As a family member of the fallen, I’ve gotten occasional updates about all the ways they want to memorialize the victims. There will be twin waterfall pools where the towers were. This Survivor Tree that was in the area, and, well the name kind of tells you the rest. Some stone monoliths studded with Trade Center steel they recovered during cleanup. And, of course, inscribing the names of everyone who died, from those in the planes and towers and the Pentagon to the first responders and recovery workers. But I’m not going to be able to see any of it until next fall for the tenth anniversary; if I even make it to then.

I toy around with the idea of asking a cop if there’s somewhere we can go where we might be able to glimpse what construction is looking like, but things have been too intense in this neighborhood. It’s been almost nine years and the fact that cops are still hanging around shows that the city means business. I’ve heard stories of residents who couldn’t even get back into their own buildings because they didn’t have IDs updated with their current addresses. I don’t want to get kicked out of here, or risk something worse going down, especially with a Decker by my side.

Something feels off.

Nah, not something.

Someone.

That someone is me.

I feel off, like my heart’s switch has been flipped.

“I thought I would cry.”

“Is it because I’m here? I could give you some privacy.”

“No, I want you here.”

“Okay. Then what is it?”

“Ground Zero’s emptiness reminds me of the funeral.” I keep staring at the hidden memorial, waiting to feel something. “I didn’t even want to throw a funeral because that meant accepting my parents were dead instead of holding on to hope that they were going to be recovered. No body, no proof. Kind of like how if you don’t see a character die on the page or on TV, you wait for that plot twist to blow your mind. I was thinking wild shit, like how my mom and dad were never at the towers that morning and instead assumed new identities and lived happily ever after somewhere else. And of course they had to leave me behind to protect me, like classic dead-but-not-really parents.”

Valentino is trying to read my mind. “Thinking your parents abandoned you didn’t actually comfort you, did it?”