September 11, Friday
COURT WAS dark today, which Randall explained had nothing to do with the case and everything to do with the calendar—Judge Arnold, like half the courthouse staff, apparently needed the day for reasons of his own.
Nobody spelled it out for us. Nobody had to.
We're cut off from newspapers and television and phones with anything resembling an open browser, but a date like this one doesn't need headlines to announce itself.
I felt it in the hallway this morning, a low current running under the usual small talk, a certain carefulness in how people moved.
Twenty-five years since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the crash into the Pennsylvania field.
My reading glasses chose an inconvenient moment to bite the dust, the arm snapping clean off when I fumbled them out of my bag. I brought the broken pieces to Randall Motts half-apologetically. "The hotel gift shop is out of reading glasses. Is there any way I can get another pair?"
"I can authorize a short supervised trip," he said, already reaching for his clipboard. "Deputy Wells is available."
Unbidden, my pulse spiked higher. "That would be… agreeable."
When he pulled his unmarked sedan around to a side entrance, I opened the front passenger door. "Is it okay if I ride up front?"
He blinked. "Um… sure."
I slid into the seat and fastened my seat belt.
"Do you have a preference for where we go?" he asked.
I gave him a sheepish smile. "There's a hobby shop about twenty minutes away. They'll have lots of reading glasses… and yarn."
His mouth curved upward. "I guess that'll be okay."
I sat back, pleased. The radio wasn't playing—probably to keep me from hearing news about the case. But the silence between us felt comfortable.
"Solemn day," he remarked.
I nodded. "Do you remember where you were?" I asked, watching cars and strip malls slide by.
"Senior year of college. My roommate turned on the TV before our morning class and neither of us made it to campus." A pause. "Felt like the whole country was on fire and nobody knew how far it would spread. Where were you?"
"I was a senior in high school. First period, actually—my French teacher had the news on before anyone understood why.
They sent us home early. My dad came to get me and my sister, and it took almost two hours to get through the traffic, everybody trying to leave at once like the whole city expected the sky to fall on us too.
" I looked out the window. "It was the first time I ever saw my father genuinely frightened. "
"Mine too, probably, if I'm honest." He kept his eyes on the road. "Next day I walked into an Army recruitment office and enlisted."
"You were in the Army?"
"Infantry. Did a stretch in Iraq." He said it plainly. "When I got out, I didn't know what to do with myself. I went into law enforcement to stay out of trouble."
I liked knowing some details of his life. It helped to organize what I'd already observed about him.
"It suits you."
He nodded. "It does."
At the hobby store, he followed me through the aisles at a distance but always nearby.
I felt awkward trying on glasses to find the magnification I needed and the style I liked.
When I looked in the mirror I caught his gaze behind me.
He acted as if he'd been caught, then looked away.
A little zing of awareness barbed through me.
In the yarn section, I nearly salivated over the selection of wool, mohair, cashmere, alpaca, on and on, in a paint palette of riotous color.
But I restrained myself and bought only enough to see me through whatever months remained—and two pairs of reading glasses, one as backup against my own carelessness.
On the drive back he turned on the radio, and a memorial service filled the cab, names being read in a long unhurried cadence, church bells between sections.
I felt a deep appreciation for this man…
the tragedy had changed the trajectory of his life toward public service.
We didn't say a word, just listened as other people's grief moved through the speakers.
When we pulled into the hotel garage and he opened my door, something in the deputy's bearing had already reset itself—professional, contained. And I felt the same shift happen in me.