Chapter 6

Thursday, September 13, 2001

It was an agonizing, torturous night that might well have lasted forever, for all he knew. Dreams, oh dear God, the dreams ... the tower falling, Julie, the terror of her last seconds, for her and for him ... Shae's quiet voice, saying "Come on, Dave, it's over now; it's just a nightmare" ... her arm around him ... the terror, the sorrow ... the comfort...

It was still dark in the windowless little room when he came to consciousness, only slowly becoming aware of an arm still around him, being held close to a sweat-shirted chest still wet with his tears ... not Julie, but Shae. It felt wrong, in a way; it should have been Julie, but at least it was good to have Shae to hold onto, knowing someone cared.

He lay there, just taking comfort in feeling close to her, and only slowly became aware that it was lighter, and daylight was reflecting in through the open door. He squirmed a little, trying to see his watch, but Shae had his arm pinned... "Good morning, Dave," she whispered.

"Shae," he began, fumbling for words. "I didn't ... well, I mean you shouldn't..."

"Nonsense, Dave," she broke in. "You needed to cry for her. She deserved it."

"But, I shouldn't..."

"Nonsense," she repeated. "Eve and I could tell you were holding it in, and you had every right to cry. Dave, I was crying right along with you. She must have been wonderful; Dave, I'm sorry I never met her. What a lucky woman she was!"

"Lucky?" he said sorrowfully. "When it ended like that?"

"Lucky," Shae smiled, squeezing him a little. "She was a lucky woman to have someone care for her and love her like you do. She had ten years of that, Dave. Ten wonderful years. Most people never get that much. I've never had it. I just wish I could be so lucky."

He was silent for a moment. "Shae," he managed finally. "I never knew ... well, I mean..."

"I shouldn't have said it," she sighed. "You have sorrows enough of your own to deal with right now; you don't need mine dumped on top of them. Maybe we can talk about it sometime, but not now. Besides, we ought to be getting around. The boys will be stirring soon, and maybe they shouldn't find us like this."

"I suppose," he agreed, as he felt her arm come off his back. After a moment, he added, "Shae, thank you. I guess I needed a friend."

"That's what friends are for," she smiled. "To share the bad times as well as the good ones."

It was mid-morning when Emily and his mother JoAnne showed up. Eve had guessed right; they had started not long after the phone call yesterday, and had gotten a motel in Pennsylvania.

Dave hadn't seen his mother for a year; sometimes they just couldn't get together very often. While Dave liked her a lot, and at times he had hinted she might like to move to the city, the hints bounced off unnoticed or ignored. She had her house in Bradford, her friends were there, her job was there in the office at General Hardware, her interests were there, and she didn't plan on leaving anytime in the next few decades. She was still single, of course; she'd never evidenced any desire to remarry after the death of his father when he was very small. He didn't have any clear memory of his dad, probably less than Cameron would have of his mother, but from hints and things that had been said over the years, it apparently hadn't been the happiest of marriages. He'd often wondered if being an only child raised by his mother had contributed to what Julie had always charged -- that he was a little introverted. His mother was short (as if everyone in the room wasn't short next to Shae, of course), about Julie's height, a little solider, with dark hair going gray -- but then, he remembered she'd been going gray twenty years ago, too.

At least there wasn't any Denis-to-Eve shocker with Emily. She was, well, she was clearly Emily, a brunette, a little shorter than his mother, a little heavier than she'd been in school and a few years older -- as were they all, of course. Dave remembered her from high school as bubbly and exuberant; there was still some of that left, but she was also clearly an organized person, a person who did things that needed to be done -- just like she'd been in school -- and she'd proved it with the way she'd grabbed the bull by the horns the day before yesterday.

