Hey all! Thanks so much for the kind response to the last piece — I loved getting to write Don and Sloan's anniversary and am happy y'all liked it (not going to lie, the anniversary gift was not something I had totally planned out when I wrote the engagement, so I was excited to come up with it).
This one ties pretty closely to the prior one (a lot of Sloan's references will make more sense now). However, I do feel this one should come with a warning: It deals w/ a pretty big and traumatic news event that happened in 2012. I rarely make warnings (and don't like the phrase trigger warning at all) but felt it was important to note it.
Let me know what you think!
December
"The semester is over. All you need to do is grade papers, and you have a week to do that," Don wheedles as Sloan scans some idiot undergrad's essay with a pen. "Come on, we've spent the last five weekends at Restoration Hardware and Home Goods and that cabinet shop that smelled like a shoebox —"
"It was cedar and it was lovely."
"My point is the bathroom is done and the kitchen is … getting worked on, which is great because I am going to go frigging cross-eyed if I had to stare at any more stainless-steel faucets —"
"Glad you're so invested in our new home." She nudges her glasses up her nose before flipping the essay's page.
"Not what I said and you know it." He flops onto his back. He has A Plan, and Sloan is scarily close to ruining it. "I'm very excited about the renovation. I'm also mostly excited for it to be done."
"You're making my point."
"No, you're ignoring mine," he sits up. "Come on, we finally have a free Sunday. It's been so stressful, with Genoa, and Sandy, and the election, and the move, and Thanksgiving with my mom and brother —"
"And now we have all these boxes to unpack, and Christmas gifts to buy, and I have to testify on Wednesday, and you have to testify on Friday, and I have a week to grade twenty 20-page term papers on the Dawes Plan and twenty-five final essays analyzing the economic implications of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the creation of the Eurozone."
"What's the difference between a term paper and an essay?"
"The term paper's for the harder class — Macroeconomics in Sociopolitical Context — and they get a data set to analyze."
"They get a data set on something that happened 90 years ago?"
"You know when the Dawes Plan was?"
"I did marry you."
"Aw," she coos, then leans forward to kiss him. "I think that might honestly be the sweetest thing you have ever said."
"Hey," he says, not sure if he should be offended. He gets up, because his plan clearly has to go into action now or he'll lose the entire day to Sloan working. "Alright, come on. Come on, come on, come on." He pulls her up by the hands.
"Don," she shrieks as the papers slide off her lap. "Come on, babe, I'm sorry, I just have to —"
"Nope," he smiles, kissing her full on her mouth. "We're having a no-work Sunday."
"Alright, can we go Christmas shopping for our families?" she asks. "Think about it: Fun and practical." She shoots some finger guns at him to entice him. God help him, he falls a little bit further in love with her, but he stays firm.
"No. We have two weeks till Christmas. We have not had a day to ourselves in ages, and we deserve one, dammit. Let's do it."
"Alright," she smiles, convinced. "So to kick it off … Join me in the shower?"
He grins. "Now you're talking."
An hour later he's got her bundled up (literally … she is freezing, all the time) and heading down to the subway. She barely wanted to leave the house and is wearing comfortable clothing in protest: Her glasses, a ratty pair of jeans and boots, the oversized olive sweater that she's had since college. "You want to hit up Cookshop? It's been forever since we went there. Or Buvette," she suggests.
"I'm kind of craving something else," he says.
She cocks her head. "Donald Blaine Keefer, you are up to something," she accuses.
"Breakfast out with my girl," he shrugs. "Seriously. Just craving a particular eggs Benedict."
"From where?"
He grins. "You'll see."
"From some place by the office?" she guesses as they exit Times Square. "Seriously, Don? We could've stayed uptown."
"Around the corner," he says casually.
"Ok, your birthday is in September, as is our anniversary. Your work anniversary is in April and if you celebrated that, I would divorce you. You broke your collarbone over spring break so nothing associated with that; your dad passed away in June; if it's something associated with your favorite movie I've lost it," she runs down the list as they wind across West 41st. "We started dating in November, so it's not that. Are you dying, Don? Are you taking me somewhere so that you can murder-suicide us because the thought of me trying to go at it alone is just too traumatizing? I'll be strong, Don, I promise. We can get pregnant and I'll have that to remember you by."
He stops as she continues down this demented ramble. "Our first date was in December. Not November."
"Are you kidding me? We started seeing each other right before Thanksgiving. That was in November."
