"I. Hate. This. Part," Ellis whined, jumping on the foot of the bed in time with her complaints.
"Don't, they'll go longer," Zola advised from the doorway, ten years old and wary of her parents' tricks.
"You're the one who wants a wedding." Bailey added, grabbing Ellis in a bear hug and sitting down, a move that incited Dante to investigate. For a moment, they were just a wiggling tangle of limbs in Christmas pajamas, and a golden-mutt doing his own kissing. "Down! Down, dude! 'Sides, El, They're in love. Most parents maybe just love each other. It's kinda cool."
"Oh, hear that, we're kinda cool," Derek murmured.
Meredith started to answer, but a small hand was slapped (mostly) over her mouth. "No more," Ellis declared. "Time for Kids-mas."
Bailey had attempted a similar maneuver on his dad. His mom was his rock-climbing buddy, but at fifty-three, Derek hadn't started skipping arm day, yet. He'd been caught and was giggling and (sort of) squirming as he got the kisses the boy who invented Kiss-mas deserved.
Meredith kissed Ellis's palm and then stood up with the little girl on her hip. She couldn't help being glad that her youngest was also her littlest. She had carried Zola past the point where she was too big for it, but even if Ellie didn't stay as small as Meredith had been—she wondered, sometimes, if she'd truly managed to make herself small—she had a little while.
Derek could still carry B.B., but while she walked around to them, he swung around to ride piggyback. "Zola G.?"
"I know." Zola dragged herself away from the door. "Merry Christmas, Daddy."
"She thought she could down there first," Ellis informed Meredith.
"Nuh-uh," Zola said, with a very uh-huh expression. "I just know better than to rush them."
"We appreciate it," Meredith said. She was better at making sure her sincerity outweighed her amusement than Derek. That'd always been important with Zola, and it wouldn't change any time soon.
"What about her?" Ellis asked, accepting her sister's kiss. Meredith put a hand on Zola's back as she replied. She thought Ellis's suspicions were cute, but she understood why Zola was less charmed.
"Did you go to all the aunts?"
"Yeah."
"What'd our visitors say?"
"I dunno."
"You don't?"
"No, no, 'cause I didn't talk, Zoolie did."
Meredith hoped that nickname never faded from Ellis's vocabulary. It'd appeared right as "Mama" became "Mommy," and "Dada," "Daddy." "Bay" was "Bailey," so of course her Zoo-Zoo could be "Zoolie."
"It's the littlest's job—" Meredith started.
"Only for Aunt Amy," Ellis countered matter-of-factly. "But I did Aunt Maggie, too. She's up doing the waffle mix with Grams. She left me a video on her tablet so I couldn't peek."
"That's pretty cool. So then...?"
"She chickened out," Zola said. "She got all shy."
"I didn't! I was doing manners!"
"Since when? You're being silly, Elle—"
"I'm not silly!"
"Okay." Meredith put her arm around Zola, and kissed the top of her head. "I want everyone to take a breath. Big day, lots of people, so what do we need to be?"
"A team," all three kids said.
Zola leaned around Meredith to give her little sister an apologetic good morning kiss. "They're up," she reported. "Ready to go. Like us," She bounced on the balls of her feet no longer trying for the aloof older sister thing.
Bailey's heels thumped against Derek's sides. "Onward!"
Meredith had given up on looking put together on Christmas morning, but she lagged at the mirror to make sure her hair didn't scream yes, that is still how my husband and I celebrate.
In the mirror, she caught Ellie's impatient pout. Her cuteness was an issue for all but the most seasoned daycare instructor, but today she got to be indulged. "Ellie, do you want some color?"
"'Cause for Christmas? Yes!"
"Does it make you pretty?"
"Um, looking nice can make you feel good, but everyone has pretty. Being pretty on the inside is what's important."
"Z. what's that mean? Pucker for me, E."
Ellis made a kissy face, and Meredith modeled holding her lips to transform the little pink petals of her mouth into red rose petals.
"It means being confident. Feeling good about who you are and what you're capable of."
"You want some?" The bigger girl responded with a nod, and Meredith picked out a different shade of red for her. "Is being pretty on the inside always thinking nice things?"
"No," Ellis drew out the word, shaking her head along with it. "You shouldn't think too many, 'acause it shows on your face, but you gotta be 'sertive."
"Assertive," Zola corrected.
"Just try to be nice and help people, and we don't need anything to make us beautiful. But colors are fun to play with, and make it so you can be seen on a stage. I maybe got making-up colors for kidsmas."
"Let's go find out! Anyone else want color?" she asked.
"Not today," Bailey said.
"You care the most about colors," Ellis accused him. "'Specially matching."
"Yeah, so it's if I do a make-up; I want people to see it. People can ask 'Bailey is that lipstick?' dozens of times, and it's okay, because I like how it looks. I want it to be seen. You want them to see what you're doing. It's different"
Meredith thought it was an astute observation for a seven-year-old. He'd mimicked some pretty detailed tutorials. She knew drag queens who'd done equally complex looks for shows; "Oh, this? It's nothing," they'd say, but the next morning lament, "I spent simply hours on my face, and you know no one noticed it?"
"I put it on my singing lips," Ellis agreed. "On stage the lights might be too bright, and people far away have to see."
Meredith smiled to herself, thinking of what was waiting for them in the living room.
"Okay," she said. "Who do I have?"
"Momma!" Zola protested. Meredith raised an eyebrow. "A lion." Not quite the enthusiasm with which she used to fluff up her hair and growl, but while Rawr wasn't in her hand, he was on her bed.
"A tiger!" Bailey followed, taking Tiggy out from under his arm. "I knew you'd do this."
"Good thinking," Derek said, putting him down behind Zola. Bailey nodded, satisfied that no one in his family would tease him. She hated that he even had the thought.
She could feel anticipation building in Ellis's body, and when she turned to her, she thrust Hop, the stuffy she'd been destined for since before she'd been a concept, into the air while Meredith lowered her to the floor. "A bear!"
"All mine!" Meredith finished, kissing each of them on the head. "In line."
It was a chant leftover from the days when Zola and B.B. were little, and Ellis was littler. It never failed to get them to line up, or hold hands, whether or not their lovies were with them. On leaving the master bedroom, the younger two ran to put them back in the places of honor where they'd meet their new toys that afternoon.
Downstairs, they found the door leading to the basement stairs open, voices drifted up to them. "I'll get them," Zola said, already halfway down to the basement
Ellis hurried after. "Wait for me!"
"She's jealous," Bailey commented. "She hardly remembers."
"It's a little bit hero-worship, too," Amelia added, joining their group. "She's fascinated by Sofia, but she doesn't want to make it too obvious, or her Zoolie might feel bad."
"Not that you have experience to speak from," Derek said.
"Eh. I got along better with Mark, maybe, but you were my favorite person." Amelia smiled and touched Derek's shoulder as she drifted past.
"Baby hormones," Meredith suggested.
B.B. followed up with, "Or she got you a really bad present," and beamed when both of his parents laughed.
