Counting Backwards

22

Jessa

May 20

I stepped off the Amtrak train in Penn Station and waved goodbye to Lydia, Sean, and Asahi. The four of us had traveled to Trenton that morning to file the complaint for declarative and injunctive relief and damages in the US District Court of New Jersey. We also attached a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, seeking release of any plaintiffs who were still being held at Hydeford as a way to protect them from retaliation. Each time I thought about the fact that we’d just submitted a book-length complaint against the federal government, I found myself shaking my head in disbelief again.

As I started up the stairs from the underground terminal, people rushed past me, scurrying in every direction in typical New York style. Now that the first step in commencing this litigation was complete, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. The defendants would have thirty days to answer the complaint, and in the meantime, much of the case would simply be a waiting game. Vance and I weren’t due at his parents’ house on Long Island for a few more hours, and I thought maybe I should take the opportunity to do something frivolous and fun in the meantime—a quick break before sitting down again to strategize about next steps.

I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Dustin.

“Filed the complaint this AM. Wish us luck!”

I didn’t let myself overthink why I felt the need to reach out to him. Instead, I just smiled and tossed my phone back into my tote. But then I thought of Gram. Before anything else, I wanted to speak to her about her meeting with Carrie Buck.

As I reached the top of the escalator and stepped onto Seventh Avenue, I squinted my eyes against the bright sunshine and dug back into my bag. Walking uptown with my cell to my ear, I waited for Gram to pick up. As I listened to the phone ring for a third time, I felt a rush of wetness between my legs.

“No!”

I yelped into the air. “No, no, no!”

I hadn’t realized that I’d stopped walking until an older woman approached me from behind.

“Are you all right?”

the woman asked. “You need help?”

I looked down to see if any fluid or blood was visible on my pants, but I saw nothing.

“No, no, thank you,”

I said. I began scrolling frantically through my phone for Dr. LaRusso’s office number.

I hailed the first taxi I saw and told the driver the obstetrician’s address. The doctor’s office hadn’t answered yet. As it rang, I put the phone on speaker and texted Vance.

“I think I’m bleeding. Meet me at Dr. LaRusso’s? Oh God, Vance.”

Then I realized I was crying.

“You okay, miss?”

The driver turned to glance at me from the front seat.

“Please, just hurry,”

I answered. “I think I’m losing my baby.”

* * *

Two days later, I lay in bed staring at the wall. The light in the room had begun to dissipate, letting me know the sun was setting. I heard the apartment door slam shut, Vance returning from his office.

“You’re still here,”

he said as he walked into the room. His top button was undone, and his tie hung open around his neck.

“Oh good, a joke,”

I deadpanned.

The doctor had put me on immediate bed rest. Forty-eight hours earlier, an ultrasound had revealed that I had a condition called placenta previa, meaning the placenta was in the wrong place and was causing my bleeding. To protect the pregnancy, I would need to stay off my feet, preferably in bed, for most of every day.

“Chin up,”

Vance said as he sat beside me on the bed. He pushed the hair out of my face and rested his hand against my forehead. Physically, I felt fine, though I probably looked awful, still clad in the t-shirt and sweats I’d thrown on the day before. My teeth and hair had gone unbrushed for more than twenty-four hours.

“The doctor said most of these cases resolve as the uterus grows,”

Vance reminded me. “You’ll be out and about in no time.”

The doctor hadn’t seemed overly concerned, and Vance certainly wasn’t, but I couldn’t relax.

“And look, you’ve already gotten pregnant two times. If anything were to happen—”

I interrupted before he could utter the words.

“Don’t.”

“Well, we wouldn’t try right away, of course,” he began.

“No, never.”

He looked down at me with a confused expression, and I pushed myself higher on the bed, bunching the pillows behind me.

“All I’ve been doing is lying here, worrying about who I’m going to lose next. Gram, this baby, or you.”

The way I’d felt during the cab ride to the doctor’s office, when I thought I was really losing the baby . . . I couldn’t go through anything like that again. I’d had plenty enough grief for an entire lifetime.