"Uh," he stalls as he realizes that his romantic gesture was about to get him in very deep trouble. "We kissed in November, yes. But we weren't …"
"Oh, we were just sleeping together?" she challenges, and he can't tell if she's joking. "That wasn't special for you too?" Alright, now she's definitely being sarcastic.
"You know what, you're right. If your mother asks me over Christmas what our first date was like, I'll absolutely say that we got into our second-biggest fight ever in the middle of a bar and then went home together because it got too cold to continue making out next to a trash can on the street and then had sex. No Sloan, I'm telling your mother that on our first date we went to 'inoteca and that I wore a blazer."
"Ok, even if you go by that metric, that's also false, since that wasn't our first date, that was your Mulligan first date. Our first date was breakfast at that place by your old apartment —"
"Market Diner?" he asks as they approach the front of the restaurant. Damn, they could not have timed that better. "That place?"
She turns to face him, jaw open. "It's one year since our first date," she deduces. "You're recreating our first date."
"Trying to," he admits. "Still want to deal with the crowds for Christmas shopping?"
"Fuck no," she says, taking his hand and tugging him into the restaurant. "What booth were we sitting in?"
"Uh, that one, right?" he asks, pointing to the one to the right of the corner booth.
"Yeah," she says. There's a clutch of hipsters sitting there already, but Sloan makes a beeline for that table. "Excuse me? Hi," she says.
"Hi?" one of the five hungover twentysomethings says.
"My name is Sloan," she says. "How are you?"
"Hungry," the second kid says.
"Good! Well not good, but you're in the right place. Anyways, this is my husband, Don," she says, tugging him over. He waves. "And we have a favor to ask. You see, last year, on this date and at this time, we had our first date. And it was here. In this booth. And now we live, like fifty blocks uptown, but we came back here for today. And we were wondering if we could sit here?"
The kids stare at them. Sloan cocks her head and smiles. "Sure, I guess," one of girls finally shrugs.
"You got married after less than a year of dating?" the second girl says, giving one of the guys (Don presumes her boyfriend) a glare.
"Yes, but we're old," Don says.
"I saw an article on Facebook about a married couple that went to the same Red Lobster every year for their anniversary, and after like, forty-two years he died, but he'd left cards with the restaurant manager to give her every year on their anniversary. Are you guys like that? You should do that," the punkiest-looking, with his smirk and his flannel, says.
Don glares. "I don't know. We're at Year One. Let's see how years two through forty-one go, buddy?" He pats him on the back and the kids, plates and cups in hand, clear the table.
"You kinda look like you're famous. Are you famous?" one of them asks Sloan.
"I promise you I'm not," she says as she slides into the booth with a bounce. "Thanks guys!" she turns to him. "All riiiiight. We got our booth. Even though you were surly."
"I was not surly, they were young," he protests.
"Sure, old man. C'mon, what did we order?"
"I had Eggs benedict. You had French toast."
She smiles as she unfolds the menu. "You really remember all of this?"
"Yeah, I do," he smiles as she absently reaches for his hand. "Plus, you know, I think I've seen you order something besides French toast exactly twice at brunch. So, you know, good guess."
She grins. "You know how to make a girl feel special, Keefer."
"We've got forty-one more years of this."
"I know," she smiles. "Anyways. If this is a just-us-no-work Sunday, can I ask you about how your trial prep is going? Or about your opinions of Marina from NBC? Because I have thoughts about her."
"She seems nice."
"Too nice. I'm suspicious."
"Of niceness?"
"Of too-niceness."
"If only ACN were accused of too-niceness and not institutional failure."
She's quiet, and her body language shifts. He instantly regrets saying that. "Do you think they'll —"
"No, Sloan, I don't."
"I'm just saying, it got brought up in both of our depo preps."
"And both times, it was ridiculously stupid. Weren't you the one explaining that spousal privilege begins with marriage? So we'd look incredibly dumb if we got married to hold conversations pre-marriage sacred."
"Yes but —"
"But they're going to try and make us all look like idiots. C'mon. Whatever we're gonna get, Jim and Maggie and Will and Mac are going to look, like, ten times worse. Let's not talk about the suit. How's that book you were reading? You finish it?"
"Book club is the stupidest idea ever. Why can't we just own the fact that we like to drink? Nobody ever finishes the book. I never finished the book, and I love reading. It would be so much less stressful if we just met and said, fuck it, we're busy, here's a mojito and let's talk."
He laughs. "You hate mojitos."
