Going Home

Part 9

Grace felt terrible for Josh. What a thing to have to cope with at seventeen and on your own. A tear sliding down her face, she whispered “I’m sorry Josh. I can’t begin to imagine what that was like.”

Looking at her Josh lifted his hand and wiping away the tear with his thumb said flatly “I survived.”

Grace nodded. “Yes you did but now they’ve made contact how do you feel about it?”

His emotions still raging, Josh looked away and replied in an angry tone “God I don’t know Grace, I didn’t think they’d ever contact me.”

“Well maybe they need to speak to you for a reason?”

“So what, something happens and all of a sudden they want to talk to me. Is that a good enough reason for me to talk to them? They’ve never bothered to contact me before. Why should I speak to them now just because they’ve found they need something from me?”

Grace was surprised by the extreme bitterness in Josh’s voice. His feelings about what happened were obviously complex. She knew he felt guilty about the accident, but it was clear he was also angry at his parents for their reaction.

Keeping her voice even Grace tried to help him work through it. “Josh it may be that they wanted to contact you before but after a while didn’t know how. Maybe whatever is going on now gave them the push they needed to finally do it.”

Josh looked at her quickly then away and sounding scathingly said “yeah right.”

“Josh it happens, sometimes after a while it’s just too hard to reach out, sometimes it takes something exceptional to make you do it. Think about it could you have contacted them?”

Josh turned his head and looked at her in silence. He realised that maybe she had a point. He certainly couldn’t do it.

Seeing he was at least listening, Grace continued.

“Okay let me ask you this why did you put their number in your phone?”

Josh looked away and didn’t answer. He didn’t want to admit even to himself why he did that.

“Well maybe deep down you wanted them to contact you?”

Josh looked at her but still doesn’t speak.

Grace sighed “Well anyway now that they have, you have to decide what to do about it. It seems to me you have two choices, either you decide that you never want to have contact with them and ignore the call and change your number. Or choice number two, you try and work things out with them so you can all move on and you can come to terms with what happened. Josh this may be your last chance to do that. But it’s up to you.”

Thoughtful, Josh just continued to look at her.