Searching for a Seattle Sky (4/10)
Title: Searching for a Seattle Sky
Author: chicleeblair
Rating: PG
Summary: During the turmoil of trying for a baby, adopting Zola and nearly tearing apart her marriage, Meredith forgot her fears about becoming a mother. Now she remembers, and Lexie’s the only one who can help rid her of them for good.
Pairings: Meredith/Derek, Mark/Lexie
Thanks literary_critic to for beta, waltzmatildah for the fanmix and onlywordsnow for the fanart!
Written for the ga_fanfic Big Bang:
Fanmix:
Fan Art:
As they entered the Babies R Us Meredith angled her travel mug so Zola couldn’t whack it and send it flying to the ground-again.
“Are you sure you don’t want to get a stroller, and, you know, put her in it?” Lexie asked.
“I like having her in here.” Meredith tapped her other hand against Zola’s back. The weight of the baby seemed to balance her when she felt precariously close to falling of the edge. “Besides, I think Derek will want to do the stroller thing. He’s already been researching them. It’s like buying a car to him.”
She didn’t mention how much more thought, effort and research Derek had put into the eventualities of Zola coming home than she had. It wasn’t that she didn’t want her. She honestly hadn’t believed it would happen.
“I think Mark prefers the Snuggie for Sofia, too. At least, he always has her in it. Then again, the stroller would be kind of unwieldy at the hospital.”
“You’ve discussed Snuggies with Mark?”
Lexie’s cheeks turned pink as she grabbed a cart and pushed it toward the bright pink section of the store they assumed held the girls’ clothes. “Not really. He’s just…around. Mark and I are done. He gave me to Jackson yesterday.”
“What?” Meredith scanned the sea of tiny outfits, trying to see Zola in any of them. She’d pictured choosing baby clothes for so long, but never for a specific baby. Now that she had a living, babbling recipient it was harder to make decisions. “What if she doesn’t like any of this stuff?” she said, sifting through a rack. “What if she hates me forever because I make her wear a shirt with frogs and she hates frogs?”
“First of all, she’s six months old.” Lexie tossed the offending shirt into the cart. “Second of all, the very fact that you care about that shows you’re better than some moms. Mine, for instance, insisted on smocked dresses for Molly and I until we were in the sixth grade. I wanted to take a blowtorch to the things.” She steered the cart toward a rack of sun dresses and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, these are so cute!”
Meredith couldn’t help smiling at the purple dress Lexie pulled out and held up to Zola. The moment reminded her of shopping with Izzie, the thrill her friend always got once she made a find. She missed Izzie fiercely for a second. It was weird how, though Izzie had been gone for almost two years, she missed her smile at times like this-times when she would have been annoying the crap out of Meredith.
“Is she wearing six months, or smaller?”
“Um… let me check. Can I check, Zola?” Zola raised her head at the sound of her voice and sucked contentedly on her pacifier as Meredith tugged he tag from the back of her shirt. “Yup. Six months. She’s right on track sizewise, aren’t you? They fattened you up at the hospital.”
While she tucked the tag back in, she met the eyes of another woman whose toddler had opened a package of socks and was happily tossing them out of the cart. The woman’s eyes had narrowed at Meredith, judging her for not knowing Zola’s t-shirt size, like maybe she should be calling the missing child hotline, in case Zola had been stolen or something.
Meredith knew it wasn’t her fault she didn’t know how big Zola’s clothes were, but she promised herself that from now on she’d know all those things, and more. “Green,” she said, catching sight of the pacifier. “She likes green.”
Lexie raised her eyebrows, so Meredith countered with, “He gave you to Jackson?”
“Yup. Speech and everything. Said he was letting me go.”
The words tugged at a memory Meredith didn’t want to think about at the moment; one of the many speeches that’d reminded her how much she loved Derek, in spite of how much she hated him. “Derek said that once.”
Lexie maneuvered the cart away from the dresses, toward a rack of Osh Kosh B’Gosh overalls. “He did?”
“Yup. Back when I was dating the vet. The vet, who loved me, and had plans. Derek said he was a good guy, and to go if I’d be happy with him.”
Lexie studied the brass fastener of a pair of overalls for a long moment before she murmured, “But you didn’t.”
