AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Greta bit her lower lip. “I asked several more times that year, I think. Father always said something vague like, ‘If Eloise proves to us that she’s ready to come back, she can come back.’ I never had an address to mail any letters to her. I never knew what to do to reach out. And I suppose, eventually, I let myself believe that what my parents were saying was true. My parents had always been tremendously kind to me— they’d never led me astray.”
Anna stared into the distance, trying to wrap her mind around this very old story.
“But how on earth did I run into your sister, of all people, in that diner in Ohio?” Anna demanded, her voice a rasp.
Greta turned to lock eyes with Anna, her face petrified. “I don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know about Eloise Richards. But I suppose, more than fifty years later, it’s time I figure her out.”
ChapterEleven
Later that afternoon, Anna had her first appointment with her grief therapist. She dropped off her grandmother back at The Copperfield House, told Julia what she’d learned so far, and then rushed out the door, not one to be late for her very first appointment with her therapist. When she reached the clinic, she waited in the waiting room for only one minute before she was called in, at which point she sat in the chair across from the grief therapist, placed her face in her hands, and burst into tears.
“I’m sorry.” Anna half-laughed, half-cried at herself. “It’s been a really crazy day.”
The grief therapist grabbed a box of Kleenex and passed it over to Anna, who took a tissue and cleaned herself up. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “This is a safe space.”
Anna blinked through tears to assess the therapist, who seemed only about ten years older than she was and several inches shorter. “I’ll try to clean myself up,” Anna said as her breathing calmed. “I really do want to have a successful session.”
The therapist smiled and said, “There’s no such thing as a successful session or an unsuccessful session. We’re just here to get to know each other today. The work can take as long as it needs to.”
Anna nodded and thanked her.
“My name is Andrea. I’ve been a practicing grief therapist for six years. To give a bit of context— maybe it’s important for you to know that I lost my mother when I was twelve, and I struggled with that loss for many, many years. In fact, even at the age of thirty-two, I still struggle with it. But because of my own grief therapist, I learned tools and skills to help me get through each day until now. I still use those tools.”
This intrigued Anna. Was it possible a therapist could just give you tools to survive, tools that acted as coping mechanisms to help you heal and live your life in a normal way? It made sense, she supposed. It wasn’t like she could cry out all her sorrows to her therapist and immediately be cured.
“You can introduce yourself to me however you want to,” Andrea said then.
Anna closed her eyes and considered how she might have introduced herself even two weeks ago— as a travel writer, as the girlfriend of a teacher, as a Seattle resident. None of those things were true now.
“I’m Anna,” she said simply. “And not long ago, I lost my fiancé.”
Andrea nodded and furrowed her brow. “That sounds very hard.”
Anna closed her eyes against the image of Dean falling off the cliff again. “My mom told me that grief therapy was a good idea.”
“As I said, I think we can work together to hone toolsets to get you through this time,” Andrea said tenderly.
“I just don’t always feel like getting out of bed,” Anna said, barely audible to herself.
Andrea remained very quiet.
“I just don’t really see the point,” Anna went on. “I mean, since I graduated from high school, I’ve been working myself like a dog. I’ve built a life on my own without anyone’s help. And now, it’s like that life has kicked me out of it and said, ‘You don’t deserve happiness, actually. Everyone else does, but not you.’”
Andrea nodded and furrowed her brow. “Tell me about the life you built for yourself.”
Anna crossed her ankles and remembered that terrible studio apartment, which she’d thought was “so embarrassing” until now when she missed it yet felt she could never see it again. “I had finally gotten my dream job as a travel writer.”
“A travel writer. That sounds wonderful.”
“It really was,” Anna said. “For my second assignment, I was sent to Orcas Island to write an article about a new restaurant. My boyfriend surprised me in my hotel room with one hundred roses and proposed to me there. In those moments, I thought everything in my life was on the perfect path. Everything was set for me.”
Anna sniffed into a Kleenex, her ears echoing with what she’d just said aloud.
“A travel writer,” Andrea said after a little while “Tell me about some of your assignments. How do you prepare for a project like that? How do you decide what to ask your subjects?”
Anna forced herself into the “work” area of her mind, which she now felt was a foreign land. “I don’t know. I researched everything there was to know about the person I was interviewing. I wanted my questions to be new and inventive if only to surprise the person. I wanted them to think I was going about this article differently than other journalists.”
“And it sounds like you were,” Andrea suggested.
