“No, we're all okay here. It could be another terrorist attack. We just don't know yet.”
“Are you coming home?” My voice echoed in the empty hall, bouncing off the walls of red lockers and slippery, freshly mopped linoleum floors.
“As soon as I can, son.”
“They're saying…the president—”
“I know, son. I know. It's going to be an organizational nightmare around here for awhile.” He sighed, and I could practically see him running a hand through his hair, its once black color died silver for years now to help add to his image of experience and wisdom. When he spoke again, he sounded more steady and sure. More like a Shepherd. “Listen, go home and take care of your mother for me, all right? She's going to be upset.”
“That's an understatement.” Mom was a first class worry wart. But she'd had reason to over the last few months. First my brother Damon. Now Dad…
I could hear the hint of a smile in his voice as he said, “Exactly. So try to keep her calm for me. Let her know I'm safe and I'll call with updates as often as I can.”
“All right, Dad.” I hesitated. “Be careful, okay?”
“I will.”
Principal Thomas had already signed me out of school. So I headed straight home, and as expected Mom was a mess. As soon as I opened the front door, she lunged off the lower steps of the staircase and ran across the foyer into my arms. It was like catching a panicking bird.
“It's okay, Mom. He's safe. I talked to him.”
Leaning back, she opened her mouth as if to argue, froze with wide eyes, then buried her face in her hands. "I thought this was all over." Her words came out in a muffled whisper.
At the time, I thought she was referring to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Washington D.C. And once again I wished my older brother were here. Damon had always been the funny one, always quick with a joke or just the right thing to say to make everyone around him calm down and lighten up.
Except for on the one night that had mattered the most to him.
After a couple of minutes, I managed to get Mom calmed down enough so we could go sit in the entertainment room. While we waited by the phone for hours that night and watched the news for updates, Mom stayed pale, her eyes red and swollen, her hands trembling hard enough to make her heavy rings clink against each other. It didn't help that the airports were shut down for the next two days. Dad’s phone calls didn't help calm her down much either. She wouldn't until he was home safe.
In the days of waiting that followed, it seemed like I said and thought the same things over and over.
If Damon were here...
“Everything's going to be all right, Mom,” was what I said, trying my best to sound strong and confident.
But I had no idea then how wrong I was. Nothing was all right. It hadn't been since Damon died, and it wouldn't be okay again for a long time to come, despite Dad's finally coming home safely a week later.
That day's explosions, which had resulted in the president's and hundreds of others' deaths, was just the beginning. From that moment on, none of our lives would ever be the same.
CHAPTER 2
Sunday, November 22nd
Tarah
“Tarah, hurry up, it’s on!” Dad yelled from the living room.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” I yelled back, rolling my eyes at the dish towel as I dried my hands. A few days ago, Dad been interviewed by my parents’ favorite show, 20/20. Ever since, he’d been as eager to see it air tonight as a little kid waiting for Christmas morning.
Dad had paused the show’s beginning so we wouldn't miss a single second of it while I got settled into the black leather armchair beside the loveseat he and Mom had curled up together on. Frozen on the flatscreen TV was an all too familiar image of a silver rhombus divided vertically into two, the show’s logo. We watched the show every weekend, no excuses allowed. My parents believed its ever-changing lineup of interviews with politicians, celebrities, and rebel leaders was the perfect choice for weekly family time because, as Mom liked to say, “it inspired deep, intelligent debate relevant to our times.”
Which would be fine if that debate didn’t usually turn into near shout fests between my always practical, psychology PhD-wielding mother and my theoretical science professor father.
Maybe if I’d been smart enough, I could have played mediator and kept things calmer around here, like my older brother Jeremy used to do before he hightailed it off to college and then various war-torn countries in the name of modern journalism. Unfortunately, not only had Jeremy gotten all the book smarts from our parents, but he’d also taken all the peacekeeping skills with him, leaving me alone here to watch our parents go at it every Sunday night like a couple of seasoned lawyers in a courtroom without a judge. When you added in my mother’s hot Latin temper and my father’s equally hair trigger Scottish ancestry, it was a wonder they’d stayed married a year, much less twenty-six.
Tucking my bare feet up in the chair's seat with me, I wrapped my arms around my legs and rested my chin on my knees.
Just a little while longer, I told myself. In a few short months after graduation, I would follow in Jeremy’s footsteps, making the best escape possible in this overly educated household…I would run away to some far off college to get a degree in journalism, get a job that required me to live overseas somewhere, and then weekly family night with all its "thrilling debate" would become a thing of the past.
Seeing that we were all settled in and ready, Dad hit the Play button on the remote.
“Tonight we're talking with Simon Phillips,” the young but silver-haired reporter began, his voice smooth and even. “Simon Phillips is the father of Eli and Caleb Phillips, who government officials earlier this week implicated as the suicide bombers behind the White House and Flight 3233 explosions that left 347 people, including President McFadden, dead.”
I sat up straighter, making the leather beneath me creak. Okay, now this was interesting. It wasn't every day that the father of a presidential assassin was interviewed on TV. “Dad, you didn’t say this was about—”
“Because I didn’t know,” Dad replied, leaning forward. “They never said this was the focus of the episode when they interviewed me. They just asked me about my research.”
The camera view switched from the 20/20 reporter to a man in a button-down flannel shirt and jeans. Both men sat facing each other in matching dark brown armchairs in what looked like a dimly lit hotel room somewhere. Though Simon had probably been cleaned up for the interview, the makeup and low lighting still couldn't hide the gaunt shadows on his cheeks or the trembling of his weathered hands now clasped in his lap.