's thoughts."
It'd been a Christmas miracle that Meredith had had the willpower left to keep from throwing the fork. She'd wanted to shove away from the table and storm off to her room, but it would've been too much of a tell. She could only sit listening to her blood pound and clean up the kitchen using years of practice in making the dishes clatter without smashing them.
She'd opened the front door intending to cover the two blocks to the Torchlight Tavern. She was sure that the heat burning her from the inside wouldn't die out until she'd poured fuel onto it and let herself explode.
She hadn't counted on the silence of the street. It was strange how much a neighborhood designed to look like nothing had been retouched in centuries could change, but over the past five years the houses that weren't already partitioned had been made into apartments, and of those most of the first and garden floors had been rented to businesses that shut at the time the gas-lit streetlights went on.
It was nothing like it had been when she was a kid. Then the trees had only been the start. Two-thirds of the buildings on their block would've been hung with lights of all kinds, from thin strings of icicles to oversized-flashing bulbs. Assuming Santa's Workshop was true to theme, and not a model of Wonka-esque colonial enslavement of North Pole natives, Meredith had doubted it looked more Christmasy. She felt like a version of Scrooge who'd woken up to find he had missed Christmas Day, and she stopped for long enough to feel the cold. Rather than simply going back inside, she tromped over to her car to get the duffel bag that held the gifts she'd picked out for her mother. That ember of hope should've been put out with her fury. For years, she'd watched her careful choices be dismissed by a woman who bought souvenirs because they were investments.
Her first year back in school, she'd special-ordered a blanket with an aerial view of Geisel. Mom was always saying she should've let the study go rather than waste her memories on another Minnesota winter. She'd taken it out of the bag, and her face had twisted into a sneer before she'd demanded to know if it was Meredith's idea of a joke. Now, three years in to watching her be tossed back and forth in time, Meredith could see where she'd been coming from. To believe she'd use that pain as a weapon, her mother must've thought she was colder than Rochester had ever been. She wouldn't be impressed by anything that could be found on Main Street in Hanover, but her reaction wouldn't send Meredith into a tailspin, either. She couldn't afford that. Not with two residency interviews to go.
The days of using Mom's spot at MGH for covered parking were over. She'd doubted anyone would've noticed a car that she'd owned for six months before it sat in a garage in Rochester the majority of the time, but Mom was insistent. Even if it made sense that Meredith would park there a few days a year, as opposed to finding street parking on a block where even in Boston the households often had two vehicles, and most of the homes had been split into apartments. She'd lucked out today—okay, she'd pulled into an alley with her hazards on until she saw headlights—and squeezed in parallel to the house next door. Its lack of decorations had been the most jarring.
Rather than sticking her key into lock, she hoisted herself onto the trunk. Cold bit through her jeans. It was nothing like the years research had forced Mom to stay close to the Clinic—a crime when there could've been another year at the Plaza—but it made her fear that she'd dreamed up the warmth of European beaches, or Southern beaches, or Californian beaches; any beach with sand, not rocks.
In the second summer after college, she'd spent a week following the Warped Tour with her sophomore roommate Dasha. She'd hooked up with an Australian guy who'd been evangelical about surfing, and Something Corporate, who he'd seen play in Ventura. "Those blokes will be main-staging here soon enough.
She'd teased him about how fitting the band's name would be for the event—She couldn't say for sure that it was the blatant capitalism of the festival that bothered her as much as how California stoners had token over a scene she used to associate with Seattle.—Gavin had had the decency to keep his naturally blond hair, which was more than she could claim, and he'd held his ground. Unfortunately, when he'd tried to play one of their songs by ear on someone's keyboard, he'd fallen back on "Jingle Bells." The festival circuit could be like a hiking trail, where a "trail-name" followed you, and stuck faster than your government name. Not wanting to show up to see his idols at Warped 2002—or 2004, these dudes were all supposed to be slackers, right?—and have someone greet him by yelling "Jingle Balls" or worse, he'd pivoted impressively and begun teaching everyone in the motel parking lot Australian Christmas carols. Meredith had been impressed by his quick thinking, his accent, and the mess of curls that defied the time he'd obviously spent on the waves. She'd found the idea of a hot winter the most alluring. It seemed perfect for her; an embodiment of one of her most fundamental contradictions: that the heat of the sun was sometimes all that could cool her down.
