maybe she’d taken advantage of the naivety she’d had as a child when being fed the stories that the family had been about where her cousin had gone, so much so that she’d stopped asking questions as she got older. sometimes, these things were better left without digging. she’d learned that the hard way. 

“i don’t know what they know.” it was the truth –– colette’s name wasn’t mentioned much. a couple of times within her own house to her parents, but they’d danced around the truth enough that april knew not to ask her aunt and uncle, colette’s parents, right out about it. somewhere along the way, it had drifted out of her memory. until now, when guilt seemed to be setting in about not trying to reach out sooner. 

“i don’t go home much. i speak to my dad every week, but he just tells me about the farm, and mom ––” it was like she was trying to justify why they didn’t speak about colette. “you’re a doctor though, that’s amazing.” her words were sincere, as hands pushed herself up in the hospital bed a little taller. “and i’m glad to know that you’re okay.”

colette looks down at the floor, unsurprised yet still disappointed. perhaps she had found some comfort in thinking that her departure had turned into some great scandal. to think she had just been forgotten about... she shakes her head. “you don’t have to tell me everything.” it was doubtful their routine had changed much in twenty years. they were simple people.

it was stifling.

wyatt had always been a romantic. from the barely existent relationships throughout high school and college to meeting the love of his life, it was who he was. probably highly influenced by the film choices of his little sister and not being able to say no to her but it had shaped him into the man he was today. mia however was everything he never thought he deserved. she was intelligent, ambitious, good looking and smoaking hot. she was the complete package and he wondered every day what he had done to be so lucky.

but things lately felt a bit off. he wanted more and she… well, she was a work in progress. nothing that a romantic night in wouldn’t solve, wyatt thought. he didn’t even noticed someone getting inside as he was upstairs finishing decorating their room with rose petals and nice candles. luckily he was hesitating lighting them, worried the house would catch on fire. he was clumsy enough for that. how embarrassing if he had to call 911 before his wife had made it home. when he heard noise downstairs, that thought left his mind. “don’t come upstairs! close your-” only as he ran down the stairs did he noticed the woman in his house was not his wife. “any thief wouldn’t make this much noise.” even if he loved his sister and often put her wellbeing before his own, he was still the oldest. he took one of the wedding frames from her hands before she could put it face down as she usually did. “you could’ve just called. we both know there’s nothing there that’ll go bad.” he was more awkward than usual and switched his weight from one foot to the other as he opened the box. exactly. “what happened to your car?” he looked down on her, semi judging her. sharmas were simply not good drivers.

the sharmas were cut from the same cloth when it came to romance. eleanor found it endlessly romantic that she ended up with her childhood sweetheart - and absolutely inevitable. if she hadn’t, she probably would have found some other tragically beautiful story to be a part of. but wyatt and mia? that was just tragic. there was something about the woman that she couldn’t trust. she always felt like she was one call away from being told she’d broken her brother’s heart completely. or she’d be interviewing for dateline soon enough.

“what’s upstairs?” eleanor asked suspiciously, immediately starting to sidle towards the stairs. “wow, are you avoiding me? that’s low, wy. even for you.” a pause. she looked at him for a second... and made a break for the stairs. “it’s in the shop!” she called behind her. “a routine thing.” if backing into a pole and losing a generous chunk of the back could be considered routine. she had to see whatever it was that he was hiding, even if when she got there it was disappointing. “at least there’s no camera in the corner- is it your anniversary?” she checked her watch. “typical she wouldn’t be home in good time.”

