Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 44B

[ariaadagio]

Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.

~~~~~

They walked into the store.  A blast of cooler air, cool but not cold, chilled away the dampness on Meredith's skin.  A shiver pulsed through her as she stared around at the rows and rows and rows of fabrics.  It was like someone had taken a color pallet and tried to use each pigment and shade before repeating.  Colors.  Everywhere.  Ugly colors.  Pretty colors.  Prints and plaids and polka dots.  A saleswoman came to greet them with a cheerful smile and a friendly hello, but wandered off when Ellen told her in a soft, honeyed voice, "Thank you, dear, but we're just browsing."

Meredith wandered toward the section labeled yarn in bold print.  The sign hung from the ceiling.  Another explosion of color greeted her as she entered the aisle, but organization held it in a firm grip, and the rolls of yarn, arranged by color, seemed more like steady gradients in a rainbow than a vomited explosion from the ugliest browns to the most royal purples.  Her fingers brushed against the yarn as she perused the section.  The yarn felt soft on casual touch, but tiny, fibrous strands gripped at the pads of her fingers as she dragged them past, giving it a coarse layer above the smooth and soft below.  She paused on a deep sangria red.

"Oh, no, dear, not that brand," Ellen said.  "The color bleeds all over in the laundry."

"Oh," Meredith said, drawing her hand away.  She'd almost forgotten Ellen was there.  "What should I..."

Ellen cocked an eyebrow at her.  "What are you planning on making?"

"I don't know," Meredith replied.  "I didn't...  I didn't really do the planning thing.  I just...  Derek...  This was kind of an impulse.  But I like knitting.  I do.  I did, anyway.  It was... Relaxing.  Sort of.  Except.  Yeah," she finished lamely.  She absently stuck her finger into one of the yarn clots and started worrying at the strands, only to realize what she was doing.  She dragged her hand away and clasped her hands together unnaturally in front of her torso, trying to give her fingers something to do.

"What did your friend Izzie have you make?" Ellen said.

Meredith shrugged.  "She tried to get me to make a sweater."

"Nonsense," Ellen replied, clucking her tongue.  "You shouldn't start on sweaters.  No wonder you had trouble.  Why don't you begin with a simple scarf?"

"Okay," Meredith replied as Ellen began enthusiastically perusing the aisle.  She picked up rolls of yarn at random, holding them up to Meredith's face, making faces that pronounced without words what Ellen thought.  Maybe.  No, not that one.  Maybe.  Definitely not.  No.  No.  No.  Maybe.  Oh, yes.  Maybe...

"What color is your favorite coat?" Ellen asked after she'd grabbed three colors.  A cream, a deep champagne red, and lilac.

"Well, I have this great white toggle coat that I love to wear in the fall..."

"Red then?  That would work with the white," Ellen said, shifting the champagne color to prominence.  She stopped to think for a moment.  "Or gray.  Gray would look lovely against your eyes."

"Gray," Meredith replied, nodding.  "Okay.  I can do gray.  Gray would... Yeah.  Grey, gray.  It matches, I suppose.  Meredith Grey wearing a gray scarf."  She paused, trying to rein the words in before she got too out of control.  Could she sound any more like a freak?  She didn't think so.

Ellen paid Meredith no mind as she put back the three colors she'd picked up and shuffled toward the grays.  She picked up a slate gray, shook her head, put it back, and settled for lighter silver.  She held the yarn up to Meredith's face and smiled.  "Perfect," she said.  "You should stick to lighter colors to frame your face.  Darker things will make you look worn out.  You have needles, right?"

Meredith nodded, and before she knew it, they were walking back out of the store with a bundle of silver yarn in a plastic bag.  When she got back into the car and glanced at the glowing digital clock, she sighed.  Only forty-five minutes.  She hated that she'd left Derek alone, but if it turned out he was actually appreciating the time alone, forty-five minutes was really not all that long.  She sighed as Ellen relaxed into the seat beside her.

As if she'd read what Meredith had been thinking as it flitted across her face, Ellen smiled faintly.  "I promise, when we get back to Derek's room, I will try to keep my mouth shut for a while, unless you have a question about what to do with that lovely yarn you bought."

