I Will Follow You Into the Dark

CHAPTER 30

I'm not completely pleased with the way this turned out, but I'm posting it before it gets too long and rambly. Eager to read your comments!

Derek obeyed her and sat on the sofa. His mouth was dry. His palms were slick with sweat. He was scared senseless. He had to know. Watching Meredith's mother pace a bit and consider what to tell him, he tried to brace for whatever came next. Subconsciously, his right hand brushed his left front shirt pocket, touching the photos he always carried there over his heart out of habit to calm himself.


As Derek sat worrying and trying not to panic, Dr. Grey took a few deep breaths and made yet another fate-altering decision. She made those decisions daily—sometimes saving lives and sometimes failing to do so—but in her life, the matters of the heart were a consistent failure. Her perfect instincts as a surgeon were completely overshadowed by her ever-misguided instincts as a mother and wife. She had no friends, but she assumed she'd flounder in that area of her life if it existed as well.

"You......you were good for her. I knew she slept around. I couldn't have stopped her—she might have even done it because she wanted to hurt me. But you changed that about her. I was grateful. You probably saved her from diseases or violence or some other tragedy. I should have told you back then how much I appreciated what you had done for her. And she drank less and studied more. All of that was good. So I'm very late in telling you "thank you" for all you did to help her."

"I love her," Derek said, pleading for her not to crush him with her words.

"Well, I did, too. But she doesn't deserve our love."

Upon hearing the venom in her voice, Derek struggled not to lunge at the woman and beat her senseless. Her words cut him because he knew she would have said them to Meredith just as coldly. And he knew what they would have done to her. Perhaps Meredith's mom already had said these things to her. She'd be deeply wounded.

"I won't believe that she doesn't deserve our love," Derek said softly.

"You have to......," Dr. Grey began.

"Nothing can change the way I feel about her," Derek said knowing that he'd never spoken words more true.

Dr. Grey sighed and turned away for a few moments.

"Just tell me," Derek said firmly. "I have to know."

"She never loved you, Derek. I saw you with her. It was obvious that you loved her. Your last visit......it was written all over you. You wanted to marry her. You almost didn't go back....."

Derek was stunned. He'd barely passed Dr. Grey in the hallway that entire trip. How she could have read him so clearly in that brief amount of time and been completely unable to communicate with her own daugher was astounding. "Yes. I bought a ring. I couldn't wait. I still want to....."

"No. She doesn't deserve you."

"Why?" Derek asked with tears overflowing.

"When you left, after that last visit, she slept around again."

"No.......," Derek felt the breath being sucked from his body. It wasn't true. She couldn't.......

Ellis knew now that she had to tell him what she knew would break his heart, "The drinking......the random men.......I found her with several of them. She didn't even care."

Derek was shaken and angry. But he still loved and needed Meredith, "We all make mistakes," he said through gritted teeth, "We can get past this."

"No, Derek, you can't. I couldn't. Look. I didn't want to tell you all this. But here's the raw truth. She was stupid and let one of those losers get her pregnant. Then she was stupid and wouldn't get rid of it. She wouldn't listen. So I kicked her out and told her I wouldn't support her anymore."

As Dr. Grey spoke, the color drained from Derek's face. He was nauseated and his heart was racing wildly but his mind was performing all sorts of calculations. He felt as if he were suspended in time and unable to move. But he still kept listening as the tirade continued.

"She left town and hasn't ever called or written. She doesn't want to be found. She never loved any of us. If she had, she would have come back for you. But she never did."

Every syllable she spoke rammed another dagger into Derek's heart. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It hurt to be.

"This is painful, I know. But I have surgery in an hour. You have to go."

"But.......," Derek began, but Meredith's mother would no longer listen. "Just go. She's out of our lives," she said as she pulled him up by the elbow and led him to the front door. Before he could speak any more, she pushed him outside and slammed the door in his face and locked it. What Derek couldn't know was that Meredith's mother slumped against the door as it closed and collapsed in a heap on the floor, sobbing silently for the pain in her past and for the new pain she had deemed it necessary to inflict. She felt certain that she was going straight to hell for her actions, but she had made her decision and she would stand up and face the consequences.

Outside on the porch, Derek was falling apart. He stared at the door as if it could respond to his questions or ease his anguish. To an outsider, he would have appeared in a transe. Pregnant? His mind wandered back to his last trip home from Ecuador with Mark. Mark had been right. Derek had been unable to contain his desire for Meredith. He had pulled over in a secluded area and made passionate love to the woman of his dreams. Without a condom. They had always been ridiculously careful to use protection. But he had not been in his right mind. And making love had been as urgent and necessary for both of them as oxygen. So they slipped and forgot all caution. She could have been pregnant with my child! Derek stepped forward and banged on the door. "Dr. Grey. It could be my child. You've got to help me find her. Please, Dr. Grey!!!"

From inside, Ellis Grey suffered a misery nobody else could contemplate. She could not give that man any hope that the child had been his. She was fairly certain that it was not. She did not doubt that her daughter had sex with him, but she knew him to be responsible. And she knew her daughter had not been faithful during his absence. It wasn't in her nature. She had not been able to look Ellis in the eye when she asked if the child were Derek's. The poor man had been through enough. She couldn't give him any more false hope. Better that he move on and try to find happiness with someone who would not hurt him anymore.

Derek beat on the door and yelled so loudly that he was certain the neighbors would call the police. But he didn't care. He was getting answers. Meredith's mother knew more than she was telling him. He would not give up..... But then he saw Dr. Grey's Mercedes drive past the house and toward the hospital. He knew that she knew he was still there. He also knew that she knew he hadn't been convinced to give up his search. But she left without even glancing in his direction.

Derek slowly made his way to his own car parked at the curb and drove home. Then he locked himself in his room to deal with the news he had asked for but never anticipated.

That visit to Ellis Grey wasn't his last attempt, but it was the most information he would learn about Meredith. Derek had all but harassed Ellis Grey for more information, but his efforts yielded no more from her about where her daughter was. Nancy corroborated the story, confirming that Meredith had been pregnant and that she left town. Nancy said she wished she knew more, and she even cried soundly with him, but she was no help. Derek contacted Meredith's alma mater and all the medical schools she had contemplated attending, but he learned nothing. He hired a private detective, but, as nice and persistent as the man was, he never found Meredith. In the end, he refused to accept payment, telling Derek to save the money in case he found another lead they could follow that might take them to her.

And so Derek spent years searching fruitlessly for his love. He never gave up. He tried everything in his power. He prayed for answers. He consulted with priests and was told that God would bring them back together if it were His will. Derek lost faith in a God that would bless him with the strongest love imaginable only to rip it away from him needlessly.


In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back