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Back 3 a.m.
Chapters (67)
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

I think back to 9/11. Waking up at 3:00 a.m., going through my routine, having no clue that eighteen hours earlier, two planes crashed into the Twin Towers. Had it been any other week, my father would have texted me about the attacks, but he was on vacation in the Bahamas and without cell phone service. He would later tell me what a nightmare traveling back to the States had been the day following the worst terrorist attack in US history. He’d camped out at the Bahamian airport for three days, finally chartering a flight to Miami, then renting a car and driving home to Virginia.

I found out about the attacks not through the news—I don’t have time for news—but when I logged into my E-Trade account. I’d lost nearly $200,000 the previous day as the stock market plummeted.

I spent the rest of my day and the rest of each of my next four days watching the 9/11 saga unfold. I once asked Ingrid how much coverage of the attacks she’d watched and she said it was more than fifty hours that first week. Can you imagine that? Fifty of my days watching reruns of two towers collapsing. Now I’m not judging; it was compulsive and entertaining coverage causing me to sleep with my laptop on my chest. But after that fourth day, I washed my hands of it. I couldn’t give any more of my time to sadness and anger.

But now.

My mother was a terrorist.

My mother was one of these assholes.

Meow.

Meow.

Meow.

“Dude, what?”

Meow.

I look down at my watch.

It’s 3:57 a.m.

I look at Lassie.

“Run!”

We take off in a sprint.

I’m a quarter mile from my condo. The fastest mile I’ve run is right around seven minutes. I will have to run the tail end of a six-minute mile if I don’t want to sleep in the street.

My feet pound against the pavement.

I glance down at the phone.

3:58 a.m.

I turn onto my street, Lassie scampering parallel with me. I don’t have to look down to know his tiny teeth are gritted in concentration.

We pass a coffee shop and a dry cleaner.

I see my condo a block and a half away.

I ponder calling Ingrid back and alerting her that I might not make it home, that she should drive down my street to look for a guy on a bus bench with a cat on his chest. I glance down at the phone.

The numbers turn from :58 to :59.

I still have time.

I can make it.

I have forty-five seconds to run a hundred yards, go up three flights of stairs, and unlock my door.