“No.” Meredith swallowed the sudden lump in her throat-the same one she’d gotten while she told Finn she wished Derek wasn’t the one. “I let Finn go. Derek was it for me after that.”
The hanger and its overalls clattered into the cart. Zola turned to the noise, but Meredith was watching Lexie’s face. She could read it easily now, she knew what the other woman was wondering. The parallels between them were so apparent, Lexie had to be wondering how much like Meredith she was-and what that meant about Mark.
Meredith touched her arm. “Let’s go. Help me pick out the toys a bright and shiny child needs, instead of a dark and twisty one.”
“No Anatomy Jane for Zola?”
“Only if she wants one. Zola’s future is going to be up to her.”
“Hear that, kiddo?” Lexie playfully tapped Zola on the arm. “Start picking out your tattoos now.”
Meredith winced. “Oh God. Derek will-.” She stopped. What would Derek do? Would they be having arguments about self-expression? Or would Meredith even be lucid enough to know the twenty-something with the butterfly tramp stamp was her daughter?
“Derek will come back from New York armed with a Zola-sized Yankees cap,” Lexie said, grabbing Meredith’s hand and pulling her in the direction of the toy section. They pulled the cart up in front of a rack of stuffed toys. Meredith reached for a bear-wasn’t that what babies usually got?-but Zola had other ideas. She twisted back and lunged. She might have flung herself out of the Snuggie, if Meredith hadn’t put her hand firmly against her back.
Lexie reached over and retrieved the floppy stuffed frog off the rack she’d been aiming for. Zola immediately stuffed the flipper in her mouth, christening it. “You were saying about frogs?”
Meredith laughed, but not at her sister. Her happiness was for Zola, who already knew to get her hands on what she wanted by herself.
While Lexie surveyed the bookshelves a few minutes later, searching for the classics, as opposed to the Illustrated Science Encyclopedia Meredith had read as a child, Meredith’s phone rang. Although she knew Derek wouldn’t have even landed in New York yet, her heartbeat still sped up while she fished it out of her purse. It increased even more when she saw the name on the caller ID.
“Janet, is something wrong?”
“No, not at all,” the social worker soothed. “I wanted to see how the day is going.”
“Well. It’s going well. We’re shopping now. For baby things. For Zola.”
“That’s great. Did she have a good night?”
Meredith hesitated, absently stroking Zola’s hand with a finger. “She…took a while to go to sleep. It was a little hectic for all of us.”
“That’s to be expected. She’ll adjust to her new environment soon.” Zola squealed around her pacifier, as if she knew she was being talked about and wanted to comment. Meredith cringed, knowing how loud that must have sounded on Janet’s end. “She sounds happy. Was your husband surprised?”
“You have no idea. I mean…definitely.”
“Good. Well, I also wanted to let you know I’ve been in touch with an Early Intervention Coordinator about Zola, and they’d like her to get a physical therapy evaluation and be seen by an orthopedist. I know she had some evaluations in the hospital, but they were focused on the more pressing issues. With a child with special needs it’s important to also get a handle on the long-term issues as soon as possible.”
“Of course. That makes sense. Just tell me who to call.”
“Can you take down a number?”
“Um. Sure. Just a second.” She rummaged through the purse at her side, awkwardly balancing the phone and Zola. Lexie dumped a pile of books in the cart to lift Zola from her Snuggie at the same moment Meredith lifted her head to switch her cell to the other side. Zola’s foot-clad in cute but not-functional sneakers-clipped Meredith in the chin. She bit her tongue to keep from swearing into the mouthpiece, but finally retrieved a pad of paper and a pen.
Only once she’d said, “Ready,” did she notice she’d pulled a pack of blue post-its from the depths of her bag.
***
After they’d effectively cleaned out Babies R Us-neglecting only the stroller and the crib, both of which Meredith insisted Derek needed to be a part of buying-Lexie drove back to Meredith’s while her sister sat in the back of the car, narrating the trip to Zola.
“I wonder if it’s strange for her,” she said while they unloaded bags into the driveway. “How much do you think she remembers about Malawi?”
“Probably not a lot. Soon all she’ll know is life here, with you.” Lexie hefted the box with the highchair out of the trunk (Delivery guys were coming with the big furniture, but she got the honor of unloading what they could fit into Meredith’s Jeep). The strain of the box’s weight had to be what made her keep rambling. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember a time before I knew you, you know? I used to have this list in my room of things I’d never done.”
