Meredith shakes her head, looking up, trying just to breathe for a few moments. She isn't, she can't believe that, not when the memory of his wife does this to him, not when he's been miserable for months because of his daughter, when she's been unable to make any of it okay. It just isn't true. "You wouldn't be here," she says when she can look at him, when she can speak, "if she were still alive. I wouldn't be anything."