Meredith flinched as she turned the keys in the ignition.  Caught.  Red-handed.  In flagrante.  Figurative hand in the figurative cookie jar thing.  She sighed, swallowing.  Definitely not a way to score points.  "I wasn't," she began, only to deflate.  She'd been caught.  She didn't want to dig her hole any deeper.  "Okay, I was.  I was totally thinking that."

Ellen sighed.  "It's really all right.  Do you want to show me something else?  Maybe give Der some more time?"

Meredith worried at the steering wheel as she pulled the car out onto the main road.  Something else.  Ellen was actually giving her an out.  An opportunity to keep Ellen away from Derek for even longer.  "Aside from all the stupid tourist traps that I'm sure you have no interest in," Meredith said, glum, "I don't think I have any suggestions.  I'm...  I'm really not good for much thinking right now."  Beyond blind panic that she might be messing something up.  "I'm sorry."

"You must be very tired, dear," Ellen observed.

"I am," she admitted.  A shiver ran through her, and a weight she hadn't realized settled down onto her shoulders, bowing her against the seat.  She sighed.  "I'm...  God, this is all so exhausting."  The sick thing.  The family thing.  Everything.  At the same time, she felt a little guilty for admitting it.  If she was this tired, how bad must it be for Derek?  He couldn't sleep with all the noise.  It'd been painful to watch him snap awake over and over and over again since they'd switched him to codeine.  She really hadn't been able to blame him for being so grouchy to his mother despite his grousing that he should have handled it better.

"Meredith, I don't mean to be too forward," Ellen said, "But, perhaps you'd like to stop at your house and take a nap?  I could make some tea.  Maybe we could start the first few rows of your scarf.  It would give Derek some more alone time."

Meredith sighed.  That did sound like a really, really attractive idea.  And she could pick up Derek's earplugs while she was at home.  Maybe that would help him.  But she'd promised.  "I told him I'd be there the whole time," she said.

Ellen smiled.  "He won't mind.  Especially if you get some sleep."

"I...  Okay," Meredith said as the protests leaked out of her.  She'd been away from home since Tuesday morning, and it was Friday.  Just a little...  Just an hour.  An hour would be nice.  She could pick up some clothes that weren't on their last threads.

She steered toward home, sighing when the rain kicked up again into a splatter, splatter, splatter, somewhere between drizzle and downpour.  The raindrops were fat, and they fell down straight.  No wind.  Just wet.

She hadn't been home in over three days.  She was stuck somewhere between longing and guilt.  Derek was homesick.  But he couldn't go home.  She felt like she was serving some sort of selfish desire to experience her own shower and her own kitchen and her own bed without any regard for him.  What if he got upset?  What if he... What if.

"You're really sure?" Meredith asked in a small voice.

Ellen reached across the parking brake and laid a warm, weathered hand on Meredith's forearm.  "Meredith, if there is one thing I know about Derek, it's that he wouldn't want you to suffer needlessly on his behalf when there's an easy fix."

"Okay," Meredith replied.  The drive proceeded in silence until she sat at a red light, staring at her surroundings, not really to stare at the surroundings so much as to avoid Ellen's scrutiny.  She was tired.  And she felt even more inadequate now that Ellen had read her like a cheap novel complete with cheating Cliff notes and then decided to do the perfect mother thing.  This was supposed to be... This was...  Her gaze drifted to the dilapidated shopping plaza on the left of car across several lanes of traffic and rested on the sign for a little mom and pop deli.  Sandwiches.  Why did that...

"Crap!" Meredith exclaimed.  The light turned green, and she put her foot on the accelerator more out of habit than anything else, probably annoying the car in front of her as she proceeded to tailgate at a marginally safe distance of about a foot.  She briefly glanced at the deli disappearing by the wayside and sighed.

Ellen looked up from her silent contemplation.  "What?"

"I forgot," Meredith said.  "I was going to get Derek something to eat.  He was asking for something earlier."

Ellen's eyebrows rose, and she smiled.  "He was?" she said, her voice rising from its normal earthy registers to something higher-pitched.  Something hopeful and flighty and happy.  She didn't sound like she thought Derek being hungry was a simple thing.  She didn't sound like bringing Derek some lunch was an inconvenience.  Just a miracle worthy of being awed.