“Look,”

he said. “I know I was on your ass to slow down, and you were right to tell the team you needed some time off. But I also don’t think the placement of the placenta inside your body has anything to do with how you’ve spent the last few months. You’ve been crushing it out there, Jess, and nothing about this situation”—he waved his hand over the bed—“has anything to do with your work.”

Oh, now he was enlightened? Now, after I’d spent the last day negotiating with God, promising I’d give up everything else that mattered to me if the baby could just make it safely to term?

The day before, I had attempted to run a conference call to discuss reducing my responsibilities just partially, and only temporarily. But I’d felt myself getting ramped up about every topic raised. Even as I struggled to pull back, I knew this case wasn’t something I could do at half tilt. Either I was all in or I was hiding under my covers. There didn’t seem to be a workable in-between. Unfortunately, Vance seemed unable to grasp the nuance.

“Jess, look. If you want your position back at Dillney, I think at this point, you kind of have to get back to work. There’s nothing to stop you from getting on your laptop or making phone calls from bed.”

“Yes, there is.”

I squeezed my eyes shut in irritation. “I’m not in the right headspace to make decisions that will affect other people’s lives. How am I supposed to solve anyone else’s problems when I’m such a mess?”

Vance looked away from me, turning his gaze toward the room’s wall of windows and running a hand across the back of his neck. He massaged his own shoulder for a moment, like he needed to rub away the tension I was causing him. Then he looked back at me.

“I don’t mean to be callous here. I know this is an incredibly hard time. But the reality is, any decisions you make now can have long-term impacts.”

I felt myself sag even more deeply into the pillows behind me. Maybe he was right, but in that moment, I simply didn’t care.

He stood and started to change out of his work clothes. As he walked toward his bureau, he spoke over his shoulder.

“By the way, did you ever talk to Gram about Carrie Buck?”

I had spoken to Gram about the bed rest, but I’d hurried off the phone. I was panicked about the baby and didn’t want to talk about anything else yet. Since then, I’d been intentionally avoiding my phone, trying to pass the hours watching old movies instead. I could handle Michael J. Fox traveling through time, but I couldn’t face anything out in the world, not yet.

“I’m so tired,”

I said instead, which was ridiculous since I had done precisely nothing all day. “I have to go to sleep.”

I rolled over and closed my eyes.

The next morning, Vance was back in the same spot at the side of the bed, staring down at me. I’d been watching him get dressed as he prepared to head back out like it was any normal day.

“It’s fine,”

I told him, after he’d announced he needed to stay at the office a little late that night.

Having him home while I languished in bed didn’t do me any good anyway. It just left me feeling guilty that I was disappointing him in yet another way. My faulty anatomy, the bad luck that followed everything I touched. I could breathe better when he wasn’t there.

He stood beside the bed awkwardly for a few more moments, as if he wanted to say more. Finally, he leaned down to kiss the side of my head and left.

Before I knew it, I felt a hand gently shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see Tate standing above me.

“What are you doing here?”

I asked, flipping onto my back.

She was wearing a chic white blazer and a full face of makeup. But of course she was. She was still out in the world, living her life and doing exciting things like everyone else. Looking at Tate all dolled up, I felt like she and I were inhabiting different planets.

“I got the key from the doorman.”

Vance had given the doorman a list of approved visitors so I wouldn’t have to get out of bed when they showed up.

“I need to show you something,” she said.

She reached into the tufted orange tote bag that was hanging from her shoulder and pulled out her iPad. As she typed in a search on the screen, she plunked down on the edge of the bed with a graceless thud, as if there wasn’t a physically and emotionally fragile woman hiding inside it. She pushed at my leg under the covers, wordlessly demanding more space for herself. If I’d had more energy, I would have told her to get out, that she was misreading the room and I didn’t want to see whatever it was she wanted to show.

“Here.”

She shoved the screen toward my face.

It was an article from the New York Times. I almost pushed the device back toward her, but then my eye caught the headline: “Advocacy Groups Allege Immigrants Subjected to Unwanted Gynecologic Procedures in Federal Facility.”

“What is this?”

