9.11 - 36. Chapter 36

September 11, 2001

8:30am: South Tower

I felt my stomach rumbling in rebellion as the elevator shot up to the observatory. I’d have thought the g-forces would have forced the food in my stomach down, but it was feeling likely that it would be coming out again. Maddy wasn’t any happier about it. She cried out, probably because her ears were popping. I was feeling like shit for a bunch of reasons. The first was physical, in that I’d drunk too damn much last night. They’d had all kinds of shit at that party, and I could have done damn near any drug I wanted, but I’d stuck to booze and pot, and so had Darius. I knew today would be a busy day, and anything harder would have totally fucked me up. Still, this was an early fucking morning.

The other reason I wasn’t doing well is because I was so pissed off, I could barely be civil to anyone. Darius told me that Dad had gone over early before dinner last night to meet with Mom and Hank, evidently to try and convince Mom that my emancipation was a bad idea, and that she should join forces with him to overturn it. He’d given her a litany of shit I’d supposedly done, which had upset her pretty badly, according to Darius. Robbie had been hella mad, so Darius said, and Hank had tried to calm everyone down by tabling this stuff until the ceremony was over, at least.

“Did you have fun last night?” Mom asked me dubiously.

“I did,” I said.

“It was a good party,” Darius intervened to save me. He’d been way more sober than I was. “Smart crowd. Mostly Columbia students.”

“They don’t usually cause us too many problems,” Hank said, referring to her role as a police officer. “This is probably pretty early for you two. What time did you get home last night?”

“I think it was after 2am,” Darius said. It had been closer to 4am, but I smiled internally at his statement that was misleading, but not a lie.

“No wonder you don’t look so good,” Mom said to me.

“I think I look great,” I said cheerfully, getting a chuckle from them. “Hey Maddy,” I said to my sister, who was quite happy in her baby sling that was attached to Hank. She looked at me sideways, even as she clung onto Hank.

The doors opened as we reached our floor, and we got out and were met by someone who worked there. I barely had time to notice the amazing views before I went to the bathroom and puked. I came out feeling a little better. While they were focused on their wedding plans, I wandered over by Sbarro and found a place to call my father.

“Hello,” he answered, his voice terse to tell me he was annoyed.

“So you decided to try and ruin this ceremony for Mom and Hank with your bullshit?” I demanded. “That’s real nice, considering how Mom was even part of yours.” My mother had been a member of their wedding party, although it suddenly seemed appropriate that she had been standing up for Robbie.

“I didn’t try to ruin anything,” he said loudly. “Look. I have to go to a meeting. I don’t have time to argue with you about this. You created this nightmare.”

“I didn’t create any of this, you did,” I said loudly. “But go on; go to your fucking meeting. They’re usually more important than us anyway.”

“Fuck,” he said. “Fine. Hang on.” I heard him arguing with Stef. “I just need five minutes.”

“I will wait for you,” Stef said coldly.

“You don’t have to,” Dad said.

“I said I would wait, so I will wait,” Stef said. “I will try to figure out which elevators we have to take.”

I heard Dad’s voice come through the phone clearly now. “You won’t listen to me, you won’t listen to anyone. You’re doing shit that’s way out of your league, and it’s only a matter of time before you really get hurt. I’m not going to stand by and watch you implode.”

“Oh really?” I asked sarcastically. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I’m doing just fine, and I’m not imploding. I kick ass in school, I drink a little and smoke pot, and I have sex as often as I can. What the fuck is wrong with that?”

“You have a bar in your house, and you’ve had more sexual partners than most people have by the time they’re in their mid-twenties,” he said.

“How many sexual partners had you had by the time you were in your mid-twenties?” I asked him. “And besides, you had lots of sex; you just had it with one person.”

“How much did you drink last night?” he demanded.

“A whole fuck of a lot,” I snarled at him. “So much that Darius had to carry me to the fucking cab.”

“See,” he accused.