She shoved the box toward the steps, half-wishing they’d waited for Jackson to be around to do all this. “Which is weird, because half the time you don’t know you haven’t done something ‘til you do it, like I never realized how blue a sky could be until I saw the one in Amsterdam, so there wasn’t a point in writing it down until I saw it.”
She tipped the box up to the porch, and pushed sweaty hair away from her face. “Zola, you better really like this chair. But number one on the list was meeting my big sister. Now I can’t even remember a time before I crossed it off.”
Meredith reached down to pick a flower from the bushes next to the porch railing. “You kept it until you started your residency?” She twirled the flower against Zola’s cheek and the baby giggled.
Lexie’s hands slipped, and the corner of the box came down on the toe of right foot. “Son of a-dingo!” she corrected, with one glance at Zola. While she corrected her hold on the box, the truck from the store pulled up. Soon beefy guys had taken charge of the high chair, as well as the rocker and changing table they were somehow going to fit into Meredith’s bedroom.
“Why not give her Alex’s room?” Lexie asked, while Meredith fixed Zola a bottle, and the men banged around upstairs.
“Cristina’s there now. And… I don’t know. That room was George’s. He got the biggest room.” She smiled; twisting the cap of the bottle long after it had been secured. Zola grabbed for it and brought her back to the present. “But I came home one night, and he was gone. Alex took it and then…” She sank into a kitchen chair waving her hand to indicate (Lexie assumed) the repetition of the line, and Lexie became aware of the weight she carried on her shoulders. “I don’t want to come home one day and find her gone.”
Before Lexie could comment, one of the men yelled from the stairs. “Do you have a Phillip’s head down there?”
The panicked expression on Meredith’s face said she had no earthly idea. “I’ll go check,” Lexie said. She headed for the basement and found the toolbox quickly. Picking it up, she wondered how long it had sat there. Sometimes she wandered the house, imagining her dad traipsing the halls, long before she was born, building a life. He’d have put together a crib there. He’d fed a crying baby in the same kitchen.
Did Meredith think about that?
Did she see Ellis Grey doing the same things?
As unprepared as those two must have been to be parents, Lexie couldn’t imagine them attempting to fit a baby’s room worth of furniture into the master bedroom alongside their bedroom suite. The workman she handed the screwdriver to looked as if he might be boxing himself into the corner of the room by putting together the changing table.
“Are they almost done? I think she needs a nap,” Meredith said once Lexie had delivered the box. Zola rubbed her eyes, proving the point.
“It’s wall-to-wall furniture in there, Mer.”
“My dorm room in undergrad was like that. If I can navigate around furniture in all states of intoxication, I can do it with a baby.” She smiled. Lexie recognized the devilish look from long, long ago. “We’ll be fine, won’t we Zola? Let’s go see all your new things.” She headed for the stairs. Lexie took it upon herself to wash the bottle. Every little bit would help Meredith out while Derek was gone.
She stood at the sink, thinking back to the conversation they’d had examining baby clothes. Meredith’s words had made the hair on Lexie’s neck stand up in the same way it had after Jackson said he didn’t mind getting chief resident because he had her. He’d been so noble to leave the study for fear of tying his name to it-but he also seemed afraid of his name. He hung back in the shadows, thinking his success wouldn’t mean anything thanks to his grandfather.
Lexie didn’t get it. The few times she’d been asked if she was related to Ellis Grey, she’d said, “Sort of.” Anything to get a leg up. Meredith had admitted that her name had made up for her dubious recommendation letters going into med school. Jackson had denied his paternity. His humility was inspiring, but it could also be seen as a lack of drive.
Mark had drive in everything he did, medicine and family. He wanted everything life could give him. She tried to make Jackson want that, but he seemed content with his lot.
How much of a freak was she to not understand that?
The slam of the front door startled her, and she realized she’d been letting hot water flow over the top of the bottle for so long it was practically sterile. “Your phone’s ringing,” Meredith said, coming into the kitchen. She made a beeline for the refrigerator, but turned around to follow Lexie through to the living room a split second later, drawn by a wail from upstairs.
“She might just be overtired and fussy!” Lexie called, grabbing her phone to push talk. The pounding of Meredith’s feet on the stairs proved that this was no time to have any sort of crying-it-out argument.
