Page 61 of 28 Summers
She doesn’t bother with a cab. Her apartment is only ten blocks away, and Ursula wants to walk. Fresh air, sunshine. People on the street are either oblivious or on their mobile phones in obvious distress. There’s a crowd gathered outside of an electronics store that has a flat-screen TV in the window. Ursula peers over a gentleman’s shoulder and sees more footage of a plane hitting a building. Or maybe that was the other building, the South Tower?
The gentleman turns around and fixes his eyes on Ursula. He’s about sixty, bulbous nose, visible pores, kind eyes brimming with tears. “People are jumping,” he says.
Ursula hurries down the street pushing Bess in her Maclaren stroller; it’s the Ferrari of strollers, the ride is smooth, Bess is quiet, Ursula just has to get home. The eighty-fourth floor of the South Tower. Was that hit? Was it below the crash? Above it? Below it would be better, right? But maybe not. Maybe not.
People are jumping.
Ursula pushes Bess into the lobby of their building. The doorman, Ernie, sees Ursula. He’s spooked, she can tell.
“A plane just hit the Pentagon,” he says.
“What?” she cries. She pulls Bess out of her stroller and hugs her to her chest. She needs Jake. Where is Jake?
“Mr. McCloud is upstairs?” she says. “He hasn’t come down?”
“No, ma’am,” Ernie says.
Ursula hurries to the elevator. Is it safe to go up? They live on the eleventh floor. Surely a plane won’t hit a residential building in the middle of town. Will it?
The next two hours are a blur. The Pentagon, a mere three miles away, has been hit. Three miles; if she walked Bess to the river, they would see the smoke. A plane has crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania; rumor has it this plane was headed for the White House or the Capitol Building. The White House is less than a mile away. They’re under attack. Despite this, Ursula wants to go into work. She needs to know how the New York office is faring. Jake tells her she’s not going anywhere. Ursula calls Marjorie, gets no answer.
Hank calls and says it’s likely the law firm lost everyone in New York, or everyone who was in the office by nine that morning. He’s trying to get a list of names. Ursula is shaking. “Anders?” she says.
“I’ll let you know.” But Hank’s voice says he already knows. Anders, like Ursula, always got to the office early. He liked to get a jump on the day.
Jake shouts from the other room. The North Tower has collapsed. It just…sunk in on itself. And then the South Tower collapses.
Finally, Ursula cries.
That night, as Ursula sits in front of the television, potted like a plant, nursing Bess, she makes a decision. It’s radical. Maybe even crazy.
But what qualifies as crazy now? Hank confirmed late that afternoon that Andrews, Hewitt, and Douglas lost seventy-one people in the New York office—attorneys, paralegals, secretaries.
Anders is presumed dead.
The managing partner, a Goliath named Cap Randle, is presumed dead, and his wife, eight months pregnant, immediately went into labor when she heard and delivered their first child, a son.
It’s too awful to think about.
Amelia James Renninger, AJ, is alive. She had an appointment to get her eyebrows done in Chinatown at eight thirty that morning, and as she was walking to work, she told Hank, she watched the second plane hit.
Why couldn’t it have been Anders with some kind of appointment? Ursula wonders. A haircut for his golden locks, or the dentist? Then she feels monstrous.
Jake stands between Ursula and the TV screen. “I think we should turn it off for tonight,” he says.
“But what if something else happens?”
“Nothing else is going to happen.”
Ursula turns off the TV and unlatches Bess, who has fallen asleep at the breast. Sweet, innocent baby girl. She deserves a world better than this—and Ursula is going to give it to her. “Sit with me,” Ursula says to Jake.
“Do you want me to put the baby in her crib?”
“I want you to sit down,” Ursula says. She’s suddenly all nerve endings.
Jake perches on the edge of the sofa. “What is it.”
“I want to leave Washington,” she says. “I want to move back to Indiana.”