I asked, even though I already knew. Clearly the Times had picked up the news about the complaint, just as we’d all hoped. I didn’t look up at Tate but kept reading.

A coalition of immigrants’ rights groups has filed a complaint in the US District Court of New Jersey alleging that female immigrants held at the Hydeford Detention Facility have been subject to significant, invasive, and unnecessary gynecological procedures without their consent. In particular, the complaint alleges a high rate of unwarranted hysterectomies performed on detained women. Several of the women joining the complaint have chosen to remain anonymous, citing a fear of retaliation by immigration authorities. The procedures at issue have been completed at one particular medical facility. That clinic has not responded to request for comment.

The director of ICE disputes the allegations that detained women are being “used for experimental medical purposes”

or that there has been any infringement on the right to reproductive autonomy of minority groups. The agency did not respond to requests for information on the number of hysterectomies, tubal ligations, or other sterilizing procedures that were performed.

The article then went on to list the other allegations included in the complaint about poor medical oversight, rough treatment of the detained women, and inadequate precautions regarding COVID-19.

That the article had been published was fantastic news. Really fantastic. If the team wanted to win the case, and to make institutional reforms going forward, we needed people to know what was happening and to feel outraged about it.

“Okay, thanks for showing me.”

I averted my eyes from the screen and handed the iPad back to Tate. A week ago, I would have jumped for joy, seeing how the article had focused on all the right bullet points. But now I just wanted Tate to leave.

“There’s more,”

she said as she put the iPad back in her tote and then, to my dismay, kicked off her heels. She readjusted herself on the bed, settling into a comfy sitting position at the foot and crossing her legs under herself. “That nurse you went to see? She’s been trying to reach you.”

I didn’t remember ever telling Tate about Fern.

“She somehow managed to get in touch with Dustin,”

Tate said.

Dustin.

After I texted him from outside Penn Station, he’d written back almost immediately. I hadn’t even read the message until long after I’d gotten home from the obstetrician’s office. Just a simple note: “You’ve got this.”

Had I not been so distraught over the pregnancy, it probably would have been exactly what I needed to hear.

“You told him? About . . . this?”

I gestured toward my belly.

“Of course not.”

Tate flinched. “Since when do you think I tell people your private business?”

She looked offended, and I felt a little bad for being so churlish when she was just trying to help.

“No, I know you’re a vault. Sorry I’m a grouch.”

I forced a repentant half smile. “Dustin can tell the nurse to just call any of the co-counsel on the case for whatever she needs. I’ll give you a list.”

I twisted to the side to look for the phone I’d been so aggressively avoiding.

“No, no list,”

Tate said. “She wants to talk to you. She told Dustin more women want to come forward. People who saw the article in the news. They want to join the complaint.”

“Oh.”

As I processed Tate’s words, something tugged at me—a pull to get up and call Fern, to track down the new defendants and create the amended filing—but I pushed all of it away. I couldn’t trust myself to be a helpful advocate while I was so worried about my own situation. I wouldn’t be able to focus, which wouldn’t be fair to our clients. “That’s great news,”

I finally answered. “It’ll make a difference for them all. Still, tell her to call Will Carbone at NYU. Or Lydia Brass, or anyone else at the Manhattan Immigrant Defense Center. I’m out.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

Tate squinted down at me like she was struggling to recognize me. “After everything you’ve put yourself through for this case, now that it’s really moving forward, you’re out?”

This wasn’t about what I wanted. But all I could think about was the baby and whether my every movement was putting it in further jeopardy. The women deserved more than the small sliver of mental space I’d be able to devote to legal work at the moment. I already knew from Shantrane that I was capable of making careless errors with disastrous consequences. I couldn’t risk something like that again.

“Look, I told Will Carbone and the rest of the team that I was having a medical emergency. They’ve got everything under control. They don’t need me.”

“Yes, they do, Jessa. You’re the one these women have connected with. You’re the one who inspired them to come forward. The case wouldn’t exist without you. You’re their best advocate. Don’t you see that?”