“Hello?”
“Lex. Is this a bad time?”
She sank onto the couch and drew her knees to her chest. The gravelly tone of Mark’s voice caused her heart to contract like he still had a hold on it, though she told herself it was only because of how strained he sounded. “No, of course not.”
He exhaled into the phone. “Good. I’m…uh…leaving for New York, but I got to the airport kind of early, and I can’t concentrate on anything. Mrs. Shepherd she… she might as well be my mom, you know?”
“I know. I met her.”
“That’s right. She likes you. She’d never liked a girl I brought home before, but she liked you.”
“What about when you dated her daughters? Didn’t she like them?”
Mark laughed. “I guess she’d always figured my joining the family officially one way or another was inevitable.”
Lexie coughed, but neither of them acknowledged that even dating her he’d only been one degree removed from being a Shepherd.
“I remember one time, though, she caught me and Kathleen on the stairs…” His voice disappeared into the past and she let him relate the story, followed by another about the prank he’d talked Shepherd into playing at their high school prom. She let him talk for the same reason she’d sat with him during the night of Callie’s accident, because he needed someone, because his family might have been falling apart in front of his face. They both valued family, maybe a little too much.
Jackson almost never talked about his family.
She didn’t leave the couch throughout their entire conversation. The noises from upstairs, if there were any, didn’t reach her. When she heard the echo of the tinny voice of the gate agent’s announcement over the airport loudspeaker she glanced around the room, surprised to see late-afternoon light pouring in through the tall windows.
“Time to board,” Mark said. “Thanks for listening.”
“It’s what friends are for. We’re friends, right?” She cringed as she said it, thinking she should have a phone cord to wrap around her fingers the way she had while she tied up her parents’ phone as a teenager.
“Yeah. We’re friends Little Grey.”
She wrinkled her nose at the nickname, and a second later he was gone. She leaned her head back against the cushions of the sofa, a dumb smile on her face.
“Have you been on the phone this whole time?”
She rolled her head slightly to the left. Meredith stood in the doorway to the living room with Zola in one arm, and a blanket folded across the other. “Yeah.”
“Hold her a sec.” Meredith thrust Zola into her arms, and spread the blanket out on the floor. “With Mark?”
“Yeah. Don’t give me that look. We’re friends.”
Meredith sat Zola on the blanket, putting two stuffed toys and a set of plastic keys within the baby’s reach. She sat cross-legged next to her, and watched her while she spoke to Lexie. “Derek and I tried that. The being friends thing.”
“Did it work?” Lexie watched Zola lunge forward for the keys. The baby shook them gleefully in both hands. She started to overbalance. Meredith’s hands shot out to catch her, but Zola managed to get a tiny hand down to steady herself before intervention was necessary. “Smart girl.”
“Isn’t she? She’s got this sitting thing down. And no, it didn’t. Or, it did, until our dog died and we had sex at the prom the hospital threw for the chief’s niece.”
“Then I’ll avoid all black tie affairs Mark might attend.”
“Good plan. I’m going to get my phone so Derek can have a picture of her to show off in New York. Be right back.”
Lexie slid onto the floor to take Meredith’s spot in front of Zola. Almost as soon as Meredith went out of sight, Zola’s face crumpled. The earsplitting scream she let out a second later brought Meredith careening back into the room, nearly falling over the end table in her rush. “What happened?” She tossed the phone into Lexie’s lap and scooped Zola up.
“Nothing! Is she wet?”
“I just changed her. I’m surprisingly good at diaper changing. I think it’s all the dressing changes we had to do as med students. What is it Zola? I wish you could tell me.” Meredith bounced the baby gently in her arms. Zola whimpered a few more times, but after a second or two in Mer’s arms, she calmed. “Well. That’s better. Decided those keys weren’t for you, huh? How ‘bout a bunny?” She sat down on the blanket, and handed Zola the stuffed bunny. Zola chewed on its ears.
Lexie picked up the phone and snapped two pictures of Zola happily settled on Meredith’s lap. All part of her mission to make Shepherd realize how stupid he’d been to ever doubt his wife’s mothering skills.
And to make Meredith realize that Zola’s hissy fit hadn’t had anything to do with the stupid plastic keys.
