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."

"Well, yes," she admitted. "We're talking the high school gym, most likely a week from Saturday, so it doesn't interfere with football Friday. Dayna and Sandy already said they'd play, of course. Dayna knows a couple of the guys from Cold Spring Rain, and she thinks she can talk them into doing it for free, too."

"That'd be a neat concert," he nodded. "I used to love that group back when we were in high school. But Dayna and Sandy? That's our Dayna, I presume, but who's Sandy?"

"Oh, boy, you have been out of touch, haven't you?" Emily grinned. "You remember how Dayna used to go to the mall in Hawthorne with her guitar, sit down and play in front of the fountain, and people would throw money in her guitar case?"

"Yeah, sure," he smiled. "We have a lot of street musicians in this town. Kind of like that."

"Right," Emily grinned. "When Dayna went to Central the fall after we graduated, she met Sandy -- she's from the Detroit area -- they hit it off in a flash and have been together almost ever since."

"Close together," Shae smirked.

"Well, yeah," Emily said, eyeing the boys, each one clustered under one of their grandmother's arms on the sofa. She chose her words carefully and continued, "Uh, very close. They live together in Bradford when they're not on the road. It's, uh, sort of the Bradford version of 'Don't ask, don't tell.' Everyone sort of knows what's going on, but no one admits it."

"I get the picture," Dave grinned. That must keep the Bradford rumor mills churning, he thought. It was hard to imagine Dayna as a lesbian, but he remembered she liked her good times. In any school, there are kids who do and kids who don't -- and he'd heard she was one who did, if not the easiest in the class.

"Anyway," Emily continued, "They've been traveling around the country in their motor home for years and years. Mostly they play renaissance faires, but do some club dates, concerts, and gigs like that, even grade schools. Their business cards say, 'Wandering Medieval Minstrels'. They've done a number of CDs. One of them, Pick Me, Please made it onto the charts a few years ago."

"I remember that," Dave nodded. "Shae and I were just talking about it yesterday. That was our Dayna? I never knew that."

"There's a story about it," Emily blushed and glanced at the boys. "But maybe, uh, not for now."

"In spite of Jennlynn and me, Dayna is still sort of the black sheep of the class," Eve grinned. "The two of them, well, they have their good times."

"Jennlynn?" Dave asked. "I've never heard a thing about her, either. I always figured she married some minister somewhere."

The whole room erupted in laughter -- not a light titter, but a belly laugh, from everyone but Dave and the boys. Even Dave's mother was laughing. "Not quite," she grinned, a little bit of a blush showing.

"We were there the night it came down," Shae said. "What a night that was."

"I wasn't there, but I sure heard about it the next day," Dave's mom laughed.

"This sounds like a good one," Dave grinned. "I've got to ask."

"Emily, you were the one who got caught," Eve grinned. "Why don't you tell the story?"

"Except you also did part of the catching," Emily blushed again and glanced in the direction of the boys. "I'll have to, uh, fuzz a couple things. It was a little over three years ago, Vicky and Shelly and I got the idea of having a tenth class reunion on homecoming weekend."

"Yeah, I remember," Dave nodded. "I'm beginning to think I should have gone after all."

"You missed a good one," Emily smiled. "Anyway, we had to track down a lot of people to send invitations. You'd be surprised how hard it was. You were easy. Jennlynn was hard; I almost gave up until I remembered Dayna saying she'd run into her a few years ago, and it turned out she had an address in her journal. So, I sent Jennlynn an invitation, and a few days later I got a phone call from her. Except for the little bit with Dayna, it was the first anyone had heard from her for years. She said she'd love to come, but she had an appointment the day after the reunion so couldn't hang around, and wanted me to meet her at the airport in Hawthorne. I knew she was a pilot from the last time I'd seen her, so I figured she was flying her own plane in. I was right. Vicky and I went out to the airport, and here's Jennlynn in this gleaming white Learjet."

"Learjet?" Dave smiled. "She was flying it for someone?"

"She was flying it for herself," Emily grinned. "She owns it and another one. I mean, this thing was so white and so well polished it almost hurt your eyes to look at it. Jennlynn gets out of the cockpit, and she's absolutely gorgeous. She told us it was worth over half a million dollars, and she'd paid cash for it."