"As an example, Keefer," she sticks out her tongue.
"Can I take your order?" the waitress smiles breathlessly.
After brunch — where, yes, she eats French toast — they head to the Strand to kick off a day of Sloan's favorite activities. After the bookstore it's ice skating at Rockefeller Center, and he's proud that he manages to stay upright among the crush of tourists. Then it's to the chocolate-fondue place she's been wanting to try, and then to the planetarium at the Natural History Museum, which is Sloan's favorite museum.
"Not gonna lie — you did good today, Keefer," she says, wrapping both her arms around his left bicep.
"Not over yet," he says. "We still have dinner."
"Are we going to 'inoteca?" she asks. "Wait, I'm not going to guess anything else. I'm just going to be surprised."
"We're not going to go to 'inoteca," he says. "When we went there last year, I didn't know we would still be together now. It's first date, not first anniversary."
"You love 'inoteca."
"Yeah, but this'll be better."
"Dinner on a spaceship then?" she guesses.
He spins her around, making her laugh. "You are going to have to wait," he smiles, kissing her.
She steps back. "We could just stay in."
"Tempting as that is … No. And we don't have a kitchen."
"You're too good to me, Keefer," she says fondly.
Later that night, as they're getting their seats at Daniel, she says, "You do know that the bar for every successive anniversary has been raised to basically stratospheric levels, right? And that while lovely, none of this is necessary?"
"I know," he smiles. "But that's why I want to do it."
The dinner is as amazing as every review has promised, and the evening — relaxing, romantic — is even better than he had planned. Which is a damned good thing. Because saying the next week is "hellish" only begins to describe it.
Sloan's deposition is Wednesday, so she spends Monday and Tuesday prepping. He doesn't see her at all the day of her deposition, and he finds her in bed with the damned essays on the Dawes Plan and a bunch of ice cream that night.
"How'd it go?"
"I hate lawyers," she sighs.
"Good thing you don't have two in your immediate family."
"They implied that I was unequipped to cover the Genoa report since I have economics degrees," she grouses. "Seriously?"
"They don't have a case," he says, even though they sort of do. They definitely might. "Anything else I have to look forward to?"
"So many things. I'll let you discover for yourself," she rests her head on his shoulder. "Is it the weekend yet?"
Friday morning, he's in his stupidest blue suit and scratchiest shirt. Rebecca, smirking in a royal-blue dress, is next to him. "So, Mr. Keefer, you're married to Sloan Sabbith, right?"
"I am, yes."
"And she is a correspondent at ACN? You two work together?"
"You interviewed her on Wednesday."
"When did you two start dating?"
"That's kind of a funny story, actually. I say it was December 9th of last year, since that's when we had our first official date, but she puts it a few weeks earlier, when we first kissed."
"But it's been a year?"
"Or a year and three weeks."
"Irregardless —"
"Regardless. That's not actually a word."
"Irregardless, you two were dating for the entire time you served on the Red Team?"
"Yup," he says.
"And you got married ten days after the Genoa report aired?"
"Yes. September 15."
"Kind of suspicious timing, don't you think?"
"Not really. I just kind of think of it as my anniversary," he says, swirling his wedding ring. They went through this in deposition prep.
"You and your wife were both on the Red Team, you both had your concerns about the report —"
"I never said that."
"Did you?"
"Have concerns?"
"Yes."
"We both expressed skepticism at the report's suitability for air, and then after Valenzuela came forward we both expressed different concerns with the ramifications of airing the report. At the time — since, I should add, your client had presented us doctored footage — we assumed that every piece of evidence we had in front of us was correct."
His phone, in front of him, starts to hum. Mac. Strange. She knows exactly where he is. He silences it.
"So you both had concerns, you both voiced your concerns, Charlie Skinner and Mac McHale and Will McAvoy ignore them, and then the report airs. Suddenly, you're in trouble, and ten days later you and your girlfriend of nine months are married?"
"Excuse me. Pulling off a surprise wedding was the most romantic gesture of my life. Do you know how hard it is to surprise a double-doctorate prizewinning journalist? And wow her Nobel Prize-winning father and Hillary Clinton-confidante mother? Hard. Very hard. I'm kind of insulted." Rebecca's phone buzzes, and she turns it off.
"What were your concerns?"
"My concerns?" Dammit, now Charlie is calling. He turns the phone to silent.
"Yes. With airing the report."
"I was concerned that ultimately, if we aired the report, exposing Genoa would be a recruiting tool for terrorists."