Their guests appeared at the base of the stairs. Even though the girls video-chatted enough that she'd followed the teeth loosening and dropping, and been asked for her opinion on the new glasses, it was a little jarring to be faced with a physical, grown-up Sofia. Callie too, even though the under-cut and their pronouns felt like natural evolutions. Strangest, was what should've been the easiest part to settle back into: having them appear hand-in-hand with Arizona.
They'd been making their way back to each other over the past year and a half, and it felt more natural to consider them as an item, but the deepening of Meredith's friendship with Callie had coincided with her separation from Arizona. The four of them hadn't done the couples-friends thing. There'd been play-dates before the plane crash, and before that they'd hung out with Callie and Mark. They'd become part of something with Arizona in the woods, and that was different from fighting for the hospital with Callie. And on, and on. She'd started to think she'd gotten used to them being Callie and Arizona not Callie-and-Arizona, but it was possible that she'd never made the initial shift.
"Okay. Are Grams and Aunt Maggie ready?" Derek called.
"Absolutely!"
Wrapped gifts encircled the tree in two layers; the family gifts surrounding the presents for their brunch guests. Bailey had asked to help her arrange them when she borrowed his colored pencils to loosely plan the stacks—truly a matter of space this year—and he'd made them Pinterest-worthy.
Carolyn was sitting on one end of the sectional, and Zola embraced her before sliding onto her section of the floor as though it was second base. If she hadn't had to change direction at that spot, she might not have thought to do so, but she created a trend, all four kids greeting their grandmother before diving into their hauls.
In spite of having joined the non-believers, Sofia got as many Santa presents as any little Shepherd, so Meredith had wrapped the for-the-family gifts and used her kids' new scooters as dividers, putting Ellis's presents closest to the fireplace, then Bailey's, and Zola's next to Sofia's. Optimally, they would've been in quadrants, so that the three siblings could show each other their gifts, but there was no way to do that without boxing someone in between the tree and the fireplace.
Zola was the first to squeal, and Maggie put her hand on Meredith's shoulder once she'd taken the coffee her sister offered. "Told you," she murmured.
"Yeah, yeah."
Up until last night, Meredith had been considering putting the costume under the tree. It wouldn't have been a question, normally. Like Ellis wasn't quite five, yet, Zola was barelyten. But on her birthday, and at the school festival, Meredith had seen Zola lean into that second digit. It'd happened earlier this morning, but the magic of Christmas had pulled back.
Like the rest of the known world, Zola loved Into the Spiderverse, but she hadn't taken to ever either her brother's Marvel, or her aunt's DC superheroes. On a library trip, while Derek oversaw Ellis giggling just a little louder than the other story-hour listeners at This Book is Gray, Meredith provided home-base for the other two.
That day, Zola hadn't been long recovered from her surgery, and being able to put distance between her and her parents had her darting back and forth to the table where Meredith was sitting. She'd paused to go through her finds when her brother had come rocketing over from the graphic novels.
"Zoie, look-it!" He gasped, plunking a stack of Marvel trades down in front of her. "She's you! She's nine, in fourth grade, she's like a super-STEM genius, she engineers stuff! Her brain is different, and look she even does her hair in bunches!"
"Momma!" Zola squealed a second later, pointing at a frame. "She roller-skates."
They'd just decided to book the roller-rink for her tenth birthday party.
She'd read the trades over four times before her own copies came. Meanwhile, Meredith had discovered that the title's run was finished, and there was absolutely no related merchandise. Luckily, Meredith had years of experience with searching out quality superhero toys; Bailey had gone directly from P.J. Masks to The Avengers. She hadn't sewn the costumes hanging in the dress-up wardrobe, but someone had. Not everything, she wasn't totally nuts, but she was practical:
If your child only wore a Halloween costume once, you bought it at Spirit Halloween.
If you had three children, who all liked playing dress-up, you waited for Emerald City Comic-Con and asked your patient about their tailor—Quinn made their own, in fact had a degree in costuming and worked for the Book-it Reparatory Theater. The connections Meredith's mother made through her patients hadn't been this interesting, and the tickets she was sent definitely hadn't been as good—and when you called them a few years later with a commission, they said, "Oh, yeah, Moon Girl's great! Do you want a doll-sized costume, too?"
It might be the last year she said yes to that, Meredith thought, watching Zola discover that she could dress her "Truly Me" doll, Robin—after Sofia, in true Shepherd fashion—as Luna Lafayette or her alter-ego Moon Girl. She picked up the cloth dinosaur mask beside it, confused, and then burst out laughing. "It's for Dante! Isn't it, Momma? Dante can be Devil Dinosaur!"
Maggie snorted into her coffee. "That' of to scale? With the doll."
"Nope, but I draw the line far, far before eight-foot dinosaur toys," Meredith said. "Someone—" She pointed at Bailey. "—made a figurine. Don't think I'd let it ride on Dante's head, though," she added, petting the dog, who was wedging himself between hers and Derek's legs to escape Zola's effort to wrestle him into the mask. She gave in to sort through the doll clothes and accessories that had been on her list, comparing notes with Sofia.
Zola had received her Bitty Baby doll and her baby sister within days of each other, and she'd been devoted to both of them. That had stoked her interest in dolls, generally, and Meredith had started checking the books that went with the Historical American Girl dolls out from the library. They'd gone to the store, looked at all the lines. She'd gotten Robin first, and they'd found someone to "re-wig" her to change her hair texture.
Then, not long after Meredith had won the Harper Avery, they'd been heading home from soccer, with Robin also in her soccer jersey, and Zola had said, "If I want one of the regular American Girl dolls—the history ones, can that be my Santa present?"
That she was planning so far ahead, and not trying to wheedle getting it for her birthday, was expected from Zola. The uncertain note in her voice wasn't.
"If that's what you want. Does Robin need a friend?"
"Mom. I know dolls are just dolls. And I still play with Joanne!"
Meredith had smiled. When they'd asked Zola about putting a doll structure she and Ellis could both use in the playroom, she'd first confirmed she could keep Robin's bed in her room, and then asked if it could have an operating room. Meredith had won five bucks; Derek said she rigged the bet by saying "structure" not "house."
"So, which one?" Meredith had asked.
When Zola had said "Julie," the blonde Title IX campaigner from seventies San Francisco, it hadn't been a total shock. The new Black doll didn't have much else in common with Zola. She had dolls who looked like her. It'd be nice if the one she wanted the most did, too, but she didn't, and your friends don't have to look like you. Your family didn't. She could've just gotten another doll and pretended, but a Black girl would've had a different experience, and besides, she didn't want to do that. All of those arguments were delivered by her daughter in a rush that reminded Meredith so much of herself that it was eerie.
"Sounds like you've thought about this a lot."
"She's most who I wanna be. Not because she looks like anyone. But…she does remind me of you, and of Grandma Ellis, and…and that's part of me, too, right?"
"Absolutely," Meredith said. "You already know all the things you'll say if someone asks a question. You're making an informed choice, but also, if it feels right for you, that's what matters."
"Because I felt right for you and Dad? And you chose me?"
"Nah, you chose us. You're the one with the good choosing instincts, love-bug. I think Julie and Robin will be great sisters."
"Yeah. Me too."
