Love's Suicide (Love's Suicide #1)(3)

I don’t remember a lot of the ride home. Danica refused to turn on the radio. She handed me her phone and let me dial my mother’s number, but the lines said all circuits were currently busy.

The longer time went by, the more I worried.

When it got dark we still hadn’t heard anything from my mother. I think we were all hopeful that she’d found him and was somewhere without a way to call us. The news, which couldn’t be avoided, had been playing all day long. Danica made it a point to keep me out of the living room, to prevent me from seeing anything that would get me more upset.

I’d caught enough to see people carrying bloodied bodies and even a person jumping out of one of the tall buildings before it collapsed. The coverage kept skipping from New York to D.C., so it was hard to look for someone when I wasn’t sure where the footage was from.

My mother’s phone was found over at our house when Danica had gone to get me some clothes. She took care of me as if she were my mom; comforting me and making me feel like everything was going to be okay.

After dinner, which I didn’t eat at all, I went out into the tree house to be alone. I should have known they’d come find me and not let me be by myself.

“I told you she’d be out here.”

“Shut up,” Branch said rudely as he pushed Brooks towards the wooden wall.

“Any word?” I hadn’t given up hope that they’d find them. Not yet.

“No. Mom and Dad keep watching to see if they spot them,” Brooks assured me.

Then it finally occurred to me that I hadn’t shed a single tear. My eyes filled up and I covered my face to keep them from seeing all the pain and worry pouring out of me. “She would have called by now.”

They kept quiet, knowing I would make them leave if they tried to comfort me.

Finally, after I’d sobbed so much that my eyes were on fire, Branch got up and started to leave. “I’m going to go see if they found out anything else. Dad said they were doing interviews at hospitals.”

Brooks scooted over next to me and grabbed my hand. He said nothing, but held it and didn’t let go. It was a tender moment between us that I knew I’d never forget.



My parent’s bodies were both found in the rubble two days after the attacks. I wasn’t present for the identification, but Danica and my aunt, who had flown in from England, were. When they came back into the house that day, I could tell that they’d recovered them.

By that point, we’d already known they were gone. After the first day, Danica was smart enough to call the phone company and listen to the messages from our landline. It was there that she heard both of their voices saying their final goodbyes to me.

We didn’t know why she’d gone to see him that day, but they had been together when the plane struck the building. They’d called from my dad’s cell phone, and in the background you could hear people screaming and suffering. I knew Danica didn’t want to let me listen to it, but she knew they’d want me to hear them saying their goodbyes.

We were sitting in my house, just the two of us, when she put the phone on speaker and hit for the message to repeat. She looked away as my father’s voice came on the line.

“Katy, it’s Dad. Listen, honey, I don’t know how to say this to you.” I could hear him breaking down and never had known my father to ever get emotional. “Sunshine, I just want you to know that I love you. Every single day spent with you was a blessing. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. No matter where you are, or what you’re doing, I’ll always be with you. Don’t forget it, Katy.”

I heard them shuffling the phone around and then my mother’s voice was on the line. “Katy. Oh my God, John I can’t do this.” Her cries were loud and muffled the phone. I could hear him comforting her and felt the warm rush of tears rolling down my face. “Katy, we love you. I love you so much. Katy, I love you, honey. I wish I was there holding you right now. I hate that this is on the machine, John. I can’t say goodbye like this. Wait, what was that noise?”

Then the line went dead.

And there were no other messages.

The phone call had made my biggest fears a reality. My parents were dead.





Chapter 1


September 11th 2006



“I can’t believe it’s been five years,” Branch said as he held my hand tightly.

I took a deep breath and tried to distract myself from getting choked up. “I know. I still remember them that morning. Mom burned a bagel and the whole house filled with smoke. I thought there was a fire when I came downstairs. My dad told her he’d grab something on the way to work, instead of having her burn another one. Wasn’t it funny how she could make anything from scratch, but something as simple as a bagel was an epic fail for her?”

“Yeah. Maybe she was just always too preoccupied. Making a homemade meal takes concentration, but when you throw a bagel in the toaster, you can walk away and do other things. Besides, I’m pretty sure that toaster was from the dark ages anyway.”

We both laughed, needing something to smile about as we walked toward the headstones.

“Mom never wanted to buy new things. My dad had this pair of jeans that he mowed the lawn in. I swear she sewed them and patched them at least four times. He even tried to throw them away and she got them out of the trash.” It wasn’t a secret that my mother saved everything. To people that didn’t know us; they would have assumed we were poor. She never bought anything for herself and I had to beg, borrow and steal to even attempt to have anything in style for school.