Part Two|| Table of Contents || Part Four
Author: chicleeblair
Rating: PG
Summary: During the turmoil of trying for a baby, adopting Zola and nearly tearing apart her marriage, Meredith forgot her fears about becoming a mother. Now she remembers, and Lexie’s the only one who can help rid her of them for good.
Pairings: Meredith/Derek, Mark/Lexie
Thanks literary_critic to for beta, waltzmatildah for the fanmix and onlywordsnow for the fanart!
Written for the ga_fanfic Big Bang:
Fanmix:
Fan Art:
As they entered the Babies R Us Meredith angled her travel mug so Zola couldn’t whack it and send it flying to the ground-again.
“Are you sure you don’t want to get a stroller, and, you know, put her in it?” Lexie asked.
“I like having her in here.” Meredith tapped her other hand against Zola’s back. The weight of the baby seemed to balance her when she felt precariously close to falling of the edge. “Besides, I think Derek will want to do the stroller thing. He’s already been researching them. It’s like buying a car to him.”
She didn’t mention how much more thought, effort and research Derek had put into the eventualities of Zola coming home than she had. It wasn’t that she didn’t want her. She honestly hadn’t believed it would happen.
“I think Mark prefers the Snuggie for Sofia, too. At least, he always has her in it. Then again, the stroller would be kind of unwieldy at the hospital.”
“You’ve discussed Snuggies with Mark?”
Lexie’s cheeks turned pink as she grabbed a cart and pushed it toward the bright pink section of the store they assumed held the girls’ clothes. “Not really. He’s just…around. Mark and I are done. He gave me to Jackson yesterday.”
“What?” Meredith scanned the sea of tiny outfits, trying to see Zola in any of them. She’d pictured choosing baby clothes for so long, but never for a specific baby. Now that she had a living, babbling recipient it was harder to make decisions. “What if she doesn’t like any of this stuff?” she said, sifting through a rack. “What if she hates me forever because I make her wear a shirt with frogs and she hates frogs?”
“First of all, she’s six months old.” Lexie tossed the offending shirt into the cart. “Second of all, the very fact that you care about that shows you’re better than some moms. Mine, for instance, insisted on smocked dresses for Molly and I until we were in the sixth grade. I wanted to take a blowtorch to the things.” She steered the cart toward a rack of sun dresses and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, these are so cute!”
Meredith couldn’t help smiling at the purple dress Lexie pulled out and held up to Zola. The moment reminded her of shopping with Izzie, the thrill her friend always got once she made a find. She missed Izzie fiercely for a second. It was weird how, though Izzie had been gone for almost two years, she missed her smile at times like this-times when she would have been annoying the crap out of Meredith.
“Is she wearing six months, or smaller?”
“Um… let me check. Can I check, Zola?” Zola raised her head at the sound of her voice and sucked contentedly on her pacifier as Meredith tugged he tag from the back of her shirt. “Yup. Six months. She’s right on track sizewise, aren’t you? They fattened you up at the hospital.”
While she tucked the tag back in, she met the eyes of another woman whose toddler had opened a package of socks and was happily tossing them out of the cart. The woman’s eyes had narrowed at Meredith, judging her for not knowing Zola’s t-shirt size, like maybe she should be calling the missing child hotline, in case Zola had been stolen or something.
Meredith knew it wasn’t her fault she didn’t know how big Zola’s clothes were, but she promised herself that from now on she’d know all those things, and more. “Green,” she said, catching sight of the pacifier. “She likes green.”
Lexie raised her eyebrows, so Meredith countered with, “He gave you to Jackson?”
“Yup. Speech and everything. Said he was letting me go.”
The words tugged at a memory Meredith didn’t want to think about at the moment; one of the many speeches that’d reminded her how much she loved Derek, in spite of how much she hated him. “Derek said that once.”
Lexie maneuvered the cart away from the dresses, toward a rack of Osh Kosh B’Gosh overalls. “He did?”
“Yup. Back when I was dating the vet. The vet, who loved me, and had plans. Derek said he was a good guy, and to go if I’d be happy with him.”
Lexie studied the brass fastener of a pair of overalls for a long moment before she murmured, “But you didn’t.”
“No.” Meredith swallowed the sudden lump in her throat-the same one she’d gotten while she told Finn she wished Derek wasn’t the one. “I let Finn go. Derek was it for me after that.”