The last time they'd gone by the American Girl store, Ellis had declared that the Bitty Baby "with Sofia's skin" was cutest. "And I could be her 'dopted mommy."
There were kinks to work out with her reasoning, but those could wait. The important part was Zola beaming at her little sister.
Robin and Julie did seem to get along; they often had matching clip-in streaks in their hair, and were dressed up like fairy surgeons.
Zola had nominally learned to make their clothes herself with a sewing machine that'd been under the tree two years ago, along with lessons from Miranda while she'd been recovering from her heart attack. She'd managed to learn enough to get a new badge in Brownies, but mostly she'd been fascinated by the mechanism. Sewing had become more of a "people named Bailey" thing. He liked drawing something, and then "making it into a real thing." Meanwhile, Zola problem-solved by learning to mark favorites on Meredith's Etsy app.
Moon Girl was a hacker, as well as an engineer. There was a Macbook was under the tree; Zola's "growing up gift." They'd redone her room for her tenth birthday, and Meredith had assumed the desk would lead to "computer" being on her Christmas list. According to Amelia, apparently Meredith had once said that would come "around junior high," and that'd stuck. Meredith didn't want Zola to be as uncritically attached to things "my mother used to say" as she was, but she appreciated knowing that her daughter listened to her so closely.
"We could still give her a suture kit," Derek had said the night they'd ordered the laptop. "It's not pushing her."
"It is, a little. I was starting junior high the next year, and Mom said everything I did should be with the goal of succeeding in medicine. Turns out, I loved suturing. If it doesn't interest Zo, or doesn't come easily, it could make her think she's not surgeon material. But if she continues this way, and you and Callie start talking about engineering the sensors…. She's been into the medical part of surgery before, and I think she will be again. If I'm wrong? If she keeps going with coding and building, and then thinks back to the Christmas she was ten and got a suture kit out of nowhere? It's the one thing my mother got right, but for Zola we'd be getting it wrong."
Most of her other presents were either going to keep her from taking the laptop apart or inspire her to do it. She was ready for it. Hand-writing stories and designing projects on the iPad weren't enough. When she'd started dismantling things like camping flashlights and the baby monitor, Meredith had assumed that was just the next step if your first doll was also a puzzle. She'd done the same thing. But Zola surpassed her when she'd wired the doll-structure with LED lights, without out any of the kits she was surrounded with now—When Meredith was a kid, "Littl' Bits" were anime gnomes; whereas the littlebits kit promised to teach her ten-year-old to build electronics—One of the devices they'd given over to her was been Meredith's old Walkman. The latest device with the name, an mp3 player, was in her stocking. Meredith wouldn't lie, she loved the circularity, and unlike the laptop, there weren't any feelings about her girl growing up associated with it. Ellis had an mp3 player, too, albeit a chunkier one. Whether Zola had asked for the hatching Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon because she loved the movie, or because she wanted to see how it worked was debatable. What Meredith could say for sure was that she A. already had a Toothless figurine, and a plushie, and B. had also asked for a build-your-own robotic hedgehog.
"Bay-Bay, I think that telescope is on the wrong side. My theme is Moon Girl!" Zola teased. "But you can have it. You found her for me."
Bailey looked up from the book he'd been flipping through since landing in his quadrant: D. Bailey Shepherd's Extra-Terrestrial Taxonomy.
Since the start of the school year, possibly due to the anticlimactic breach of Area 51, Bailey had been creating aliens. Not only drawing them; modeling them with clay, kinetic sand, and slime, then putting all he knew about anatomy and zoology into giving a backstory to their features. Some had more, home planets and cultures. Some were altered Earth animals, others more cliché with eye-stalks, some stranger. He drew them complete, and in poritions he'd learned from his fascination with medical illustrations going back as far as preschool.
She'd gathered up as many drawings and photos as she could, organized all the information he could give her about each species, and bound it for him. He'd gotten sucked in by that. It took Zola's voice to make him look up, and Meredith was so glad she got to see him see the next gift.
"It's mine! Mommy, it's a Ragoosh!" He threw himself across the sofa to land on her lap, holding the plush she'd had made based on his favorite creation. "Feel how squooshy he is!"
"Pretty cool, huh? And, hey, looks like he's got some little buddies over there."
His eyes went wide as he saw the figurines balanced on the kickstand of his scooter. Those she had actually let her use her 3D printer skills, using the library's machines. She'd looked into getting him one of the simpler models over the telescope, but their school was getting a MakerSpace, and she wanted him to keep going with clay until the tech could handle the more intricate, multicolored, tentacled creations.
From there, his other gifts ranged from a sketchbook to new sculpting supplies to an illustrated monster compendium. He wasn't as into Star Wars as Derek would've liked—His main take away from The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda was the reason an origami kit was stacked with the other additional art supplies—He liked The Mandalorian, but wasn't asking for Baby Yoda yet. She could see the hundred-piece, kid-friendly Lego set he'd gotten leading to the Millennium Falcon, but Derek was impatient as always. He'd wanted to buy the littlebits Droid build kit, in case it got discontinued before Zola got to that level. They had been burned by toys that came with crappy, never updating apps, or irreplaceable parts, but Meredith was sure that someone, somewhere would still produce a droid-building kit within the next few years. Also, she was hoping Zola would go for the synth guitar first. It was cool.
She had bought the small toy claw machine specifically to put figurines of the Toy Story aliens into, and set up Bailey's asked-for Buzz and Rex—"Rex" could be a Derek nickname. Something to keep in mind—on top. He liked the little pieces of Christmases pasts, like the Breyer horses for his stable he'd gotten in the year of PAW Patrol, ambulances, and fire trucks. He'd had Woody since he was two, from the Christmas he'd been into every form of transit except cars. He'd hold a train from Sodor in each hand while riding the rocking horse Carolyn had sent for Zola's first Christmas—FAO Schwartz, or it have had to have been replaced for Ellis, and definitely wouldn't have made it through her riding like it was a bucking bronco, sometimes getting Zola to shake and tip it for her.
"There's a question I've never asked you," Derek had noted once, while they watched them.
"Twenty seconds. From there, I said anyone daring or betting me had to beat that first, and they'd accept the video demonstration of my thigh strength."
"There's video?" Derek's face bad done contortions more complex than any maneuver she'd used to stay on a mechanical bull. "That's impossible. I went through all the..."
Meredith patted his cheek. "I don't keep everything in the shared folder, buckaroo." What she'd held back had been mostly stupid junk like that; her being a drunken daredevil who couldn't see her own luck. Twenty years later, she'd left the sofa to confiscate the jump-rope Ellis had been using to try to lasso Bailey. That had been a behavior they'd needed to discourage if they really were gonna get a dog—Bailey wasn't done with superheroes, either; his stockings held refills for his Spider-man web-shooters, and one of the family gifts was The Art of Into the Spider-Verse, but he hadn't made a shift toward Guardians of the Galaxy. He hadn't shifted toward any other IP; he was making his own.
Wrapped under the tree were riding boots and a helmet; symbols of the upcoming year of riding lessons— "How long 'til you're building a paddock out there?" Callie had asked while Meredith arranged Ellis's My Little Ponies the night before.