Tate’s words hit me hard. The team had just filed a second complaint with the Department of Homeland Security, and they’d begun reaching out to members of Congress. Since the beginning, I had promised the women I would be there. Right there with them. I let out a long breath as I thought it over again. But then I shook my head.

“I appreciate what you’re saying, but I just can’t. Thank you for coming, Tate.”

Then I turned onto my side, away from her.

“Jessa, come on,”

she persisted.

In response, I just closed my eyes, shutting out my friend, trying to shut out the world.

She stayed on the bed a moment longer, obviously reluctant to go. But eventually the bed shifted and I heard her stepping back into her shoes. Seconds later, I heard the apartment door close and the room was silent once again. I lay in the bed, exhausted, sad, afraid.

Before long I heard the front door opening again, and I figured Tate must have come back to argue another point. I kept my eyes closed, hoping to discourage her from saying whatever else she wanted to say. But then I heard my grandmother’s voice.

“Enough,” she said.

I turned over to find Gram marching into the room holding a paper grocery bag. She was wrapped in a cheery floral pashmina, but she wore a stern expression on her face.

“Enough,”

she said again, waves of moral indignation wafting off the word. She dropped the grocery bag on the nightstand and moved toward my work bag in the corner of the room. Bending low, she dug into the bag and retrieved my laptop.

I pushed up on my elbow. “What are you doing?”

“Fire this thing up.”

She held it out to me. “Check your emails.”

“What? Why?”

“Do as you’re told,”

she said, her tone steely.

I felt wounded by her harsh pitch. She had to know how much I was struggling, how scared I was of something happening to the baby. I reached out for the computer.

“I’m making you a sandwich,”

Gram said, picking up the bag again and turning on her heel. I didn’t bother to protest that I wasn’t hungry.

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 computer back 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’ve lived!”

Her face filled with color as she continued revving up. “I married, had a child, 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 to you? 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 my deep 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. Forgive yourself. 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.

Gram stood and collected her things, retrieving the plate of sandwiches from the dresser and moving it to the nightstand beside me. She left the notebook for me as well, telling me to call if I wanted to talk over what Carrie had written.

Once I was alone again, I ran a hand over my eyes as if to clear them. I stared down at the journal in my lap. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to read it. I related to my grandmother in that moment.

I traced my fingers along the edges of the closed journal, the aged cardboard delicate and pulpy against my skin. Slowly, I opened the front cover and looked down at the page, where I found tight, slanted letters waiting.

It was one of them blindingly bright Virginia summer days. That’s what I remember most about the morning the ladies came to take me away. I was home watching after the babies like usual because Mama was downtown again, looking to find herself a day’s work. Doris was crawling across the dusty floor, stopping now and again to stare at her toes, and I felt a little sorry at the way the milk-white skin of her knees had gone gray from the dirt of the planks. Baby Roy was asleep in the old bassinet we’d got from Miss Jenny, who lived with her brother’s family on the second floor of the house. Our family had two rooms on the first floor, right below them. I was just six years old at the time, you understand, but I loved to look after my own brother and sister, to be the one taking charge. Even if they was only half-related to me, that one-half was enough.

My cell phone rang, interrupting me. I fished through the rumpled bedcovers until my hand connected with the phone. It was my doctor’s office.

“Hello?”

I asked, bracing for whatever bad news they might deliver.

“Hi, Jessa? It’s Kendra from Dr. LaRusso’s office. The doctor just wanted me to check in to see how you’re feeling.”

“Oh, um . . .”

I wanted to say, “I’m scared to death,”

but I knew that wasn’t what the woman was really asking.

“I’m good, I think,”

I said instead. “I haven’t had any more bleeding, and I’ve just been lying here in bed the whole day, like the doctor said.”

“You’re still in bed?”

Kendra asked.

“Yup. I’ve been very well behaved.”

“Oh no, honey. The bed rest was just for the first twenty-four hours as a precaution. You can get yourself up and move about now. Just so long as you avoid strenuous exercise and such.”

“But the doctor said full bed rest.”

