Chapter 1

My dad met my stepmother when I was sixteen. He sat beside her on one of those long, middle-of-the night flights across the country where you either sleep the whole five hours or there's something so major eating away at you inside that it's impossible to sleep. Cassie had just signed divorce papers and was leaving her husband of nine years, and being terrified of flying anyhow, that was what occupied her mind. She was occupying my dad's.

I don't remember my real mother. Within a year after my younger brother Chris was born, she and Dad split up. Supposedly she couldn't handle the responsibility of a baby and a two-year old. Dad never talked much about her except to call her "the biggest mistake he'd never repeat". We didn't even have pictures of her. I never felt we were missing anything.

So Dad raised us on his own. I never really thought about what kind of man he was until it was too late to appreciate him. To us, he was just Dad. But when I think back, he was strong, very stable, dependable, hardworking. He gave us his good ethics - for the most part - good morals, and he set a good example. It's hard to admit, but I suppose good locks ran in the family too. He was 6'2, 195, solid, healthy, and always had a good tan because we were always outside involved in some kind of sport. Thank God he had a full head of salt and pepper hair. The longer he kept his, the better off I would be!

I was already 5'11 when I was seventeen, people said I was a carbon copy of my Dad with a little filling out left to do. I never had any problems getting a girl in school, they seemed to like the way I looked and that was good enough for me. My brother Chris must've gotten more of my mom's looks. He wouldn't ever be as tall and his hair was lighter than ours. Secretly, I thought he looked better then me, but I'd never tell him that.

Dad had a few dates here and there but rarely ever had a steady girlfriend. I asked him once - I think I'd been afraid he was gay or something - and he told me there wasn't time in life to deal with the headgames women play. He had taught us to treat women with respect and nearly old-fashioned chivalry, but also that we didn't have to put up with the bullshit. He wanted to make his life, raise his sons, be financially secure, then he'd worry about finding a woman.

So no one was more surprised than I was when we went out to celebrate his forty-third birthday and he brought a woman to meet us.

He'd told us about meeting a girl on his last flight home from Los Angeles and he'd been out with her a few times since then, but we knew better than to take any of his flings seriously. And now he wanted us to meet her?? I didn't know whether to be happy or worried for him.

I was amazed when we picked her up. She lived in this tiny little house in an older section of town. Granted, the area was immaculate, but I'd been under the impression that no one under retirement age was even allowed to visit there. I found out later that she'd come to stay with her grandparents while her divorce was being settled.

Dad left us in the back of the car while he went up to knock on her front door. I couldn't remember ever seeing him so excited. Chris and I joked about it, right up until Cassie stepped out onto the porch.

She was gorgeous! Long blonde hair down nearly to her waist, clear, tanned skin that looked like it glowed from the inside, perfect figure in a form-fitting red tunic dress. She was tiny, at first I didn't think she looked old enough to be out of school yet. It would have shocked me if she was even an inch over 5ft and she had to be younger than Chris.

"He's flipped," I said whispered to Chris as they headed towards the car.

"She's fucking hot!" was all he could say.

Dad opened the passenger door and helped her in. There was a clean, soft smell immediately filling the car - not perfumy, but just... I don't know, nice.

As Dad walked around to the driver's side, she turned sideways in her seat and looked back at us. I've seen all kinds of looks on women from nervous to bitchy, but she looked out of her eyes differently. She didn't look at us like she might be worried we wouldn't like her and she didn't look at us like we might be rivals for our Dad's attention, but she didn't seem snotty about it either. Instead, she seemed completely comfortable with the situation, completely comfortable with who she was and where she stood in life. That kind of look was like an aphrodisiac.

"Hi," she said smoothly, "I'm Cassie."

No one had ever made me feel as unsettled as those first few moments. Not even when our regular doctor was out of town and the LADY doctor had to give me a physical for basketball one year. Cassie was an unknown quantity and all I could do was kinda stammer back, "Hi, I'm Keith." Chris had bug-eyes and I elbowed him in the ribs to get him to shut his jaw.

Dad got in and reintroduced us all. Maybe he thought he'd finally found one who didn't feel the need for all the games.

We went to an Italian restaurant and wound up staying for more than two hours. She put us all at ease and we were soon laughing and joking like we'd known each other for years. I wondered if that was what it felt like to have a mom? She was quiet, but charming and bitingly witty. She could speak volumes with her eyes alone and I tried to catch all the little looks she gave my Dad. She deferred respectfully to him in every way and always looked at him with nothing short of pure adoration.