She'd shrugged. He might not take to lessons over occasional rides on weekend farm visits; there weren't many boys competing in equestrian sports, but then he didn't have to do that to ride, so…. "We have a dog and three kids. For now, it's enough."
"For now," Callie repeated. Meredith had shrugged again.—The regular equipment they needed for sports and other activities didn't take the place of other presents. Sure, Ellis had tights in her stocking, but she liked wearing her dance clothes home, and she'd run straight through the house to the swing-set. They put tights in every cart at Target.
Her birthday next week would bring the two-wheel bicycle and T-ball bat; the traditional gifts that came with being five. The party was Frozen II-themed, and so the Elsa rain-boots and cuddly Olaf were still hidden. Meredith had built a small castle-esque structure with the new magnatiles that looked like blocks of ice, but it guarded the costume jewelry.
Her Christmas theme was "performance"—Okay, it was "diva," but over Meredith's dead body would she put the baggage of that label onto her confident little girl—Ellis was generally the most like Meredith, and Derek insisted her extremes weren't out-of-Grey-character, but Meredith knew what Shepherd dramatics looked like. He was the king of them, and Amelia was queen, so of course Ellis was a drama princess. She loved moving, music, and being in the spotlight. She could read just well enough that kiddie karaoke would be more fun than frustrating, and Meredith set up the child-sized DJ-equipment thinking specifically of Amelia's reaction to the "noisy" box of instruments five Christmases ago. Those were the hand-me-down toys Ellis had loved the most. She'd also gotten new headphones, Meredith did have a sense of self-preservation. When she'd purchased them, the product image had changed as soon as she'd selected "green," the headphone model switching from a little girl wearing the pink version to a boy. She'd checked the other options, and found that pink, purple, and yellow were for girls; blue, green, and orange for boys.
Meredith had had so many other things to spiral about, but seriously? That was why her kids had puzzles, books, and games that highlighted how much women could do, and didn't pigeonhole boys into monosyllabic meatheads. Their favorite picture books had included Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell, Molly, by Golly!:The Legend of Molly Williams, America's First Female Firefighter, Rachel Carson and Her Book that Changed the World—Ellis's Christmas theme last year had been "Discovery;" lots of map puzzles. Periodic Table Blocks didn't come in pink or blue, and they were still colorful. —and she was pretty sure Ellis would become the kid who finally followed in Derek's footsteps beyond T-ball, thanks to Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings and She Loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story.
She loved a sparkly tutu, and had a rainbow of leotards for both dance and tumbling. She'd just never gravitated to pink. It hadn't been a big deal until her first "Introductory Dance" class. The studio taught "a mix of styles" at her level. They were very insistent that it wasn't exclusively ballet, but whichever style they gravitated toward, the other little girls in her dance class had come in with visions of pink-clad ballerinas in their heads. Meredith couldn't blame them. Although the TV shows they loved were introducing them to other forms of dance, the image dominated. Ellis had picked out the same multi-color, bright leotards that she wore to tumbling, and her style started to influence her cohort.
It became obvious that the instructor would've preferred it the other way around when she'd pulled Derek aside to give him a "heads up" that they "preferred" that girls wear pink for their recital. It'd infuriated Meredith—it wasn't supposed to be a ballet class, but Ellis had been surprisingly unfazed.
"It's like a costume, Momma. I'll be on stage as a ballerina."
At that point, Meredith had almost set out to find her exclusively non-pink ballet-related Christmas gifts, but she'd checked herself. She didn't know if Ellis would continue ballet long-term, if she'd switch exclusively to hip-hop, or if dance would become one of many talents once she discovered musical theater. Right now, she liked doing jetés in the living room, curtsying to anyone who'd watch, Dante included, and had memorized lines of Hamilton. She wasn't a dancer, an actor, or a singer; she was a performer. She was getting costumes—a white Swan Lake dress, a salsa dancing outfit—and costume jewelry. A purple music box with a ballet dancer figurine, a ballet school sticker book, a My First Magic kit and magician's cape, and judging scarves were among the bits and bobs, since Derek hadn't been able to pass on his party trick to the other two, but Meredith had faith in Ellis's sense of rhythm.
Meredith had put the foldable dance floor at the center of Ellis's Santa presents. It doubled as a miniature stage, complete with a curtain, all just big enough for a corner of her room. It was lit with an LED "Disco Light" that could also do stars, or light up with a single color.
Bailey had gotten a book on stop-motion to create films with his guys—Meredith was holding out hope that one of them would fall for a Nightmare Before Christmas; she had ideas forthemed Christmas gifts—along with a camera and tripod. She'd set it up aimed at Ellis's stage, and next to it, on her side of the divide, sat a child's-sized director's chair with her name on the back. A reminder that she could be both the star and the boss.
Meredith had given Zola A Wrinkle in Time for her birthday, and was going to start reading it to B and E once they finished the last How to Train Your Dragon. That book showed the crossover of their themes: scientists' kids on a space adventure. It took until she was testing the voice recorder on Ellis's rough and tumble mp3 player that she'd realized that she'd also been finding ways to give them a voice.
After the Santa gifts were dug through….
After the kids gave Amelia a puzzle called "Wonder Women" featuring famous ladies and thought the bait and switch was the funniest thing ever….
After Sofia took a box taped to a brochure for an apartment complex out of her stocking, and then noticed her moms had the same boxes, and opening them on Callie's count, the same key….
After Meredith found the rereleased SEGA she'd joked about buying for the family instead of the PlayStation 4 they'd finally caved on in hers….
After Miranda gave her a new nameplate….
After brunch was cleared away, and enough toys moved to bedrooms and the playroom that people could mingle….
After all of that, Meredith was up.
Meaning, she retreated to shower. She'd expected Derek to sneak upstairs against all odds. She'd managed it as hostess, but in years that were simpler. Years where this had just been Christmas dinner. Last year, they'd kept things small; skipping brunch, inviting the lonely ones to dinner, but trying not to outshine Jo's New Year's party.
Alex should've been here for this. He'd listened to her rant through the possibilities so often. "We'll look like dumbasses if I lose my license, but..."
"It'll mean more," he'd finished for her.
She hadn't wanted to agree. This had been a whim; it wasn't for her.
"Basically," she'd said the last time, stealing a fry from his plate.
Yeah. He really should've been—Meredith screamed, holding her towel tighter, which was ridiculous, but she'd been young and impressionable the first time she found Psycho on TV. "You wanna give me a heart attack?"
The person who'd appeared on the reading nook chair across from the bed raised an eyebrow. "I haven't cut in days, making it marginally appealing, but I doubt your heart is that interesting, anatomically."
Meredith grinned and sat down on the bed, unwrapping a second towel from her hair. "You're supposed to be hosting a big delegation from Sierra Leone."
"I did. Them, Partners in Health, Gates. I went to the airport an hour after they did," Cristina said. "McDreamy figured it was one surprise you wouldn't slit anyone's throat over. Sent me up with this." She tapped the box sitting on the table that encircled the lamp beside her. "Gonna be blue?"