"And you found nothing objectionable about the report?"
"I found plenty objectionable about the report. But I assumed it was honest reporting and wasn't asking whether or not there was doctored footage."
"So you find things objectionable about the report, but you only voice concerns about the ramifications —"
Now Sloan is calling. "Excuse me, I have to take this call."
"We're in a deposition."
"Yeah, I've had my boss, my coworker, and now my wife call. Something is going on. Yeah, Sloan?" he twists to give them a modicum of privacy.
"Don?"
"Yeah. What's up?"
"You need to come to the newsroom."
"I'm in my depo—"
"There's a shooting. At an elementary school. In Connecticut. Marina's been covering it but we're about to switch to Matt and Chelsea for the 11 o'clock hour and I'm going on as the national correspondent. We need you."
By the time he's downstairs, his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up, there's a computer-rendered map of the school — Sandy Hook ES — on a split-screen, and Sloan, Matt, and Chelsea are in the other box.
"What we know is that the police are responding, they're creating a perimeter and they're containing the scene. ABC News is reporting that all other schools in the town are on lockdown," Sloan says on TV. "We have no idea who the shooter or shooters might be, what his or her motivations are. We have a number of injuries, though it's unclear what the extent is. One shooter is dead, there were earlier reports of a second shooter —"
"What is happening?" Don yells from the middle of the newsroom.
"Listen to Sloan," Mac says.
"Who are we sending to Connecticut?"
"Jim's producing and Ricky is on air. They left twenty minutes ago; until then we have the local FOX affiliate and the AP. Kendra, let's find some parents."
"Maggie, call the local news affiliates and see what they're saying," he says, jumping into action. "And who's on the phone with the state troopers? Tess, do it. Martin, call the governor's office. And Jenna! Go online and grab the bios of everyone listed on the school website and the district's website. I want contact info for their families. Phone numbers, addresses, we're gonna need them. Let's see if we can find the superintendent. Start a database of the local churches, their clergy, their phone numbers. Neal, is anything weird popping up that's geotagged on Twitter in that area? A tweet, or something, that makes a threat? Are any parents or anyone tweeting from near the school about what they're seeing?"
"I — That's a good idea," Neal says, hopping onto the computer.
"And now, we're taking a quick break, but we'll be back in a few minutes with more information on the scene of a potentially very tragic story that's unfolding in Connecticut," Matt says from the TV. Hearing that, Don beelines into the studio where Sloan is shuffling papers and talking through her earpiece to a producer.
"Sloan!" he say, walking in quickly.
"Don! How was the deposition?"
"Curtailed. How're you?"
"I'm fine. We don't have many details yet. Are you —"
"I'm back there, yeah. You OK?"
"Let's see how this goes," she says, lips tight and thin.
He nods, squeezing her hand briefly, then runs out of the studio. "Yo Charlie," he says. "Sloan's got a show at 2 and 4, and then she'll be on again tonight. How long are you planning on keeping her on air? If this develops, she'll need a break."
"We'll know within the next hour if she's going to be reporting any other news or if she'll just be moderating a tragedy in real time. If she's got other news I'll pull her by 12:30 to prep, but otherwise she's going to stay on. She's on the scent."
Don stares at him. That means Sloan will, if this is actually something terrible, be on air from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. There's only one thing that makes sense. "You're auditioning her."
Charlie shrugs, his hands in his pockets. "She's talented, your wife. And you're not half bad. I'm going to need you to run the war room."
"You want me to run the war room?"
Charlie nods. "Now get me some fuckin' information."
The war room is part command center, but it goes beyond that. They need to gather all available information, but they also keep an ear to the ground for what stories might develop, what other networks are covering. The war room shapes the narrative for the coming days and weeks; if anyone wins an award for crisis coverage, it's because of the quality of their network's war room. If he's running the war room (and this turns out to be a thing), everyone in the newsroom, barring Charlie, will report to him for the day.
"Don, the affiliate has footage!" Tamara says.
"Get it on the link. Stream it into the control room; we might need to switch to them."
"The school district's website has announced that afternoon kindergarten is canceled," Jenna says.
"You're goddamn right it is. Listen, Neal!"
"Yeah?"
"At the next break, get the affiliate updates to stream directly onto Chelsea and Sloan's iPads."
"The kids are all at a firehouse. Nobody's coming out of the school," Tess says.
"Don!" Maggie says. "The Courant is reporting that there's one child dead."
