96 Hours (24 page)

“What are you doing?” she asked aloud, as she grabbed her key card and put it in her little clutch purse. “It’s not like you’ll be bringing her up here.” As she reached for the doorknob, she swore her reflection smirked at her. “Oh, shut up,” she told it.

Erica loved New York City. She loved its energy, its vitality. Before this week, she’d visited only once or twice when she was younger, but her admiration for its vivacity had stuck and seemed even stronger now. It was crushing to see the lost, pained expressions on the faces of so many people, but she had faith that they’d recover, that the entire country would recover and be stronger because of what had happened. That’s why she was here, to aid in that recovery in any way she could. The people of Gander had shown her how important it was to help. It was a lesson she’d never forget and she silently thanked them for the thousandth time since her return as she rode the elevator down to the lobby.

At 7:05, Erica stood in the doorway of the restaurant/bar on the ground floor of her hotel and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. It was busy, televisions showing sporting events and news updates, several men in suits talking and laughing. She scanned the patrons until her gaze fell on the far corner of the bar. Abby was talking with the bartender, and Erica felt the warmth of affection whoosh through her. Of
course
Abby was talking to the bartender. If not him, then the waitress or the bar-back or the guy a couple stools down. That was Abby. Erica didn’t allow herself to freak out over the fact that she knew such a thing about her, that she’d recognized it, or that it filled her with fondness. Instead, she shook it all away and crossed the room.

“Hey,” she said with a smile as she approached Abby.

Erica stood and Abby sat and they took each other in for several moments. Abby had changed her entire outfit and was now wearing gray slacks and a black long-sleeved shirt with big silver buttons. Small silver hoops glittered at her ears and her dark hair was glossy and loose. She looked delectable. Erica barely managed to keep herself from licking her lips. Finally, Abby stood up and opened her arms. “Hi.”

Erica stepped into them and wanted to sigh at the wondrous familiarity. They hugged tightly, neither able to verbalize the sudden tenderness that enveloped them.

“You look beautiful,” Abby whispered, and Erica tightened her hold.

Eyes darted away as they parted and took their seats and got comfortable. Abby signaled the bartender. “Hey, Sam,” she said, as if she’d known him for years. He leaned his hands on the bar in front of them and gave Abby his full attention. He was in his late twenties with a smoothly bald head, a neatly trimmed goatee, dark skin, and kind, soft eyes.

“What can I get you ladies?” he asked.

“Tequila shot?” Abby asked as she turned to Erica, a twinkle in her eye.

Erica barked a laugh. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I have one of those again. Chardonnay?” she asked Sam.

“Of course.” He nodded once and turned to Abby. “Another beer for you?”

“Please.”

“Tequila shot,” Erica chuckled, shaking her head.

“Hey, you seemed to like them in Gander.” Abby shrugged.

“Hello? Am I the only one who remembers the morning after?”

“I didn’t say
they
liked
you
.” Sam delivered their drinks and Abby held up her beer. “It’s great to see you again.”

“You, too.”

They touched glasses together and sipped.

“So,” Erica said. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been all right. I’ve been okay.”

“It has to be hard, being so close to it all.”

“It has been.” Abby blew out a large breath. “But it’s getting better. Slowly. Very slowly. Sometimes it’s two steps forward and three steps back, you know?”

Erica pressed her lips together in a thin line as Abby spoke, listening raptly. “And your mom? Is she all right?”

Abby gave a nod. “She is. It’s been hard for her. She lost four friends and two spouses of friends, so that was quite a blow. She’s been to way too many funerals over the past few weeks.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine.” They were quiet for a few moments and then Erica asked, “How was San Francisco? When did you get back?”

Abby looked away and took a swig of her beer. “I didn’t go.”

Eyebrows raised, Erica blinked in surprise. “You didn’t? How come?”

“I’m not really sure.” Abby gave a half-snort.

“What happened to ‘I believe in traveling the world, I am a rolling stone’ and all that?” Erica’s voice held no sarcasm because she was honestly curious about the answer.

