Counting Backwards

15

Jessa

March 2022

I slammed my laptop shut and fought to catch my breath. Nothing Gram told me had been true.

I’d just finished reading the trial court record from Carrie Buck’s case. After telling Andrew Hendricks that I was taking a leave of absence to represent the women of Hydeford, I thought it’d be fortifying to learn more about my own great-grandparent who’d put himself on the line with similar goals. But when I tracked down the witness testimony from the case, I discovered that my long-fabled, heroic grandpa Harry had actually done just the opposite. He’d ruthlessly and intentionally destroyed any chance she’d had.

My phone battery was running low, so I riffled through my desk drawer to find my portable charger. I pushed aside a tube of hand cream, a little troll doll my nephew gave me the year before, and a container of almonds that were probably too old to eat. Had I not been so focused on the sickening revelations of the past hour, I might have gotten nostalgic about all the ways I’d made this little space mine over the years—my framed degree certificates hanging on the wall, photos of Vance and me on my desk. But I was in too much of a fog. I barely managed to shove the charger in my tote, grab my travel coffee mug, and hurry toward the elevator.

When I finally reached Gram’s apartment and let myself in, I found her standing at the stove, wearing an old floral apron and stirring a saucepan full of meatballs.

“Jessa!”

she said with delight in her voice. “What a nice surprise.”

But then she took in the look on my face and her smile dropped.

“You told me he was a hero,” I said.

She stayed frozen for a moment. Then the meaning of my words settled on her, and she nodded almost imperceptibly. Reaching toward the knob and twisting it to turn off the burner, she said, “I suppose we’d better go sit on the couch.”

I followed her numbly to the old striped sofa in the living room, the mint and powder-blue hues that had always been so familiar suddenly seeming foreign and strange to me.

“Why?”

I didn’t even know how to phrase the rest of the question even though I had so much to ask.

“I wanted to tell you,”

Gram said as she reached out for my hand, but she seemed to think better of it and took hold of her own hand instead.

“I Googled him,”

I said. Oh, how I wished I could unlearn what I had read on the internet about Harry Laderdale all afternoon.

“I was going to tell you after your first meeting at Hydeford. But then I realized there was no reason to ruin the beautiful image you’ve always had of my father, how much you’ve savored your impression of who he was. That day we went walking, I was planning to come clean, but then I looked at you with your cheeks pinking up in the cold, your dark curls bouncing just like Grandpa Harry’s, and I lost my nerve. I wanted you to know how important the Buck case was to your legacy without taking anything away from you.”

“Take anything away from me?”

I snapped. “Have you read the testimony? You told me he saved Carrie Buck. Are you kidding me? He put every last nail in her coffin!”

“Yes, I’m aware,”

Gram said, managing to keep her composure despite my obvious outrage.

But then an air of resignation settled over her. She got a faraway look in her eye and started talking.

“Some of my earliest childhood memories are from glamorous affairs where my father was the guest of honor. My mother would put me in a party dress to match my sister, Faye. How Faye hated to have me following her around in an identical dress.”

She smiled fondly at the recollection of her long-deceased sister. “Other times we’d have to stay home, and my parents would come back at the end of their evening smelling of champagne and cigarettes and success.”

I’d already heard this bit about Gram’s childhood, about her family attending wonderful parties, but it was dawning on me that I’d never been told anything about the hosts or other guests. And I’d never thought to wonder. I’d pictured Gatsbyesque events in my head—pearls and flapper dresses, cigarette smoke and champagne glasses, all being enjoyed against a backdrop of art deco furnishings. But now those images were tainted by my knowledge that Gram’s family had gained all that finery at the expense of so many other tragedies.

Her tone shifted as she began to tell a new part of the story.

“Everything was different after the war. Attitudes changed, and my father was no longer viewed as a luminary. Especially after Nuremberg, people understood. My father’s findings . . .”

She paused and swallowed hard. “Well, his findings were credited with being a major influence behind the Third Reich’s notion of a master race.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. Even though I’d read as much earlier, hearing the words straight from Gram’s mouth was so much worse.

“The Eugenics Record Office got shut down,”

she continued resolutely. “So he lost his job as director. No more requests to serve as an expert witness like in the Buck trial, no more payments for his testimony. Certainly no more parties. By the time I was a teenager, he was struggling to support us. Faye and I had been cast out by our friends at school and even by some teachers. But the worst was when Faye got sick and we couldn’t find a local doctor willing to treat her. That was when we finally moved and changed our name. The Laderdale family became the Larsons.”

She met my eyes again as she finished, and I just stared back at her, absorbing the weight of her words.

Finally, I asked, “What about the medical clinic he ran? Was that even real?”

She nodded again. “He was a scientist, not a doctor, but that didn’t prevent him from starting the center. He managed it all, but he wasn’t a clinician like I may have implied. Just the supervisor.”

“May have implied,”

I said, repeating her words. How thoroughly I’d been misled. Gram opened her mouth to respond, but I interrupted her. “Did my parents know?”

“It wasn’t appropriate information to share with a twelve-year-old girl. You shouldn’t feel any sense of betrayal that they didn’t tell you.”

That wasn’t what I’d been thinking so much as wondering how my mother had dealt with the information.

“The honest truth,”

Gram said as she fiddled with an apron string, “is that I whitewashed it a bit for your parents too. I wanted them to know, but I saw no reason to give them all the gory details.”

“And now what am I supposed to tell Vance?”

I demanded. “I hadn’t even worked up the nerve to tell him that Grandpa Harry had changed his last name, that he’d lost a job over this case. Oh my God, this is so much worse than losing a job!”

And then I thought of something even more problematic. “Gram, his podcast.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but I interrupted.

“His whole platform is about authenticity, uncovering items lost in the Holocaust, righting the wrongs of the past. But look who he married!”

She tilted her head at me, her lips folding in disappointment, as if I was being childish or foolish.

“What?”

I demanded.

“Why would you even consider telling him?”

she asked.

“What? How can I not tell him something like this?”

Somehow, I was still surprised by her bias for secrecy, even after the decades she’d spent keeping me in the dark.

