Reagan’s father had died here, before she had time to tell him goodbye.
Other than Tommy, they all had chapters in their stories that were marked by the events of 9/11. And being here was bound to take them all back one way or another.
After a thirty-minute wait, they entered through the double glass doors. The first wall held dramatic images of a passenger plane tearing through the North Tower. Ashley felt Landon’s arm come around her. They didn’t move, didn’t look away.
And Ashley was back there again, in Bloomington, working at Sunset Hills Adult Care Home in the blur of hours after the terrorist attacks. Her favorite residents, Irvil and Helen, were concerned because a scary movie was on television. Only it wasn’t a movie, it was real live footage of the most unimaginable horror anyone had ever seen.
Then Landon was at the front door of Sunset Hills and he was asking her to step outside. And he was telling her he had to go to Manhattan. Where he’d been hired months before. If it hadn’t been for his injury on the job in Bloomington, he would’ve been there in the same tower as his best friend, Jalen, when it collapsed. Instead Jalen was there and already Landon knew his buddy was missing. Landon had to go. Had to head for the remains of the buildings and work around the clock until he found his friend.
Like it was happening all over again, Ashley didn’t want Landon to go. And she remembered knowing something with a certainty that took her breath. Because on that awful Tuesday—for the first time—Ashley had known she wasn’t only Landon’s friend.
She was in love with him.
The memory broke.
Luke and his family moved up ahead, but Ashley and Landon remained, anchored in place. A somber quiet filled the museum. No matter how many people walked through the doors today, no matter how crowded the hallways, each person was alone with their memories. Alone with whatever the terrorists had stolen from them that September morning.
Landon leaned close and his voice fell to barely a whisper. “I was like a different person here. Looking for Jalen. Almost like a machine. Hungry… exhausted… it didn’t matter. I just kept looking.”
Ashley nodded. “I remember.” She felt the fear again, how she had worried Landon would never come back to Bloomington.
“So much loss.” Landon stared at the wall. “I miss Jalen. I miss him still.”
Ashley had never met Landon’s college buddy. The one who had convinced him to be a firefighter. When Landon’s pursuit of Ashley wasn’t working, Jalen had talked him into moving to New York City. Come to the action, he had told Landon.
And so Landon had put in his notice with the Bloomington Fire Department and made plans to move to Manhattan. Only he got hurt in an Indiana house fire first. The one where he saved the life of a little boy. A few weeks later Landon was still nursing a broken leg when he should’ve been moving to New York City.
Otherwise…
Ashley couldn’t finish the thought.
But for the next hour, the story played out on the walls around them. Yes, in a different set of circumstances, Landon definitely would’ve been running into the Twin Towers right next to Jalen. The terrorist attacks would’ve trapped him beneath hundreds of tons of steel and cement and glass. Landon’s arm wouldn’t be around her now. Rather, his name would be engraved on the memorial wall.
One more person they would be remembering today at Ground Zero.
8
The visit to New York City and Lower Manhattan was turning out to be harder than Reagan had expected. After a day at the museum, she was more aware of the truth. Her father wasn’t here. Of course not. He had been a believer in Jesus, a man with a heart after God’s heart. He was in heaven, and maybe he had a window to this day.
So he could pray for Reagan and Luke and Tommy as they woke up today—on the anniversary of 9/11—and as they did what they had come to do. As they remembered and honored Reagan’s dad. The grandfather Tommy had never known.
Luke and Tommy were still getting ready, so Reagan took the elevator to the lobby. She found a quiet chair and phoned her mother. It was something she did often, but the call each year on September 11 was different.
“Hello, dear.” Her mom sounded tired. “How is it?”
“New. Nothing looks the same. Where the towers stood.”
“Hmm.” Her mother hesitated. “One of these years I’ll have to come with you.” She sounded doubtful. As if the memories were hard enough from far away. “What’s it like?”
Reagan thought about yesterday’s tour. “The time line at the museum doesn’t leave anything out. It was like… like watching it happen all over again.”
There were personal reasons why 9/11 was hard for Reagan. Her mother knew that, same as Luke knew. But Reagan and her mother didn’t talk about that now. Her mom took her time. “Reagan… I was going to call you. I… have new information. About your father.”
“New information?” What more could there possibly be to know? Her father had been working at the top of the World Trade Center when the plane tore through the building.
And he’d never been heard from again.
What could her mother mean? Reagan pinched the bridge of her nose. “Mom… new information?”
“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “I heard from the widow of one of your father’s coworkers. She’s looked for me since the attacks that day.”
Reagan stood and walked to the front door of the hotel. She needed air. “Why? What for?”
“Because…” Her mother hesitated. “This woman’s husband called her before the North Tower collapsed. They stayed on the phone together.”
And then Reagan’s mother told her the story of how her father had spent his final minutes. It was a story they hadn’t known before this, and it made Reagan both sick and beyond proud.
As the story came to an end, Luke and Tommy stepped off the elevator.
“I have to go, Mom.” Reagan didn’t cry. The news her mother had just shared was too profound, too unbelievable. “I’ll call you later.”