After diner, we saw a movie, a silly comedy that I barely watched. Instead, I watched the interaction between Dad and Cassie. He kept his arm around her almost the entire time and she stayed snuggled up to him as if he was protecting her from something. It was very odd because at times, she seemed like such a strong, capable young woman and other times, she actually seemed to be shy, uncertain little girl. She was young, yes... compared to Dad. She was only 26, but her eyes held a lot of experience. Dad loved the attention he was getting. I knew he wanted someone who would depend on him and let him lead but who was also capable of standing on her own two feet when necessary. He seemed to believe this was a rare combination and hard to find but I believed he'd finally found it and it was sitting right here with its pretty blonde head on his shoulder.

They married a few months later and he took her to London and Paris for the honeymoon. We got left behind with our Uncle Paul.

When they came back, she moved into our family house that we'd lived in all our lives. I guess we were rich by most standards - we'd never gone without anything, and the house was huge. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, all kinds of playrooms and dens, immense white columns outside. It's just that when you grow up in it, you don't really notice it. And when Cassie moved in, nothing really changed except the house stayed a little cleaner.

Life went on. Usually we called her Cassie, sometimes we slipped up and called her mom. She never felt jealous (or at least didn't show it) of all the time Dad put in with us. We were sports nuts, everyone that came along, every season. I was captain of the football team when I was a senior and Chris was already playing junior varsity. Dad was active in the booster clubs and he still worked a few hours a day at his job.

He and Cassie loved each other. He pampered her so much that we sometimes thought it was silly. She adored him, he became her whole world and we were all happy.

I graduated from high school at eighteen like most people and spent my last summer at home bumming around. I'd been accepted to the University of Florida at Gainesville on a football scholarship and although it was only a three-hour drive from home, I wasn't all that enthusiastic about leaving. Yeah, it was time to grow up, I knew, and I had no doubts I could take care of myself, but home was really a fun place to be.

Halfway through that last summer, Dad announced that we were going to take a last family vacation together. To me, that sounded kind of ominous and I knew he only meant that I was grown up now, but it just felt wrong. He took off work, Cassie didn't work except for some free-lance illustrating and writing now and then and we left for three weeks at Disney World.

I have to admit, it was great. My worries disappeared as we spent every day roaming all over Disney World, Epcot, Universal Studios, and even a day trip over to the coast to hit the beach at Daytona. (On those days, I took Chris around bragging about the things I'd done down here on spring break.)

Two weeks into the vacation, a tropical storm turned into a hurricane down around Cuba. It started moving rapidly north.

Cassie seemed the most worried. She wanted to cut the trip short and head north, but the three of us did not. She wouldn't argue with Dad, she decided to just trust him. In concession though, he agreed to stay inland for the duration.

We were in our hotel room when the storm hit. We'd expected some wind and rain but it continued to grow stronger. It wasn't long before the power went out. One of the bellboys came through telling everyone to evacuate to the shelter in the basement.

Though Cassie never said "I told you so" as we rushed down the crowded stairs, Dad apologized and said he should've listened to her.

The hotel had a large, mostly empty storeroom under the first basement that was designated a storm shelter, that's where we all headed. The stairs were poorly lit and we clutched each other's clothing to stay together. Outside, we could hear things crashing around and the incredible roaring of the wind.

The basement was crowded and stuffy and we were given sandwiches and drinks. It was dark and there was nowhere to sit but on the floor. Someone had brought a battery-powered radio down and through the static, we found out that the hurricane had made an unexpected turn inland and was bearing down on us full force.

The roaring grew louder over our heads until we couldn't even hear ourselves talk. Cassie was uncharacteristically terrified and she sat up against Dad with her face buried under his arm.

Suddenly the unexpected happened. The ceiling above our heads began to creak and groan. Everyone went immediately silent, looking up in dread at the sound of boards beginning to split, metal groaning. The shower of plaster was small at first, everyone tried to scramble but there was nowhere to scramble to. I thought selfishly of luggage and souvenirs we'd left in our room, now blowing away like trash. I was glad that Dad had thought to make us bring all the important stuff with us - ID's, the traveler's checks, money.

Then it collapsed. Sounds around us were deafening. Dad leapt up, dragging Cassie with him, and shoved us all flat against the side wall. People all around us were screaming in fear, and now in pain as huge chunks of concrete fell in on top of us. Just before the last light went out, I saw a man running across the spot where Chris had just been sitting. An unbelievably huge metal beam crushed him as I watched.

We stayed pressed against the wall and each other for what seemed an eternity. It was completely dark but the roaring sound eventually tapered off. There were still people shouting and crying all around us and the sound of glass breaking, but the scariest sound of all now was the same kind of low creaking as if something extremely heavy was balanced in a horribly unsafe way.

"It didn't all fall," Dad whispered, recognizing the sound. He'd been a structural engineer for most of his life and I trusted him to know what he was talking about. "We've got to get out of here before we are crushed!"

"How?" Cassie asked, panic very apparent in her voice.

"I can see light," Chris said, his first words in a long time.

"Where?" Dad asked and Chris got him looking in the right direction. There was the faintest blue/white glow far above us and a little to our left.

