Chapter 4

"I'm sorry we had to do it that way, Dave," Eve told him in the kitchen a while later; Shae had come up to the apartment just long enough to fill Eve in on what was happening, then disappeared. The boys were in sight in the living room, and they were talking in low tones. "But Cheryl and I have experienced enough freakouts that we didn't want to run the risk in front of the boys."

"Cheryl?" he frowned.

"My sister-in-law, and my other best friend," Eve smiled. "She's trans, too. That's quite a story, but one we don't need to get into right now. I thought you'd take it all right, but we never know for sure."

"No problem on my account, Eve," he replied. "In fact, it just proves you're one of the coolest ladies on the face of the planet." He grinned for a moment and went on. "I was thinking about it this morning. Shae showing up brought up some memories of Denis, and I was wondering how things turned out for him. The answer is better than I could have ever dreamed."

"It's better than I could have dreamed, too," she smiled. "Certainly better than anyone could have imagined when Shae stopped Denis from killing himself and taking a few others with him if he could have managed it. But that's a story for later, too. Let's just say it was a long and difficult road, but worth every minute."

"I think so," he smiled, realizing that the whole story had to be considerably more painful than Eve and Shae had let on. He let out a sigh and said, "I just hope things work out halfway as well for me, after this."

"Dave, I know you're down about Julie and everything. You have every right to be. Julie needs to be mourned and remembered. But the time will come for you to pick up the pieces, and when the time comes, you won't be alone."

"There's going to be plenty of pieces," he sighed. "I haven't even bothered to think it all out yet. I could very well be out of a job. Even if I'm not, the only reason Julie and I could afford our place in Battery Park Village was we had two incomes. Even if I could still afford it, I'm not sure I could live there again, anyway."

"Something will settle out," Eve told him. "Even if you don't have a job, you can find another one, and you and the boys won't be living in a homeless shelter. You have options. Give it time, Dave. Shae and I will help where we can, others will too. Shae put out her big hand to Denis at a very troublesome time, when she had no reason to do it. It changed his life, and really, hers, too. This isn't the same thing, but there are hands reaching for you, and not just ours."

"I realize that, Eve," he said, trying to keep himself pulled together.

"Among those hands are your mother's and Emily's," she smiled. "You want an incredible person, that's Emily. She could be president if she put her mind to it, or as rich as Bill Gates, but she's perfectly happy just being the manager of the Bradford Spee-D-Mart. We ought to be making up our minds whether to have them come, or what. They're worried about you and the boys, Dave. They at least want to show their support, and I don't see how it could do any harm."

"We might as well," he nodded. "But it leaves the question of Stan and Deborah."

"We don't have to call them right away," she reported. "Your father-in-law called while you were out, and we talked for a while. Your mother-in-law is fairly hysterical and is under sedation. He and I agreed it'd be best if the boys weren't exposed to that. He sounds fairly reasonable, Dave."

"It doesn't surprise me," Dave nodded. "I know him well enough to know that he's hurting as bad as she is, as I am, but he keeps things like this bottled up until he can turn to a bottle to work it out. He'll wait until Deborah calms down before it happens."

"I think I'd better plan on spending some time with both of them," she nodded. "But it doesn't have to be today. What I'm thinking is we can call Bradford, and work that part of it out. I'd hoped to have Shae here, but what she's doing is important, too."

It took a while on the phone to work out the details; as Shae had said, both his mother and Emily were ready to hop in the car and drive all night. It took both Eve and him to convince them to at least hold off until early morning, so they wouldn't pull in way late. "I'm not going to bet on how early," he said as soon as he hung up the phone after letting the boys talk with Grandma for a minute. "But if I had to put money on it, I'd bet well before dawn."

"If they aren't already so anxious that they start out anyway and get a motel somewhere," Eve nodded. "Boys," she went on, "When your daddy and Aunt Shae went out, they got you some crayons and coloring books. Would you like to have a couple now?"

Smiles broke across both their faces; it didn't take a lot of answering. Dave knew Shae had bought more than coloring books. There was a big bag of toys, but she told him they'd dole them out slowly, as needed. "We want to keep them busy and not let them have much time to brood," she'd told him while shopping. "That goes for you, too."

