Page 70 of Counting Backwards

Within seconds, I could hear her rooting around in the kitchen, the clamor of drawers opening and closing. It all sounded so ordinary, as if this were just a regular day and not another moment in my life when I was petrified of losing what I cared about most. I didn’t want to read whatever was waiting on my computer. I’d already seen the one article from Tate. I couldn’t face any more real life today. Caught in my own panic, I simply didn’t have it in me.

I stared at the computer’s lock screen with its artful picture of Arizona’s red rocks until Gram finally walked back in, a plate of finger sandwiches and a glass of water in her hands.

“I’m not ready to do this,” I said. “I just need to be alone.” I pushed the computer closed and twisted toward the nightstand to get rid of it.

“No, you don’t,” Gram ordered, putting the food down on the dresser and hurrying to the nightstand. She snatched the computerback up, holding it to her chest. “I heard you,” she said, looking down at me. “And two days ago, I respected your position. I know you need to process this on your own, to worry, to be vigilant. And you’ve done that. But no more. Now you need to get back to work.”

“But the baby—”

“No,” Gram interrupted. “No ‘but the baby’!” She held the computer out again, and I reached for it even though I had no intention of using it. As if Gram could hear my thoughts, she persisted. “The baby is fine. There is no medical reason why you cannot work from the comfort of your bed. You can take calls, you can write emails, and you can continue what you started. You will not abandon these women. I raised you better than that!”

I flinched at her words.

“I just can’t. Please, can you understand that?” I looked up at her pleadingly. “I’d only be worrying about the baby the whole time because...” I didn’t even know how to explain what I was feeling, the terror of despair.

“Jessa.” Gram fixed me with a stern look. “Losing your parents as a child was hard, yes. Nearly impossibly so. Believe me, I know. I lost my only daughter that day. But you are so much more than a girl who was orphaned at twelve. You have to stop living your whole life based on the worst thing that’s happened to you.”

“Really?” I asked, the anger rising in me like a flame. “Isn’t that just what you’ve done? Have you not defined yourself by your parents? Or are you more than the daughter of a villain? Living your whole life in shame, telling your family half-truths and hiding where they came from... If that’s not basing your life on a singular part of your identity, I don’t know what is.” I hadn’t yelled at Gram like this since I was a teenager.

Gram stepped closer to the bed. “As a matter of fact,” she said, her voice rising, “I’ve done the exact opposite. I’velived!” Her face filled with color as she continued revving up. “I married, had achild, got a wonderful job, made friends, and then pushed through terrible tragedy to raise my grandchild. I did everything I could to be a better person than my father. Yet you...” She looked around my bedroom, which had been growing messier as I lingered in bed. The curve of her lips deepened in disapproval. “You’re languishing here, letting everything else that matters to you wither away instead of making the most of the best parts of who you are.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you didn’t raise me as well as you think. You’re the person I trusted most in the world, yet somehow you kept an enormous secret from me my whole life rather than face something that scared you. Maybe I learned it from watching you, Gram. Pathological avoidance seems to be exactly what you’ve taught me.”

I could see such sadness in her expression as she regarded me, her eyelids sliding to half-mast and the corners of her mouth seeming to pull her whole face down. I began to regret my harsh words.

“Gram,” I started again, “I didn’t mean—”

She interrupted before I could finish.

“Nope.” She shook her head. “Don’t do that. You said your piece, and you meant it. It’s good for you to tell me what you’re really feeling. Especially when there’s so much truth to your words.”

“There is?” I asked, reaching for a tissue from the box on the bedside table.

“I need to work on sharing the truth, even when it’s hard for me. And you, my dear, need to work on remembering that loss is a part of life, and we can’t live our entire existences focused so intently on everything that has been stolen from us. Sometimes you need to concentrate less on what’s been taken and more on what you have to give instead.”

I could hear the logic in Gram’s words, but somehow the idea didn’t seem to pertain to my own circumstances. The losses hurt too much.

“Now,” Gram said, as if we’d settled the matter, “I brought you something I think you should read.” She moved toward the bedroom door, where she’d left her oversized purse. With a satisfied grunt, she pulled out a marble composition notebook, the kind I used to practice my penmanship in when I was in the first grade. The notebook Gram held was badly faded and warped with age. “I know Vance told you that I met Carrie Buck,” she said, coming to sit beside me on the bed. “So it’s time you and I have a little chat about that.”

“Yeah. I wanted to ask you about it, but then everything with the baby...” I looked toward my midsection before pulling the duvet higher to cover myself. “How come you never told me you met her? Like, not even after telling me all about your father?”

Gram let out a long sigh. “I don’t know, Jessa.” She looked up at the ceiling, as if searching for her response somewhere in the ecru paint above us. Then she brought her eyes back to mine.

“It was a long time ago when we went to see her, in the early ’80s, and nearly ten years before you were born. She was living in Waynesboro, Virginia. A widow by the time we met. She gave me this.” Gram lifted the notebook. “I’ve kept it all these years, but I never actually opened it, not until last week. I tried when she first gave it to me, but I was too full of guilt, too afraid of what I’d find inside. Eventually I just hid it away. But watching you these past weeks, I knew it was time for me to confront whatever I’d find in the pages. The woman filled the whole thing, and her handwriting does leave something to be desired. But I think you should read it.”

“Why would she give it toyou? What about other people in her family?” Right away, I realized the answers and regretted asking.

“She never had more children, obviously,” Gram said pointedly. “Her husband had already died by the time we met. She didn’t have any family to give it to.” She placed the notebook on the bed beside me. “She seemed to feel we had a bond—because of mydeep regret over what had happened to her, I suppose. Maybe she hoped I would do something with it. Try to set things right.” Gram cleared her throat, and I thought maybe she felt shame about not doing more with Carrie’s writing. “She told me she’d learned that the only way to move on from the pain of the past was to try every single day to make the world a little better somehow.”

“But who did she think you were? Didn’t she think it was random the way you and Mom reached out?”

“I told her straightaway who my father was, and she remembered exactly the role he’d played in her life. We talked for a while, the three of us. Toward the end of the visit, she told me it was time to release myself from the burden of my own guilt. She forgave me and insisted that I follow her example.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. “What reason did she have to be so gracious?”

“Your mother and I couldn’t fathom it either. But I think I understand now. And my point in bringing this to you, Jessa, is that if she could do it, after everything she went through, you can forgive too. Forgiveyourself.Stop blaming yourself. It’s time. Well past time, in fact.” The look she gave me then was so knowing, she seemed to be aware of every last secret I’d ever kept.

I had never spoken to a soul about my guilt over my parents’ death, about how they were on that icy road because of me. If not for me and my school’s parent-teacher conferences, my mom and dad would have been at home that night, watching sitcoms instead of skidding off the road, flipping not once but twice, before slamming into a hundred-year-old oak tree. I hadn’t talked about this with anyone, not even my childhood therapist. I knew what people would say—that it was ridiculous to blame myself, that some things are just fate. But I’d always felt responsible just the same. The role I played in the greatest loss of my life was perhaps what made it so difficult to bear, even all these years later.