"Yeah," Meredith replied, frowning.  "Something a little more attractive than soupy eggs and greasy sausage.  Maybe a sandwich from a deli.  We can get something on the way back to the hospital, I guess.  Just don't let me forget."

If she took a nap, relaxed at home for a few hours, and then forgot to bring him some food he would like, well...  She'd feel awful.  Worse than awful.

"Why not make something?" Ellen suggested.

"I don't cook," Meredith said.  "Cooking is one of my many not-talent things."

"You helped Sarah with the cookies," Ellen countered.

"That was stirring, and I was tricked into it," she tried to explain.  "I can stir.  I can totally stir.  I just can't cook.  It's all... cooking and...  Yeah.  No.  That never goes well."

"Turn in here," Ellen commanded.  Her eyes sparkled, and it was the first genuine flicker of excitement Meredith had seen in the woman since she'd arrived in Seattle.  She clutched at her purse straps, and looked like she wanted to jump out of the car.  While it was moving.  Meredith reflexively followed Ellen's directions, responding more to the tone than anything else.  It was a mom tone.  A do it now, or else tone.  She frowned in consternation as Ellen released her purse and wrapped her finger around the door handle.  The car rolled to a stop as Meredith eased into a parking space and put her foot down on the brake.  Why...  Why...

"Safeway?" Meredith said as she absorbed the bold red lettering spanning across the storefront.  "I don't need groceries, Ellen," she added.  Ellen popped open the door without hesitation and started heading for the main building, dodging past an old woman who, despite the spattering rain, walked her cart back to her car at a speed competitive with tectonic shift.  Sometime in the next geologic age, she might reach her vehicle.  "Hey," Meredith said to the empty car as she pulled her keys out of the ignition.

"Where are you going?" she added toward Ellen's departing figure as she lugged herself out of the car.  The rain slammed down into Meredith, but for all Ellen seemed to care, the sun beat down, baking the streets, and everything was fine.  Well, Ellen did have a raincoat.  Meredith did not.  Meredith wore a pair of ratty knit pants and a holey shirt.  She didn't keep many spare clothes in her locker, and she hadn't been home.

"Derek wants to eat," Ellen said brightly, turning around only to smile before turning back.

Oh.  Meredith felt stupid, realizing Ellen hadn't heard Derek complain about the food looking awful.  She'd just seen him not eat it.  He was already acting lackluster and tired.  It would be easy to mistake his refusal to eat for disinterest in food altogether.  Meredith wanted to kick herself as she started to get a full picture of why Ellen had been so upset that morning.

Crap, crap, crap.  She really was bad at this.  She raced after Ellen, only to jar to a halt as she smacked into a little red hand basket Ellen held as Ellen turned around.

"Carry this, dear," Ellen said.  "My wrists have been bothering me today."

"I um," Meredith stuttered, trying to catch up with the shift from sad, fretting Ellen to take-charge Mom Ellen.  She followed, feeling sort of like a drowned rodent, waterlogged, dripping as she clutched at silver handles of the basket she'd been given.  "Okay.  What are we buying?"

"Things to cook," Ellen replied.  "Do you mind if I use your kitchen while you nap, dear?"

"I, uh.  Uh, no," Meredith replied as the sliding doors parted for them, revealing aisle after aisle of produce and food and meat and Izzie things.  The temperature dropped enough to make her shiver, not from nerves or evaporating moisture, but because the store was essentially a freaking refrigerator, and she was soaked.  People traipsed up and down the aisles with noisy, squeaky red carts bearing the store logo.  Dirty, muddled trails of water arched toward the doors and into the welcome mats, memories of passing carts.  It wasn't busy.  But it wasn't empty either.

"No, of course I don't mind," Meredith added as Ellen darted toward an aisle.  An aisle with boxes.  Lots of boxes.  Ellen knew exactly where she was going.  "You're welcome to...  Yeah.  I don't know how clean it is, though."  Ellen grabbed a box from the rice section.  Ricearoni?  Minute rice?  "I haven't been home to make sure Izzie hasn't been on one of her maniacal baking sprees.  She does that when she's upset, and the whole marriage thing is... Yeah.  She was a little upset.  So... baking.  Maybe baking.  Muffins.  She likes to make muffins.  And cookies.  And cupcakes."