In a few minutes, they were sitting in the kitchen, while the boys were busy with the crayons and coloring books on the floor. "Eve, I've been thinking about it," he said. "Maybe you could keep an eye on the boys, while I go into the other room and make a couple of calls."

"Anything important?" she asked. She was really asking if it was something potentially emotional and stressful, and he knew it.

"I just keep thinking I ought to at least make contact with someone from work," he said. "I'm pretty sure the office is trashed, but I ought to at least let someone know I'm still alive."

"Good idea," she said. "But you don't need to head off into the other room, if you don't want to."

"Better that way," he said, nodding his head at the boys.

"Keep it cool," she smiled. "I'll keep an ear out."

At any other time, he might have been irritated at being watched over so closely, but right now it felt good. How lucky he'd been to have the distant past come out of the woodwork to him in the form of these two incredible high school classmates! And, he thought, the more he found out about them, the more incredible they seemed. He stole a glance at Eve -- Denis Riley? It couldn't be! But apparently, it was. Clearly a lot had happened that he had never seen.

He went into the living room, found where he'd left his cell phone the night before, and sat down in a chair where he was away from the kitchen some, but still in Eve's view. He speed dialed the office -- and got "not in service", no big surprise. He hadn't had a chance to look, but the office had faced the World Trade Center, and from what he knew it had to have been hit pretty hard. The next idea was to call his supervisor Michelle Martin at home, but got a busy signal. Only a machine answered the chief editor's home phone. He debated whether he should step out of line and call Rob, the company president. Well, things are probably all screwed up anyway, he thought, and Dunlap and Fyre wasn't such a big company that people were very formal with each other. With that thought, he hit the speed-dial for Rob's cell phone. It rang a couple times, and he heard, "Rob Dunlap."

"Rob, it's Dave," he said. "Just checking in. I take it we're not working today."

"God, it's good to hear your voice. Just a second." he replied. "It's Dave!" he heard Rob say to someone in the background. "Dave," he continued. "We've been trying your phone all day. We were starting to get real worried about you, too."

"I've been away from it until just now," he apologized.

"Are you all right Dave? Your family?"

"I'm all right, so are the boys," he said. He took a deep breath and continued, "Julie's probably dead. I was talking to her on the phone when she rode the tower down."

"God, Dave, I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm glad you're all right. Hang on again." He could hear Rob tell someone in the background, "He and the boys are OK, Julie's probably dead." He could hear sad sounds in the background for a moment before Rob came back on and said, "Michelle and Royce and Linda and I are here in my apartment; they're just as sorry as I am to hear about Julie. Where are you?"

"With an old high school friend on Staten Island. She and another old friend tracked the boys and me down. They brought us here. Is everybody else all right?"

"We still don't know," Rob said. "Now that you've called in, we're only hanging on Melissa Schaedler. Ronna Goldberg's husband is missing; it doesn't look good. We had several injuries in the office, mostly flying glass when the tower went down, nobody too seriously, fortunately. The office was totally trashed the last I saw when we got out of there, and there's talk the building is so unsafe that they may have to drop it before we can rescue anything."

"If you see Ronna, tell her I'm just sorry as hell, and I know how she feels. So, are we out of business, or what?"

"No, we're not out of business," Rob told him. "You can rest your mind on that. Virtually everything electronic was backed up across the river, and it happened so early in the day that few files had been changed yet. We're just getting started on how to get things going again. Nothing's solid yet, and it's going to be a few days."

"God, that's good to hear," he replied, feeling a wave of relief wash over him. "At least I've got something left out of yesterday besides the boys and some good friends I'd forgotten about."

"Things aren't quite as bad as they looked this time yesterday," Rob replied. "Bad, yes, but better. Are you and the boys doing all right?"

"As well as can be expected," Dave admitted. "One of my friends is a clinical psychologist, and she watches us like a hawk. If one of us starts brooding, she's on us in an instant."

"That's good to hear. Look, Dave, you take it easy, get yourself pulled together. Get in touch in a couple days, maybe by then we'll have some idea of how we're going to do this. Can you give me the regular number where you're at?"