“There’s no benefit, Jessa, to either of you. I know it feels uncomfortable, keeping these things to yourself, but trust me when I tell you it’s a kindness to protect him from it. I’m only sorry you have this burden to bear now. I wish I could have taken the information with me to the grave.”

“Even if you hadn’t told me, it wouldn’t change anything. I’d still be the descendant of a monster.”

“Jessa,”

she snapped at me. “He was my father.”

“And he did terrible things! And now the consequences of all that—that’s my legacy.”

“No.”

She reached for my wrist, a fierceness in her voice. “The evil he did does not negate the good. People can be many things. Altruistic clinic directors, loving fathers, and yes, also bigoted, racist, intolerant scientists responsible for great tragedies. Your legacy will be what you make it, and that is why you are defending these women, so the footprint you leave behind in the world is the exact opposite of the one my father left.”

Could I really keep something like this from Vance? Just stash it away in a locked compartment in my brain?

But it wasn’t just Vance I’d be lying to. His whole family would feel this was important information, something that should have been shared with them. If they found out I was keeping this awful news a secret, they’d hate me for the secrecy, never mind for the information itself. Images of my in-laws, Renee and Howard, flashed through my head. I thought of Vance’s brothers and their wives, especially Jiyana and the boys. Over time, they might be able to get over my connection to Harry Laderdale, but Vance was a different story.

“It’s so much more complicated with Vance,”

Gram said, as if she’d heard my thoughts. She knew how deeply Vance had loved his own grandfather, how profoundly he would hate that I was related to someone who’d had any part in causing the man’s pain. Or maybe she was thinking of the podcast and how my connections might undermine Vance’s success, even if only in his own mind. “I just don’t see what you’d gain by telling him.”

“It feels too huge. How can I lie to him like this when we’re trying to have a baby together, Gram?”

“Sometimes,”

she said, “we seek to reveal secrets so we can unburden ourselves, when in fact we’re only putting the burden on someone else. Sharing that information wouldn’t add to the good in the world; it would just undermine your relationship with your husband. If you love Vance as much as you say you do, why would you want to upset him about all this?”

I didn’t want to upset him. I’d done plenty enough of that recently as it was. Maybe Gram was right, that keeping this to myself would be a kindness to him, and to the rest of his family too.

“You told Grandpa Walt though, didn’t you?”

“Yes,”

she said. “But it was a different time. Of course he thought the research was awful, the whole idea of eugenics. But he came at it from a different place. Nothing about the Holocaust, or even the war, had touched Grandpa’s family. He couldn’t trace any of his own family tragedies back to Harry Laderdale. It won’t do any good for you to show Vance that he can.”

I thought about how things might play out once I told Vance even a portion of what I’d learned, how he’d chart a path back from the present straight through history, just like he did for people seeking stolen artifacts, until he knew every last horrible detail. The bond he and I shared felt increasingly fragile these days, and I wasn’t sure we could withstand more stress between us. If keeping the information to myself could protect our relationship, I supposed it was worth it.

* * *

The next morning, Vance directed the old Subaru down a narrow, pebbly road in Brookville, Long Island. The car was a hand-me-down gifted to us by Vance’s dad, Howard, years earlier. We had resisted at first, telling Howard that we’d never need a car in the city. But the car came in handy more often than we’d expected, not just for driving to professional obligations outside Manhattan, but also for excursions like this one, visiting Vance’s cousin Dalia and her husband, Yuval, who’d moved to the suburbs.

As we made our way closer to the right house, every bump and jolt caused me to grimace. I was thinking about Vance’s sperm, which had been inside my body since we’d had sex earlier that morning. I hoped the jostling wasn’t making it more difficult for one or two special swimmers to reach their intended target, that the bouncing wasn’t interfering with their goal.

It had been two days since my meeting with Andrew, and I still hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell Vance that I was taking a leave of absence from the firm. I thought about how I’d arrived at this place, keeping so much hidden from my husband. Maybe that’s just who I was now, a person who kept secrets. I wondered if I should stop beating myself up about it and instead embrace the idea of being a cagey, elusory person. I let out a loud breath, and Vance looked over at me.

“I have to tell you something,” I said.

“Uh-oh . . . ,”

he said lightheartedly, as if nothing I said could possibly upset him.

“I’m taking a leave of absence from work.”

He beamed at me. “That’s amazing. Why do you look like it’s terrible news?”

“It’s amazing?”

I asked, feeling hopeful that I had misjudged how he’d react.

“Yeah. You can finally take some time for yourself, de-stress like I’ve been saying. I’m glad we’re in agreement now. It’s the right thing for you.”

“Vance.”

Before I said more, I started to wonder if maybe I didn’t have to. Maybe I could keep the entire immigration case a secret from him and let him think I was actually taking the leave he wanted for me, a few quiet months to rest. If I was embracing my dishonest side, maybe it was time to go big or go home, as Vance himself liked to say. But it was a ridiculous thought. With any luck, this case would be all over the news, and I would be working so hard that doing the whole project on the sly would be impossible. Besides, I didn’t actually want to embrace my duplicitous side. The whole point was to avoid creating any more secrets than those I’d already squirreled away.

“I’m taking the leave,”

I said, “because the firm won’t let me file a class action for the Hydeford women.”

“It’s probably for the best that the firm’s letting it go, given how much evidence you’re still lacking. Even if you have enough to support the claim of substandard medical care, that doesn’t prove the part about unnecessary sterilizations. Look, do I think the women should have been given more information before their procedures? Yeah, seems like it. Could the doctor have done a better job explaining the risks or making sure interpreters were present? Yes and yes. I admit that something concerning is going on, but the facts you have don’t prove any intent to do harm or even that the procedures were not medically necessary, lifesaving interventions.”

I couldn’t believe he was still refusing to get behind me. I wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him for insisting that I had to be missing something. What I was missing, it seemed, was the supportive husband I thought I had.

“Evidence isn’t the problem. We’ll get that. It’s me. It’s because I’d be the one bringing the case. The firm doesn’t want my name front and center on another case that may end up in the news.”

I felt a fresh wave of shame, thinking about the partners’ opinion of me, their persistent reluctance to take me seriously, an attitude that had reached more of my colleagues than I’d ever realized.