Ellen grabbed a can of Campbell's soup next.  Meredith didn't catch what kind it was.  "And then they multiply into dozens of muffin cookie children until they're all over the kitchen.  And she leaves stuff out until we eat it all.  Which isn't necessarily bad.  Because it tastes good.  Well, I guess it's bad.  Because it's usually bad for you.  Derek won't touch any of it.  Izzie stopped trying with him, but the rest of us are all still helpless victims or something.  Maybe not helpless.  But it's cupcakes!"

Meats next.  Ellen poked through the refrigerated chicken section before picking up one that she seemed to think looked good.  The pink, uncooked chicken sat mashed under plastic wrap on top of a yellow Styrofoam plate.  "But, you know," Meredith continued to babble.  Why was she babbling?  And why couldn't she stop?  The words were like a train wreck from start to finish.  She couldn't stop looking to see what would tumble from her mouth next.  "I'm just not sure the kitchen is clean.  Right.  Maybe clean.  Maybe not.  But you're welcome to..."  Ellen turned finally.  "Use it," Meredith finished, swallowing.

Ellen stopped moving, and, as if Meredith's whole spiel had been a non-entity, she responded only to the part that was relevant to her.  "Wonderful," she said.  "I didn't realize he was hungry."  She gestured to the basket in Meredith's hands.

Meredith was glad for it.  The basket.  It meant her hands weren't free to wander all over creation, gesticulating to the tempo of the words cascading from her lips.  No.  Holding.  Holding the crate was very good.

Ellen smiled.  "All done."

"What?" Meredith said, hoping that hadn't sounded as much like a quack as it had sounded like to her.  "Is that..."  She shifted the basket to her left hand and pawed through it with her right.  Not that there was much to paw through.  "This is everything?"

Ellen nodded.  "Yes."

"You're going to cook with minute rice, a can of soup, and some chicken... stuff?" Meredith asked incredulously as they wandered toward the checkout.  The store wasn't empty, but the checkout lines were.  They came out near the end.  Aisle ten.  That was the checkout line they picked.  The checkout guy smiled at them.

"I never said I was a master chef," Ellen replied as Checkout Guy rang up all their stuff.  Their three items of stuff.  Stuff-lite.  Hardly worthy of the term stuff.

"Paper or plastic?" Checkout Guy said, flashing a bright, toothy grin as he eyed Meredith up and down.

"Paper," Ellen said as she swiped her credit card.

"But you're," Meredith stuttered.  "You're all...  Mommish.  SuperMom.  You're SuperMom.  How can you not... It's..."  She stared as Ellen signed her name on the receipt.  "I don't get it."

"Come, now, dear," Ellen said as they walked out.  "I essentially had six children, and I was a single mom for over half of it.  I didn't have time to be a chef."

"But," Meredith said.  "Okay, you've ruined my whole worldview now, I hope you know."  The rain had stopped again, so the trek back to the car was leisurely.

Ellen laughed.  It was a beautiful, rich sound.  Full of life and love and all sorts of Mom things.  "Oh, Meredith.  You're such a dear."

"Okay," Meredith said, flustered.  "Okay, but how does chicken, soup, and rice equal a meal?"

"It's one of his favorites," Ellen replied, shrugging.

"It is?"

Ellen raised an eyebrow.  "He doesn't make it at home?  I'm surprised.  It's one of the few recipes I managed to drill into him before he went to college."

Meredith flicked the unlock button on her keychain.  Derek's Lexus chirped, happy to have company again, and the trunk popped open.  Trunk.  Stupid.  You didn't need the trunk for three freaking items.  Ellen put them there anyway.  Meredith reached up to close the door.  The latch clicked, and she moved toward the driver side.

"Wait," she said as she climbed into the car.  "You mean that rice thing.  With the chicken.  That thing that he makes in the casserole dish.  That's this?  You make that out of this?  We could have gone through the express checkout with this without pissing off everyone.  This can't be that."

"Well, yes, dear," Ellen said.  "It is.  It's always been one of his favorites."

"But that's like...  It tastes good."

"Oh, Meredith."

"I thought he was being all master cheffy," Meredith said, biting her lip as she navigated out of the parking lot.

Ellen peered at her.  "Master cheffy."

"Yes," Meredith replied, nodding.  "To be a chef.  Cheffy.  It should be a word."