“Yeah, only here I am, doing relatively well, up and about like I’m supposed to be. So how am I imploding?” I demanded.

“That’s not the point,” he said.

“That’s exactly the point,” I shot back. “I don’t have to answer to you for shit. I don’t even have to listen to your bullshit. I could care less about what you think except you’re bugging Mom about it.”

“And that bothers you because you know that she thinks it’s wrong, and she’s one of the ways you could have a problem with this emancipation thing,” he said coldly.

“No, it bothers me because this is her big day, and you’re fucking it up for her. I’m fine if you wait until next month to play your games with her, just not now.”

He paused for a bit, which shocked me, because that meant he was actually listening to me. “That’s fine. I’ll put this topic to the side, and I won’t broach it with her until next month. That gives me time to see if your behavior changes.”

“I think that’s awesome that you’re finally showing that you give a shit about her and you’re putting it aside, but you’re not changing me at all, so don’t even get your hopes up,” I said, then laughed at him. “I got invited to another party tonight. Maybe I’ll go and pull a train.”

“Then my path is clear in October,” he said.

“I’m so glad you finally figured something out,” I said sarcastically. He ended the call, and I took a few seconds to calm down. I saw Hank over with my mother, talking to the lady who worked here, and Maddy was being fussy.

“Hang in there, Maddy,” Hank said soothingly.

“I can take her,” I said.

“Here,” Hank said, and gave me the baby sling. It was actually more like a backpack that fit over my shoulders, and put Maddy in front of me. She submitted to the transfer, and settled in against my chest.

“Hey,” I said to her, and bumped her head with mine, gently. “Let’s go look around.” I was walking over to the Hot Dog store to see if I could distract her when there was a loud explosion, and slight shockwaves to the building.

“What the fuck?” Darius asked. Robbie rushed over to the window facing the north tower and saw smoke pouring up from it.

“Was there an explosion in that building?” Mom asked nervously. Hank already had her phone out and was dialing the station, while the rest of us stared at the building next to us, identical to the one we were standing in, only it was on fire.

And then the true horror of the situation hit me. “Weren’t Dad and Stef supposed to be there?” I asked Robbie.

We all looked at each other, paralyzed by fear at what may have happened to them. “They were,” Robbie said. “Hopefully they’ll be able to put the fire out before it gets to the top floors.”

“Hopefully,” Darius said, shaking his head. It didn’t look good. It looked like the top floors were completely enveloped in smoke. I thought about the conversation I’d just had with my father, and felt physical pain surge through my chest at the thought that may have been our last talk.

“A plane crashed into the building,” Hank announced.

“That’s one bad pilot,” Darius noted.

“What was that?” Mom asked, as we saw something fall off the building.

“Oh my God!” Hank said. “That’s a person!” We stood there, absolutely horrified, as people who were unable to escape from the fire and smoke, opted to take their lives by jumping instead. I watched as a guy in a suit leapt out of a window and soared down, his arms spread like wings, as he plummeted to the earth.

8:46am: North Tower

I hung up the phone and stared at it, as if it were the reason I was so furious. “And an argument was necessary?” Stef asked coldly. Ever since he and Will had more or less patched things up last night, he’d been giving me disapproving looks whenever Will came up in conversation.

“I am just not willing to let him destroy himself,” I said to Stef. “You can give up on him, but I’m not going to.” Will was turning into my personal nightmare. I got that he was maturing more quickly than most boys, and I got that he had hormonal overload going on inside his brain, but this lifestyle of drinking, drugs, and sex was really dangerous at that age. If he was actually seventeen or eighteen, I could probably handle it, but shit, he wasn’t even going to be fifteen for a few more days. He was way too young to be out there, living like he was on the circuit. I’d lost too many friends from that shit, from AIDS and from drugs, to let that happen to my own son. Besides, there were predators out there, guys like JJ’s coach, guys who would see a wealthy and handsome young guy like Will and paint a target on him. He had no awareness that he was so vulnerable. His refusal to see threats that were real was maddening beyond belief. As much as anything, his naiveté and obliviousness unnerved me. He didn’t realize what it meant to come from a very rich and powerful family, and he didn’t understand that the popularity that he enjoyed as a result came with significant risks. And he was so fucking stubborn, you couldn’t tell him a damn thing.