“He did, for twenty-four hours. I know, sweetie, sometimes when we’re stressed we don’t get all the facts. That’s why the doc always likes us to call patients to check in after a scare.”

“You’re sure? I’m allowed up?”

I asked, nervous to follow the wrong advice.

“I’m sure.”

“But . . . ,”

I began, not sure how to politely explain that I wasn’t prepared to accept medical advice from the receptionist.

“I’ll tell you what,”

Kendra said. “I’ll have Dr. LaRusso call you himself after he finishes with his patients today. Until then, there’s no harm in a hardworking pregnant mama keeping her feet up for a few extra hours, right?”

I hoped Kendra was right. Even just the two days of bed rest had me feeling like I was spiraling toward an abyss of fear and depression. But if full bed rest wasn’t necessary, then perhaps the baby wasn’t in the kind of jeopardy I had been imagining.

“That would be great. Yes, please have him call, and I’ll stay in bed until then. Thank you.”

Besides being upset with myself for confusing the doctor’s instructions, what I couldn’t stop thinking about after I hung up was the difference in care between what I was receiving from my fancy Upper East Side doctor and what the women in Hydeford had gotten from Pinelands. I had been spoken to in my own language, by a doctor of my own choosing, in a clean and comfortable medical office, and still I had misunderstood what was happening and how to take care of myself. The contrast with what the detained women had experienced was glaring. I thought of the personal and emotional nature of gynecological care, the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, the fragility of so many moments that occurred only in exam rooms. Those women still needed my help. There was plenty I could contribute from home—even from bed, like Gram said. I needed to get back to work.

* * *

By 8:00 p.m. I was sitting comfortably at the dining table. Dr. LaRusso had called a couple of hours earlier, just as Kendra promised, and he’d clarified that the bed rest was, indeed, intended as only a brief precaution. As my uterus continued to grow and stretch with the pregnancy, the doctor explained, the placement of the placenta would, in all likelihood, correct itself. In the meantime, now that the bleeding had stopped, I could resume my usual routines without concern. He told me to take it easy physically—no strenuous exercise and no sex—until the placenta moved to a new position. But returning to other regular activity was no problem.

The thought of avoiding sex with Vance was a surprising relief. Ever since he abandoned me for those few days the month before, I hadn’t wanted to be intimate with him, to have him touch me in that way. If I was completely honest with myself, I still felt uneasy being around him at all. Had my feelings toward him changed altogether? Or did I just need more time to move past what he’d done? I used to rely on him no matter what. But what had felt safe and comforting before was now making me feel small and stifled. I worried our relationship might have always rested on the building blocks of my emotional baggage. But then I reminded myself that I was chock-full of hormones, so maybe I shouldn’t entirely trust my current feelings.

For the time being, I needed to turn my attention back to the old case I’d been searching for online. When I’d finally returned Fern’s calls earlier that afternoon, I learned that one of the new Jane Does joining the complaint had experienced severe abdominal pain and a diagnosis of endometriosis. She had been told, prior to her incarceration at Hydeford, that she needed to have one of her ovaries removed. After the woman was settled in the facility, she agreed to have the surgery. Unfortunately, when she awoke, she learned that Dr. Choudry had removed the wrong ovary, taking out the healthy organ. The woman needed a second surgery to remove the faulty one, leaving her in an infertile state. Jane Doe #6 had relocated to South Carolina after her release, but she was willing to travel to New Jersey to testify if it meant someone would have to answer for what happened to her.

The case I had been looking for was one I’d read in my torts class in law school. A man had gone into surgery to have his left hand removed, and when he awoke, he found his right hand had been amputated instead. The doctor in the case had been found liable of negligence, and the hospital was held to account. As I copied down the citations from the case, I heard a key in the front door.

Vance walked in with his messenger bag draped across his body and an empty bottle of iced tea in his hand. He startled at the sight of me. “You’re out of bed,”

he said, stating the obvious.

“Apparently we misunderstood Dr. LaRusso. It was only a twenty-four-hour bed rest.”

“No, you should get back in bed.”

He put down his bag in a hurry and started moving toward me.