"What difference does it make as long as you liked it?" Ellen asked.

"None.  I guess.  I just..."  Meredith loosened her fingers from the steering wheel and laughed, letting the wheel, for once, guide her more than make her feel like she was wrestling with something.   The steering wheel uncoiled from the turn, and the smooth, leather guard brushed her palms.  "Worldview.  Crashing down!" she said.  She stopped the car abruptly for a light.

"It doesn't have to be complicated to taste good."

"Anything requiring a stove is complicated to me," Meredith admitted.

Ellen grinned.  "I'm sure we'll fix you.  I made Derek self-sufficient, and he nearly burned our house down once.  We had to replace the countertop and repaint the ceiling.  There was a smoke ring over the stove."

Meredith snorted with laughter as she tried to imagine calm, collected, in control, I-fix-brains Derek flummoxed by a stove.  He made fun of her.  All the time.  For her lack of cooking.  And now she'd found out that, not only was his master-cheffiness a carefully constructed illusion held up by a can of soup and some minute rice, he'd actually pulled a Meredith and burned something.  Her vision blurred.  Oh, god.

"Do you have pictures?" she asked.  "How old was he?"

"Eighteen.  Two weeks before he left for college.  And yes.  Sarah seemed to think it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen."  Ellen leaned back against the seat and chuckled, her eyes sparkling at the memory.

"Copies," Meredith said as she struggled to breathe.  "I need copies."

Ellen winked.  "I think that can be arranged."  She sighed.  "Oh, I'm so glad you told me he wants to eat.  I was.  I thought..."

Meredith wiped the tears away, collecting herself in time to push down on the accelerator for the green light.  "He's fine, Ellen.  Really.  You really want to teach me to cook?  I'm probably worse than Derek.  Worse by a factor of about, oh, fifty billion and six."

"If you want," Ellen said.  "It could be our little project.  Not that I pretend to be an expert."

"Well, you're welcome to try," Meredith replied.  "We'd need to buy a backup fire extinguisher, though.  I don't trust myself to avoid my own pyrotechnic stuff.  Even with toast.  Toast can be very dangerous, you know.  That's where the black, bubbled streak on the kitchen wallpaper is from.  But if you want, we could.  Or cookies.  I could stir some more.  That could be a nice interim step.  Stirring.  The stirring thing.  I can definitely stir."

"Let's just start with the rice," Ellen said.  "You can watch this time."

"Watching," Meredith said.  She let out a withering sigh.  "Oh, thank god.  I mean.  Yeah.  Watching sounds good.  Great.  Watching sounds great."

Ellen smiled, and the silence for the rest of the drive was a warm one.  Their can of soup rolled around in the trunk, thumping and clanking whenever she made a fast turn, and Meredith couldn't help but snort with laughter whenever it made a noise.  Ellen watched the scenery, but with a vague, ghost of a smile pasted across her face instead of weary, passive watching and worry.  And, in what seemed more like seconds than fifteen minutes, Meredith found herself sticking her house key into the old brass lock and jiggling it.

The door gave way with a little jimmying, and she made an absent note to get a contractor out to fix it.  Or maybe Alex or Derek.  Maybe Derek.  Maybe not Derek, she decided as she thought about the burnt ceiling disaster.  Perhaps he wasn't as much of a capable homebody as she thought he was.  But he was a guy.  And a surgeon.  And a control freak.  So, he'd probably try to fix it even if he didn't know how, and then he'd break it more.  Laughter stuttered through her.  There she blows!  She imagined Derek ducking for cover as a plume of flames belched up from the stove pilots all while Sarah cackled maniacally, snapping photos.  Siblings.  Awesome.  She made a note to pump Sarah for more stories.

"Oh, Meredith," Ellen said, her voice low and breathy as she stepped into the foyer and peered around, pulling Meredith back into something resembling serious in less than a blink.  "This is where you live?  This house is lovely."  The surprise in her voice was impossible to miss, and the remainder of Meredith's relaxed, happy feeling dwindled into a faint pile of exhausted embers.

Ellen had met Meredith thinking Meredith was just a gold digging bar slut on a crappy intern salary.  She'd been friendly and tolerant thus far, but apparently, Meredith hadn't managed to dispel all the stigma Nancy had generated for her as a welcome mat that essentially said go away.