"And you passed that tidbit on to everyone else at the reunion," Shae laughed.

"Well, I guess I did," Emily replied sheepishly. "But how was I to know what else was going on? When we got down to the dinner, I had people stand up and introduce themselves, and tell us a little about what they'd been doing. So, we got to Jennlynn, and she stood up and told us she had her Ph.D., she was a development engineer who worked for this company in Phoenix, and on the side owned this aviation charter company, and had a retired general as a chief pilot. She explained a little later that she was a multimillionaire."

"She must have done well for herself," Dave grinned.

"Uh, yeah," Emily blushed, looking at the grins on Shae, Eve, and JoAnne's faces. "Then she said, and I quote, 'My parents threw me out on my, uh, rear, in 1990, so to get through college and part time ever since, I've worked in Nevada as a licensed legal p-r-o-s-t-i-t-u . . ."

"Jennlynn? You're kidding!"

"You could have heard a pin drop," Emily shook her head. "She went on to explain that she was also known as 'Learjet Jenn, the fastest woman in the state of Nevada.' Dayna confirmed it later; she'd known more about it than she had been willing to tell us at the time."

Dave shook his head. "That must have dropped everyone's jaw to the floor."

"It got worse," Emily grinned. "I'm standing there, gasping for air, trying to think of something to say to break the silence, and I finally babbled something like, 'Is there anyone down at that end of the table I've missed?' So then, this woman I didn't recognize stands up and introduces herself. I'm still stunned, so I said something like I'm sorry but I didn't remember her, and then Eve dropped her little bomb."

"I would never have done it if Jennlynn hadn't already had everyone stunned speechless," Eve grinned. "As it turned out, I'm a little sorry I stole some of her thunder."

"There was enough to go around," Emily shook her head. "I don't know what must have happened for Jennlynn to fall out with her folks like that, but it must have been something bad. I learned later, more from Dayna than Jennlynn, that she'd made her announcement at the reunion to make sure it would get around town. She knew her folks would hear about it, and they'd know that everyone else in town knew."

Embarrassing? Oh, yes, Dave thought. Her father was the long-time pastor of the most conservative and obnoxious fundamentalist church in town. "She must have wanted blood and got it," he nodded.

"She sure did," Emily nodded. "By the bucketful. You still don't mention her name in their presence."

"Is she still, uh, doing it?"

"As far as anyone knows," Emily nodded. "She doesn't want anything to do with Bradford or her parents. No one I know has talked to her since but Dayna, and apparently they don't talk very often."

Dave shook his head. "It sounds like we have a pretty wild class."

"Oh, there are a few odder than the rest," Emily grinned. "Shae and Eve, for example. Most everyone is pretty normal, most married now, most with kids, a few divorces. John Engler has gone through three wives at last count, and I haven't heard for a while; one of them was Mandy Paxton. Vicky Varney married a real jerk, had a messy divorce, and just got married again here recently. I mean, stuff like that, really pretty normal. Of course, there are stories you haven't heard. There have to be some I haven't heard, and they make me wonder sometimes. About a quarter of the class has just vanished, disappeared, not a trace. About half of what's left I'm in good contact with, and the rest, well, they're like Jennlynn, or like you were, I have an address, maybe now and then I hear a little, but not much."

"She often asks me about you when I go into the Spee-D-Mart," JoAnne conceded. "I've mostly said things are pretty much the same, since really, there hasn't been much actual news." She let out a sigh. "At least until Tuesday."

"Right," Emily agreed. "I think the last news before then was when you moved from what JoAnne called 'midtown' to Battery Park. It meant nothing to me except an address change on my mailing list. Until Tuesday, I wasn't even sure you were on Manhattan."

Dave shook his head again. "You know, I find that even more impressive. Here I'm all but out of contact, I really haven't had much of anything to do with the class since I graduated, but this happens and there you are."

"Just because we hadn't heard from you for a while doesn't mean you're not a friend anymore," Emily said flatly. "The class of '88 may have scattered to the four winds, near and far, and there aren't many of us, but we still try to take care of each other when we can. This isn't the first time."

Dave just nodded his head. It was clear without it being said that the spark plug for that was named Emily Holst.

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