Well, fucking A.
"Make sure that Chelsea, Matt, and Sloan know," he says dully.
"Ricky and Jim on the phone for you!" Tess shakes the phone in front of him.
"Thanks. Call in my staff, please. Jim? Ricky? What do you got?"
"The shooter's dead," Jim says unsparingly. "The local newspaper is called the Bee; their reporter is here and she's tweeting. Multiple people have been shot. We're hanging by a parent; they're upset. There's a lot of confusion. Everything's in lockdown and they just took a guy out of the woods; he's saying he's not involved. It's bad. It's going to be bad."
"When are you going to be ready for a live shot?"
"Give us 15. Five for a phone call."
"Patching you through," he hits a few buttons on the phone. "Jenna! Talk to the local hospitals. We need to find out what they know and how many injuries they've been told to expect."
"Look at this photo, Don." Tess swivels her computer, and it's a bunch of screaming, crying kids, their hands on each other's shoulders, tripping out of the school. He clenches his jaw in shock. It's a gut-punch photo. Someone is going to win a lot of prizes for that.
Chelsea and Sloan are on the phone with the mayor of Danbury, and the ticker is still scrolling through mindless news out of Hollywood and Chicago. "Someone turn that damn thing off!" he yells.
"It's Jim again." Tess yells.
"Yeah? Talk to me," he grabs the phone.
"I have a mom, with a second-grader and a fourth-grader. The kids say they'll talk. Should we talk with them? Put em on camera?"
He hesitates. "How do they seem?"
"Fine. The younger one said her stomach hurt."
"What does mom say?"
"She says she'll let them be interviewed."
"Keep her in the shot. Don't press them. Pre-interview them, make sure they didn't see any … anything." He turns to see CNN interviewing the governor's spokesperson. "What the fuck? Why aren't we interviewing her?"
"We couldn't reach her," Kendra says.
"Kendra, she is clearly somewhere with a linkup. Somebody get the fucking press secretary for the governor on my airwaves in the next ten minutes, or they will be walking to goddamn Connecticut to bring the governor down to the studio."
Don's covered all manner of terrible things before, from the war in Iraq to the London bombings to Gabby Giffords' shooting. He lived in Little Italy on 9/11. But the next three hours are a neverending spiral into hell. He dispatches Elliot to Connecticut to broadcast that night from in front of St. Lima's in Newtown. Around 1:50, as Sloan's being prepped to fully take over coverage — she's been commenting, but now she'll be leading — Jim calls again. "I've got a police source saying the death toll is between 25 and 30. Most of them are kids; he's saying as many as twenty. A parent here — I haven't officially confirmed this — she says her neighbor's daughter and half of that girl's class is missing. She's a first-grader, Don. I think most of them are first graders." Jim's voice cracks.
Don lets the phone dangle for a replying. "Thanks. Get it confirmed, will you?" He goes to find Sloan, as she's the one that's going to have to announce it.
He finds her to the side of the studio with Bethany and Liddy fluttering around her. "Give us a minute, everyone?" he says, and they scatter.
"Hey," she says. "I haven't seen you all day. How're you holding up?"
"How you're holding up is the more important question," he says seriously.
"I'm — It'd be nice to have more information, but I think I'm doing OK."
He takes a deep breath. "Alright. I'm going to tell you something, and you're going to need to break the news in a minute, got it?"
"How many?"
"Jim's got a police source. Twenty-five to 30 confirmed deaths. Most of them are children. Probably about 20. We're working on getting it confirmed, but it sounds like a lot of them were in the same first grade class."
She's quiet for a second as the newsroom swirls furiously around them. At least five emotions cross her face, almost simultaneously, before she shuts her eyes for a second. Once they're open, she licks her lips. "You're running the war room?"
"Yeah."
"Can you — can you be in my ear? Not for the whole show. Just the first fifteen minutes."
"Sure."
She's hustled onto the stage with a quick nod, and he jumps in back to headphone up. She's a pro, managing the first ten minutes of updates with barely a comment or direction from him — she talks to the mayor of Stamford, she talks to the governor's press secretary, she talks with Jane in Washington, who says that the president will be making an announcement probably within the hour. "He reacted first as a father, according to staff," Jane says, like it's fucking astonishing that anyone is reacting not as a father. He's fucking reacting as a father, and they have exactly zero kids.