“I mean, I’m not sure I want your name front and center in the news about this either. You’re not the only person whose reputation would be affected, and with the podcast—”

“Vance!”

I turned toward him in my seat, ready to lay into him, but he held up a hand like a stop sign.

“Hear me out,”

he said. “Why don’t they just put another attorney on the lead? If they believe someone is actually orchestrating the sterilization of all these women?”

His tone was fanciful, as if that intentionality was an utter impossibility, as if he were talking about ghosts or time travel. “Shouldn’t somebody put a stop to it?”

“Right. Which is why I’m taking the leave. Because the case needs to be filed. And if I’m working on my own, I don’t need anyone’s permission.”

I wanted to add, Not even yours, Vance.

“On your own? But if they give it to someone else at Dillney, there can still be more investigating, which you could skip. And then if it turns out it’s more than just chasing shadows, whoever did the investigating could bring the case, and you wouldn’t have to risk your spot at the firm. You can just work on something else.”

“No.”

I shook my head, knowing we were treading closer to matters I didn’t want to discuss. “It has to be me.”

“Why? Plenty of attorneys at your office could handle it.”

The chances of another attorney at the firm following up seriously were slim at best. As Andrew had made clear in our meeting, the expectation at Dillney was to focus on billable hours and career advancement. If I handed off the case, it’d be a matter of weeks before the whole thing fizzled and died. I wasn’t going to abandon my clients like that.

“Because . . .”

I struggled to answer Vance, wondering how to tell him the universe had sent this case to me specifically, how it had everything to do with what Gram had shared with me about my family’s past. “It just does. It has to be me.”

“What about your salary? You’re not going to get paid? Don’t you see how rash you’re being?”

I huffed audibly before answering.

“We have plenty saved. Even without your ridiculous Wall Street salary, we could live off savings for six months.”

“So it’s only for six months then? No matter what?”

I clenched my teeth and turned toward the window. Looking into the seemingly endless thicket of trees along the side of the road, I tried to choose the right words, but Vance spoke first.

“Let me guess. They’ll only take you back if it goes well.”

“Yup.”

“So what you’re saying”—his voice began to rise—“is that you’ll be working twice as hard, earning nothing, and adding even more stress to your system. All for something that might not even be happening?”

“Precisely,”

I deadpanned.

When he didn’t respond, I turned toward him with a sheepish expression, hoping he could just accept this.

“Jessa, this isn’t a joke!”

“Trust me.”

My words came out clipped. “I’m well aware.”

Vance’s neck began to turn pink, a telltale sign that he was fuming. He seemed to be running through all the different things he wanted to say, trying to choose where to start, and I braced for the impact of hurtful words. But then I saw a marker for house number 1799 at the end of the road, the lively blue and yellow hues of the painted mailbox so at odds with the weight of the moment we were having.

“It’s there.”

I pointed.

Vance swallowed and turned into the partially hidden gravel driveway. Once we rounded the first bend, we could see Vance’s cousin’s new home. An oversized colonial with brown shingles, gray shutters, and three symmetrical dormers, it was every bit the quaint pastoral retreat that would inspire a young couple to finally move from Manhattan to the suburbs. It was a place where parents could raise a growing family in the fresh open air, admiring lightning bugs and bunny rabbits on summer nights. I tried not to be jealous of the perfection of it all.

Vance pulled to a stop outside the two-car garage and moved the gearshift into Park without looking at me.

“Come on,”

he said, his words tight as he opened his door. “We’re already twenty minutes late.”

He was out of his seat in a flash, slamming the car door with significantly more force than necessary before starting toward the front door. I hadn’t even taken off my seat belt yet.

After emitting a frustrated huff, I climbed out of the car too, grabbing the cheesecake we’d picked up at the bakery on our way to the Midtown Tunnel. The gravel crunched under my sneakers as I scrambled to catch up to Vance. I’d misjudged the day’s weather, and the cool March air made me shudder under my denim jacket. I reached the top step just as the front door swung open, revealing Vance’s cousin Dalia and her three-year-old daughter, Sadie.

“You’re here!”

Dalia held out her arms in apparent joy. Even with her blond hair and fair complexion, Vance’s cousin still looked so much like him. She had the same heart-shaped face with its broad forehead and cheekbones, the same full lips and button nose, and the same penetrating stare that could make a person feel like they mattered more than anyone else on earth. I liked to joke that Dalia was simply “hot-girl Vance.”

Except, looking at Dalia now, I realized how long it had been since Vance had fixed me with that signature gaze, the look that said nothing other than me was on his mind. It brought more clearly into focus how much our relationship had changed since I’d stopped trying to fit so neatly into his idea of perfection.

I pasted a broad smile on my face and gushed, “This house is enormous!”

Dalia’s movie star–handsome husband, Yuval, appeared in the foyer behind them, an unopened can of artisanal seltzer in his hand.

“It took you two long enough,”

he said in his thick Israeli accent. “Six months since we moved, and only just now you come?”

He smiled to show he was teasing, pushing the door wider and ushering us inside.

After Dalia took the bakery box from my hands, I bent down toward Sadie.

“Hey, sweet girl.”

I tugged lightly on one of her brown braids. “Will you show me all the best parts of your new house?”

“I’m getting a new baby,”

the girl answered.

“Oh?”

I looked up at Dalia.

Dalia smiled and nodded, putting a hand to her still-flat abdomen.

“It’s early days still, but . . . yeah. I guess we’re having another one.”

She shrugged like she didn’t even know how it had happened.

“That’s the best news!”

I tried so hard to sound genuine despite the wave of jealousy in my gut. As I wrapped Dalia in a tight hug, I was horrified by my selfish, immature reaction to her happy news. I marveled at how everywhere I looked, every last thing suddenly seemed to be about babies. God seemed to be taunting me, making me think about reproduction all day every day, all while withholding the grand prize. Maybe it really was karma, a curse on my family. I’d never been into supernatural ideas, but current circumstances had me reconsidering.

“Mazels.”

Vance reached out to fist-bump Yuval. “That’s awesome for you guys.”

His smile looked sincere, even as he seemed to be avoiding my eyes.