Later, in the back of a van with a moonroof open to the stars, she'd prodded him into elaborating. He'd told her about caroling wearing an Akubra with lights around the brim, and made a dumb joke about sand-globes with surfing Santas. "We got your white Christmases, don't we? And the ocean right beside. My dad's family's always left a beer out for Father Christmas. Got a rough gig, he deserves a cold brew!"
He'd tried to call her "Candy Cane" after discovering the white stripes her bra and tank-top had blocked from the sun, but it didn't stick. Queer solidarity and music-appreciation kept her from flat-out hating Billie Joe Armstrong, but no one who'd seen her glaring at floppy-haired teenagers while muttering about Green Day wannabes would think of her as her sweet.
Last summer, her mother had still been trying to draft another book, and not even the best headphones could block out the reverberations of constant door slamming. They had A/C, a luxury that made it insane to consider lugging her stuff over to the BPL. The one time she had, she thought she'd recognized some of the grad students from summers in the last millennium. The idea that she might become a doctor before they got their doctorates had made it even harder. She'd fallen back into the habit of making her escape by night, buying overpriced tickets from scalpers, and eventually finding herself in the Fleetboston Pavilion searching for an Aussie who'd answer to "Jingle Balls" in a crowd that held every sun-bleached surfer in Massachusetts.
Other than admitting he'd been right about Andrew MacMahon, she had no idea what she'd have done if she'd found him, or if he'd recognize her with a paid-for haircut and minimal makeup. Every break she ran into someone who she'd have sworn she desperately wanted to see, and the reunion was far more awkward than talking to a stranger.
She'd stopped at the bar two blocks from home, but she hadn't been able to get blotto enough to blot out the fantasy of convincing him to take her home with him for the holidays, and then let her loose in the wild, like an invasive species. It'd been as warped as the tour where they'd met—Christmas in summer didn't mean Christmas in July.
It still seemed like a way to escape the stifling air of everything from department Christmas parties to the moment today where Mom had said, "Well, I don't miss fighting over he house, that's for sure." That was the first time she'd mentioned her sister while lucid. Then, when Meredith had asked if there was a hospital in Tacoma that wouldn't be too far from the old house to put on her match list, she'd snapped, "Why should that matter? Sell the place, put me in a home, and be done with it! You're going to do it anyway."
"Only because you're so paranoid that you wouldn't let me bring anyone in if I got a background check and a gag order!"
"Yes, and I suppose the home health agency you use to engage the personal care attendants lets you demand NDAs?" Ï
In the increasingly biting cold, Meredith's ears burned as hot as they had in the moment. Mom had probably known from the day the arrangement started, almost a year ago. It'd been beyond anyone's expectations that she'd been able to function on her own for as long as she had, and Meredith was sure she'd been the one being lied to about more than the Driving Debacle of 2004.
Instead of logically presenting any of that, she'd said, "Good job. You've held on to more deductive reasoning than they're crediting you with."
Basically, she deserved to have her ass frozen to the trunk of the car she'd confiscated. If she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend the traffic sounded like the crash of waves. Maybe in a few years they—They? What was she thinking? Her fantasy-Australia featured her returning from the bush at the sound of carols, and there was no way Jingle Gavin would be waiting for her. She'd only be free to travel when the holiday found her mom's windows as empty as the ones in the house next door—Oh, she knew Travis had sold it to one of the holding groups that rented to students; she was being poetically pathetic—and the thought made her want to buy run inside and hold a mirror to her mother's mouth. The compact she'd kept in the loose baseboard probably hadn't been moved.
She hadn't gotten close enough to anyone at school to buy them more than cards that could be used for the place, drink, or snack that she thought they liked, but also for something else in case she got it wrong. The few people she'd kept up with from other places and years were succeeding at school, or in jobs, or with families. Her mother was as much all she had as the reverse, and in a year, or two, or five, she'd would leave her as alone as she'd wanted to decades ago. She didn't feel any more ready now than she'd been then.