At 2:07 Jim calls. "Federal law enforcement is confirming 18 to 20 are kids. You should report that. The parents here are saying they're from the two first grade classes. One class, they got maybe ten kids out unharmed. Two died at the hospital. The other class — one girl."
"One girl dead?"
"No," Jim's quiet. "One left."
Around five, he takes a break (Sloan is still on the air), and steps out onto the freezing-cold balcony. Will's lurking there, smoking a cigarette. "Mac said you quit," Don accuses.
Will holds out the carton. "Want one?"
He takes it and the proffered lighter. "This fucking day, man," he says, and the sentiment sounds trite. But it's the only way he can process it.
"You've run a damn good war room," Will says. Don realizes that, besides talking to the high-level people, yelling at various Congresspeople about gun control, and waiting for his show, Will's been basically useless all day. International stuff, terrorism, they might've put him on the desk, but this was just a smidge under his level. "And Sloan's been good on air."
He shivers as he takes a single drag. He never liked cigarettes. "Is Charlie auditioning her?"
"You'd have to ask Charlie."
Don stubs out the cigarette. "I should get back in there."
"Don."
"Yeah?"
"Sloan's going to get off the desk at six but she'll be back on with me for analysis at 8. She's been the face of coverage, so you'll need to have her on again at 10. After that, she's going to have a period of shock and you'll think she's fine. And then she's going to have a breakdown," Will studies him. "Take care of her. And take care of yourself."
He and Mac co-produce each other's shows, just to lighten the load a bit. The flow of information has slowed down but he's still sending out producers and correspondents to chase down more information about the ghost-faced boy-killer, about the mother who bought him the gun, about the twenty kids who all seemed to have perfectly spunky smiles and missing front teeth. After Elliot says goodnight from Connecticut — he'll be back on with ACN Morning in seven hours, talking about kids the same age as his daughter and about how they'll never come home again — Mac hangs her headphones, then her head. "This day was the fucking shittiest," she announces, then sits. "Go find Sloan. She's going to need you. And you're going to need her."
"Yeah," he says.
He finds Sloan, predictably, on the floor of his office. She's staring straight ahead, and just seems stunned into silence. "Fancy finding you here," he says, sitting next to her.
Suddenly, she bursts out into tears, the loud, angry, body-wracking type. "Christ, Don," she says as he wraps his arms around her. "We're never having children, you hear me? Never."
"You don't mean that," he says, though today, he agrees with her.
"I'm going to close my eyes to go to sleep, and I will see those children's faces. What the fuck is wrong with the world? I mean really. What. The. Fuck?"
"Let's go home," he says. "Come on."
She's quiet for a second. "Yeah. Let's go."
They head home, to their apartment with no functional kitchen, with Christmas presents waiting to be wrapped, with the new dishes and furniture and all sorts of things in piles all around them. They linger quietly in the living room, ACN on in the background, and use water from the bathroom sink and a microwave to make tea and cocoa.
"I keep thinking, about how Will's career was made on 9/11. I could barely handle today. I don't think I could've done that," she says.
"You rose today and you would rise then."
"Where were you on September 11th?"
He pauses. "In Little Italy. I'd just finished up my fellowship at the Times and had just started J-school. I didn't have class that morning and so ran down as soon as the first plane hit. My old editor called me up and asked if I wanted to write freelance. I did a bunch of coverage day-of but then ended up writing obituaries on commission. Worst fucking job. What about you? You were in Durham, weren't you?" Despite being two years younger than him, his brain-trust wife had graduated college the year ahead of him and would have been deep into grad school at the time.
She nods. "Yeah. But I had interned at Morgan Stanley that whole summer, and my internship had ended the week before. My dad came to town to help me move back, and he wanted to meet with his friend from grad school, Pete. Pete was a partner at Cantor Fitzgerald, and suggested that we meet at Windows on the World," she sighs. "We ate there the last Friday it was open, before we got in our car to drive to North Carolina."
"And Pete?"
"Died in the attacks," she sighs. "As I said. I don't think I could've done it."
They retreat to their bedroom, which feels safer, somehow, than the rest of the draining world. "I'm too wired to sleep," Sloan says. "Can we watch a movie?"
It's a great idea. "Yeah. What are you thinking?"
She considers. "Roman Holiday?"
"You hate that. You say it's too sad."
"It's about people that got a chance, Don," she says, and he can't argue with that. He pops it into the DVD player, and she curls into his side to watch. She barely makes it to Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn meeting before she passes out, her fingers curled tightly into his. He drifts off not soon after her, and they wake up there the next day.