Dear Zoe

“From the time you could crawl we called you ‘Z,’ not because of your name but because that was the shape of your life, always darting from one thing to the next. It wasn’t like you got bored easily. It was more like you’d see something else that made you even more excited than you already were and you just had to go do that other thing right away. We couldn’t look away from you for a second.”

Tess suggests that “Z” is the shape of her younger sister’s Zoe’s life, and by the same token, the narrative shape of the book often resembles a “Z.” Tess tells her story non-linearly, and the book is filled with flashbacks and anecdotes that appear out of chronological order. The final line of this passage is filled with poignant, devastating irony, as neither Tess or her mother were watching Zoe when she was hit by a car.

“But nothing changes everything by itself. Even things that seem like they do. Like me missing the bus on what looked like any other September morning until those planes flew into the tallest buildings in the world. Even you dying, that same day, when I was supposed to be watching you. Or go back to the beginning, around the kitchen table. We could have named you anything and it would have all come out the same.

On the news they say that history is going to be separated by what happened before that day and what will happen after it. But they don’t know what they’re saying to me.”

In the first part of this quote, Tess suggests that Zoe’s death was fated from the beginning, even before she was born. She believes that small events aren’t random but create a domino effect that cannot be altered. Over the course of the book, however, she comes to question and challenge this belief. In the final part of this quote, Tess articulates the tension between the global tragedy of September 11 and the personal tragedy of Zoe’s death. The relationship between these two coincidental events causes Tess a great deal of internal conflict and guilt, complicating her experience of grief.