"It was my mother's," Meredith admitted, trying to ease the sudden, jittery attack of nerves.  She glanced around frantically.  Izzie had kept it relatively clean since she'd left.  Nothing looked out of place.  "Derek and I are going to move back to his place, I think.  We're going to get a house built there eventually.  But we talked, and I...  Moving back."

Ellen shrugged her raincoat off.  Meredith pointed to the closet.  "The trailer?" Ellen asked as she hung up her coat, an underlying thrum of caution biting at her tone.

"Yeah.  He likes it," Meredith said, suddenly defensive.  Why did they have to bitch so much about the trailer?  "I like it.  Why not move somewhere we both like?"

Ellen smiled faintly.  "I haven't seen it yet."

"I'm sure he'd show it to you if you asked," Meredith said.

"Maybe after he's feeling better," Ellen said as they walked out to the kitchen.  Ellen settled the paper bag containing her rice, chicken, and soup onto the counter as she glanced around, her eyes wide and discerning and calculating.  Izzie had, thankfully, not been on a baking binge recently, and everything hovered somewhere between neat and spotless perfection, not quite enough of one or the other to classify it as anything other than acceptably clean.

Meredith brought her arms up to her chest and rubbed her palms against her biceps, using the friction to try and stop the shaking in her chilled torso and limbs.  She didn't have a raincoat at the hospital.  She'd managed to get completely waterlogged from all the walking in the rain.  Her hair hung in drippy tendrils.  As she stood there, shivering, she felt naked.  Ellen made absolutely no effort to hide the fact that she was evaluating.

"Why do you like it?" Ellen asked as she came to a stop behind the center island.

"The trailer?" Meredith asked.

"Yes," Ellen said.

Meredith shrugged.  "The morning."

"What about it?"

"You can go sit out on his deck with a cup of coffee and it's just...  Perfect," Meredith said, closing her eyes, unable to stop the smile as the picture of it unfurled in her head.  She could remember one morning where she hadn't gotten dressed.  Derek had pulled a double shift and had still been asleep.  She'd grabbed a sheet from the bed, wrapped herself up, and gone out to sit on one of his deck chairs.  The temperature had been just chilly enough to need the sheet.  The morning had been utterly still.  She'd listened on the deck for a long time.  Listened to the nothing.  There'd been birds and movement and wind and water lapping from the nearby lake.  Leaves rustling.  But no people.  No cars.  No noise, just sound.  A thin layer of fog had hovered over the grass, making it seem like something out of a dream, and in that moment, that silent, beautiful moment, she'd known deep in her heart why Derek had fallen in love with it, because she'd fallen in love with it, too.

"The air is all gray and misty and damp, and you can hear the birds and everything moving," she said, trying to describe it.  "Every sip of coffee is...  It just makes you warm.  From the inside out.  But the best part is when Derek gets up, slips his arms around me, and we just watch."

"Watch what?"

"Everything," Meredith said breathily.  When she opened her eyes, she saw Ellen staring at her, contemplating, serious.  "I'm really sorry," she added.  "I'm not a poet.  Another of my not-talents."

"It does sound nice," Ellen said.

"It is," Meredith said.  "And this house?  It's not really mine.  It's just...  A pile of stupid memories that I seem to be stuck in."

"Surely, they can't all be bad."

Daddy, Daddy, look! she'd squealed as she'd gotten her wagon to start trundling down the hill.  She'd put her arms out like the wings of an airplane until he'd come up behind her with his strong hands and lifted her out as she'd giggled.  The wagon had kept on rolling.

Oh, you're a big girl, he'd goaned as he'd picked her up.

Flyin'! she'd shrieked.  He'd run her down the hill making engine noises.

"No," Meredith said.  "I guess not.  But..."

Ellen smiled.  "Change is good."

"Change is great," Meredith replied, her gaze reflexively tumbling down, down, down the length of her arm to her ring.  The kitchen lights made it sparkle.  And, whether it was the tiredness that unfettered her emotions, or the fact that Derek was sick, but he'd still said yes, or the whole mess of everything in the last two weeks...  She blinked, and tears started streaking down her cheeks.  Not grief.  Just...  Everything.  Elation.  All of it.  She touched the sharp edges of the diamond and couldn't stop herself from gasping.  When she realized Ellen was still staring at her, though, she pulled it all back inward and offered a lame, quivering, "Sorry," as she wiped at her face, frantic to erase the salty stains.