“You are only making things worse,” Stef argued. “The more you argue about this, the more Will is likely to do something worse, if only to spite you.”

We strode up to the elevators and hit the button. “Oh? Like what? Shit, he’s already fucked almost twenty guys. What’s he going to do? Go to the bathhouse and double it?”

“Quite possibly,” Stef said in annoyance. The elevator doors opened and we got on, and surprisingly enough, we were the only two passengers. We were going to a tech conference for the financial services industry, being put on by Risk Waters. They called it a technology congress, which sounded more impressive than it probably was. We pushed the button for Windows of the World and stood there as the elevator soared up the massively tall building.

“This doesn’t appear to be a real popular conference,” I joked, trying to get us both away from Will and his issues so we could focus.

“It is rare that an elevator is empty at this time of the morning,” Stef agreed. I watched the floor numbers tick up, until we were at 80, when a tremendous explosion shook the building. At first the elevator jarred to the left, and then the cable must have snapped, and it began to fall.

“Hold on!” I shouted to Stef, who had fear in his eyes. I knew mine did too. I saw my life flash in front of me, as there was no way we could survive an 80-floor drop. We were falling, building up speed, when suddenly the elevator lurched and we heard squealing outside of it, as if the tracks were somehow bent. It shuddered, the sound of metal on metal permeating the car as it slowed, then stopped. Stef and I were smashed into the floor by the force of the stopping car. And suddenly, where death had seemed certain, now we had hope.

“Did it have brakes?” Stef asked.

Before I could answer, hell literally seemed to rain down on us. We heard what sounded like heavy rain on the roof of the elevator, and then a steadier stream, and then there was the smoke. It smelled like some sort of gasoline. “Let’s see if we can get these doors open,” I said to Stef.

He got up and tried to walk, but staggered a bit. “I think I hurt my ankle,” he said.

“Are you alright?” I asked, concerned.

“I think that is the least of our problems.” He came over and we tried to wrench the doors open, but they weren’t budging. Just then, the roof of the elevator gave way, dumping burning fuel into the cabin. We both instinctively jumped away from the flames, using the elevator rails to hold our bodies up off the floor, while trying not to gag from the smoke. We coughed and choked, trying desperately to find fresh air, until the fire on the floor of the car seemed to abate. Most of the burning fuel must have rolled off the top of the elevator, and this was just the remnant, left to burn through the roof. I ignored how hot it was, even though both Stef and I were sweating profusely. There was smoke around us now, presumably from fires below, but we could breathe now, even if our eyes were watering. “Where did this gas come from?” I asked, as I used my foot to stomp out what was left of the fires, only now that the fire had been extinguished, there was no light at all.

“I do not know, but I think we must get out of this thing,” he said. As if to emphasize his words, the elevator lurched and dropped a little bit before stopping again.

I looked up and saw smoke billowing above us, but there was a metal ladder to the side of the shaft, presumably for maintenance. It was barely visible in the smoky haze, and discernible only because of the light from the fires burning above us. “We’ll go out that way,” I said, pointing up. “I’ll lift you up, and then you can help me.”

“Very well,” he agreed. Stef was light, and I was glad, because it was really easy for me to hoist him up to the top of the elevator. He cried out a little bit when he landed on his sore ankle. He looked around nervously, and then grabbed the ladder to brace himself. “Come on.”

I jumped up, and using my hands to prop myself up on the side, I started to pull myself up. I got to the point where I could use my feet to brace myself against the hole in the roof, and then I was finally able to scramble up. “The ladder. Let’s go.”