After a grand tour of the home, including the multiple empty bedrooms that I imagined would soon be filled with a whole gaggle of button-nosed babies, we all settled into the kitchen to enjoy the spread Dalia had prepared for lunch.

Yuval sat beside Sadie, carving her grilled cheese sandwich into bite-sized pieces and trying to convince the cherub-faced girl to eat. Meanwhile, I listened to Vance and Dalia at the other side of the table, catching up on the various members of their extended family. In between bites of avocado salad and poached salmon, Dalia told Vance all about how Uncle Mort was dating a woman half his age and their cousin Lydia was finally moving back from Sweden. Dalia’s younger sister, Naomi, had just accepted a position as an exhibition manager at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.

At the reference to the Holocaust, I tensed. I shouldn’t have been surprised that someone would mention it. The Holocaust had a way of coming up at nearly every single visit with Vance’s family, whether as a passing mention or as material for yet another philosophical debate. Typically, I might chime in to make a comment or offer my own opinions, but now I felt like an interloper, a traitor. Long ago, I assured Vance that I’d be comfortable raising our children in the Jewish faith—but suddenly I wondered if I even had that right, given who I came from and everything he’d set in motion.

“The Holocaust Museum,”

Vance said, and I assumed he was going to mention the ways he’d collaborated with that institution for a few episodes of his podcast. The museum’s international tracking system was a valuable tool for hunting down documentation pertaining to art and other heirlooms that had been stolen from families. But instead, Vance sighed. “That’ll be pretty rough stuff, being confronted by the images in their exhibits day in and day out. It’s different than just talking about it. Some of those photos . . .”

He let out a loud exhale, shaking his head at the notion. “I’d never be able to face all that horror on a regular basis.”

His words reconfirmed my decision to keep my secret to myself. I had no other choice. “Sounds like the perfect job for Naomi though,”

he continued. “She was always the most committed to our heritage out of all the cousins.”

“Says the man who refuses to drink from anything other than his grandfather’s sixty-year-old kiddush cup at Jewish holidays,”

Dalia said. Then she lowered her voice to imitate what Vance always said: “Because it’s what Saba would have done.”

“Touché.”

Vance laughed. “Well, still, this position makes so much more sense than the taxidermy she was doing at Natural History.”

“Right?”

Dalia popped a grape into her mouth. “Her senior thesis was on all the ways the world would have been different if the Holocaust had never happened. My dear sis has always been a crusader.”

“I’m well aware,”

Vance said between bites of fish. Then he finally looked at me across the table. “Remember when you first met her?”

Naomi had been the only member of the extended family who’d taken issue with Vance dating a non-Jew, grilling me about my background and my plans for our future children. Vance had felt bad about his cousin’s uncouth behavior, explaining over and over that their grandparents’ experience in the Holocaust had traumatized the entire family. I didn’t want him to start talking about all of that again, the specifics of what his grandparents had endured, the stories he’d grown up hearing.

“But what about you?”

I asked Dalia, trying to change the subject. “What’s the latest in your life? I mean, besides . . .”

I motioned toward Dalia’s stomach.

“Actually,”

Dalia said, her shoulders slumping, “I’m having an existential crisis, I think.”

She laughed lightly as she reached over to snag a piece of Sadie’s grilled cheese for herself. “I finally found a job out here, but now with the new baby coming, I’m thinking of taking off a few years.”

She looked at Yuval, who nodded encouragingly.

“I keep telling her to do whatever she wants,”

he said. “It is her life, so it must be her decision. You agree?”

My eyes shot over to Vance, but he was happily spreading cream cheese on a bagel and nodding along.

“I just don’t know,”

Dalia said, grimacing. “If I’m gone for too long, I’m afraid I won’t be able to find a position when I’m ready.”

“You just have to leave the right way,”

Vance said assuredly. “Shore up your contacts now, while you’re still there, and then you could take some time away without too much detriment to your résumé. Just remember that you have a very marketable skill. I mean, people always need nurses, right?”

“You would think,”

Dalia answered. She reached for a platter of roasted vegetables in the center of the table and began serving herself some eggplant. “It certainly feels like the nurses run everything, like we’re the only ones who actually know what’s going on with any given patient.”

With Dalia’s words, I thought of the nurse at Hydeford. I had been meaning to track down the woman, but I’d gotten so caught up in the meeting with Jacinta and everything it revealed. Dalia was right though: The nurses always had the inside scoop. That woman at Hydeford clearly wanted to help. Otherwise, she never would have given me the note. I needed to find her again to see what else she was willing to share.

“Right, Jess?”

Vance said.

“Sorry, what?”

I hadn’t heard anything over the din of my thoughts.

“That a nurse with Dalia’s character traits will always be in demand.”

They all looked at me expectantly.

“Oh, yeah. Of course.”

That was a no-brainer. Dalia had an indescribable quality that made people want to share all their burdens with her because they somehow knew instinctively that she would do her very best to take care of them. “If all healthcare workers were as kind and selfless as Dalia, this world would be a much better place.”

As we drove back toward Manhattan, this time with me at the wheel and Vance in the passenger seat, my thoughts felt like a collection of Ping-Pong balls bouncing in every direction. I had so many ideas and new questions as I considered how the nurse from the detention facility might be able to assist with the case. I tried to corral my herky-jerky thoughts and started to create an interview outline in my head. I wanted to know how long Hydeford had been using Dr. Choudry, whether Choudry was the only doctor performing gynecological surgeries for residents of the facility, if the sterilizations were openly discussed among supervisors or staff, and whether other medical abuses were being perpetrated on the incarcerated women. The list went on and on.

“I can smell those fumes,”

Vance said, interrupting my internal deliberations. “Just say it and get it over with.”

The edge had returned to his voice.

“Get what over with?”

I glanced over at him and saw that his expression was strained, the corners of his mouth tilting down so pointedly that they were almost cartoonish. Turning my eyes back to the road, I told him, “I honestly have no idea what you’re even talking about right now.”

“You’re just going to get more upset if you keep it inside, and I have too much work waiting at home to deal with this later. So go ahead, spill.”

