As Ruth now stares at the photo, she thinks about her Mother as a young girl, about her grandmother as a young woman. They are the women who shaped her life, who are in her bones. They caused her to question whether the order and disorder of her life were due to fate or luck, self-determination or the actions of others. They taught her to worry. But she has also learned that these warnings were passed down, not simply to scare her, but to force her to avoid their footsteps, to hope for something better. They wanted her to get rid of their curses.

"Think about your intentions," her Grandmother says. "What is in your heart, and what you want to put in others." And, side by side, Ruth and her Grandmother begin. Words flow. They have become the same person, six years old, sixteen, forty-six, eighty two. They write about what happened, why it happened, how they can make other things happen. They write stories of things that are but should not have been. They write about what could have been, what might still be. They write of a past that can be changed.

After all, as her Grandmother says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?

They can choose not to hide it, to take what's broken, to feel the pain and know that it will heal. They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or country but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.

Ruth remembers this as she writes a story. It is for her Grandmother, for herself, for the little girl who became her mother.