"Nah, I told him his eyes were old and blue." Meredith smiled. Anything that could inspire Derek to grumble, "I'll show you old" usually benefitted her.
"Eurgh. I shouldn't have bothered with the rental car. You're not going to need to make a run for it."
"Not this time." A note of superiority played in Meredith's laugh, but it was playful. She'd gotten to drive the getaway car for Amelia—well, the getaway-and-go-back car—at her wedding to the same guy she'd once talked Cristina into marrying. She was a full-service Meredith-of-Honor; there for whatever the bride needed. "But I need a Person-of-Honor."
"I feel like a sham of a Person showing up for this, and not when you actually needed support. I've had to rain-check you more than.I'd like."
"You picked up when it mattered."
The night of Zola's surgery, she'd convinced Derek to go home to the other two only after crying in his arms going over what she'd said at the courthouse—the fear that'd grown as Zola did a storm cloud guaranteed to burst. On her way back from walking with him to the elevator, she'd ducked into a supply closet, still dogged by darkened nimbuses. Cristina had watched her sob in the dark over the realization that she'd put Derek in Luis's place, and worse, she'd done this all before.
"It's worse," she'd said. "This isn't Adele! She's…She's one kid out of…out of thousands, being taken from their moms…. How do you…? I told the judge that she made me think of Zo's story, and yeah, of course. Everyone's someone's husband, mother, lover, child. But…You remember when Derek met Zola? How he got a feeling? I didn't, but I knew I could. She could be our baby girl. There was no reason she couldn't…and she is, she's…even Janet said I was the mom she needed on the day of her hernia surgery, and I should've.…" She doesn't know you left, she reminded herself. They'd alluded to her stint in foster-care, but she hadn't been told that part of her story yet, either. "I…I just don't get not caring that a child's going to be in pain.… It's not that I looked at Gabby and imagined Zola or Ellis…. But I…I get this sense that…if this child needed my love, I could give it."
"You're that Hozier song. You fall in love with everyone for a second."
"I absolutely am," Meredith had allowed, ripping over a gauze pad to use as a Kleenex.
Eight weeks later, Zola was downstairs learning how to play the card game that'd been in her stocking, "Sleeping Queens." Later, she'd take out last year's game and kick a few resident down a few…whatever. (Anyone who hadn't been clued in by the game literally called "Snake Oil" deserved it.) Gabby was getting well—though she hadn't been reunited with her mom, yet. Meredith had a dozen tabs open on her phone about how to help—She was still a surgeon, and Cristina was here.
"Do you need to hug me?"
"Kinda want to."
"Fine, just don't get me all wet."
The hug was one-hundred percent recipricated, Meredith noted. She'd had six more years of tiny human barnacles clinging to her.
"Blame my shrink," she said, catching Cristina's hand. It'd been almost exactly five years since she'd visited to meet her third goddaughter, and Meredith couldn't adjust to her presence. "I assume he's downstairs somewhere by now."
"You invited your shrink?"
"It's Christmas. This is what we do. It's awkward, sometimes, but it helps us see each other as people. Plus, I caused this whole split between Grey+Sloan and Pac-North; might as well do what I can to keep it from turning into a full-blown rivalry."
"Two hospitals both alike in dignity…. Except there's only one chief downstairs. Where's Uncle Sal?"
Cristina pursed her lips, and Meredith could read her mind: what has he done this time? She didn't know, but she couldn't be upset with him. Not with the memory of those doors opening, seeing so many people, so much life, fresh in her mind. It reminded her of what Derek had said during her streak; that every one represented a family who wasn't mourning at the holidays.
"Plans changed. He hadn't gone home for the holidays in thirteen years. Guess it finally felt like a good time to visit. His mom was up here last spring, and she seems to be doing well. Amber has a kid he barely knows, and he hasn't said anything about Aaron in a while. Jimmy's gone. Seems like he might have a chance with the rest of them. Could fall apart again, which is why he didn't take Jo. Stupid, if there's someone I'd want around in that situation, it's her. That she didn't implode years ago is incredible, with all she's been through."
"If you'd said you wanted him here—"
"He came through for me last month in a big way. I should've…I thought…. It's insurance fraud. I know of septuagenarian white doctors who've been shaving some off the top for decades. But I've got a whoo-ha not a dong, Gabby was undocumented, and everything is political and partisan…. I was ready to fight, but I didn't think I could do anything." She squeezed Cristina's hand. "Thank you for your letter."
"Sounds like it packed more of a punch without me there. I've always gotten things like that across better in writing. Something about my demeanor."
"I get 'bitter' and 'pretentious' these days," Meredith said. "'Spit and image of my mother.'"
"That's bullshit. You have more right to be bitter than she ever did, but you're not."
"On the way out of the hotel that day, some old fart hospital donor told me my mother would've been proud.
"My mother would've called me ten kinds of idiot. She expected the system to shift around her. She might've pulled every legal string for Gabby, but she'd never have gotten involved." Meredith shook her head. Her hair wasn't dripping anymore, so she dropped that towel. "She wouldn't have bet everything on a single child."
"She…. No, I guess not," Cristina said, and there was a moment where the years of her absence sat between them. She knew about Maggie, but there'd been the Derek thing, and the Maggie thing at the same time. For a while Meredith hadn't talked to her much about either. By the time it was settled that she and Derek weren't just in some weird phase; they were really working on things, there'd been a baby coming.
"It's too bad, really. If I'd lost my license, we could've come to visit as soon as Derek finishes at Pac-North. Maybe next year? You haven't seen cute until you've seen the three of them in winter gear. Ellis's hands get cold, so she has this muff…."
"I've seen pictures."
"Not the same! Did I send you the video from the day we got her up on ice skates? She's a natural. Bailey took longer to take to them, but he's fast. Zola says roller-skates are steadier, but she's so graceful once she's out there."
"Do you think any of them will take up hockey? Or would McDreamy not be into that?"
"They haven't had much exposure. Seattle's getting an expansion team, so we'll take them to a few games. See how they take the blood-spurts. Derek…. If one of them really wanted to, I think he'd be okay with it. He was relieved when B.B. asked to quit Little League, because it obviously wasn't his thing.
"We can't protect them from everything we've seen in the O.R., they wouldn't be living. We want them to try as much as possible before they tie themselves to a career; especially one that controls so much of your lifestyle."
"So, you really would? Visit, I mean?"
"If you'd have us. Three is a lot of children."
"It's a long flight."
"Yeah…. The length isn't really the issue. It's irrational. Driving to California was the stupidest idea ever, and more dangerous than flying, but the other times we've traveled, having all three of them on a plane…. And they were so little that they mirrored our feelings. They're old enough now. If we let them see our weak spots, we teach them how to deal with them."
"Well, I'd definitely have you…in a hotel near my apartment."
They laughed, but Meredith could sense that Cristina was still uncertain about something. She wished she had a stash of eggnog fixings up here. It surprised her that she didn't have to prod her into revealing her thoughts.
"Mer, I'm sorry. I haven't been home for the holidays in a long time, either. It was just…with Owen, and—"
"You're doing incredible things. You've got a life that works for you over there. I'm sure you're missing a wastrels Christmas shindig to be here."