I started to worry he was talking about what Gram told me, that he could tell I was keeping something important from him. When I stalled, he said, “So you’re not upset about Dalia and Yuval? It didn’t bother you that they have another kid on the way?”

“Well, apparently it bothered you.”

I leaned forward to punch the dial on the radio, and “Uptown Girl”

came bursting through the speakers. I turned the knob to the right, raising the volume to drown out further conversation. I raised my eyebrows at Vance, who leaned his head back against the headrest and shut his eyes in frustration.

For the first time in a long time, I was focused on something other than getting pregnant—and I wanted to keep it that way. The questions I’d been asking myself about Hydeford were important, and I was trying to concentrate. Having to manage Vance’s emotions on top of everything else required bandwidth I just didn’t have. Let him stew in his own anger and resentment, so long as he kept quiet and let me think. I was finally feeling the smallest flicker of hope for the Hydeford case, and that was where my focus needed to be. Vance, and his ever-present need to be in charge, could wait.

* * *

A few days later, I was back at the detention facility. As I waited for Isobel in one of the private meeting rooms, I arranged my memo pad and pen on one side of the long white table. Then I walked back toward the closed door, peering out from the little glass window in its center. I was hoping for a glimpse of the blond nurse, an opportunity to get her full name at least, but the hallway was empty.

I stuck to my post by the door, shifting from one foot to the other as I waited. I reached up to the small silver hoop in my right ear, a modest, discreet piece of jewelry that I thought was appropriate for today’s meeting, and pushed the backing more firmly into place. My eagerness to find the nurse was coming out in my every nervous fidget.

A moment later, Isobel rounded the corner with an unfamiliar male guard escorting her. My shoulders dipped as I moved back from the window, and I settled into my seat at the metal table. Any interaction with the elusive nurse would have to wait.

“Ma’am.”

The burly guard nodded as he brought Isobel into the room. “Buzz us when you’re through.”

He motioned with his head toward the box on the wall before stepping out and closing the door.

Isobel was dressed in the same jumpsuit as usual, but she had her hair up in two buns at either side of her head, Princess Leia–style. The way she kept her shoulders pulled back and her chin tilted slightly toward the sky had me wondering whether that aura of strength she projected was as effortless as she made it seem. Or maybe it was a crucial component of surviving in a place like Hydeford. As she sat down in the opposite chair, she looked at me expectantly.

“Everything is prepped and ready for your hearing,”

I told her. “But that’s not why I’m here this time.”

Isobel’s top lip twisted, and she shook her head slowly, like she was disappointed in me.

“I knew you were going to come back here asking about my personal business. I don’t have anything else to say about it. Nope.”

She folded her arms across her chest and glanced toward the door. “I’m done talking about that. Everything that happened is none of my concern anymore, so it most certainly shouldn’t be any of yours.”

“We have a woman who wants to sue,”

I answered, “to bring a lawsuit against Dr. Choudry and the clinic, against Hydeford, maybe others. She’s on the outside now, but she was detained here.”

Isobel showed no reaction, so I continued.

“The woman has legal status to stay in the country, but after what they did to her in here, she can’t ever have kids. And she’s ready to do something about it. She wants someone to be held accountable.”

Isobel shrugged, her eyebrows slightly raised, like my comments were utterly irrelevant to her.

“Isobel, please.”

“Why do you even need me if you’ve already got somebody else to do this fight? I told you already, I cannot get deported over this, and that’s what’s going to happen if I start running my mouth.”

She looked down at her hands.

“We can do certain things to protect you from retaliation. They didn’t do this to just one person, Isobel. From what I’m hearing, there’s a pattern. A group of powerless, under-resourced, dark-skinned women have been targeted and abused. Somebody has to put a stop to it before more people are hurt. I’m not looking to be the hero here. That has to be you. What if you can stop this from happening to more people?”

Isobel did more machinations with her lips, biting on the lower one, twisting the top, as if words were trying to escape her mouth but she was using a great deal of energy to hold them in.

I wanted to say more, to continue rattling off all the reasons why Isobel’s participation was so crucial, but I reminded myself of what my father always used to tell me: that sometimes sitting quietly is the most effective way to argue.

Finally, Isobel spoke.

“What exactly do you need?”

she asked.

“Tell me about Fern, the nurse who works here.”

* * *

At eight thirty that evening, I was still at my office. Andrew and I had settled the terms of my leave, deciding that I’d finish out the week before making it official. Over the last two days, I’d handed off most of my work to various colleagues, which left me free to focus all my attention on the immigration case.

A few younger associates were in the hallway outside my office, arguing over who would go to the lobby to retrieve their food delivery. I wondered if I’d miss the camaraderie of the firm while I was working on my own, but I’d never really bonded with anyone at the office besides Tate, so probably not. As the associates discussed their dinner, I glanced at the clock on my computer screen, unable to remember if I’d even eaten lunch.

I’d been glued to my desk since returning from Hydeford earlier that afternoon, following up on the meager information I’d collected from Isobel. After finally relenting earlier, Isobel told me the nurse’s last name, Kraska. She said the nurse had been working at the facility since well before Isobel’s arrival there. But that was the sum total of either what Isobel knew or what she was willing to share. Either way, I was beginning to worry that I’d hit a dead end.

I dialed a number from the list I’d made and listened to the ringing on the other end. After a long afternoon of combing the internet, I had located the telephone numbers for all but one of the F. Kraskas who lived within a hundred miles of Hydeford. This was the second-to-last F. Kraska remaining. If whoever answered this call was not the correct Fern Kraska, only one more shot remained before I might have to admit I was entirely out of ideas.

On the third ring, a woman picked up. “Hello?”

“Hi, is this Fern Kraska who works at the detention facility in Hydeford?” I asked.

“Who’s this?”

The woman’s words were clipped and impatient sounding, similar to all the others who’d answered my earlier calls. They probably thought I was trying to sell them something or steal their credit card numbers.

“This is Jessa Gidney. I believe we met when I was at the facility interviewing a client.”

“You’re Isobel’s lawyer.”

My heart bounced and I pumped a fist into the air.

“Why are you calling me at home?”

“I was hoping you might be willing to speak with me about some of the medical treatments the women are receiving,” I said.