The conversation ended and Reagan met up with her husband and son. She didn’t say a word about what she had just learned. She could barely get her mind around it herself. She would tell Luke and Tommy later. For now they needed to connect with Ashley and Landon at the memorial.
Traffic was terrible around Ground Zero so they walked the last few blocks. Today there were twice as many people wandering the parklike area as yesterday. They met up with Ashley and Landon and all five of them headed to the four-sided waterfall, rimmed by a memorial pool.
Ashley and Landon split off to find Jalen’s name on the other memorial wall, and Reagan, Luke and Tommy made their way to where her father’s name was engraved. It didn’t take long to find it and as they did Reagan was overcome by the truth.
They were in the exact spot where the North Tower once stood.
In the very place where her father had been working high above them that Tuesday morning, the three of them huddled and stared at his name in the stone wall.
THOMAS DOUGLAS DECKER.
Reagan’s eyes blurred with tears and she put her hand on the cold letters. All around her people were doing the same thing. Remembering the ones they lost, finding some sort of solace in touching a piece of the wall.
Tommy pulled a slip of paper and a pencil from his backpack. This part had been his idea. A way to take home the memory from today. Reagan watched their son position the paper over her father’s name. Then with quick gentle strokes, Tommy ran the side of his pencil over the paper so that the name came through.
A permanent keepsake.
There was an open bench nearby, and the three of them sat down. The sun shone through the trees here, which Reagan appreciated. She’d been freezing since they reached the reflecting pool. Here on the bench Luke sat on one side of her, Tommy on the other. Reagan stared up where the tower used to stand. A hundred times she had come here to visit her dad. Her mother would bring her when she was little, and as she got older she would stop by on
visits from college.
“You came here to see Grandpa, right, Dad?” Tommy’s voice was soft. Appropriate for the moment. “When you and Mom were dating?”
This was something Reagan and Tommy had talked about last night. Tommy knew he was born before his parents married. And he knew they’d been apart for a year after his birth. But he’d never seemed to want more information than that. Reagan and Luke both wondered if today he might have more questions. If he did, they planned to answer him.
Luke grabbed a quick breath. “Yes. I came here with your mom.” He lifted his eyes to the sky, as if he were looking to the spot where the eighty-ninth floor used to be. “His office was beautiful.”
Reagan’s eyes followed the same path. “He liked you so much, Luke.” She linked arms with her husband. “You told him you could picture having an office down the hall from his. Both of you businessmen at the top of your game.”
“I remember. He had an infectious personality.” Luke turned to Tommy. “You’re a lot like him, Son.”
They were quiet for a moment. Tommy looked up, too, but he couldn’t possibly know what it used to be like here, how it had felt to stand at ground level between two hundred-floor buildings. As impressive as the new World Trade Center was, nothing would replace the way the Twin Towers had looked.
Especially from this close.
“You said you didn’t get to say goodbye to him.” Tommy turned to her. “You mean… you didn’t talk to him? In the days leading up to… that morning?”
Reagan shot a look at Luke.
“Your mother and I”—Luke faced Tommy—“we had every intention of honoring God with our relationship. We had guidelines.”
Tommy didn’t look like he was quite tracking. “You mean you weren’t going to have sex before getting married?”
“Right.” Reagan hesitated. Reliving this part of her life story was always painful. “That was the plan.”
Luke explained how on the night of September 10 they were in Bloomington at school.
“We had a deal. We didn’t hang out in our apartments alone. But that Monday night we broke our own rule.” She looked off. “We wound up watching the New York Giants on the couch at my apartment.”
“Your mom and I… well, we got caught up in the single moment we had tried to avoid. That’s where we were when the phone rang.” Luke sighed. Again his eyes found the invisible spot in the sky.
“It was your grandpa.” Reagan could still hear her dad’s voice as he left a message that night. “He loved the Giants and he had called to celebrate with me.” She looked down. “I didn’t take the call. I… I missed the chance.”
“And the next morning…?” Tommy looked from Reagan to Luke.
“I was in class when I heard about the attacks.” Luke stared off. “I ran to find your mother.”
A sad understanding darkened Tommy’s expression. “So… Mom, you never got to talk to him?”
“No.” Reagan felt the sting of sorrow in her eyes. “By the time your dad came to my apartment, I was already packing. I had to get home.” Tears trickled down Reagan’s face as she finished the story. In the devastation and horror of the morning, communication broke down between Reagan and Luke. Reagan boarded a bus from her college apartment in Bloomington to her home in New York City.
“The whole time I told myself he was alive.” Reagan dabbed at her cheeks. “If anyone had found a way to make it out, my dad would have.” She looked up again. “He would’ve done anything to get out of there.”
Of course, now she knew different. But that story could wait.
Tommy was quiet for a long moment. He stood and moved to the edge of the rimmed waterfall again, the spot where his grandfather’s name was engraved. Five minutes passed before he finally returned to his spot on the bench. He looked at Reagan. “What happened next?”
“I wouldn’t talk to your father.” She turned to Luke. “Something I still regret.”
Then she told Tommy how she went home and learned the terrible truth. Her father had not made it out. He had been killed with thousands of others when the towers collapsed. In the days and weeks that followed, no matter how many times Luke tried to reach her, Reagan refused him.
