This is happening.
And nothing will ever be the same again.
I stand there, helpless and shaking, surrounded by strangers who feel like family now, and think only one thing with absolute clarity:
If I get out of this…
I am never wasting another day
CHAPTER 19
BETH9/11/01
It startedlike any other Tuesday.
Coffee in my hand. Hair still damp at the nape of my neck. The office humming with the low, familiar rhythm of keyboards and printers and half-muttered complaints about meetings. Jim and Ethan were still in New York. That was the only thing that made the day feel even slightly different.
I’d grabbed coffee that morning with Sage.
She looked wrecked—sunglasses too big for her face, lipstick reapplied twice, fingers wrapped around her cup like it was the only thing keeping her upright. I tried to cheer her up the way she’d cheered me up all summer. Talked about nothing. Clothes. Gossip. Work. I told her Ethan stayed behind in the city.
The second it slipped out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said it.
Her head snapped up too fast.
Stayed behind?
I smoothed it over. Said it was just meetings. Corporate stuff. No big deal.
It felt like a lie even as I said it.
By the time I got to work, I was halfway through typing a response to Jim—something about revised timelines for the new marketing strategy—when the noise started.
At first, it was just voices. Raised. Urgent.
Then screaming.
Real screaming.
I stood up so fast my chair rolled backward and slammed into the desk behind me. Chris was already on his feet. Mark too. Someone shouted from the hallway?—
“Beth. It’s New York.”
Everything tilted.
We poured into the conference room like we were being pulled by gravity. Someone had turned on the TV. The volume was too loud. The image was too sharp.
A plane.
A tower.
Smoke blooming where it didn’t belong.
The footage kept looping.
Over and over.
The anchors didn’t know what to say yet. They kept using words likeaccidentandmechanical failure. I felt cold all over, like my body already knew something my brain hadn’t caught up to.