Abby wet her lips as she searched for a way to explain something she didn’t fully understand herself. “I haven’t gone anywhere since we got back.” Erica’s expression was soft as she held Abby’s gaze and Abby felt safe enough to continue. “All of my adult life, I’ve been about traveling and visiting and not staying in one place for too long. With the exception of that short period of time when I was working, I haven’t stopped moving since I graduated from college. I never wanted to. But after 9/11, after Gander . . .” Her voice trailed off and she drained her beer, signaled to Sam for another.

“Something changed,” Erica finished for her.

Abby turned and was ensnared by those crystal blue eyes. “Exactly. Something changed. I don’t know what and I don’t know how. I just feel different. I want to stay home. I want to be near my family. I want—” She tilted her head back and studied the square tiles of the tin ceiling. Finding the word, she looked at Erica. “Stability. I want stability.”

The sip of Chardonnay in Erica’s mouth went down wrong and nearly choked her. She recovered and just looked wide-eyed at Abby. “Stability?”

“I know. Right?” Abby shook her head in self-deprecation, grabbed the bottle Sam handed her and took a healthy swig.

“You? Little Miss Fly-By-The-Seat-Of-Her-Pants wants stability?”

“Don’t make fun, Erica.”

“I’m not.” Erica touched Abby’s forearm, her face sincere and her voice softening. “I promise I’m not. I’m just surprised.”

Abby released a breath and gave a shrug. “I know. I can’t believe it either. It’s weird.”

Sam set a fresh glass of wine on the bar and Erica smiled her thanks.

“You know what else is weird?” Abby asked. She caught and held Erica’s eye. “I haven’t told anybody that but you.”

“Not even your mom?”

“Not even my mom. Though I’m sure at this point, she’s starting to wonder why I’m still sticking around the house.”

“It’s not a bad thing, Abby.”

“What’s not?”

“Change.”

“No?”

Erica shook her head as she swallowed. “No. Sometimes, it’s a really good thing.”

Abby studied her, full of a hundred different questions all at once. But she also wanted to slow things down, to not have her time with Erica go quite so fast. “Hey, should we order some dinner? Want to get a table?”

“I actually like this seat. Can we stay at the bar?”

With a grin, Abby said, “I like the bar, too.” She caught Sam’s eye and asked for menus.

Needing a break, they talked about superficial things like the weather and the quality of the hotel until their food was delivered. Once they dug in, conversation went back to more serious subjects and Abby got around to asking the question that had been on her mind since just before she’d crashed her cart earlier that day.

“So, what are you doing here?”

Erica grinned around her fork, took her time chewing. “I told you. I’m working.”

“Yeah, I’m going to need a little more detail than that.”

The fork clanked lightly as Erica set it on her plate, picked up her napkin from her lap, and dabbed the corners of her mouth. She sipped her wine and furrowed her brows as she thought of how to put into words what had happened to her when she returned to Raleigh from Gander.

“I was looking forward to getting back to my old life,” she began, running a fingertip around the rim of her wineglass. “I really was. Gander was amazing, despite the circumstances that brought us there, but there were some things I really needed to leave behind me.” She tossed a grimace in Abby’s direction and Abby looked down at her lap, guilt coloring her face. “I went back to work on Monday, broke the news of my disastrous presentation to my team, and we went back to the drawing board. It was all very routine, very familiar, but I felt kind of restless.” She shrugged. “I don’t have a better word than that. I felt restless and I figured I was still coming down, still decompressing from everything that had happened, and that I needed to just hang in there and things would go back to normal.” At that, she held Abby’s gaze. “But they didn’t. They wouldn’t. I couldn’t settle in. I didn’t want to be there. For the first time in my life, I felt like I wasn’t doing what I should be doing. It was so bizarre. I didn’t know what to do.”

“How long did this go on?” Abby asked, riveted.

“Two-and-a-half weeks—which doesn’t sound like a lot, but for me? It felt like forever. Finally, I was online one night and I did a little poking around and I found chat rooms and mailing lists and online groups all made up of other people who had also been in Gander when we were there. You know, we were so isolated in our little foursome at the MacDougals that I forgot there were almost 7,000 other people marooned there as well. And it turned out a lot of them were in the same boat I was.”