“Vance, I spoke to him. He said it’s okay, that he never meant for me to stay in bed longer.”

Vance shook his head and reached into his pocket for his phone, but then, presumably noting the time, tossed it onto the table. “I’ll call him in the morning to figure this out.”

“Vance,”

I protested as he came closer to my chair, as if he might lift me out of my seat and carry me back to the bedroom. “I literally spoke to the man a matter of hours ago. I don’t need my husband to act as an interpreter.”

“Still, I should follow up with him.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t you think I can have one single conversation with a doctor and understand what he’s saying all by myself? Why are you always second-guessing me?”

Vance scowled. “Jeez, Jess. I’m not trying to second-guess you. I’m trying to take care of you. The way I always have.”

Vance had always taken care of me. But somewhere along the line, his tendency to swoop in and take control had gotten completely out of hand. His care had begun to feel oppressive, like an insult. I could take care of myself just fine. I could stand on my own, figuratively and literally. But I couldn’t bear another argument. Not now, when I was finally coming out of my funk.

“Fine. Call him in the morning if you want. In the meantime, I’m sure I can sit in a chair for a couple more hours without any problems. I just want to get through a few more cases.”

“You’re working here?”

He looked horror-struck.

“If you’re worried about my stress levels, then let’s not do this.”

I didn’t want to devote the next hour to rehashing the same old arguments when I had so much work to do.

“You know what?”

He threw his hands in the air and marched toward the kitchen. “Fine. Don’t listen to me,”

he said, grabbing the take-out menus. “I’ll order dinner.”

“Well, won’t that be wonderful.”

I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my response, but I didn’t quite manage it.

* * *

The following morning, after a tense night of picking at chicken tikka masala and snapping at each other, Vance was once again chipper. He had just hung up with Dr. LaRusso and was pleased to report that my required period of bed rest had, indeed, concluded. I waited for him to apologize for his despicable behavior, but he just leaned over for a quick peck on the lips and headed out the door.

Instead of dwelling on his over-the-top mansplaining from the night before, or his failure to apologize for belittling me, I hurried to my closet. I was excited to put on my first pair of maternity trousers. I’d ordered them online after growing tired of using a rubber band to hold the button of my regular pants in place. As I pulled the gray slacks up to my middle, I marveled at the loveliness of an elastic waistband. Tugging at the flexible fabric, I tested how far I could stretch it out. Would my belly grow as far as the fabric extended, or even beyond it? Putting on those new pants made the pregnancy feel very real, and I had to remind myself to temper my excitement, for all the obvious reasons.

As I finished getting dressed, my thoughts returned to the case. Adding women to the complaint would require additional filings with the court. The night before, I’d arranged a meeting with Lydia and our co-counsel from New Jersey to take care of completing the necessary motion. I was just heading out the door when my cell phone rang. Pulling it from the front pocket of my tote, I checked the screen.

“Hello?”

I said, feeling a little uneasy.

“Finally, she picks up!”

Dustin joked on the other end.

“Yeah, sorry about that. There’s been a lot going on.”

“No, no worries,”

he said, his voice bouncy with excitement. “I heard from Tate that more plaintiffs are joining the action.”

I rolled my eyes as I walked out the apartment door, cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder. It had been less than sixteen hours since I’d texted Tate. I should have guessed from the preponderance of smiley face and fist bump emojis in her response that she’d share the happy news of my return to the case with someone else.

“It’s like I said,”

Dustin continued. “The smart bet is always on Jessa Gidney getting it done.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,”

I laughed into the phone. “But you might want to wait a little longer before calling your bookie.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I filled in some of the partners,”

he said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I was so amped up about your progress that I couldn’t keep it to myself. Hendricks and the others are pretty excited. They’re all patting themselves on the back now, saying how your involvement is going to reflect well on the firm. I think they might be asking you to come back sooner rather than later.”

“But nothing’s really happened yet. We only filed three days ago.”

“Things are happening, Jessa. Trust me. You haven’t checked the news?”

“Tate showed me the article,” I said.

“Article?”