She had been one of the brighter kids in the class, a top-ten student, but she had just never had any desire to go to college. All through high school, she'd had a thing for Kevin Holst, a family friend four years older. He'd gone off and joined the Air Force right after high school; things got real serious when he'd been assigned to Grissom Air Force Base, a hundred miles away, about the time their junior year was ending. Emily was wearing an engagement ring when she came back to school a senior, and they were married within a couple weeks of graduation; she was pregnant soon afterward. All through high school she'd worked after-school hours at the Bradford Spee-D-Mart, the downtown convenience store, and she stayed there once graduated and apparently was still there, the manager now, and apparently without any higher ambitions.

Up until Shae and Eve had found him a day and a half ago, Emily had been his most recent contact with his high school class, and not recently at that. In spare moments over the last day or so, Dave had dredged up the memory of paying her for a tankful of gas and talking for a minute or two, possibly when Tyler was a baby. So, though she would have come the closest of the Bradford '88s to meeting Julie, he couldn't recall their actually meeting. A few years ago, he'd gotten a letter from her inviting him to the tenth class reunion, but he hadn't been interested and only responded with a brief note. Since then, he'd gotten an annual newsletter from her but only once had he bothered to read part of it; until a day and a half ago, Bradford had been something he'd wanted to leave behind him.

Emily and his mother hadn't been there long before Eve arrived. There was some updating to do; JoAnne and Emily had only heard bits and pieces of what had happened over the last two days, so they got an expanded outline.

"Dave," Emily said as the topic wound down a little, "As far as anyone knows, you're the only one from Bradford, or even from Hawthorne County to be directly affected by Tuesday. We've, uh, we've been getting calls. People, well, they feel like they should be doing something to help. Several people have suggested a benefit."

"No, Emily," he said immediately. "Not for me. Yes, I'm technically homeless right now; I don't know how long it'll be before I can get back in my apartment. It could be a couple days; it could be a month. I'll probably have to move from there, but it's really no big deal. Julie and I had money in the bank, money in the market, we had good insurance policies on each other. I'm really not worried about money, which is at least one thing that I don't have to worry about."

"He's not even lacking for a place to stay," Shae added. "I told him he's welcome to stay here as long as he likes, and I'll be willing to help with the boys."

"So will I," Eve added. "And John will, too."

"I was thinking on the way here," his mother said, "That you might want to send the boys back with us for a while."

"No, Mom," he sighed. "Right now, they need their father more than anything else, to tell them they're still part of a family and they're still loved."

"I agree with Dave," Eve nodded. "The boys are doing well so far, but it's at least partly because Dave has put them ahead of everything else."

"Well, you could come too," his mother insisted. "That'd at least give you a place to stay, and you wouldn't have to put Shae out."

"No again, Mom," he protested. "Granted, I'm not working now, but it looks like I will be in a few days, as soon as the company sorts things out a little. I think the best thing that can happen to me is to get back to work and give me something to think about, some regular routine."

"But how are you going to take care of the boys by yourself?"

"I'll work it out," he shrugged. "They'll probably have the school going not long after we can move back into the apartments. They have an after-school program, since so many people there work. They've been in it before; they know the other kids." That really was a pretty weak argument, he thought. They probably were going to be moving out of Battery Park Village since he didn't see how he could afford it by himself, and he didn't care to have the wreckage of the World Trade Center right out his living room window to brood over, anyway.

"After this shock, it might be better if they were with someone they know," she insisted, not willing to give in easily.

"They will be. They'll be with me. Besides, if I send them off with you for a while, then Stan and Deborah will want a turn, and believe me, I'd rather have them with you than them." Might as well throw her a bone, he thought. "Now, that much said, we don't know what's going to happen in the next few days, so I'm not closing the door on the option yet."

Now would be a good time to change the topic a little, he realized, and continued, "Emily, I'm very grateful for the help I've had from Bradford, and especially the help I've had from you. I appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers. But I don't want anyone out shaking the can for me. Money is the least of my worries."

"People still want to do something," Emily countered. "Would you object to a fundraiser that would give the money to the Red Cross or one of the other relief efforts?"

"Fine with me," Dave nodded. "I'd encourage it. I'll even endorse it, send a message, something like that. I suppose from the way you phrased it that the notion is a little more advanced than just being kicked around."