"I'm a secular Jewish Korean-American. They have absolutely no idea what to do with me in December. I don't know what to do with me. So, I do what's asked of me. I've gone out for Glühwein a couple of times, and Hanukkah isn't over until Monday. I've got invitations. New Year's Eve is supposedly great; it's busy for us, so I wouldn't know. Konrad's into all that stuff," she said, referencing her second-in-command. He always sounded sort of like Kepner, but gay, and Jewish with a husband who ran a Christmas Market. "I make an appearance at the staff 'winter gathering.' I think I could get a couple years of skipping it by proving the kids in my pictures aren't models. They'll be a hit with my roommate."
Meredith laughed. "Who knew you'd become the one sending me cat videos?"
Truthfully, her worries about Cristina had been halved the day she brought Favaloro home. She'd found a living being to care about on her terms.
"I don't think it's all that surprising. Cats are pure self-interest. Fava and I understand each other."
"You're not selfish. You're ambitious, and you're direct. Determined. Selfish would've dumped me, along with Sofia and my three stooges. not still be listening to my ranting about dance bags, and if getting Ellis a full-length mirror sends the wrong message."
"I have a vested interest in my goddaughter not having body-image issues. I got out of L.A. without them; you'd totally send her my way."
"Because I could. You're in Switzerland, Cristina, and you are close enough to the kid you've barely met that I can see her turning to you. If she ends up on Broadway, you'll be at her premiere, or you'll be sending her the biggest bouquet in Manhattan. If she goes all Rachel Carson, you'll fund her research. You've sent all three of them perfect presents every Christmas and birthday, and that's without me cc'ing you the list of franchises they're into. When one of your peds surgeons—who happened to come with good press—was having a hard time, you found a new position for him; filling a gap at Grey+Sloan!"
"Cormac needed a change of scenery, and the boys don't speak German—" Cristina cut herself off the she realized she was strengthening Meredith's argument. "Come on, open the box. Let's see the pretty-pretty stones McDreamy got you as a wedding present."
"Vow renewal," Meredith corrected, "We've been married over a decade."
"Longer than him and Montgomery."
If someone else said it, Meredith could gloat about it, right? "If you count from the Post-it. Officially, it used to be easy, because it was the same as Callie and Arizona. Really, maybe I should be taking you up on the car thing, because I think ceremonies might be what's cursed…. Oh." Meredith gasped, her fingers reaching towards the stones on the necklace. Round black and white diamonds alternated all around the white-gold choker. At the center, smaller stones encrusted a caduceus-shaped pendant.
"It's all dark and shiny, and bright and twisty," Cristina observed.
Meredith nodded. That was most of what she'd been thinking. The rest of it was that he had to have commissioned this before he knew what the outcome of her hearing would be.
Two hours later, she took Derek's hand to step up onto the gazebo, and turned to face the empty seats.
"Told you to take a Lyft, Yang," he said.
Cristina made a face at him, and took a seat on the front row.
"Hey," he added, squeezing her hand.
"Hey. I thought we weren't doing big presents."
"Weren't we?" he asked, shaking his wrist to check his watch, revealing the cufflinks she'd snuck into his shoes. "It's not a big present. It's congratulatory."
"It's time, guys," Callie said before Meredith could call him out on the two weeks—not even—that'd passed since her hearing. "Ready?"
"You bet," Meredith said, and Derek coughed a laugh. She raised her eyebrows at him. "The things we do for our children."
"Oh, yeah, for—"
"I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord/
But you don't really get my music, do you?"
Meredith smiled and laced her fingers through Derek's, looking out on the the tea candle-lined path that would lead their family and friends to them. Callie's voice was being piped through strategically placed speakers between the house and the ridge, accompanied by April on the violin—That was one of those details that you could go for years not knowing about someone, but once you knew, it made perfect sense. They stood off to the side of the gazebo, in front of a currently-blank projector screen.
When Meredith had asked them to do this, it hadn't been the unusual song choice that Callie questioned. "Are you sure you want me to come over for that, and not your hearing? I owe you a couple good testimonies."
"And you'd be able to give it? What if they asked you about the sensors?"
"That was Derek's deal."
"Before he met me, do you think he would've just assumed you'd hand them over? It's not fair play."
"Can you say he would've compromised?"
They made a good point, but it wasn't one that swayed her. She'd have needed her friends if she'd lost her license, but she'd wanted them here for this, either way. To prove that she hadn't lost them. There were faces that wouldn't have been in the approaching procession if it'd gone differently, but maybe not as many as she'd assumed.
They came with the children leading them; Ellis's steps half-skipping, half-dancing, sometimes doubling back to take one of her siblings' hands, or behind them to Carolyn, who was being escorted by Richard. The little girl wasn't wearing the gold taffeta dress they'd agreed on, or the Bonnie Jean red plaid jumper that matched the skirt of Zola's. She had on the white, shapeless dress she'd worn for the daycare's Saint Lucia's Day celebration, tied with a red-ribbon sash.
"Someone should wear white. Might as well be her."
"She was going to wear the wreath, anyway," Derek pointed out. "And Saint Lucia leads a procession."
"And I barely got to see her in it, because thatt was the day of the hearing. Friday the thirteenth."
"I forgot that. Zola's not the only one who pays attention, is she?"
"No. Not at all."
Derek squeezed her arm with the hand not holding hers, and then ran his hand up and down the sleeve of her dress.
"I'm for this. I'm really for you not freezing."
"Global warming, and we have heaters everywhere," she reminded him. Ahead of them Bailey and Zola linked arms and imitate the characters from The Wizard of Oz on the Yellow Brick Road. "He's gonna kick over a candle just to see what happens."
"He's been warned. I let him help light them. Then Ellie asked if we could put the candles back in her wreath and light them, and he freaked about how she'd burn her hair. He's a careful firebug."
"No idea where he gets that from," Meredith said wryly, her mind offering up dozens of memories of beach bonfires, flames in trash cans, campfires. She'd always been fascinated by them.
As they got within a dozen or so yards from the chairs, Zola flipped the big sister switch. It was rare for Meredith to see her do this from a distance, and it made her think of going into her daughter's room on her tenth birthday, one last package in her hands.
"Don't get too excited," she'd joked as Zola whipped her earbuds out and let her tablet fall on the bed. It landed next to Rawr, whose bandage had come off at the same time as hers. "This doesn't take batteries."
"So it's a book? Ooh, books!" she'd corrected as she'd taken it. Meredith laughed.
It wasn't as though they didn't use e-readers, they'd had to tell far too many people. PDF apps had genuinely changed Meredith's life by making research portable. But books were better for sharing pictures. They didn't have batteries, or backlights. They could sit in a backpack through an airport. They could get left in the tree fort. They could be signed by the author, and a child could always remember understanding that a person wrote their favorite book.
And there could be moments like this. "My mom gave me an edition of this when I was twelve," she'd said, pointing to Our Bodies, Ourselves. "I wish I'd had it earlier. It's for girls and women, so there's going to be stuff you don't have to worry about yet. It was written at a time where almost no one was asking questions about women's bodies, much less answering them, and that's not very long ago."