The hanger and its overalls clattered into the cart. Zola turned to the noise, but Meredith was watching Lexie’s face. She could read it easily now, she knew what the other woman was wondering. The parallels between them were so apparent, Lexie had to be wondering how much like Meredith she was-and what that meant about Mark.
Meredith touched her arm. “Let’s go. Help me pick out the toys a bright and shiny child needs, instead of a dark and twisty one.”
“No Anatomy Jane for Zola?”
“Only if she wants one. Zola’s future is going to be up to her.”
“Hear that, kiddo?” Lexie playfully tapped Zola on the arm. “Start picking out your tattoos now.”
Meredith winced. “Oh God. Derek will-.” She stopped. What would Derek do? Would they be having arguments about self-expression? Or would Meredith even be lucid enough to know the twenty-something with the butterfly tramp stamp was her daughter?
“Derek will come back from New York armed with a Zola-sized Yankees cap,” Lexie said, grabbing Meredith’s hand and pulling her in the direction of the toy section. They pulled the cart up in front of a rack of stuffed toys. Meredith reached for a bear-wasn’t that what babies usually got?-but Zola had other ideas. She twisted back and lunged. She might have flung herself out of the Snuggie, if Meredith hadn’t put her hand firmly against her back.
Lexie reached over and retrieved the floppy stuffed frog off the rack she’d been aiming for. Zola immediately stuffed the flipper in her mouth, christening it. “You were saying about frogs?”
Meredith laughed, but not at her sister. Her happiness was for Zola, who already knew to get her hands on what she wanted by herself.
While Lexie surveyed the bookshelves a few minutes later, searching for the classics, as opposed to the Illustrated Science Encyclopedia Meredith had read as a child, Meredith’s phone rang. Although she knew Derek wouldn’t have even landed in New York yet, her heartbeat still sped up while she fished it out of her purse. It increased even more when she saw the name on the caller ID.
“Janet, is something wrong?”
“No, not at all,” the social worker soothed. “I wanted to see how the day is going.”
“Well. It’s going well. We’re shopping now. For baby things. For Zola.”
“That’s great. Did she have a good night?”
Meredith hesitated, absently stroking Zola’s hand with a finger. “She…took a while to go to sleep. It was a little hectic for all of us.”
“That’s to be expected. She’ll adjust to her new environment soon.” Zola squealed around her pacifier, as if she knew she was being talked about and wanted to comment. Meredith cringed, knowing how loud that must have sounded on Janet’s end. “She sounds happy. Was your husband surprised?”
“You have no idea. I mean…definitely.”
“Good. Well, I also wanted to let you know I’ve been in touch with an Early Intervention Coordinator about Zola, and they’d like her to get a physical therapy evaluation and be seen by an orthopedist. I know she had some evaluations in the hospital, but they were focused on the more pressing issues. With a child with special needs it’s important to also get a handle on the long-term issues as soon as possible.”
“Of course. That makes sense. Just tell me who to call.”
“Can you take down a number?”
“Um. Sure. Just a second.” She rummaged through the purse at her side, awkwardly balancing the phone and Zola. Lexie dumped a pile of books in the cart to lift Zola from her Snuggie at the same moment Meredith lifted her head to switch her cell to the other side. Zola’s foot-clad in cute but not-functional sneakers-clipped Meredith in the chin. She bit her tongue to keep from swearing into the mouthpiece, but finally retrieved a pad of paper and a pen.
Only once she’d said, “Ready,” did she notice she’d pulled a pack of blue post-its from the depths of her bag.
***
After they’d effectively cleaned out Babies R Us-neglecting only the stroller and the crib, both of which Meredith insisted Derek needed to be a part of buying-Lexie drove back to Meredith’s while her sister sat in the back of the car, narrating the trip to Zola.
“I wonder if it’s strange for her,” she said while they unloaded bags into the driveway. “How much do you think she remembers about Malawi?”
“Probably not a lot. Soon all she’ll know is life here, with you.” Lexie hefted the box with the highchair out of the trunk (Delivery guys were coming with the big furniture, but she got the honor of unloading what they could fit into Meredith’s Jeep). The strain of the box’s weight had to be what made her keep rambling. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember a time before I knew you, you know? I used to have this list in my room of things I’d never done.”