Stef grabbed the rungs and started to haul himself up, while I did the same thing. We’d gone no more than five steps when the elevator lurched again, and then plummeted down. We paused until we heard it crash at the bottom of its shaft. “Regardless of how this turns out, we made the right decision,” Stef said, his acerbic wit making me chuckle.

“No doubt,” I agreed. “Let’s go down. We need to get out of here anyway.”

“What floor are we on?” he asked.

“I can’t tell,” I answered. It was even darker with the elevator gone; the light from the fires didn’t really illuminate things much below us. We started to descend, going as quickly as we could, while trying to maintain our grip. We were doing pretty well until Stef lost his footing and started to fall down. I gripped the ladder firmly, using all my strength, and caught him in between my body and the ladder. I could feel him shaking with fear. “You might want to hold on a little tighter,” I teased, trying desperately to ease the tension. Here we were, probably at least fifty floors up, with certain death facing us if we slipped.

“No one has ever complained about my grip before,” he joked. We began to move down the ladder a bit more slowly, with Stef being careful with his sore ankle, when I heard my phone vibrate.

“Don’t answer it,” Stef said.

“I won’t,” I said, and chuckled. I saw a marker that said we were at the 46^th floor. “There has to be a door up here somewhere.”

“Then the challenge will be figuring out how to open it up,” he said.

“Let’s hope we get lucky,” I said. We descended a few more floors and saw a doorway off to the side. “That must be the maintenance entrance,” I said.

More smoke billowed past us, but it was starting to slacken. I assumed that whatever was on fire was burning itself out. The sounds of the fire above us, though, seemed to reverberate down the elevator shaft. “See if you can open it,” he said.

I got to the door and tried to pry it open, but it wasn’t moving. I noticed a small handle off to the side and turned it. That seemed to be some sort of locking mechanism. Now I could open the door. I looked through and there appeared to be nothing but machinery in there. At least it wasn’t on fire. I hoisted myself through the hole, and then turned to help Stef. “Here,” I said, and held out my hand. He lowered himself down, his foot slipping briefly on the rung of the ladder, until he got to the door. He took my hand, and I gripped him tightly, and then pulled him in so forcefully we both landed on the floor. It felt so solid and so safe. “We need to get out of this building,” I said.

“You do not think we are safe on the lower floors?” Stef asked.

“No,” I said. My instincts were telling me that this was a damaged building, and to get the fuck out of there. “Let’s go find the stairs.”

Stef nodded and hobbled after me to the closest stairwell. There were other people there, lots of people, making their way out of the building. “We were hit by a plane,” someone said. That explained the gasoline. It must have been jet fuel. I walked slowly, helping Stef, but managed to pull my phone out to see that it had been Robbie who called me.

9:00am: South Tower

“A plane hit their building?” I asked, totally freaking out. “Weren’t Dad and Stef supposed to be up there, where all those people are jumping?”

“They were,” Robbie said, and was so upset, he was almost panicked. “I’ll try to call your dad again.” He walked off for a bit while he called Dad.

“A plane hit that building, but we don’t know more than that,” Hank said.

“Is it safe to be in this building?” Darius asked.

“The chance of a plane flying into both of these towers is almost impossible,” Mom said.

“We are going to exit the building until the crisis has passed,” the lady who was helping Mom and Hank with the planning said. She and her assistant hurried over to the elevator, pushed the button, and it miraculously opened up for them. They climbed in and the elevator doors began to close.

“Wait!” I shouted, but they were only too anxious to leave us behind.

“They left?” Robbie asked, returning to our group after making his phone call.

I nodded. “Are Dad and Stef alright?”

“They didn’t answer,” he said glumly.

“What’s that?!” Hank exclaimed, pointing out the window. We’d just turned to look out and saw a huge fucking plane flying toward our building. We stood there, frozen, as it crashed into the building, a bunch of floors below us. The whole building shuddered, and it was so intense that it knocked Mom onto her ass. I managed to stay upright, barely, and to calm Maddy down. We watched as the smoke billowed up past our windows.