She paused. “A month later I learned I was pregnant. With you.”
Again the realization seemed to come over Tommy. “From that night…?” He drew a sharp breath. “The night before the attacks?”
“Yes.” Luke put his arm around Reagan, but his eyes locked on Tommy’s. “Your aunt Ashley brought us back together. Months after you were born.” He paused. “I didn’t know about you until then.”
Reagan needed Tommy to understand something. “You were always proof of Romans 8:28.” She put her hand on Tommy’s knee. “God works all things to the good for those who love Him.”
Tommy nodded slowly. “Such a… crazy story.” He turned and after a few seconds, he hugged them both. “I’m sorry. For all you had to go through back then.” He kissed Reagan’s cheek. “Sorry you didn’t get to talk to Grandpa one more time.”
Peace and sorrow mixed like a healing balm in Reagan’s soul. “He would’ve been so proud of you, Tommy.” She leaned her forehead against her son’s. “I know you’ll meet him one day.”
Sitting there on the bench with two of the people she loved most in the world, Reagan could almost forget what it felt like that long-ago Tuesday morning. She hadn’t only been upset with herself and Luke for what they’d done the night before.
She’d been destroyed.
Back then, every time she thought about Luke she could hear her father’s voice on the message machine, the kindness and light, the way he had sounded leaving the message that evening. After that, the idea of ever seeing Luke again was preposterous. She hated him and she hated herself.
Those parts of the story she spared their son.
After a few minutes, the three of them wandered around the perimeter of the reflecting pool, pointing out details and avoiding other mourners.
They met up with Ashley and Landon, and the five of them moved toward the new Memorial Glade adjacent to Ground Zero. Tommy walked beside Reagan, quiet, pensive. Clearly more keenly aware of all 9/11 had cost them. Not just Reagan. But Luke and even Tommy, himself. He slid his hands into his sweatshirt pockets. “I wish I would’ve had the chance to visit him here. On the eighty-ninth floor.”
“Mmm.” Reagan smiled. “You would’ve loved the view.”
Later today they planned to take the elevator to the top of the new World Trade Center. Just so Tommy could get an idea of how high up his grandfather had worked.
They slowed their pace as they reached the new garden. It was built to honor those still dying from diseases caused by 9/11. A quiet somberness hung over the pristine grounds and the giant pieces of granite that jutted up from the edges of the path.
Reagan found a bench and Ashley took the seat beside her. “So many memories.”
“Yes.” Reagan turned to her sister-in-law. “How’s Landon? His cough… I’ve noticed.” It wasn’t something Reagan had wanted to ask about before. But here at the Memorial Glade, the question seemed appropriate.
“Well…” Ashley glanced toward her husband, a few yards away. “We were going to tell you all later. Landon saw a specialist yesterday morning. When we first got to the city.” She grinned at Reagan. “He has allergies. Nothing more.”
“Really?” Reagan felt a wave of relief. “Thank God. That’s incredible.”
“Yes.” Ashley looked at Landon again. “His health doesn’t make sense. God alone.”
Again silence fell over them. Most people walking or sitting in the memorial garden complex didn’t speak. Each caught up in a story known only to them. The strange thing was, everyone here was connected in some way. Because on a page nineteen years ago, their stories had all intersected.
They had that in common.
Reagan breathed deep and gratitude filled her heart. Yes, she had lost her father on 9/11, but look at how far
God had brought them since then. Nineteen years ago, Reagan never could have pictured a day like this. Sitting here on a beautiful September morning, walking and remembering in the exact place where the towers had once stood. Here with Luke, the love of her life. And with their son.
God’s mercies really were new every morning like the Bible said. And God had a way of taking the very worst situation and bringing good out of it. Hope from horror. Mercy from madness. And something God proved when He gave her Tommy.
Beauty from brokenness.
And now Reagan had something else, a treasure she would keep forever. The story her mother had told her earlier that morning. In a few days, when they were back home and the time was right, Reagan would share the story with her family. It was too sacred to share here with strangers milling about. For now, holding the truth deep in her heart was enough for Reagan. The fact was this: Her father hadn’t only been a businessman on the eighty-ninth floor of the North Tower that Tuesday morning.
He had been a hero.
9
The experience at Ground Zero was changing Tommy. He could feel it.
From the moment he stepped out of the Uber and set foot on the sacred sidewalks surrounding the new One World Trade Center, Tommy had been struck by one thing: 9/11 had really happened.
This tragedy was part of the past for him, of course. Same with his friends at school and his cousins. At school, some teachers glossed over 9/11 as part of a sociology lesson. But it was history. As much as Bunker Hill or Pearl Harbor.
Every year on this date Tommy’s family hung an American flag, and most of their neighbors did the same. But in the back of Tommy’s mind the idea that terrorists had actually flown commercial airliners into the Twin Towers seemed inconceivable.
It had happened, of course. Occasionally he and his family would watch an old movie set in Manhattan and a panoramic shot would include the Twin Towers. They were real. They had stood on this very spot and they had housed thousands of workers.
Truly, Madly, Deeply Page 7
