Rifiuto: Non Miriena
A scream woke Zane, and he bolted up in bed. His first thought was of Bug, and he climbed out of bed, rushing down the hall to comfort his daughter. It was only then, that he realized he wasn't in his home. Instead, he was his mother's townhouse in Boston; it was four on September eleventh. In little under four hours, he would be in New York with his family, and they would be attending the ceremony to commemorate the anniversary.
"Zane! Are you okay?" He turned, to see Allison come out of a room, Carter in tow. Slowly, others came out- Henry, Fargo, Zoe, Pilar, Lucas, Kevin, with Jenna, his mother, all watching him with worry in their eyes.
"Bug. Where's Bug?"
"Um... Bug?" Zoe asked, as Zane pushed past her, heading further down the hall.
"Yes, Bug! My daughter, Gwendolyn! I... I woke up to her screaming... I... I didn't want to wake Jo, so I figured I'd come take care of her and I can't find her!" Everyone shared confused glances, before Zoe slipped into his room and turned on the light.
"Zane, there's no one in your room."
"What?" He moved the girl out of the way, going back into his room, only to find it empty. But he could smell her vanilla shampoo, so she had to be here, she just had to be. "No, no, that's not right! That's not- she's here!" He cried, pulling on his shoes and grabbing a coat. Then, he rushed down the stairs, heading for the door, Carter and Henry following hot on Tessa's heels, who was chasing after her son like the devil was after her. "I just have to find her!"
"Zane!" The door slammed shut, and Tessa slipped in front of it, blocking her son's exit. "You have to sit down, okay? You have to go back to bed and get some sleep-"
"Not until I find Jo, Mom! Once I find Jo and Gwen, then I will go back to bed, but I have to find them first!" He cried, reaching for the door. Carter and Henry's strong embraces stopped him, and eventually, they managed to wrestle him into a chair. As Allison quickly fixed some tea, Zoe came over to Tessa, laying a hand on her arm.
"Is Zane okay?" She asked. The older woman glanced back at her, laying a hand over hers. She sniffled.
"He gets like this, every year, on the anniversary. Last year, I found him sitting on the stoop, a cup of coffee in his hands, waiting."
"For who?" Zoe asked, as Tessa led her into the living room. Zane's mother took a deep breath as she grabbed tissue and blew her nose.
"For her." She said, folding the tissue.
"Who was she?" Zoe asked, as they took a seat in the living room, Lucas, Pilar, Fargo, Kevin and Jenna joining them. Tessa took a deep breath, swallowing her tears.
"She... she was a girl that Zane met in a coffee shop that morning. In the Army, said she... was shipping out the next week and... that she and her friends were spending one last week in New York before seperating." Pilar reached out, taking Tessa's hand and squeezing gently. "She... gave him her number and told him to call her... and left. Went up to Windows on the World with her friends for breakfast, when the plane hit." Fargo closed his eyes, swallowing his horror. "Zane rushed to help- tried to go in to save her..." She got up, going to the bookshelf and pulling out a small box. Returning to her place on the sofa, she removed the lid, lifting out several small trinkets, burned and charred and warped.
As the other looked through them, they recognized a silver bracelet with small rubies in it, a burned and twisted earring, the name tag of a worker from Windows, what appeared to be the remains of a necklace with blackened turquiose stones, and a wallet. Inside the wallet, were several credit cards, melted together, and three photographs, charred and burned; one of four young women women, gathered together in front of a window, with the New York skyline stretching behind them, one of four little girls in Halloween costumes, obviously the four young women as children, and the last one, of one of the women, a striking dark-haired, dark-eyed, olive-skinned beauty with three young men who looked like her. Apparently, her brothers; all four were dressed in military uniform, with their arms slung around each other, grinning at the camera. Zoe turned it around, reading the neat, tidy scrawl, still readable all these years later-
Davie, Ricco, Jo, Luca.
"Jo?" Tessa nodded.
That was here." She replied. "after the towers collapsed..." She glanced back towards the kitchen. "Zane helped search the rubble. They found nothing of the four girls except these few things... and then they found her body, or, what they thought was her body- they couldn't be sure. All they knew, was that ." She choked out a sob, unaware that Carter, Henry and Allison had come in to listen. "Splashed over the concrete like red paint... she was..."
Fargo had turned the TV on, in the middle of the two thousand two Nine-Eleven documentary. No one heard Zane enter the room, they only focused on the firemen on the screen, of the sound of bodies hitting the ground. "'You don't see it, but you know what it is. And you know that every time you hear that crashing sound, it's a life which is extinguished. It's not something you can get used to, and the sound was so loud.'"
"The people above the impact zone chose to take some sense of fate into their own hands... some of them chose to..." Tessa stopped, as the fireman on screen summed it up.
"'I just remember looking up, thinking, 'How bad is it up there that the better option is to jump?'"
Wiping tears off her cheeks, Tessa whispered, "I hope she took some... control of her own fate, and decided to jump. Even a lonely, ten second journey towards the ground is better than suffocating on toxic smoke or dieing in the collapse..."
"She didn't jump, Mom." Everyone turned to see Zane, standing in the living room, his eyes on the screen. "Not Jo. Not my Jojo." Tessa set the box on the table and got up, going to him.
"Oh Zane, sweetheart, I... she's gone. This fantasy of yours... sweetheart, she didn't survive. No one, could survive a fall from that height. Not even her."
Zane shook his head, giving his mom a soft smile. "You're wrong. You're all wrong."