jo had stashed herself in a corner, call it subconscious or whatever. paperwork, the thing she despised, had somehow become her perfect excuse. her favorite hiding place. ever since things with alex had been left unresolved, jo had convinced herself that she could avoid her feelings and the whole situation if she tried hard enough. so what if they worked in the same hospital? “huh?” her head snapped up, surprised for a moment that she had been observed. “oh! doctor robbins. yes. i mean, no.” she sighed, straightening up a little. “yes i’m with you today. no, i’m not trying to bury myself in paperwork. i’m ready for anything you’ve got. seriously, hit me.” as soon as arizona spoke, jo could practically hear the wah wah sound effect playing overhead. mocking her. “oh.” she couldn’t turn down scrubbing in on a surgery. she was a resident. she would probably be declared insane. but there was another route she could go. “it’s just that…you are like, the peds surgeon of all peds surgeons, and i was really looking forward to learning from you, doctor robbins. especially as the strong, independent woman you are.” jo placed her hand over her heart, really sealing the deal. 

arizona wasn’t blind, she could tell there was something going on. annoyingly,  alex wouldn’t give up the details so she was left to come to her own conclusions, somewhere in the wheelhouse between soap opera and reality tv she was currently entertaining the theory that alex had a secret twin that kept appearing to mess things up with the people around him. that was probably wrong, but it was the most amusing. 

it felt surreal –– face to face with someone she hadn’t seen in more years than she could keep track of. maybe she’d half expected to see that colette hadn’t aged a day, that the face in her memories would be the one she’d see. “just a little battered and bruised.” she hoped it was a little bit reassuring, at least. as much as she’d like to keep talking about the predicament that lead to the kepner family reunion, there were more pressing questions bubbling beneath the surface. “where did you go?” the million dollar question. 

for some reason, colette thought she could get away with not being questioned. truthfully, she had hoped someone had explained what really happened - not just to april. to everyone. she wanted her family to care enough to still talk about her, but of course that was too much to ask. “where did i go?” she repeated, a soft laugh escaping.

she had the chance to bridge a gap - a chance she had been waiting for for years. she knew how the kepners could be. how everything was tied to doing the ‘right thing’ for the wrong reasons. she saw a lot of who she used to be, just in the way april held herself. she wanted to tell her everything she wished someone had told her. but she doesn’t know where to start. “i don’t know if you remember but um- i was married. and then i wasn’t. my parents didn’t agree with that so i um- i moved to boston for college.” she hesitated. “but i don’t think they know that because they didn’t ask.”

it had been too long since larissa had actually let herself have fun like this. perhaps it was being overly cautious, or too many of her friends being weary on her behalf that meant that her evenings looked more like something in an old folks home than of someone in her twenties. “definitely.” words were loud over the sounds that thickened the air, the feeling of the bass practically rattling her bones. “can i tag along more?”

"are you kidding? whenever you want!” she promised, resting a heavy hand on larissa’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. she meant it, but she knew the likelihood of them following through was slim. her nights almost always looked like this. she’d co-opt a practical stranger into a night out, insist they’d do it again and either forget about them or convince herself never to speak to them again. maybe this time would be different.

“because he had smaller trees?” brooke was too quick, set on dying on this hill of not needing a 7 foot tree. her serious look lasted all of five seconds until she semi melted under his kiss and rolled her eyes at how annoying he could be. times like this she remembered how stubborn he (they) could be, all the way back to sharing a lab table in biology class. like the one time he was dead set on the start hour for the ac/dc concert they’d gone to as teenagers and they ended up missing half the show.

brooke followed her husband back inside, arms crossed over her chest as a sign of protest. “i trust you.” just not with this. her eyes got smaller as he explained his plan. “you’re not going to chop off that tree in here. have you lost your mind? you didn’t let me sleep for a week because of the stupid paint wall on the furniture but you want to go all lumberjack inside our living room?” to say she was shocked was an understatement. a complete contrast to his joy. “hold on,” she walked towards him, putting the palm of her hand on his forehead. “no fever. could’ve sworn you were delusional just about now.”