“Not on the phone, no. I have nothing to say.”

The panic in the woman’s voice was so palpable that I imagined her looking around the room in her own house, making sure she was alone.

“Perhaps you’d be willing to meet me for coffee?”

“I work all week. I can’t get away for coffee with someone I barely know.”

“Saturday then,”

I said. “I’ll come to you.”

To my surprise, the nurse rattled off an address.

* * *

When Saturday rolled around, I was so nervous I almost called Dustin to ask him to join me. But my leave had officially begun, and going forward, I would need to refrain from using the firm’s resources. I was tackling this case on my own.

I knew in my gut there were more victims of Pinelands at Hydeford, but if I couldn’t get Nurse Kraska to open up to me, I wasn’t sure how I could help them. Under my arrangement with Andrew, if I ever wanted my job back, I had six months to file this case and show a likelihood of success on the merits. Whether it was negligence by the facility or the medical clinic, or intentional targeting by the government, a guard, or Dr. Choudry—I couldn’t yet say. But even if I failed to meet Andrew’s deadline, I would not give up, whatever the cost to my career.

When I pulled my car up in front of the small clapboard house in northern New Jersey, I glanced in the rearview mirror to check my appearance. I decided to quickly pull my unruly curls into a ponytail so I’d look more professional. But then I pulled my hair free of the rubber band just as hastily, deciding that a more casual, approachable look was probably best for this meeting.

When Fern opened the door, she was just as I remembered. Somewhere in her midfifties with long blond hair, which she now wore in a low braid, and thick, sturdy limbs. She was dressed in loose jeans and a faded lavender sweatshirt, and she held a steaming cup of coffee in her hand.

Her eyes swept over me, and then she shepherded me inside. “Come, we can sit on the deck. You’ll want to keep your coat on,”

she said, as she pulled her own parka off a coat-tree near the door.

As we passed through the living room, I saw the home was modest but tidy. Colorful area rugs and decorative table lamps filled the space. The shelves in the living room were lined with picture frames, many of them holding multigenerational group photos full of smiling faces. The unmistakable aroma of pancakes wafted toward us from the kitchen, and I wondered if anyone else was in the house. As we continued through the cluttered kitchen toward the glass sliders leading to the back, two tabby cats appeared at Fern’s feet. She shooed them away before opening the glass door.

Outside, two coffee mugs and a carafe waited for us at a patio table.

“I started early,”

Fern said as she held up the coffee cup in her hand and pushed one of the mugs on the wrought-iron table to the side. “We might as well get straight to business.”

She motioned for me to sit down, took her own seat, then poured hot coffee into the cup in front of me. “What is it you wanted to know?”

“I went to see Jacinta. Thank you,”

I added, taking the cup. “We met at her home in Brooklyn. I brought an interpreter and heard about the procedure she underwent. We’re going to file a complaint in federal court.”

Fern offered little more than a nod in response, but I thought I saw a flicker of satisfaction cross the woman’s face.

“So what else do you need from me?”

she asked. “Sounds like you’re all set.”

She glanced back toward the door to the house.

“Jacinta doesn’t want to do it alone. She’ll probably back out if we can’t get others to join the complaint, and then we’ll be nowhere. I don’t think I can help the women at Hydeford, or the ones who come after them, unless I have a fuller picture of what’s going on. I also need a better understanding of what’s happened to women who were there in the past.”

“And what makes you think I’d be able to help you? Or that I’d be willing?”

Fern asked. “I did my part.”

She pulled at her gray parka, tightening it around herself as if physically holding in whatever information she might have.

“Nurses always know more about what’s going on with patients than anyone else,”

I said, repeating what Dalia had pointed out the week before. “And the fact that you’ve chosen to work as a nurse tells me you care about helping people. You’re not going to sit by and do nothing while women are at risk.”

I hoped those words were true.

Fern sipped her coffee but didn’t answer.

I stayed quiet too, my heart beginning to race as I worried I’d hit another dead end. But then I had a thought. “How long have you been working for ICE?” I asked.

“I don’t work for ICE,”

Fern said. “Hydeford is a privately run facility. I work for DeMarke Corrections, an outside company. The government hired them to run the place. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works at most detention centers these days. DeMarke runs more of these centers than anyone else, and they could have put me anywhere. I requested Hydeford because it’s closest to where I live.”

I hadn’t even known the facility was privately run. Realizing that I’d been ignorant of such a basic and important detail was another blow to my confidence, jolting me awake to the fact that I still needed to learn so much—not only about this particular case, but also about the nuts and bolts of detention in the US. I’d recently become aware that the government often hired private contractors to help with various aspects of immigration detention, but I hadn’t realized the entire operation at Hydeford could be for-profit. Knowing now that I was dealing with a business enterprise, I wondered more seriously about the kind of insurance reimbursements they must be getting for all the medical procedures happening there.

“Can you tell me how medical treatment generally works at the facility?”

I asked, hoping the open-ended question would get Fern talking.

“I can’t lose my job,”

she said. “My husband’s been out of work near two years. He’s helping out on some construction jobs, but we’ve got three kids. You know how teenaged boys eat? I can’t lose my job,”

she said again.

“I understand,”

I told her. “I’m not asking you to get involved. Just maybe point me in the right direction. Tell me who else to talk to?”

“I don’t know if anybody else would be willing. Some women in the past have filed grievances. But then you see those women get deported back to their countries, sometimes the next day, sometimes only hours later. The other women see it too. Makes it so people want to keep quiet, you know?”

“How is that even possible?”

I wondered aloud. “To make the deportations happen so quickly? Aren’t there protocols? Last I heard, it could take weeks to even get an asthma inhaler in one of these places, yet somehow they can ship a woman off like it’s nothing?”

“I imagine if they get those women to file a request saying they want to be sent back to their origin country, arrangements can be made very quickly.”

She looked off toward the yard next door. “The guards just have to persuade them to say they don’t actually want to stay in the US after all.”

So now there was coercion to add to the complaint too. I felt a pounding in my head.

“Can you tell me about Dr. Choudry?”

I asked, switching gears.