She shoved the box toward the steps, half-wishing they’d waited for Jackson to be around to do all this. “Which is weird, because half the time you don’t know you haven’t done something ‘til you do it, like I never realized how blue a sky could be until I saw the one in Amsterdam, so there wasn’t a point in writing it down until I saw it.”
She tipped the box up to the porch, and pushed sweaty hair away from her face. “Zola, you better really like this chair. But number one on the list was meeting my big sister. Now I can’t even remember a time before I crossed it off.”
Meredith reached down to pick a flower from the bushes next to the porch railing. “You kept it until you started your residency?” She twirled the flower against Zola’s cheek and the baby giggled.
Lexie’s hands slipped, and the corner of the box came down on the toe of right foot. “Son of a-dingo!” she corrected, with one glance at Zola. While she corrected her hold on the box, the truck from the store pulled up. Soon beefy guys had taken charge of the high chair, as well as the rocker and changing table they were somehow going to fit into Meredith’s bedroom.
“Why not give her Alex’s room?” Lexie asked, while Meredith fixed Zola a bottle, and the men banged around upstairs.
“Cristina’s there now. And… I don’t know. That room was George’s. He got the biggest room.” She smiled; twisting the cap of the bottle long after it had been secured. Zola grabbed for it and brought her back to the present. “But I came home one night, and he was gone. Alex took it and then…” She sank into a kitchen chair waving her hand to indicate (Lexie assumed) the repetition of the line, and Lexie became aware of the weight she carried on her shoulders. “I don’t want to come home one day and find her gone.”
Before Lexie could comment, one of the men yelled from the stairs. “Do you have a Phillip’s head down there?”
The panicked expression on Meredith’s face said she had no earthly idea. “I’ll go check,” Lexie said. She headed for the basement and found the toolbox quickly. Picking it up, she wondered how long it had sat there. Sometimes she wandered the house, imagining her dad traipsing the halls, long before she was born, building a life. He’d have put together a crib there. He’d fed a crying baby in the same kitchen.
Did Meredith think about that?
Did she see Ellis Grey doing the same things?
As unprepared as those two must have been to be parents, Lexie couldn’t imagine them attempting to fit a baby’s room worth of furniture into the master bedroom alongside their bedroom suite. The workman she handed the screwdriver to looked as if he might be boxing himself into the corner of the room by putting together the changing table.
“Are they almost done? I think she needs a nap,” Meredith said once Lexie had delivered the box. Zola rubbed her eyes, proving the point.
“It’s wall-to-wall furniture in there, Mer.”
“My dorm room in undergrad was like that. If I can navigate around furniture in all states of intoxication, I can do it with a baby.” She smiled. Lexie recognized the devilish look from long, long ago. “We’ll be fine, won’t we Zola? Let’s go see all your new things.” She headed for the stairs. Lexie took it upon herself to wash the bottle. Every little bit would help Meredith out while Derek was gone.
She stood at the sink, thinking back to the conversation they’d had examining baby clothes. Meredith’s words had made the hair on Lexie’s neck stand up in the same way it had after Jackson said he didn’t mind getting chief resident because he had her. He’d been so noble to leave the study for fear of tying his name to it-but he also seemed afraid of his name. He hung back in the shadows, thinking his success wouldn’t mean anything thanks to his grandfather.
Lexie didn’t get it. The few times she’d been asked if she was related to Ellis Grey, she’d said, “Sort of.” Anything to get a leg up. Meredith had admitted that her name had made up for her dubious recommendation letters going into med school. Jackson had denied his paternity. His humility was inspiring, but it could also be seen as a lack of drive.
Mark had drive in everything he did, medicine and family. He wanted everything life could give him. She tried to make Jackson want that, but he seemed content with his lot.
How much of a freak was she to not understand that?
The slam of the front door startled her, and she realized she’d been letting hot water flow over the top of the bottle for so long it was practically sterile. “Your phone’s ringing,” Meredith said, coming into the kitchen. She made a beeline for the refrigerator, but turned around to follow Lexie through to the living room a split second later, drawn by a wail from upstairs.
“She might just be overtired and fussy!” Lexie called, grabbing her phone to push talk. The pounding of Meredith’s feet on the stairs proved that this was no time to have any sort of crying-it-out argument.