"Julie's time."
"Exactly."
There was so much they still didn't know, like why girls' bodies were changing earlier. Girls in Zola's fourth-grade class had had their periods; starting to look like women, with the innocence of little girls. Innocence that didn't have to mean ignorance.
"This book I'm sure you've seen," she had indicated The Care and Keeping of You 2. "Amazon and American Girl have wanted me to buy it for years. It's aimed toward girls and teenagers, mostly about puberty. They first put it out in the nineties and what we say about bodies, and sex, and gender has changed." There'd been people who knew; science done, suppressed, done again. "Everyone's body is different. But the thing is, they're just bodies. Everyone has one, they do weird things. Your body is yours. We've told you all your life: no one touches you if don't want. If someone makes you feel bad about your body, know they have same issues, and your body is amazing. It's how you play soccer, and take Ellis down the slide. It keeps a lot of complicated systems going. Only one person gets to decide what it should look like. Who's that?"
"Me," Zola said. The slight shift of her eyes, an aborted eye-roll, made Meredith grab her hand.
"I'm serious, love-bug. Starting at your age, and through high-school, your classmates are all going to be facing changes in their 's body will be changing at different speeds. There's no point in comparing yourself to anyone else, but it's an easy thing to do. If someone says 'you'd be so pretty if…' or anything like it, all they're saying is that they feel self-conscious, and they want you to feel the same way. Just remember, it's the data that's important.
"If you have questions about anything in these books, or something you hear, or see somewhere else , you can talk to me, or your aunts, and you can talk to your dad. He might stammer a little, but he has four sisters; he might know more about puberty than I do. I've only got my own experience to pull from."
"What about...?" Zola picked at the hem of her shirt, which showed Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis each holding a fist up, a birthday present from a school friend.
"Nothing about your skin color makes puberty any different, physically. There are stereotypes out there." Meredith shifted to put her arm around her. It was impossible for her to imagine looking at her and seeing anything other than the child she was. But in the right light, at a certain angle, she could almost see the teenager she'd become, and they all needed to be prepared for that. "Stereotypes that Ellis and Bailey won't have to deal with. It's okay to be frustrated, or jealous, or whatever you feel about that."
Zola nodded, her fingers tracing the links of her charm bracelet. Over the past six years she'd added Ellis's birthstone, the sign for 'l love you'—cliché and cheesy until you knew she'd been forcefully silenced for six weeks— and, after she'd won the Harper Avery, a carousel horse.
"I don't," Zola had said. "I don't feel different. I like being Black, and sharing it with Aunt Maggie, and Lucas, and those hyphen-Shepherds. I don't want to change anything about our family. I want other people to change how they see us. I want them to see that I can be Black and just…just a Shepherd kid. A Grey Shepherd," she'd added, and Meredith understood something she must've figured out subconsciously, or even known nine years ago, and let it slip her mind: She'd given Zola her surname as a middle name so that she would be a Grey. Her siblings might have a strand of her DNA, but Zola had her name.
She was very much a Grey and Shepherd kid, Meredith thought, watching her daughter's posture shift. From this distance she could see her shoulders rise as she nudged Ellis ahead of her. Bailey tried to offer her his arm, imitating Derek perfectly, and without being able to hear them, Meredith could create dialogue for the ensuing squabble:
Zola: I'm taller! You should hold my arm
B.B.: That's not how it works! The boy—
Zola: —escorts the poor, weak lady?
Carolyn: Watch who you're calling weak up there.
Zola: [huffs] I didn't mean—
B.B.: It's traditional.
Zola: It's patriarchal. Brotriachal. Just be normal.
Bailey: [grabs big sister's hand] Tradition is normal for a wedding.
Zola: It's not a normal wedding.
Ellie: It's a wedding party.
[Zola and Bailey share a look. Correcting her got old weeks ago. Zola takes Bailey's arm.]
Ellis wasn't wrong; none of them were. It wasn't a normal, traditional wedding, and although Ellis had misunderstood the concept of "wedding party," that was the idea. Meredith had conceived of this as a belated reception-type thing' Christmas with a wedding cake, maybe a toast.
But the longer it took to untangle the knot she'd made, the less that seemed like enough. She'd started off irate at the system, angry, defensive, defiant, unashamed, frightened, and sure of one thing: Derek. Sure that he'd stay, and sure that he'd be infuriated. Telling him she'd used their daughter's name to commit fraud was one thing; being arrested for it was another.
On the ferry after Nancy Klein had gotten her out of lock-up, they'd gone up to the foggy Sun Deck, and she'd stared out at the water while she said, "Are you ready?"
"Hm?"
"You've had all day, and I know that's not a long step back, but it's a decent amount of stewing time—"
He'd wrapped his arms around her. "I'm proud of you."
"What? Derek, I…What I did was wrong. I have to clean up my own messes."
"It was illegal. Wrong...? I don't know." He sighed.
"You should've at least left me there overnight. In the interest of fairness."
"I'm not leaving you anywhere."
"Didn't you used to have self-preservation instincts?"
"No, that's why you left me in lock-up, remember? You weren't endangering anyone, and you were ready to take on the consequences."
"I wasn't knowingly…but, Derek, If they come, you can't say you knew."
"If who comes?"
"I would've used my name, if I could've. If she'd been Zola's age, I might've tried to get some kind of consent, but then she'd have been implicated. How old do you have to be for white collar crimes? Little Black girls get arrested for being hyper, but Gabby was four, and….
"You can't let on that you knew. I'm sorry, I know you hate lying to authority, but we don't know who turned me in, and…I don't think…. Miranda knows the system is not the place for our kids."
"Oh. I can't imagine there being an investigation based on this, but you're right, someone could have called social services." The wind was already whipping through his hair, but him ruffling it still held meaning. "I'm still glad you told me. I'm on your side. Got that?"
"I do. We have to be prepared, though. Not just for social workers. If Catherine says boo to the right person, I might not be able to get work here, no matter what happens. Even if they impeach the clown, I doubt you could get a government job again."
"Mer…."
"She could make us mud in the private sector! We can't pretend this won't affect our lives, Derek!"
"I know. I know it will. But we're going to get through it, okay? One step at a time."
She shook her head. That'd been how they got through the aftermath of the attack; cribbed from the AA meetings he'd gone to with Amelia after the relapse that Meredith thought had more to do with the baby in the house than she'd admit.
"If I…. If I'm not around while Jo's in treatment, Alex may need to be talked out of just letting go, because she needs more than he can give. He has all this 'crazy chicks' baggage, like trauma can't happen to anyone at any time. Being the caretaker is hard, but it's not an excuse….You've been there. Make sure she has visitors, too. Not just Alex and Link. She needs family. And you need to call Richard when we get home. I don't think he'll want to hear from me, but Catherine's face…. Maybe Amelia should just go over? He shouldn't be alone after—"
"You were alone." Derek interrupted. "You were reeling, your career was hanging in the balance, people were coming and going, and I wasn't there."
She shrugged and swallowed. "It wasn't the same. I knew…knew you'd come. I knew it'd be okay. But…this morning, I told Jo about how I used to feel. The worst of it. I haven't felt anything close to that in a long time, but I've felt hints of it. They…They scare me. Today I…I…."