“That was no accident,” Robbie said. “Someone flew those planes into these buildings on purpose.” We stared at him, the total horror of what he said dawning on us. They’d bombed the World Trade Center before, in the basement in 1993, only this time, they’d decided to attack it from the air.

“Who?” I asked.

“Who knows,” Mom said.

“We need to get out of here,” Robbie said. “Now.”

“There’s a burning plane in between us and the ground. We’re trapped,” Darius said. “How the fuck do we do that?”

“I think we should wait for them to rescue us,” Hank said. “I’ll check in for orders.” She got on her phone again, while the rest of us pondered more immediate action.

“Will the building collapse?” I asked.

Robbie grabbed a pen and since there was no paper handy, he began to draw a rough schematic on one of the tables. Damage to the table was the least of our worries at this point. “It’s built like this with two boxes connected by the floors, and the occasional bracing.” It was easy to forget that he studied architecture, but it came in handy now. “The outer box is this part,” he said, pointing to the steel outer wall. “The inner box is the core, where the elevators are. I don’t think any building can handle this kind of impact.”

“So how do we get out of here?” I asked. “The floors where it hit are bound to be blown to shit.”

“The plane hit on that side of the building,” he said, remembering how it had maneuvered in. “If it did that, maybe it didn’t go all the way through. And in that case, we should take the stairs farthest away from it.”

“So that would be those stairs,” Darius said, pointing at Stairwell A.

“It’s worth a try,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“I need to wait for instructions,” Hank insisted, joining us again.

“We’re going down that stairwell,” I said, pointing at it.

“My orders are to stay put,” Hank said obstinately.

My response to that was to say ‘fuck your orders,’ but Mom intervened before I could. “Why don’t the three of you go down the stairs, and Hank and I will follow after we get confirmation?”

“If you run into fire, or too much smoke, come back up here and we’ll see if we can get air evac,” Hank said.

I looked at my mother, and took her hands in mine. “Come with us,” I begged.

Her eyes fluttered. She let my hands go and put hers on my face. “Go, Will. Take Maddy with you. Promise me you’ll look after her.”

“I promise,” I said, and felt the tears welling up in my eyes. She gave me a big hug, smashing Maddy between us, and then gave Maddy a kiss on the head. Hank did the same thing, then they both repeated the hugs and kisses with Darius and Pop. With our goodbyes said, we headed toward the stairwell.

I opened the door to find it smoky, but not horribly so, so with Darius in front of me and Robbie behind me, we began to climb down over a hundred flights of stairs, hoping that we’d be able to get past the area that had been damaged. Maddy started crying, because the smoke was irritating her eyes, but all I could do was kiss her head, and talk softly to her, as we frantically tried to get down the stairs.

9:00am: New York University

“Thank you gentlemen for your support,” I said. “As Claremont Tech expands its programs, it is good to know we have a way to enhance our graduate programs.” My words were hopeful, but I wasn’t sure if these men would actually deliver on their promises. We were looking for an efficient way to make the master’s degrees offered at ClareTech better, and I’d come to ask them to allow students to study here for a semester. They had tentatively agreed. Tentatively.

“I think this will be a good opportunity for both of our institutions, Professor Crampton,” the dean said.

For the past fifteen minutes, we’d heard sirens going off outside. I assumed that wasn’t unusual, but in this case, they’d been consistently building in volume and number, rather than diminishing. “Are the sirens usually this loud?” I asked.

“They are not,” one of the other professors said. He walked over to the window and opened the curtain, and we looked out to see smoke coming from the World Trade Center.

“There’s a fire in the North Tower!” one of them exclaimed. I stared, unable to move, unable to speak, as I stared at the building in horror. The North Tower was where Stef and Brad were supposed to be, and they were supposed to be there right now. I watched as the smoke engulfed that top level where they were meeting. There was a huge gash in the side of the building, as if something had gouged it wide open.