“Hello?”
“Lex. Is this a bad time?”
She sank onto the couch and drew her knees to her chest. The gravelly tone of Mark’s voice caused her heart to contract like he still had a hold on it, though she told herself it was only because of how strained he sounded. “No, of course not.”
He exhaled into the phone. “Good. I’m…uh…leaving for New York, but I got to the airport kind of early, and I can’t concentrate on anything. Mrs. Shepherd she… she might as well be my mom, you know?”
“I know. I met her.”
“That’s right. She likes you. She’d never liked a girl I brought home before, but she liked you.”
“What about when you dated her daughters? Didn’t she like them?”
Mark laughed. “I guess she’d always figured my joining the family officially one way or another was inevitable.”
Lexie coughed, but neither of them acknowledged that even dating her he’d only been one degree removed from being a Shepherd.
“I remember one time, though, she caught me and Kathleen on the stairs…” His voice disappeared into the past and she let him relate the story, followed by another about the prank he’d talked Shepherd into playing at their high school prom. She let him talk for the same reason she’d sat with him during the night of Callie’s accident, because he needed someone, because his family might have been falling apart in front of his face. They both valued family, maybe a little too much.
Jackson almost never talked about his family.
She didn’t leave the couch throughout their entire conversation. The noises from upstairs, if there were any, didn’t reach her. When she heard the echo of the tinny voice of the gate agent’s announcement over the airport loudspeaker she glanced around the room, surprised to see late-afternoon light pouring in through the tall windows.
“Time to board,” Mark said. “Thanks for listening.”
“It’s what friends are for. We’re friends, right?” She cringed as she said it, thinking she should have a phone cord to wrap around her fingers the way she had while she tied up her parents’ phone as a teenager.
“Yeah. We’re friends Little Grey.”
She wrinkled her nose at the nickname, and a second later he was gone. She leaned her head back against the cushions of the sofa, a dumb smile on her face.
“Have you been on the phone this whole time?”
She rolled her head slightly to the left. Meredith stood in the doorway to the living room with Zola in one arm, and a blanket folded across the other. “Yeah.”
“Hold her a sec.” Meredith thrust Zola into her arms, and spread the blanket out on the floor. “With Mark?”
“Yeah. Don’t give me that look. We’re friends.”
Meredith sat Zola on the blanket, putting two stuffed toys and a set of plastic keys within the baby’s reach. She sat cross-legged next to her, and watched her while she spoke to Lexie. “Derek and I tried that. The being friends thing.”
“Did it work?” Lexie watched Zola lunge forward for the keys. The baby shook them gleefully in both hands. She started to overbalance. Meredith’s hands shot out to catch her, but Zola managed to get a tiny hand down to steady herself before intervention was necessary. “Smart girl.”
“Isn’t she? She’s got this sitting thing down. And no, it didn’t. Or, it did, until our dog died and we had sex at the prom the hospital threw for the chief’s niece.”
“Then I’ll avoid all black tie affairs Mark might attend.”
“Good plan. I’m going to get my phone so Derek can have a picture of her to show off in New York. Be right back.”
Lexie slid onto the floor to take Meredith’s spot in front of Zola. Almost as soon as Meredith went out of sight, Zola’s face crumpled. The earsplitting scream she let out a second later brought Meredith careening back into the room, nearly falling over the end table in her rush. “What happened?” She tossed the phone into Lexie’s lap and scooped Zola up.
“Nothing! Is she wet?”
“I just changed her. I’m surprisingly good at diaper changing. I think it’s all the dressing changes we had to do as med students. What is it Zola? I wish you could tell me.” Meredith bounced the baby gently in her arms. Zola whimpered a few more times, but after a second or two in Mer’s arms, she calmed. “Well. That’s better. Decided those keys weren’t for you, huh? How ‘bout a bunny?” She sat down on the blanket, and handed Zola the stuffed bunny. Zola chewed on its ears.
Lexie picked up the phone and snapped two pictures of Zola happily settled on Meredith’s lap. All part of her mission to make Shepherd realize how stupid he’d been to ever doubt his wife’s mothering skills.
And to make Meredith realize that Zola’s hissy fit hadn’t had anything to do with the stupid plastic keys.
Part Two|| Table of Contents || Part Four