"Where are your keys, sweetheart?" he asked Cassie.

"In my purse," she answered. "I've got it." He'd insisted that she not leave it behind in the room. We could hear her fumbling in it and then the rattle of keys as her hand grasped them. Some time ago, Dad had found a powerful but tiny superbright LED flashlight keychain for her and it had come in handy more than once, but never as much as this.

Dad shone it all around us and we could see how fortunate we were that he'd made us move up against a supporting wall. I'd never seen a dead person before but now they were all around us.

"We need to help," Cassie began, seeming to look around at them in a daze.

Dad cut her off. "We will look for help after we find out way out first."

She nodded, her wide beautiful eyes peering around in disbelief.

"Up here!" Dad called from a few feet away. We rushed to catch up with him and looked up the length of the beam. The light had come down a seemingly straight shaft through the debris. Warm rain fell on our faces from the black sky.

"Kevin, you go up first," he instructed me. "Remember your path so you can help guide them out. When you are all safe, I'll look around down here and see if I can send more people up."

"No!" Cassie cried. "I'm not leaving you down here!"

In the most stern voice I'd ever heard him use with her, Dad said quietly, "You will do exactly what I tell you."

I expected her to protest, knowing her personality, but in the shadow of the tiny flashlight, I saw her bite her lip and a shiver pass through her little body.

"Start climbing," he told me and began to point our a good route. "Go slow. Check before you put your weight on something, you remember the climbing we did last year. Don't grab hold of something loose."

"Yes Sir." I was afraid but I knew I could do what he was telling me. The hole was probably less than two stories deep so I took a deep breath and began. It got easier the higher I got, everything I grabbed seemed firm and I found myself out in the open in a matter of minutes.

"It's okay," I shouted down to them. Chris was already on his way up so I paused to look around. Most of the hotel was simply gone. In fact, most of the structures around it were gone. Emergency crews were running about everywhere and I yelled to get somebody to come over and help.

Chris made it up as easily as I had and I could barely see in the dim light Dad sending Cassie up. She paused and threw her arms around his neck, then let go and started to climb. I could see her eyes as she looked up and see tears glittering on her cheeks.

She was about three quarters of the way up when the debris pile under our feet started to shift. Maybe it was from the weight of the rescuers walking on it. I stumbled, trying to keep my feet under me while I tried to watch what was happening down the shaft. Something large turned loose halfway down and fell towards Cassie. It hit her left shoulder. She screamed and I was afraid she had fallen but someone shoved me out of the way.

"Hold on, Miss!" the fireman called down. He was tying a rope around his middle and two of his buddies were preparing to lower him into the hole. I managed to get back close enough to peer in and see him catch Cassie around the waist. I could see a blossom of blood covering the shoulder. With horror, I realized I couldn't see anything past her. Dad's light had been extinguished.

"David!" Cassie was screaming now, struggling in her rescuer's arms to see what was going on below. She called his name over and over until they had her up and were putting her on a stretcher.

"Wait!" she begged the fireman, then called my name.

Dad had taken the flashlight off her keychain and she pressed the keys into my hand. "If you can find the car," she explained, then tried to argue with the paramedics that they couldn't take her away, she had to take care of her children.

"She'll be at St. Francis," the man told me. "You can find her there."

I nodded and tried to get Cassie to calm down. I told her I wouldn't leave until they had Dad up and safe. I begged her to stop fighting and let them take care of her.

"We'll wait for Dad, then we'll come to you."

She seemed to accept with one final warning. "Stay together!"

I nodded and promised her that we would.

"I love you both!" she cried out as they shoved the stretcher into the ambulance.

Five hours passed before they could dig down deep enough to get to the people in the basement. I knew that Cassie was probably going crazy, not knowing what was going on. I was about to lose my mind and I was watching every move they made. I found out later that they'd had to sedate Cassie when she tried to leave the hospital and come back. It took thirty-seven stitches to sew up her arm and shoulder.

They pulled fourteen people up from the basement before Dad. Eleven of them were dead. Chris and I both rushed to the stretcher they put him on and had to fight to stay beside him. I finally yelled, "He's our father!" at one of the medics trying to push us away.

I couldn't help but cry when I got close to him. I thought he was dead. There was dried blood and concrete dust covering him so much that I could hardly recognize him. Fresh blood oozed from a deep chest wound.

Both Chris and I leaned in close. He told us that he loved us, that he'd held on as long as he could just to make sure we were okay.

"Cassie?" he whispered.

"She's okay too, Dad. They took her to the hospital a long time ago."

He nodded and coughed, blood frothing at his lips.

"Take care of her, Keith," he told me. "She's such a child."

"Dad," I whined like a little kid myself, "Don't talk like that! You'll be okay!"

"Promise me," he said urgently. His eyes sought my face but I don't think he could even see me anymore.