One of the professors hurried over to a television and flipped it on. We waited impatiently for it to warm up, even as we looked back out the window to see the North Tower spewing flames and smoke. As soon as we got a clear picture on the television, and had focused on it, we saw a large passenger plane suddenly appear and fly right into a tower. I hoped for a moment that we had just watched a replay of news footage. But as I looked back out the window and saw a horrendous ball of fire explode from the South Tower, we could hear the explosion. I wondered how we had missed hearing the other one. “Holy shit!” the dean exclaimed. “What kind of pilot hits a building that big?”

“I think, gentlemen, that we have just witnessed a major terror attack on our country,” I told them evenly, my mind quickly pulling the facts together. I pulled out my phone and tried to call Stef, then Brad, then Will, but there was no answer. By the time I tried Darius, the phone lines weren’t working.

While I was trying to get past their voicemails, the dean said, “I hope they manage to get the people out of there.”

“So do I,” I observed to them icily. “My partner, my son, and my grandsons are in those buildings, along with other members of my family.”

“I’m sorry,” the dean said. I was irritated that inside I was near panic, and that it was visible to these men.

“If you gentlemen will excuse me, I must see what I can do to find them,” I told them, even as I fled from the meeting with indecent haste.

9:10am: The Marriott World Trade Center

“What the fuck do you want?” I screamed. Someone was banging on the door loudly. This was bullshit. I was never staying at this fucking hotel again. There were all kinds of noises that I’d been trying to block out, from sirens to what sounded like very loud construction noise, and now some dickwad was banging on my door.

“New York Police Department!” came a loud voice. “Open up!”

Probably looking for Will and Darius, because of some shit they did last night, I grumbled to myself as I got up, stuffed my morning erection into my boxers, and went over to open the door. “What?” I asked rudely.

There were two men there, a cop and a guy who worked at the hotel. “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr…”

“Schluter,” I said. “Jeremy Schluter.”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the cop continued, “but there have been attacks on the World Trade Center towers, and we’re evacuating all the buildings in the complex. You need to leave here within five minutes.”

“Five minutes?” I asked. “I can’t do that. Are you fucking kidding me?”

The cop gave me a dirty look. “Look asshole, some bastards just flew two jets into the twin towers, and I don’t have time to listen to your fucking whining. Throw on some clothes, grab what you can carry, and let’s go!”

The fact that he was yelling at me had a pretty big impact, but that was nothing compared to what he said. Damn near my whole family was in those buildings. Fuck. I nodded and hurried over to grab the Diesel jeans I’d had on last night, put on one of the shirts I’d bought at Dior in Paris, and slipped on the Bally loafers I’d had made when I was in Switzerland. I put my computer and stuff in my satchel bag, and decided to leave the rest of my clothes. Carrying them would be annoying, and I’d be back here in an hour after they cleared the alert. No time to even brush my teeth, but a spritz of breath spray would solve any of those problems. I paused to get my hair in some semblance of order, and was about to do a more thorough job when the cop returned. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, and followed him to the elevators. It was crowded, with people crammed up against me. I hated that, absolutely hated that, but I finally managed to get out of the hotel, and only then did I look up and see the towers above me, both blazing away.

“This way,” a voice said. “We’re evacuating people further uptown.” I looked at all the masses of people with disdain, and decided that the last thing I wanted to do was to be huddled with them. I didn’t like being in crowds, especially one like this, where people were freaked out. I made my way to West Street, staying away from the groups of people, trying to maintain my personal space. I was actually more guarded about that than Darius was. Both of us were more uptight about it than Will, who would hug damn near anyone. And fuck them too, I thought, shaking my head at his sluttiness. He probably wasn’t any worse than Darius, though. I wondered if Dad would still be giving Will shit about that when he was eighteen. Probably. Will had always been his favorite, and he got way more uptight about what Will did than what either Darius or I did. I tried to decide if that bothered me, and concluded that it didn’t. That kind of love from Dad came with a pretty big price tag, one that Will had been figuring out and had been trying to deal with for the last year or so.

