This was the scene on Saturday evening when I was a panelist on Zoom in Hippocampus magazine’s Night of Nonfiction and read from Wisdom Builds Her House.

“What you need to know,” I said after Hippocampus Magazine and Books founder Donna Talarico introduced me. “In 2009, I found my husband’s deceased daughter’s journals while cleaning closets during spring break. When I asked Keith about them, he said reading Gretchen’s journals was the best way to get to know his daughter. So, I took them along to read during my next break: our 4^th of July vacation at Blackwater Falls, West Virginia.”

We rented a small, rustic one-room cabin—a quiet forest retreat like the mountain house we planned to build—and packed a week of supplies. The first morning, in chill and drizzle, we hiked the muddy trails among rhododendrons in late bloom—quiet “God time,” a prayerful listening-while-walking exercise I’d done every day since becoming a believer in my early forties. As we listened to the sounds of God’s creation, a loamy scent arose from the earth, and forest leaves bowered our path. Keith and I threw sticks for Heathcliff, the one-year-old, hundred-pound, black lab mix the two of us had adopted from the Alexandria Shelter the previous fall. Heathcliff barked and chased and chewed. 

Back at the cabin, we sipped our coffee beside the hearth fire. I cooked eggs-over-easy: whites shimmering with a dusting of salt and pepper, yokes unbroken and runny when forked. Just the way Keith liked them. 

After breakfast, Keith read by the fire while I stacked Gretchen’s journals on the nightstand beside the queen-sized bed, the only “sofa” in the small, one-room cabin. I switched on the lamp, propped the bed pillows, and ordered the journals by the opening date. Six, 9 by 6-inch books, ranging from February 1996 to June 2001: a black plastic spiral, the green Rousseau print, then four hardcovers. Donning my reading glasses, I opened her first book. [Trigger warning: this selection involves self-harm.]

February 25, 1996: “I wonder, will I be honest with my observations, or will I edit my life self-consciously, knowing I’ll have witnesses? Or one witness. I don’t know. Please, don’t be angry with me.” 

Her words flowed in small, neat pencil-print free of erasures, unlike my college letters’ sloppy penmanship and disorganized after-thoughts dancing up the sides and onto the envelope. They also cut to the core: she was so insightful she’d even questioned her own honesty. Neat, self-aware, and smart. Gretchen had been a National Merit Commended Scholar, like my older sister, and a scholarship recipient in creative writing. 

I adjusted my glasses and focused on Gretchen’s question about wit- nesses. She had written for herself and expected to have readers; now I was among them. Mid-way through the first journal, I discovered who her other witnesses had been. 

June 5, 1998: “I have this habit of measuring time in lovers, in men and women I’ve kept time with, made time with. It always seems like the most natural step to say, I like you, I may love you; we should go to bed in order to find out.” 

I squirmed at such an intimate admission. Did Keith know about this—her seemingly unrestrained, sexual pleasure-seeking? I pushed the book aside. 

The second book contained more entries from 1996 plus stories and poems, both copied and original like this: 

I maintained a safe distance But I’m crippled somehow. 

Safe distance. I rocked my head from left to right. Of course, she’d want to protect herself from those who might wish to hurt her. Crippled somehow. How many times in childhood had I declared, “I am not a cripple,” while pointing to my clubfoot? But I knew her word “crippled” had nothing to do with a surgically repaired clubfoot. 

This wasn’t getting easier. I shook my head to banish those thoughts and placed the second book on top of the first. 

I opened the third book and skimmed through duplicate poems and entries until this. 

August 17, 1998: “What a nice party this weekend! I was able to get ridiculously drunk and still have a fun time… everything I looked at was flipping in front of my eyes like a television with poor reception. Ah, beer. Also, I sucked down some excellent Merlot…” 

Gretchen drank a lot—I heard the hard-edged voice of my inner judge. In my head, the scene switched from her college years to mine. There I was, slim and shapely in a miniskirt, a shy, mousy-brown-long- haired, good girl at a mixer, circling the edge of the dance floor. I envied the flashy fast girls getting all the dances and dates. My smile masked self-righteousness, disdain, jealousy, and fear that no one would ask me to dance—or maybe it hadn’t. 

Forty years separated then and now, most of those years spent parenting two children and teaching history to adolescent girls. I didn’t want to think about my past, so I swallowed the bad feelings. My gut churned, releasing a surge of anger to my brain, as memories of my daughter Jessica’s teenage behavior stirred. The shame that followed re- minded me of who I had been—a mother who’d failed to stay calm when Jessica needed me the most. 

“Oh, for goodness sake, Carole,” I muttered to myself. “Angry with a dead girl, and after she asked you not to be?” 

I wasn’t proud of these thoughts. Part of me felt guilty for having them, and the other part felt perfectly justified. People are responsible for their actions and should think before they act. Right? 

“Darn,” I growled through clenched teeth, sealing my lips so Keith wouldn’t hear. The honesty in Gretchen’s journals was bringing out the worst in me, qualities I worked hard to hide. What had I been thinking, taking the journals on vacation? What had I expected, a beach read? In- stead of facing those questions, I did what I usually do: ignore them and forge ahead. 

The fourth book. 

March 7, 1999: “I checked everything out with a hand mirror in the bathroom. The virus had gotten so much worse; it was horrifying to see myself eaten up with this shit from the inside out. I began shrieking and threw the mirror at the wall…” 

Then the fifth. 

June 7, 2000: “Who do you know that you’d trust not only with your house when you’re gone, but also with your corpse when you’re dead?” 

Then the sixth. 

January 8, 2001: “I ran the hot water in the sink, pulled up a chair, drained a couple of beers and began to slice. I couldn’t find a vein…” 

I imagined Gretchen falling down a deep, dark well and me falling with her. “Help me, because I can’t help myself,” she wrote. In my head, I heard another cry, one from a vivid dream I’d had since childhood. “Help, please, please help.” The nightmare, absent for more than a decade, had returned. My hands stretched out, as if I could reach through the pages of her journal and save her. But my nightmare and Gretchen’s story always ended the same way. Her final journal slipped from my fingers and crashed onto the cabin floor. 

Keith looked up from his reading. “Are you all right?” 

My hand shook as I retrieved the fallen book. “Uh-huh, but this is tough going.” 

“Yes. I know. I lived it.” 

With that, I closed the journal and returned her books to the crate. The questions her writings provoked were far too big for me to resolve in one week. Yes, Keith knew about this. And I was unable to abide with him emotionally. 

While carrying the crate out to the car, I wondered what would hap- pen if I maintained a safe distance from all of this. The answer was immediate and unequivocal: I would be less of a person—crippled, and my marriage, too. I remembered an old Chinese proverb: Go into the heart of danger, for there you will find safety. Perhaps by reading Gretchen’s journals and delving into the past, I would find what I longed for. Not so much safety but freedom. Freedom from fear. 

Then and there, I made a firm promise: to read the journals of a young woman I’d never met, a girl who had ended her life at age twenty-four, a daughter in some ways similar to my own. To read all six books, every word from the beginning to the end, after I resigned my long-distance job the following year. 

Unbeknownst to me, this was the beginning of a seven-year journey, which would indeed lead me into the heart of danger. There I would find safety for the first time in my life. 

Wisdom Builds Her House releases a week from tomorrow, Tuesday, August 20, 2024.

Linkup with Five Minute Friday: https://fiveminutefriday.com/2024/08/08/fmf-writing-prompt-link-up-scene/