You're Like Coming Home

71.

Meredith sighed as she pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge. She's spent the entire morning wrapped up in her studying, with Derek at work it had been the perfect time to get ahead in her reading. But after hours of reading, she now needed a break, and she wasn't sure what to do. TV was boring, she'd already tried to see if Beth was home, and she knew Derek wouldn't be home for another couple of hours. With a glance at the clock, she realized that it was a good time to call Addison in California, and hopped onto the counter to reach for the phone. Before she could dial, however, there was a knock at the door, and she paused in her movements.

They hadn't had any trouble since Dr. Brown had been placed in jail months earlier, but she still got scared when someone knocked on the door when she was home alone. Nothing else had ever happened, but replaying flashes of that horrible period in her life were enough to make her want to run upstairs and hide under the covers.

She took a deep breath as she slowly moved towards the door, looking out the peephole and rolling her eyes when she saw Thatcher's other daughter standing in the hallway. She briefly contemplated pretending that no one was home, but she remembered Derek telling her what a good sister would do, and she took a deep breath before she opened the door.

"Hi," the girl breathed, and Meredith wondered what kind of sister she was if she couldn't even remember her name. "You're Meredith. This is awkward, I know, but...I'm Lexie."

Okay, now she at least knew her name.

"I know that you don't know me, but I came here yesterday looking for you, and your husband told me a lot about you," Lexie continued, and Meredith wondered if this girl knew that she hadn't stopped talking since she'd opened the door.

"I know our father abandoned you and you don't talk to him," Lexie continued. "But I thought...we're living in the same city now, so I thought you might like to know me. And Derek...he said that you like strawberry ice cream. Which is my favorite too. So I brought some ice cream over, and I thought that maybe we could eat ice cream and talk."

"Oh," Meredith said, making a mental note to kill her husband. He couldn't just go around strange girls with the same father as her that she like strawberry ice cream. "Um...yeah, I was just doing some studying, but come on in."

"Thanks," Lexie said with a smile as she stepped into the foyer. "Sorry to take you away from your studies. I know med school isn't easy."

Meredith smiled slightly as she walked into the kitchen, grabbing spoons and bowls. "No, it's not," she said. "But it will be worth it. I hope."

Lexie nodded as she handed Meredith the carton of ice cream. "Derek didn't tell me that much about you," she said. "I just...showed up here and I think he took pity on me but he said that he didn't want to tell me too much about you because he didn't know what you would be comfortable with."

"Yeah, he's amazing like that," Meredith smiled. Maybe she'd let him live after all."

Lexie took the bowl of ice cream Meredith was offering her and followed her to the couch. "I want you to know that I'm really sorry for what my dad did to you," she said softly. "I don't know very much, but my sister and I were looking through some old pictures over Christmas break, and we found one of you and him, so he kind of had to explain the whole thing."

"Oh," Meredith nodded, looking into her ice cream. "Um...how old are you?"

"I'm seventeen," Lexie replied. "I just started my first year at NYU."

"You're young." Six years younger than her. Thatcher obviously hadn't wasted any time in getting a new daughter.

"I skipped third grade," Lexie said. She looked closely at Meredith for a moment, smiling slightly. "This must be really weird for you."