“paint stains. you can clean up wood chips, easy!” tommy insisted, barely standing still long enough for her to go about her charade. with a saw in hand, he was unstoppable. only... logistically, it was almost impossible to lie the tree down on its side without getting in the way of something. “babe, can you uh- push the chair back?” he asked, motioning with the end of the saw.

it was tricky, considering april didn’t have many memories of colette to draw on, even now when she was faced with her cousin. as far as she’d known, one minute she was there and the next they were to never speak of her again. she’d tried, asked her mother in private, called on her older sister too, but nobody seemed to know. it was like colette had just disappeared into thin air. and now she was here.

“it’s good to see you.” those words were sincere. having wondered for a long time what had happened, it was good to know that she’d done well. ever an over-thinker, she’d come up with far worse scenarios in her head. “are you living here? in seattle?” will i get the chance to know you?

colette nodded, perching herself on the end of the chair like she might just take her leave at any moment. “i am. for the foreseeable future.” she clasped her hands together, fidgeting with a ring on her middle finger. questions about their family sat below the surface, waiting to be asked. but it felt insensitive to let them out now. she had to bide her time. which was starting to feel finite.

“i deserve that.” there were a lot of things that he’d done that perhaps he should have done differently, if not for his sake but for colette’s and for annabelle’s. taking his daughter to the other side of the country and cutting her off from her godmother wasn’t high on his list of proudest achievements. “and i can deal with mostly. i can fix mostly.” he confirmed, a small smile of his own curling up at the corner of his lips. “starting with an indefinite access to my guest bedroom. has to be a start, right?” 

guilt still weighed heavily on his shoulders. it was only now, that he and colette were in the same room together, that he truly was able to consider how his actions would have impacted her. how leaving her behind in pursuit of his own attempt to rebuild his life, a life without angelica. he hadn’t really taken into account that colette might just be in need of the same thing. selfish, was the word that came to mind for him. “a call would have been nice.” he admitted, the suggestion of a laugh behind his words in an attempt to lift the mood, though it was harder than he thought. “you can stay as long as you need to.” having some more help with annabelle would also be a perk. “and for what it’s worth –– i am sorry. for just, leaving you in the lurch like that.” his grief fuelled decision making hadn’t done wonders for her. “to be honest, i’m just glad you don’t hate me.”

"oh, don’t get me wrong. i did. a lot.” colette smiled in such a way that it wasn’t entirely clear whether or not she was being serious. what she felt when he left wasn’t hatred, it hadn’t even had the chance to become anger. it was just emptiness. they’d gone from figuring out how to live in a world without someone they both loved together to this vast nothingness in a matter of weeks. part of her wanted to tell him exactly that, but she’d never been a sharer. the only person that could get her to open up was gone. “but i’m over it now,” she added after an uncomfortably long pause, meant just to make him squirm.

addison herself knew that worrying about things that were beyond her control was a pointless exercise –– the past couldn’t be changed, and there wasn’t lots that you could do about the future either. things would go the way they were meant to go, and that was that. her own hand wrapped around the stem of a wine glass, bringing it to her lips as she considered the question. “just one?” there was a laugh to her words, but she considered it all the same. “i don’t know –– perhaps i wish i’d made a different choice, not done some of the things i have. but in the grand scheme of things, they all made me me. do you? have a number one regret?”

“Uh, 4 years ago.” Lexie looked at the date on the article. “Wait then what is the right answer. Cristina you can’t do this to me.” She started to panic a little bit. “I’m trying to study for my boards.” 

Cristina merely shrugged - “Out of date.” The look on Lexie’s face almost made her feel sorry for her. But not quite. “Okay. This is part of the learning process or whatever you want to call it. Why are you looking at me like that? Just change your answer.”

“maybe you’re right about that, but you’ve gotta hope he’d stop laughing enough to at least stop the bleeding.” yazmin said with a laugh of her own –– there had to be perks to being related to doctors, after all. “make sure the doctors stop screwing each other in on call rooms, mostly. give the new ones their passes. just keep them all behaving you know? it doesn’t always work…” there was another laugh, with a roll of her eyes. “what’s the update on your work situation? not ditched seattle to tour with some band yet?”