With lunch eaten, it was back to The Sister House for Amelia and Scout. The movers were prompt and arrived on time. While the youngster enjoyed an unusual whole afternoon of Play Station, Amelia was kept busy directing the placement of her furniture throughout the rooms.
She loved this house. Always had done. Derek, her late brother, had re-modelled the house for Meredith and for the family that the couple had hoped to have together. With his own hands, he had crafted it into an ideal family home and no matter where she stood within it, Amelia could feel Derek’s presence. He was in the walls, floors, fixtures, and fittings that surrounded her, something that brought her a sense of peace and calmness.
Also, the house had always been Amelia’s safe and happy place. On her arrival in Seattle from Los Angeles, Amelia had been a mess. Grieving the loss of her fiancé James and their son, Christopher, she’d been a shambling mess, struggling with her addictions to OxyContin and booze. Eager to help, Mer and Derek had offered her not just a room, but a home and it had been in this home where she had learned to be sober, achieving a new normal for herself.
Plus, it was where she had raised Scout for the first three years of his life. He had taken his first wobbly steps in the living room of this house. He’d spoken his first words there too. Marks indicating his height, and those of his cousins, could still be found on the wall of the kitchen.
With so much of their history here, having the house fall into the hands of strangers, who would never fully appreciate it, was not something that she could live with. So, when Meredith had told her about wanting to sell it, she’d agreed a price with her adopted sister and bought the sentimental pile of bricks herself. Then, before she knew it, Amelia and Scout were going home.
Standing looking at her small sofa, she wondered if she would ever be able to fill up its large spaces. Her pieces of furniture were few in number, coming as she was from a small apartment. In places, they were too small for the much larger spaces they would now be occupying, meaning that they would need to be replaced in due course. Remembering how the house was before her life was turned on it’s head, Amelia feared that she’d ever be able to replicate its homely, lived in atmosphere.
Never in the houses history had so few people lived in there. It had always been a collection point for Grey-Sloan’s waifs and strays. At some point, almost all of the hospitals interns and residents had lived there. The trend had begun with Mer, Alex, George, Izzie and Christina and had ended with the most recent crop of residents. Even then, Shepherd blood had been present here. Her nephew, Lucas had only moved out, having taken up an oncology fellowship in New York, alongside his new bride, Simone.
Amelia didn’t feel inclined to open the house up like that again. Living alone had been an awakening for her. Living with other people, she’d never had to learn how to fully care for herself. For example, up until three years ago, she famously hadn’t been able to cook. Meredith and Maggie had always prepared her meals or she ate in the hospitals canteen or she’d grabbed herself a takeaway. Even when she’d first moved into the apartment, Maggie had batched cooked enough to see her through the week.
Living alone had also forced Amelia to take responsibility for her own mental health and addiction management. She’d had to learn to be able to identify early warning signs that she was entering a spiral. Spiralling was a one way street back to rehab and with her key support figures no longer on her immediate doorstep, she couldn’t afford to let herself slip.
So she’d gotten herself a good therapist, attended regular AA and NA meetings, enrolled in a cookery course, and had thus started the process of taking control of her life. With a lot of hard work, she’d learned to become self-sufficient. For the first time in her life, she hadn’t needed to rely on anyone and it was a pretty good feeling. It was also safe. If you could do it all by yourself, then you didn’t need anyone or anything. It was a neat way to ensure that she couldn’t be hurt anymore.
With the furniture sorted, Amelia realised that it had been hot and thirsty work. She plucked chilled bottles of ginger ale from the cooler box she’d packed, knowing the fridge would be empty in the sister house. The movers gratefully accepted the cold drinks, along with a generous tip as they prepared to leave. Having waved them off, she flopped down on her compact sofa, next to Scout. She watched him play his game for a few minutes before gently but firmly insisting it was time for him to shut it down.
“Let’s get some fresh air. How about a picnic in the garden?” she suggested.
He didn’t look convinced. “Picnics are for babies. I’m a big boy now, Mom.”
She chuckled at this. “You’ll always be my baby, squish”, she thought.
“You are getting big. If you keep growing so fast, I may have to stack some of my big, fat, heavy textbooks on your head. That ought to do the trick.”
Scout looked at his Mom sternly but when he saw her laughing, he gave in and laughed too. He loved her to bits, even if she made really bad Mom jokes sometimes.
“So what about that picnic? You must be hungry?”
He couldn’t disagree and so they set up a blanket on the ground in a shady spot in the yard. It was near where the old swing had been, the one where Kai had left her the first time, after telling her that they didn’t want what she had – a child.
“No, no, no, Shepherd. Stay in the present. Going back there will only hurt you”, she thought.
Putting her focus back on her current reality, Amelia set about pouring a cool drink for Scout and then offering him a paper plate of salad, cold meat, and bread. After she’d prepared her own plate, they’d gotten comfy and told each other jokes as they ate. Peals of laughter filled the air, causing a blackbird that had been perching on the fence to become startled and take to flight. It was a wholesome, heart-warming scene, one that Amelia wished she didn’t have bring to an end. But, with work still to be done, she had no option but to do so.
Together, which really meant her working with Scout watching, Amelia got their beds made and unpacked some essentials such as clothes, underwear, and toiletries, along with towels and Scout’s green frog plushie. Link had bought it when he’d first learned that she was pregnant and it had always been Scout’s favourite toy. He couldn’t sleep without his battered old froggy tucked safely under his arm. Next, she ordered a home delivery of groceries and when it arrived, she put it away. After, she made an executive decision that that was enough for today. Everything else could wait until tomorrow.
She made a simple pasta meal for dinner, before getting Scout showered and ready for bed. They watched a movie on her laptop before Scout went up to bed. With his teeth brushed, she tucked him in and kissed him goodnight.
After cleaning up the kitchen, she made sure the house was safely locked up before heading upstairs herself. She took a long, cool shower, and put on her pyjamas. After looking in on Scout, who was out cold and snoring softly, she got into her bed and was soon enjoying her first nights sleep in her new-old home.
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