I strolled past the police cordons, trying to decide what to do. I could try and flag down a cab and go to a different hotel, but things were pretty chaotic. The other choice was the subway. I cringed at the thought of taking public transportation, and of being crammed into a train like that with a bunch of other people, these people. Besides, what good would a different hotel room do me, when I’d probably end up back here tonight after they put out those fires and got things under control?

The smart thing to do was to go to my mother’s house. I mentally rebelled against that, because I was pissed off at her for totally bailing on me. As soon as Maddy came into the world, I hadn’t meant shit to Mom. Shit, I didn’t even want to be here in New York for her lame-ass commitment ceremony to a woman she’d only been dating for a couple of months. I was so ready to just say fuck her and her girlfriend. But the rational side of me prevailed. Mom’s house would be where everyone would congregate, now that the hotel was closed.

I got to her house and got lucky to find that Maddy’s nurse was there. I guess they’d left her behind. That was good news for me, as otherwise I’d have had to have an argument with the doorman. “What is happening?” she asked me.

“Turn on the television,” I said. “They know more than I do.” She gave me a dirty look for being rude, but shit, I was just telling her how it was. I went up onto the deck and sat there alone, watching the buildings burn, while I listened to the news on the radio.

I thought about my family, and the first thing that came to my mind was how fucking annoying they could be, and how they usually managed to piss me off. It’s not like they gave a shit about me, anyway. But then I mellowed, and remembered that they did love me, and that I loved them too. I felt my chest tighten up, and felt the familiar signs of an anxiety attack. I reached into my satchel bag and pulled out one of my pills and popped it, and only realized after I’d put it in my mouth that I didn’t have anything to drink. I hurried down and grabbed a soda, then went back up to the roof. As I watched the towers burn, I got out my phone and tried to call Will, Darius, Dad…but I couldn’t get a line. It was like there was no phone service. Instead, I called Escorial and left a message, then sat there and watched the events unfold.

6:00am (PST): Palo Alto, California

“I’ve got surgery in an hour,” Jack said, even as he gave me a nice kiss. “Barely time for breakfast.”

“Sit down and eat,” I told him. “I’ve got to get John and Marie off, but maybe we can enjoy a few minutes of peace before they arrive.”

“Maybe,” he said, and shook his head. “Have I told you that you look beautiful, even in the morning?”

“You have,” I said, smiling. “You were this charming, even when we started dating.”

“It’s not every guy that got to go out with Claire Crampton,” he said, using my maiden name.

“I wasn’t slutty,” I told him. “Unlike our son.”

“I was, until I met you,” he said. “Let’s see what’s happening in the world.”

He clicked on the television, and even as the plasma warmed up, we could hear the news announcer speaking. “This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “They’re supposed to be in the towers!”

“Who?” Jack asked.

“Stefan and Bradley were going to a meeting in the North Tower, while the others were preparing for the wedding in the South Tower. Which one is that?” I asked.

“Looks like the North Tower,” he said. I just shook my head, tears starting to pour out of my eyes. I pulled out my phone and tried to call them, all of them, but got nothing. And then, as we stared at the television, another plane crashed into the other tower.

“No,” I said, shaking my head harder. “No!”

Jack hugged me, probably worried because he’d never seen me lose it like this, but Stefan, Daddy, and Bradley’s whole family were probably in those buildings. John and Marie came in and saw what a mess I was, and looked at the television. “What happened?” John asked.

“Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center,” Jack explained.

“Everyone that went to New York for the wedding, along with Jeanine and Hank are probably in those two buildings right now,” I told them.

“Are they alright?” John asked.

“We don’t know yet,” I said.

John turned on Marie, giving her a truly hateful look. “Well, you told Will if he dropped dead, your life would be fine. Looks like you may get your wish.” He stormed out of the kitchen, leaving Marie standing there, looking as if he’d hit her.