Fern swallowed audibly. “She works at Pinelands Women’s Health. It’s an outside facility the women go to. They have a contract with DeMarke, and all the women go there when they need medical visits. Choudry’s been there a few years. From what I hear, she’s not even board-certified.”

“Have you ever been there, to Pinelands?”

Fern shuddered. “You couldn’t pay me to step foot in that place.”

“Why?”

I sipped my coffee and tried not to grimace at the bitterness of it. Something about it tasted off.

“You should see the women when they come back from the place. Shell-shocked, bandaged, confused. Lots of the women don’t speak English, don’t even know what happened to them. I wonder near every day how many women still don’t know exactly what was done to them over there.”

“Why does it continue? Who allows it?”

I couldn’t keep the incredulity from my voice.

“The people who run DeMarke, I guess.”

Fern said it like she wasn’t very sure. “Sometimes I think they’re just punishing the women for trying to find their place in the good ole US of A. God forbid they should have the right to live how they want.”

Fern was getting worked up, confirming my suspicion that she cared more than she’d initially let on.

At the sound of the slider opening, I twisted around to see a brown-haired boy, about thirteen years old, poking his head out the door.

“Mom, where’d you put my cleats?”

“They’re at the front door, Pete, right where you left them last night.”

Fern sighed and glanced at me.

As the boy closed the door, I hoped Fern would continue what she’d been saying, but she was quiet a moment and then just pushed back her chair.

“Look,”

Fern said, “I can talk to the women. Try to get a few of them to reach out to you on their own. Can’t make any promises though. They’ll need real assurance that you can protect them from sudden transfers or deportation. None of them will like the idea of putting themselves in further jeopardy. And like I said, some of them don’t even speak English.”

“That’s fine. I have someone who can join me to interpret. At least for Spanish. I can find other interpreters as needed.”

I prayed that Dustin’s conscience would keep him amenable to helping me, at least for a little bit longer.

“Give me your number again,”

Fern said, taking her cell phone from her pocket. “I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

When I walked into the lobby of our apartment building, I caught sight of Vance already waiting at the elevator bank. His back was to me, and he wore a sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of baggy gray sweatpants. His arms and neck were slick with sweat. Earbuds peeked out of his ears, and he didn’t notice me approaching. I paused, taking a moment to study him. He was apparently still energized from his Saturday morning run as he bopped his head along to the music playing in his ears. A few months ago, I would have wrapped my arms around him from behind and kissed his cheek, not minding the dampness of his skin. Now, I felt awkward and unsure. There had been so much fighting and stress lately. Everything between us felt changed.

He turned slightly and noticed me. His lips began to spread in a smile as he reached up to remove one of his earbuds.

“Hey. How’d it go with the nurse?”

he asked as I reached him.

The elevator doors opened, and we stepped in together. The routine of it, the sameness, shook something loose inside my heart, sending a wave of melancholy through my whole body. In a different version of reality, in the world before our “fertility journey,”

I’d have already called Vance to fill him in on my meeting, eager to talk through every nuance with this beautiful man who’d given me so much emotional support over the years. For a long time I couldn’t have imagined making a major decision without his input. But things had changed between us. Somewhere between all the foiled, unpleasant attempts at baby-making, or maybe because of his constant doubts about my judgment, the magic between us had been steadily evaporating, like shallow puddles after a summertime storm. Soon there might be nothing left at all, I thought, and the realization made me profoundly sad. I wasn’t prepared to let him slip away from me, not yet. I had to protect our closeness, all past mistakes and omissions aside. I knew keeping secrets from him was only making things worse. But with the growing chasm between us, I saw no other choice.

Even if I couldn’t reveal the horrible story of my family’s past, I could still make sure to be immensely, excessively forthright going forward. No new secrets, I promised myself, and maybe with enough honesty, I could push the old secrets further and further away.

“The meeting was kind of great.”

I smiled tentatively as Vance nodded. Maybe he was warming to the idea of me pursuing this case. “She’s going to try to get me a few more names, women who might be willing to talk. I also found another party we have to name as defendant. Turns out, the facility isn’t even run by the government. They hire private companies to run these places. She said this one was called DeMarke.”

“DeMarke? You mean DeMarke Corrections?”

Vance asked.

“Yeah, how—?”

“They’re a client. Not of mine. Arjun manages the account. I think they’ve been with our bank for a long time, like more than a decade. They run Hydeford?”

I nodded, stunned by the coincidence. The elevator doors reopened, and we stepped out in tandem.

“You can’t bring a suit against DeMarke,”

Vance said as he continued toward the apartment door. “So I guess that’s that.”

The flippancy with which he said it stopped me in my tracks. “What the fuck are you talking about? You just said it’s not your account.”

“Still,”

he started, turning back to where I stood, but I interrupted.

“You and Arjun aren’t even in the same group. How could this matter at a company as enormous as yours?”

“Jessa, are you kidding? They’re an important client of the bank. I can’t have my wife dragging them into court on some witch hunt. Do you know how that would look for me?”

“Witch hunt?”

I snapped back, and the accord I’d been hoping for was gone in an instant. I was once again brimming with rage. “If you can’t respect what I’m doing, then maybe we have a bigger problem than who’s getting named in the complaint.”

“Yeah,”

Vance nearly spat back. “Maybe we do.”

He reached into his pocket for his keys, turning his back and marching down the hallway. I stayed rooted to my spot. I couldn’t bring myself to follow him after what he’d just said, and I wasn’t fool enough to miss the metaphor in that. There was a small bench opposite the elevator, and I lowered myself onto the faux leather to collect my thoughts. I felt like I was seeing Vance in a whole new light. I’d always thought he trusted my choices, but now I was wondering if those choices had actually been his, not mine, all along. Maybe every single time. I had let him direct me in so many ways, professionally, socially, romantically, because it felt safe. How easy it had been to fall in line because I generally agreed with his suggestions, but now it seemed we no longer saw eye to eye on anything at all.

Witch hunt. Fuck him. Suddenly it was all just too much—having to fight Vance, knowing what had happened to Denise and Jacinta and Isobel, discovering what had been taken from them. Their whole futures, worlds of possibilities, had been ripped away, literally yanked from their bodies. A sudden sob escaped me as I thought of them now, young women who would never get pregnant, never birth more children of their own, no matter how desperately they wished.

