Secret smile

22

Everyone was quiet. Well, not everyone. Laura was giggling and banging her spoon against her highchair, but everyone else was completely quiet. I t was how this always went, how the dinners always started. Meredith knew exactly how tonight would go: Susan would ask her a question, she would answer, Thatcher would try to act like he cared, and then she'd stare at her plate for the rest of supper. This was hell. She wasn't sure why she kept coming except for that these people were something vaguely resembling a family, but she was pretty sure family wasn't supposed t be this hellish. She knew that today was not going to go well. And Derek would be done work in about half an hour. She would definitely rather be picking him up at work than sitting at this table. They could go do something, movies or he could cook dinner or something. That sounded like a good way to spend tonight, instead of staring miserably at her plate while her step mother or whatever stared at her former father, urging him to actually say something first. Thatcher never said anything first, probably because he didn't actually care if Meredith answered or was even here.

She was actually willing to bet money that this whole trying to include her in the family thing was more about Susan than it was about Thatcher. Well Susan and Molly and Lexie. They wanted her there. But Thatcher, that was a big complicated mess and she would rather not be here with the father who still wanted nothing to do with her. He never even tried hard. The first time they had done this, Thatcher had been telling a story about when Molly was three or four and Molly had sworn she didn't remember it, and then Susan had sworn it had never happened and then that had been when it had dawned on Meredith that her father was confusing his other family with her. Which was...after that, he didn't say anything to her. Except for the nice friendly person stuff. If she said something about her life, he had a tendency to say something to show interest and then she would respond and then it would end there. That was how it went and he just wanted to be somewhere else. Mark had a really comfortable couch and a really nice TV with this amazing movie collection that she and Derek were working through alphabetically. They weren't even through the A's yet.

Derek said the next movie they would watch would be Anaconda, which Meredith couldn't actually remember if she had seen before or not. She knew it involved a big snake, and that Derek had smirked when he had mentioned it, which probably meant it would scare her and she would jump and he would laugh at her. Derek was an ass like that. "What?" she looked up quickly at Susan, whose mouth was moving.

"I was just wondering how your job is going right now?" Susan smiled warmly.

"Oh," Meredith breathed, stabbing at her pork chops. "Great. Busy and...kids get sick a lot during the winter so...busy."

"Busy is good," Susan nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, busy is...it keeps me..." she trailed off, itching to reach into her pocket and text Derek, begging for him to save her. Or maybe Cristina would save her.

"That's good," Thatcher smiled, before looking back down at his plate.

"Yeah," Meredith breathed.

"She works with my boss's sister," Lexie volunteered, smiling brightly because Lexie was always the one to try to keep conversation going. "It's the strangest coincidence."

"It's just...funny," Meredith giggled slightly, pushing her fork through her peas. "And um...she's pregnant again. Which is...I think this is fifth kid. Maybe her sixth."

"Oh wow," Susan laughed. "She likes having children."

"Actually, she hates it. It's just...her husband got a vasectomy and it didn't work and...she's not happy."

"She's pregnant and she's not happy?" Molly frowned.

"That sounds...she's not very far along. She hasn't even told me yet and...I mean, she might be happy but she's sick a lot so she just doesn't...it's a lot of kids."