He laughed. “It’s not just one article. The story is everywhere. And the fact that more women are coming forward is huge. The partners know you assembled an entire team and that you’re on your way to winning a high-profile case. I thought you’d want to know I’m not the only one who believes you’ve got what it takes to win this. Just don’t be surprised when Hendricks calls, begging you to come back.”

I laughed at his words. And then I shocked myself by wondering if I even wanted to go back to Dillney. I hadn’t missed being in the office for a single day since taking the leave. I didn’t miss my other cases or any of my colleagues beyond Tate. And apparently Dustin.

I’d reached the elevator bank and was hovering beside the down button. I didn’t want to risk losing the connection.

“I’m sure you’ll get the temporary restraining order too,”

Dustin said. “You’ll see.”

He was talking about the request our team had made for an order preventing any of the Jane Does from being deported until the merits of the case were litigated.

I allowed myself one moment to bask in his unbridled support, closing my eyes in gratitude.

“Thank you for saying that,”

I said as I pushed the elevator button. “Speaking of the TRO though, I’m on my way to a prep meeting, so I’d better run. Thanks for checking in.”

After my meetings, I rode the 6 Train uptown.

Winding my way through the tightly packed train, I maneuvered to a spot where I could clutch one of the stanchion poles while the train rocked from side to side.

Looking around at the crowded car, I wondered if soon my belly would grow large enough that others would begin offering me their seats on rides like this.

It was hard to imagine reaching such a different point in the pregnancy, where simply standing up would feel like hard work.

I prayed again that I’d get there.

As the train sped north, my mind wandered back to Carrie Buck’s journal.

After the call from Dr.

LaRusso’s office, I’d been in such a hurry to start working again that I’d put the notebook aside, hiding it deep within the drawer of my nightstand.

Tucking it away like that had probably been a gesture of protectiveness, a safeguarding of Carrie’s secrets.

Or maybe I was just protecting myself from more of Vance’s gaslighting.

Either way, now that I was caught up on the new developments with Hydeford, I was eager to see what else Carrie’s pages revealed.

I wondered what Carrie possibly could have written about at such length.

If it turned out to be page after page condemning Harry Laderdale, I decided I wouldn’t hate that.

I imagined there would have been some catharsis for her in filling a journal with all the things she never got to say to the men who trampled her rights, Harry Laderdale being at the front of the pack.

But I doubted Gram would have shared the notebook in that case.

When I finally reached the apartment, it was only six o’clock. Vance wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours.

I made a beeline for the nightstand, removing my blazer and tossing it across the foot of the bed.

I kicked off my shoes and climbed onto the bed, settling myself against the plush pillows.

Then I reached into the drawer for the notebook and began to read.

* * *

After more than two hours, I was nearing the end of the journal when my phone rang. I ignored the call, instead reaching for a tissue on the nightstand and wiping at the wetness under my eyes.

I’d read all about Carrie’s life, starting with how she ended up in foster care, then the sexual violence she suffered, followed by her subsequent transfer to an institution for “mental defectives.”

I struggled to keep turning the pages.

When I read about the loss of her baby, Vivian, and how it shattered Carrie so completely, all my prior thoughts about curses and karma started coming at me again.

Breathing in and breathing out, I reminded myself that panic wasn’t good for me or the baby.

Then I returned my focus to the scrawl of Carrie’s writing.

In the last few pages, Billy had shown up in her life again, taking a second chance at asking for Carrie’s heart.

Carrie finally had relented, figuring maybe it was time to let him in, to embrace the one good thing she had.

And then I was on the last page.

As I stared down at her final words, I realized that the entire time I’d been reading, I’d been hoping Carrie had written something about mercy and forgiving the unforgivable.

All along, I’d wanted to believe that if she could find a way to forgive those people, then maybe I, too, could find a way toward compassion and forgiveness like Gram had said.

I was so very tired of holding my anger and disappointment like a force field around me, clasping the despair like a talisman.

I felt almost desperate for guidance from Carrie—a way out.

Pulling the notebook closer in, I turned my eyes back to the page, equal parts nervous and eager to see what those last few paragraphs would reveal.