I wiped at my eyes. A neighbor could step off the elevator at any moment and find me weeping in the hallway, but I didn’t care. I needed this moment to simply let myself feel. I replayed everything in my mind again, how the women had been cuffed in the exam room, how they’d been forced to sign unclear paperwork, pressured to submit.

I wondered then if I’d told any of those details to Vance. I’d pulled so far back from him that I couldn’t even remember what I’d shared.

Reminding myself that I was partially at fault for our current discord, I tamped down the fierce anger in which I’d been stewing. I could do better too.

When I stepped into the apartment, I heard Vance already in the bathroom with the shower running. I went straight to the kitchen, reaching for the bag of sliced sourdough bread on the counter. I had skipped breakfast in my rush to meet Fern earlier. As I pulled two slices of bread from the bag, I tried to think dispassionately about the conflict of interest with DeMarke. It was unfortunate that Vance might have a difficult situation at work because of the case, but if anyone was to blame for it, that would be the people at DeMarke, the people at Hydeford, or Dr. Choudry. And yet, Vance probably wouldn’t see it that way.

But this was just too big. I wasn’t going to drop this case simply because it might cause a problem for my husband at work. Besides, everyone loved Vance at his bank. Whatever happened, they’d figure things out. And not for nothing, maybe Vance should encourage the bank to drop DeMarke as a client. Unless he liked working with people who supported discrimination and abuse. He couldn’t possibly be okay with that, given his lifelong feeling about what his grandparents had experienced.

We’d had so many conversations over the years about what his grandparents had been through, how they’d never really recovered, how he and his brothers had tried so hard to heal their grandparents’ pain. Yet now, amid a situation where people were suffering in real time, their pain didn’t matter to him?

I pushed the bread into the toaster, trying to keep my mind blank. I needed a few minutes of rest from my turbulent emotions. Taking a container of hummus from the fridge, I crossed the small kitchen for a butter knife, relieved by the mundanity of these tasks. As I removed the cover from the spread, the tangy, garlicky smell of the chickpea paste instantly turned my stomach and I raced to the sink, ready to vomit. The feeling passed almost as suddenly as it had arrived, but it left me reeling nonetheless.

Could it be? I remembered my distaste for Fern’s coffee earlier. So many women said that nausea was their first sign, the symptom that tipped them off about their pregnancies. I tried not to get excited. It was probably just the beginning of a stomach bug. I pulled my phone from my back pocket anyway, then opened the period tracking app.

To my great surprise, I saw that my cycle was already two days late. I couldn’t believe that despite my hyperfocus on getting pregnant, I hadn’t noticed. I’d been so wrapped up in the case and all the stuff with Gram that I’d actually managed to lose track of when my period was due.

My hand shot up to my breast, and I poked at it to see if it was tender. It was not. Even so, between the two-day delay of menstruation and the unexplained nausea, I dared to hope. Come to think of it, I’d been a little queasy at my last meeting with Isobel too. I wouldn’t say anything to Vance until I knew one way or the other. And at that moment, I didn’t feel like saying anything to Vance at all.

My brunch forgotten, I grabbed my purse from the hook near the door and headed back to the elevator. I’d used up my supply of pregnancy tests and needed to buy more at the pharmacy. Vance would wonder where I was when he got out of the shower and found an empty apartment. After the way he’d spoken to me, I didn’t care. Let him sweat a little.

Twenty minutes later, when I returned to the apartment with a bag from Duane Reade in hand, Vance was gone. We hadn’t made any concrete plans to spend the afternoon together, but we had tickets to see The Music Man on Broadway in the evening with Vance’s parents and Gram. Maybe he needed more alone time before all the family togetherness later, but still, it wasn’t like him to leave without telling me where he was going.

Except I had done it too. So at least we are still on the same page about one thing, I thought glibly.

Rather than dwell on Vance, I hurried to the bathroom to take the test. I’d used so many of these home tests over the past few months that I didn’t even glance at the instructions. When I set the wet test stick down on the counter, I flushed the toilet and pulled out my phone, planning to sit on the edge of the tub and scroll through social media while I waited the required five minutes for the results. I checked my reflection in the mirror first. My curls were pulled back in a low ponytail, and I had a slight flush to my cheeks. There were little blue half-moons under my eyes, probably because of the late nights doing research. I’d heard that a woman’s face sometimes changed during pregnancy, but so far I just looked like a tired version of my regular self.

My eyes drifted back to the test stick, and I saw something already beginning to appear. I leaned in closer, not believing my eyes. Two lines! The control line was significantly darker than the test line, but there were definitely two lines.

“There’s a second line!”

I said into the empty bathroom.

Could it be that I was actually pregnant? In the very worst month of my entire relationship with Vance, I’d managed to conceive? I closed the toilet seat and sat down to stare at the test stick for the duration of the testing time so I could make sure the line didn’t disappear. Does that ever happen? I wondered. Do lines disappear after they’ve shown up? This was uncharted territory, and suddenly it seemed I was not an old pro at pregnancy tests at all.

When my phone alarm went off and the test still showed a positive result, I laughed out loud. I had given up hope of getting pregnant without some sort of medical intervention. I’d been so sure we would need serious fertility treatments and that even then, we might not see any action inside my uterus. It seemed utterly unfathomable that simply having sex with Vance could have resulted in me finally becoming pregnant again.

I thought then of my last time, how I’d been pregnant one minute, and the next, not. Was I going to fall in love with the fetus this time, only to lose it again? I wrapped an arm around my belly, willing the little cells, the beginnings of a baby, to stay put and keep doing their thing.

A few months earlier I would have called Vance immediately, shrieking in excitement. But right then, I was so frustrated with him that I didn’t even want to share the news. I wanted to hold on to it as a private nugget, for me alone, to simply bask in a moment of joy without any strife or disagreement. Maybe I could keep it to myself for a few days, like my own special treasure, before I had to tell him. I realized then that if I did that, my pregnancy would become just one more secret I was keeping from my husband. But for a few blissful moments, I simply didn’t care.