Ellen rounded the island and closed the space between them.  She eased herself down into the chair by the table and clasped her hands in front of her.  A simple gold band still gripped Ellen's left ring finger.  It was the first time Meredith had noticed it.

"Meredith, you seem..." Ellen said, her voice trailing away as she searched for a word.  She inhaled deeply before continuing.  "I know we didn't meet under the best circumstances.  And I know your family life has been difficult from what little you've said about it.  I also know that you've been working under the assumption that you have to win me over."

"Well I..." Meredith said, her voice hitching as she realized she'd been read again.  How was this woman so freaking discerning?  It wasn't fair.  It wasn't fair at all.  Meredith collapsed into the seat across from Ellen, too tired to deny or come up with an excuse.  "Yeah.  Okay.  Yeah, I was.  Derek was nervous, too.  Not as crazy-worried as I was.  But he was nervous.  At first, anyway, not that he would admit it.  He and I didn't meet under glowing circumstances.  And then there was...  You know.  Addison.  It was a mess.  A big, messy, messy mess... thing.  I'm sorry.  You probably liked her a lot.  She's leggy and fabulous and mature."  And I'm not.

"Addison?"

"Yeah," Meredith said as a sigh racked her frame.  She stared down at her placemat and started fiddling with the frayed edges.  "She's a very likeable person.  Even I like her.  Which is scary at times."

"I did," Ellen said.  "I adored her.  But that doesn't have any bearing on now."

Meredith looked up.  "It doesn't?"

Ellen leaned forward and caught Meredith's gaze with her own, unblinking blue one.  Her stare was warm, not accusing or hateful or anything of the kind.  "She was a good match for the ghost, Meredith," Ellen said.  "She was good for the Derek I got used to, the Derek we all got used to.  They were content, and I thought that would be the end of the road.  It wasn't a bad place.  Just not perfect.  But they drifted.  She made a stupid mistake, and Derek...  All we heard was that he'd dropped his multi-million dollar private practice in New York on a whim to work on staff at a hospital across the country, that he'd bought a trailer, and that he'd had some sort of affair with a surgical intern he'd met at a bar, of all places," Ellen added.  Her eyes added a subtle apology for the dig.  Sorry for the bar thing.  It's just what we'd heard.

"We gave him a hard time," Ellen continued.  "It was easy to give him a hard time when he was thousands of miles away and just a voice on the phone.  But you make him happy.  All he has to do is look at you, and it's perfectly obvious.  That's all I've ever wanted for him.  To be happy."  Ellen stopped and reached across the table, staying Meredith's worrisome fiddling, clasping her old, age-spotted hands over Meredith's younger, smaller ones.  Heat slipped from Ellen's skin into Meredith's rain-drowned fingers.

"Meredith, you don't have to fight to win me over," she said.  "I'm already won."

Meredith shuddered, staring down at Ellen's hands eclipsing hers.  "I'm..."

"Do you really want to knit that scarf, Meredith?" Ellen asked.

"I'm..." Meredith began, trying to stop herself from crying all over again.  "I'm very bad at the knitting thing."

"But do you want to do it?" Ellen prodded.

"No, not really," Meredith admitted as the tears began to fall.  "I did the knitting thing when I was miserable."

"You're happy now?" Ellen said.

"Happier than I've ever been in my life."

Ellen nodded and drew her hands away, eyes sparkling.  "I'll knit it for you," she said.

"Really?"

"Of course, dear."

Meredith reached up to wipe at her eyes, but it was useless.  Everything she'd been bottling up since she'd dragged Ellen out to the car escaped, and she cried.  "Thank you," she whispered hoarsely.  "It means...  A lot.  It means a lot."

She would have married Derek anyway.  She would never run again.  But she hadn't realized until that moment how much she'd wanted Ellen's approval.  And it felt...  She gasped as another sob racked her.  She wasn't sad.  She didn't know why she was crying so much.

Ellen smiled.  "You should go take a shower and warm up," she said.  "You're freezing."  She searched around the kitchen, located a clean pot, and started preparing the rice.