“What do you mean?”

“People had changed, Abby. People were changed by their experience there. Like me.” Her face turned tender. “Like you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you do. You want stability now. You said so yourself. Would you have said that a month ago on September 12
^th
? No, you were all about traveling the world, next stop: San Francisco. And now? You don’t want to go anywhere.” The tone of her voice lacked any harshness, anything judgmental; she was simply stating facts. “Look at me,” she went on. “A month ago, would you have thought in a million years, that I would be helping other people? That
I
would have gone to my boss and asked what our company was doing to help the residents of New York City? That I would have asked to head up the team they were sending up here to help with the anthrax research, not knowing how long we’d be staying or what we’d find once we started? Me? Really?”

“Never,” Abby said, a grin beginning to form.

“That’s what I mean. Some really awful, cowardly men did something beyond despicable, but in trying to wrap our brains around such brutality, a lot of us learned new things about ourselves and a lot of us came out of it different people, better people, people more aware of what’s important in life. Because if anybody learned the lesson of how short life really is, it was those of us on airplanes that day, any one of which could have been a target of the hijackers. A vicious lesson, but valuable—at least in my case.”

“Change isn’t always a bad thing,” Abby said, repeating Erica’s earlier words.

“No, it isn’t.”

“When did you get here?”

“Middle of last week.” Erica sipped her wine, suspecting what was coming.

“You weren’t going to call me.” It was a simple statement and Abby’s voice held no accusation, but a flash of hurt zipped across her face before she could stop it.

Erica took a deep breath. “I was waiting.”

“For?”

“Some courage?”

“Some courage.” Abby’s dark eyebrows met above her nose, broadcasting her puzzlement.

“I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure how to open, you know? I know we parted on good terms in the airport, but I had a tough time for a little while after that.” Erica caught her bottom lip between her teeth as if embarrassed that she’d let the fact slip. “I wondered if maybe you—what had happened between us—was part of the reason I was feeling so discombobulated.”

“I—” Abby started to respond, tried to come up with an apology of some sort, but Erica stopped her by laying a warm hand on her knee.

“No. No, it’s okay. There’s no need for you to explain. How could you? I can’t explain half of what I thought or felt during those four days.” She gave a soft laugh, and the genuine open smile reminded Abby once again of how seldom she’d seen it in Gander. “So, I’ve been biding my time, trying to figure out the best approach, and suddenly there you were, crashing into a trash can right in front of my lab building.”

“Ugh.” Abby covered her eyes with a hand. “So embarrassing.”

They shared a laugh for a moment before Erica grew more serious. “There you were,” she said again. “In a city the size of New York, what are the chances we’d run into each other like that?” Erica’s hand was still on Abby’s knee and she squeezed gently. “I’m a scientist, Abby. I don’t believe in God. I’ve never believed in Fate or Destiny or any of those things, but I don’t know how else to explain it. The chances of us meeting in a city this size are just too slim and yet—”

“Here we are,” Abby said.

“Here we are.”

“My mom always says everything happens for a reason,” Abby commented as she popped a steak fry into her mouth.

“Mine, too.”

“I always thought that was just some superstitious way of explaining things she had no explanation for, but now I have to wonder. First we meet in Gander. Now here. It
is
kind of weird.”

“It’s totally weird. But in a good way.” Erica finished her salad and pushed her dish away, as did Abby.

Sam was on the scene immediately, clearing dishes away and wiping down the bar. “Can I get you ladies anything else?”

“How do you feel about coffee?” Abby asked, not wanting the evening to end.

“Coffee sounds great.”

They sat in comfortable, companionable silence for long moments, sipping their coffee and tossing tender smiles at each other, simply content to be sitting next to each other. On occasion, Erica would wave at a fellow patron. She explained to Abby that there were ten employees from her company staying there.

“Our lab is very close. It wasn’t easy to find a hotel near Ground Zero that was repaired and ready to put us up, but this one’s been pretty great.”

They talked about the other buildings damaged when the towers collapsed and how it would be months before most of them were up and running again, but how incredible the amount of effort from people had been. Neither of them had ever experienced such teamwork, and it was inspiring.