Love’s Suicide(3)
Author: Jennifer Foor

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.

I didn’t find out until I was sixteen that they’d saved a lot of money and it was put into a trust that I could have when I was twenty-two. I knew I would cherish that money and put it towards something good that they would be proud of.

Being at the cemetery was something I tried to avoid, but every year on the anniversary of my parent’s death I had to come.

Had it not been for the Valentines, I would have had to move to England with my aunt that I hardly knew. I think in my seventeen years of life I had seen her three times, if that. Compared to living next door to the Valentine’s house and spending the majority of our time with them, she was out of the question.

One good thing was that my mom and dad had been organized. They’d had a will and also named the Valentines as my legal guardians in the event that both of them had died. My aunt had tried to have the courts grant her custody anyway, but she lost after they let me talk to the judge in private. No judge in their right mind was going to give a child to a practical stranger when a loving family that I was familiar with had already been arranged. Since that day I’d never gotten one single birthday call, present, or even a card.

I was twelve when my parents perished in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers, on September 11. My father worked as a highly classified agent, who dealt with Presidential events. He was in charge of making sure the security was in order and overseeing any threats. My mom stayed home and designed greeting cards. You know those cards that you open and immediately begin to weep? My mother probably wrote that one. We still don’t know why she was there so early in the morning to meet with him, but their last phone call to me let me know that they were together when they took their last and final breaths. It wasn’t exactly peaceful, but it did give me some kind of comfort knowing that they weren’t alone. If I had to die that way, I’d want to be with the person that I loved.

My mom was always the romantic, and I guess that explains why she did what she did for a living.

Since the day they died, I’ve never purchased a single card, nor have I opened one. I couldn’t take the chance that it was something she designed.

I stared down at the names on the matching headstones.

Loving Father. Loving Mother.

Tears filled my eyes, even after I’d promised myself that this year would be the one where I could handle visiting without breaking down. It wasn’t as if I never cried for them. Whenever there was a moment in my life that required a parent, I lost it. While seeing my friends with their families, or watching a mother hugging her daughter in public, even a little girl holding the hand of her father would cause me to break down.

I guess that it had been happening for so long that I was just used to it. No matter how hard I tried, I knew I couldn’t prevent it. I’d been jipped from having that bond with the two people that brought me into the world. We’d never share a meal, a cry, or a holiday together again.