It was awful to think about my mother, who I sometimes pictured as a younger Nan, sitting mutely, too sad to even talk about her sadness. She must have loved my father very much, I thought, unsure if having a wonderful thing while it lasted was any comfort.
I wished that I had been older and could have helped her somehow. Nan hadn’t been able to, though. And, knowing Nan, she’d have tried her damnedest.
I wondered why she’d taken me back to Ashville rather than staying here. Or why Nan hadn’t brought my mother to Ashville with us. Maybe Petra would find it in the files, the reason for putting half a country between mother and daughter. Then again, that might be one of those things I didn’t want to know.
It was hard to imagine Nan out here. She liked being close to the beach, dipping her painted toes in the icy East Coast water, walking the boardwalks. Taking long drives, just to go. It would have been hard for her somewhere like this, with the view so unvaried. It had been perfect for me, a relief from almost the day I arrived, though I wasn’t sure it was anymore. The luster had worn off with things fraying between Lucas and me, the fear of talking to another person with the mark, or running into that woman whose baby died.
I walked maybe a mile, until the sun was just above the wheat, spiny stalks teasing its bottom curve. Then I turned around and headed back, nervous but ready to hear what Petra had learned.
“I made good progress,” she said, smiling and beckoning me to the couch when I got back. “The sessions were easy to read because a lot of it was repetitive. Georgia opened up very slowly. One step forward, two steps back. Then the same one step forward, you know?”
I nodded, plucking at my shirt, trying to cool down from my walk.
“I mean, there’s still a lot here, but I’m through the first year at least. Georgia had survivor guilt all right, but it was unusual. Your mom felt responsible for the accident. Not just guilty that she survived, but she truly believed she could have prevented your father’s death.”
I felt a little shiver, the start of goose bumps on my still-sweaty skin. “How? I mean, was she the one driving? Did she distract him or something?”
“No, I don’t think it was anything like that. There are no specifics in the notes about the accident itself. Dr. Wells didn’t think Georgia had full memory of it. Georgia actually believed she knew your father was going to die that day—had some kind of psychic pre-knowledge.”
I felt very far away, as if I were looking at Petra through a long, long tunnel. “What do you mean ‘psychic pre-knowledge’?” It took all I had to ask the question.
Petra didn’t seem to notice. “I’m not sure. But that’s not all that uncommon either, for survivors to think—looking back—that they had foreknowledge. They start to manufacture things that should have told them what was coming.”
“Do you … Did Dr. Wells think that’s what happened?”
“Well, that’s the funny part,” Petra said. “Georgia must have been very convincing. Dr. Wells was working on that theory, trying to make Georgia see that it wasn’t her fault, that she couldn’t have prevented the accident, but Georgia was adamant. She was completely certain that she knew, even swore that she tried to prevent it. She claimed she had warned your father ahead of time. I can see in Dr. Wells’s notes that she did research on it, hadn’t had that much direct exposure to this exact situation, but it seems that nearly every case she could find was distinctly different from your mother’s.”
“How so?” I was clinging to Petra’s every word, hoping for something that might explain this all away and take me anywhere but where I felt sure we were heading.
“Her thinking that she had acted on her knowledge, for starters. Most of the time the guilt is for not acting. The other thing that was unusual is that your mother said there’d been others, other times she’d had this … knowledge. That’s odd, Dr. Wells notes, the belief generally stemming from the traumatic incident and completely confined to it. In other words, survivors twist the facts immediately preceding the incident, but not other facts unrelated to it.”
I was almost shaking now and Petra could see it: my hands clenched tightly together.
“Are you okay?” she asked, leaning forward. “Should I stop?”
“No, no. I want to hear it. Does Dr. Wells … does she say how my mother … what she saw or whatever that made her think she knew something?”
I held my breath, sure of the answer, waiting to hear it aloud.
“No.” Petra shook her head. “Not in the ones I’ve read through so far.”
Or any of the others, I guessed. It didn’t matter; I knew. Far too well. “Is there anything else?”
“Yeah,” Petra said. “She talked about you…. Are you sure you want to hear this?”
I nodded, afraid to speak.
“She was scared. Felt like she had to watch you constantly, but couldn’t stand … well, it was hard for her to be there with you.” Petra watched me as she spoke. “It happens a lot in cases like this too,” she said. “After a trauma, people become convinced something bad is going to happen to other people they love. So much so, sometimes,” she continued gently, “that they experience the heartbreak of it even before it happens.”
“Is that why I was living with Nan?”
Petra nodded. “Georgia had a lot of guilt about that. She wanted so much to have you back, but every time she and Dr. Wells talked about the steps to get there, even to a halfway house, Georgia would withdraw more.”
“Like she was afraid of it?”
“Right. Dr. Wells notes that it got to a point sometimes where she wasn’t just afraid of how she’d protect you, but also of how to protect herself. She seemed preoccupied with death, always trying to prevent it, fearful of every action.”
I nodded, thinking of how, over the last few months, I’d found myself wondering about every choice. How did it change my fate that, looking for my wallet in the morning, I was ten minutes later walking out my door than I would have been otherwise? Did I miss walking past a man, a dog, a bus that might change my life? Was that a good thing or not? If I wore pink socks instead of black, what would be the result? Would they attract the attention of the serial killer sitting next to me in the coffee shop? Were these things preordained or was I in control? You could drive yourself crazy with these questions. I guess my mother had.