Here's a question that occurred to me while I was sitting next to Rachel in her brother's car driving around Santa Ana, California.

Are you kind of hiding out here?

Yeah, absolutely. I've been hiding out here for a while. She'd been in

California for a few weeks when I got here. Her plan had been to start clearing out

the house where her father and brother had lived. But when she got to the house, she

couldn't stand being in it, so she fled up to Northern California. She wanted to be alone.

Did that for a few days. That was awful. Then she met up with friends. That was better

Rachel's been talking by phone and text and Face Time with her teenage kids every day while she's here

But by the time we were driving around together,

she hadn't been home to her family in Rochester, New York for a while.

Grief somehow maintains a public image of mainly sadness, fragility, but grief can also be

selfish, unfair, kind of an asshole. Rachel's aware.

I don't know. I'm having a hard time right now.

I'm just having a really hard time connecting with anyone.

It's like fucking up my relationship, you know, with my partner.

I just don't feel like my, like anyone has my griefs back if that makes sense like I just I I like

cry in my car by myself I go for drives and just scream and then I come home and I'm mom who's got a chore or you know

snowboard lessons to drive you to or whatever and it's like I am just I don't know I just feel like a piece of

shit for saying it I just I just can't connect and get myself to do mundane ordinary things that are required of me.

Rachel's described her father and brother as anchors for her, heavy but stabilizing.

Without them, she's floating, driving around the place where they lived, looking for ways to feel nearer to them, to understand

them. From Serial and the New York Times, this is the last part of We Were Three. I'm Nancy that is left.

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