She'd seen the cops from the hyperbaric chamber, and she'd known. She'd taken Gus to his room, started down the hall thinking of her tiny humans and Legos, and Dr. Meredith Grey? From there, a whirlwind: Miranda's office, a squad car, lock-up. At some point, she'd dissociated. She accepted the word now. Not like her intern year, when psych terms had belonged on flashcards. Shepherd's in surgery. He only operated a few times a week. Had he seen them? Should we page him? He couldn't do anything. He'd come to her. Post-it. Cuffs had clicked around her wrists. Her mother had always expected a cop to bring her home. They only did that if you ran away, and for that someone had to notice you weren't there. She hadn't run. Ellis, and Zola, and Bailey, they would come home, and she'd be gone. When would she see them? She'd be arraigned; they could make bail—If Derek—She'd find someone—but after that? As long as she'd been in the hospital after the attack? Longer?—He'd bring them. He'd come. Post it. He'd have to process first. To go away and process? Tonight? Would he take them?—He'd trusted her with Zola. He couldn't work with her. It was all entwined. Had to be. Home was hospital was home was them. Grey?
"I was terrified that you'd come for me, and I'd still be alone." She visualized the waves of Derek's sigh, drawn out and jagged. Not an exasperated-at-her sigh. The Meredith that she'd flinched at in that season without Zola. Not what-did-you-expect?
"I'm so sorry I've rejected you when you've needed me in the past. I wish they'd paged me, so I could've given you that reassurance."
"I should've let them. This was different. Not your project. Not a shock—"
"It wasn't different enough that you could be sure."
"I guess not. I'm used to…to this, to us like this, and…I was arrested. They do a good job of dehumanizing you, quick. I got fired. Bailey fired me, like I was just…. I thought…I sort of thought that…. They're taking babies from their parents, Derek. They did fuck all for Gabby. Doesn't she get why I had to do something?"
"I don't know. But she'll regret letting you go. I bet you have a job when this is over."
"I don't care. I mean, I do, but…I don't need it."
"It needs you. I meed you. If I get mad at you at any point through all of this, it's because I'm scared. Losing you is the worst things I can imagine."
"I love you," she'd said, turning around to kiss him. It was true that the situation wasn't identical to what'd happened with the Alzheimer's trial, but the stakes were higher, and could affect his career just as much down the line. Then she'd broken FDA guidelines, not federal laws. It would've been understandable for him to react more like Miranda. But he'd evolved, and he'd come to understand more of the world the way she did. To make better compromises. The man she'd met did not compromise.
Did other people notice how much he'd changed? She'd decided to make sure they did.
The Queen of Grey+Sloan thing had always been a joke to Meredith, but she would admit that she felt a certain amount of power standing above a gathering of staff from all over that hospital and others that Derek had worked with in the past few years.
Her dress was decidedly not a wedding dress. It was a forest green velvet A-line with long thin sleeves. Across the front was an oval keyhole that left more to the imagination than plunging necklines, but was enough for the man she wanted imagining. The skirt was shorter in front, long in the back, and the decorative button at the center of the mock neck suggested cape as much as train.
How she would do her hair has been a question that she judged herself for stressing over, and then chided herself for judging herself—it'd been a great way to make time pass. Her customary tousled waves were the safe choice, visibly so, and that wasn't her style. The smooth, tight bun she tried next matched perfectly, but she'd barely secured the last pin before she'd known it would be too severe. It sapped the warmth out of the ensemble, making the fir tree color evoke thoughts of frozen forests. Evil queen. She looked powerful. Authoritative. Like someone whose ambition outweighed their convictions. Amelia had offered a coronet braid. Ellis suggested a wreath, which was better than a veil, but was equally not her thing. Zola pointed out that a lot of brides replaced that with a tiara. Too blatant.
She'd been away for six months; her history would've been circling again. Those who'd known it, and those who hadn't, they had all been reevaluating her for the past week. How she presented herself today would become part of the lens—a kaleidoscope—she was seen through. What—they would be wondering—had picking up trash on the side of the road done to Meredith Grey's dignity? Will we finally see shame? Will she be sharp, like she was after her sister died? Enraged, as she was while treating Lieutenant Hunt? Is Dr. Shepherd being as supportive as he seems, or will they be fighting in the halls?
She understood. Her story had become inseparable from the lore of this hospital. She was a symbol, but also a person who made mistakes, and changed, and reevaluated herself.
"It would feel like a costume," she'd told Ellis, in response to endless questions about something bridal. "A lot of children like to imagine the big party they'll have, but that wasn't my thing. I wasn't the type of kid who liked dressing up and putting flowers in my hair."
"You're not a kid anymore, and you like dressing up for sometimes. Maybe you could like flowers in your hair?"
"Maybe I could." She'd laughed.
The sleek bun had suited this dress, but Meredith had gotten a similar effect by brushing her har back over her forehead, and then letting Maggie and Cristina go at it with serum—She wouldn't want them in an O.R. together, but they'd gotten everything smooth—Thanksgiving Saturday, she'd taken the kids to the craft store while Derek was off being in the woods with Ben, Link, and Ben's sister. Ostensibly, they'd been getting B.B. alien-making supplies, but she'd stopped at the aisle full of fake flowers.
"We're switching things up this year," she'd said. "We're going to practice Mommy's Christmas hair."
That weekend was when they'd made the headband Zola wore in front of a ponytail that she'd ironed out and secured herself. Ellis's wreath had come from the same supplies, and once she stepped up onto the gazebo for hugs, Meredith saw that she'd put it on over the barrette that matched her sister's headband. She got away to sit on Carolyn's lap before Meredith could see if the dress was on under the white gown. She'd be warmer if it was.
The barrette pinned at an angle over her ear held three roses around a tiny white flower, a single instance of the pattern repeated on the girls' headbands, and the "corsage" hot glued on an elastic wristband for Bailey.
She'd gone into the craft planning on making herself a barrette to hold the partial updo, but then she'd remembered the Dia de los Muertos marigold she'd been last year. It'd made her think of Lexie, who'd never gotten to be in her wedding. Molly was there, but if Thatcher had been alive, would he have bothered? Would she have invited him? Mark would've found a reason to stand with Derek, regardless of their plans. She could see having asked George to speak, rather than Richard, who'd followed the older two up to join them. There were others, too. Susan, Reed, Charles, Brooks. Patients who'd been important, and who she'd thought of while her successes sang her praises at that hearing. They were the people she would've apologized to, if she'd lost her license. The roses were for them. The smaller white flower at the center—only called "white flower" on the tag—was for her mother. She would've hated this, everything about it. Nothing done to make it less patriarchal would've satisfied her; the candles would be a fire hazard, the gazebo a death trap. All far too sentimental. But without her, Meredith wouldn't be here, and neither would her namesake, who was already out of her other grandmother's lap, twirling to the last vibrations of Kepner's violin. And Meredith liked to think that in spite of hating it, she'd be here if she could. That, in a way, she was here.
She wouldn't be at the hospital. It was Christmas.