She was holding the word in her mouth like a piece of hard candy. She spit it out.

Reed!

She ran down the stairs to her car, dialing. Number one on her speed dial, before Addison even, was Reed at work. Cantor Fitzgerald, hundred and first floor, the World Trade Center, Tower One.

She got his voicemail.

“Jesus, Reed, call me!” she screamed.

Two women Phoebe knew vaguely were getting out of their cars in the parking lot. One of them, Jamie, said, “Hey, Phoebe! Are you okay?”

Phoebe waved, got into her car. Call Addison! The receptionist at Addison’s office, Florabel, answered the phone. Phoebe detested Florabel and suspected the feeling was mutual.

Phoebe said, “Addison, please?”

Florabel didn’t recognize Phoebe’s voice, because Phoebe’s voice was held hostage by panic. Florabel said, “Mr. Wheeler is out of the office today. Would you like his voicemail?”

Shit! Addison was fishing! Phoebe hung up. She tried Addison’s cell phone and got his voicemail. He was so far offshore, he would never have reception.

She called Reed back. It was five after nine.

“Hey, Twist,” he said. His voice was calm, but in the background Phoebe could hear shouting, which seemed more frenzied than the usual Cantor shouting. “You would not believe what is happening here. Have you seen the news?”

“Sort of,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Well, I just threw up in my trash can,” he said. “Because I tell you what, people are dead over in that other building. You should see the smoke. It stinks, even in here.”

“What are they… are they saying anything?”

“We’re supposed to sit tight. Some of the guys—Ernie, Jake, you know—they want to go to the ground to watch, but there’s debris falling. It’s safer, I think, to stay put.”

“You think?”

“That’s what…”

“What?” Phoebe said. She couldn’t hear.

“I’ll call you back when the dust settles, okay? I love you. I’m going to be fine, I promise.”

“Okay,” Phoebe said.

“I have to call Ellen Paige. She’s at play group with Domino, but when she hears about this, she’s going to freak.”

“Okay. I love you,” Phoebe said.

“Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Me?” Phoebe said. “I feel fine.”

There was a noise. Honestly, it sounded like a lion roaring, or a wave crashing over her head. The line went dead. Phoebe nearly sideswiped the mailman, who was filling boxes on Old South Road.

She watched footage of the plane hitting the second tower on Addison’s sixty-inch plasma TV, in the closed-up, air-conditioned, professionally decorated comfort of her own home. Outside, the day shimmered. Nantucket was as tranquil and lovely as it had ever been. Phoebe turned her stare outside, in a daze. According to Tom Brokaw, America was under attack. Phoebe waited for the planes to come screaming over the ocean. Nothing. A monarch butterfly settled momentarily on the picnic table, then flew away.

On the TV a plane hit the second tower, which was Tower One. Again and again. Phoebe was riveted. Show it again! She was counting floors and dialing Reed from her landline.

“Pick up!” she screamed into the phone. No one was around, no one could hear her. Their neighbors on both sides had left after Labor Day.

Her call went to Reed’s voicemail. “Call me!” she screamed.

It looked like the plane had hit the second tower, Tower One, about two thirds of the way up. Definitely lower than the hundred and first floor. Were there a hundred and five floors or a hundred and ten? She couldn’t remember.

Her phone rang. Delilah. Phoebe let it go. She could not talk to Delilah.

She counted floors down from the top. They flashed back to Tom Brokaw.

“Show the building!” she screamed. No one on TV could hear her.

Another channel, CNN, showed the towers smoking, blazing. This channel showed people hanging out their windows. Hanging out their windows so far up? What if they fell? They were waiting for the helicopters to come. Where were the helicopters? Was the National Guard going to send in helicopters for the people who were trapped above the flames? Phoebe had seen it countless times in the movies. This was the United States. The government, the military, the people in fucking charge would use their expensive, cutting-edge technology to rescue the people hanging from their windows.

“Send the helicopters!” she screamed. Where were the fucking helicopters?

At some point it hit her. This was real. Reed was in that building, he was clinging to that office window—the very same window that for years had afforded him what he called the billion-dollar view—because the temperature inside, they said, was three thousand degrees. Was that correct? Was there even such a thing as three thousand degrees?

Phoebe was on her knees. She was freezing, shivering, convulsing. The TV showed people jumping. Jumping from the hundred and first floor? Was there a team of firemen on the ground holding one of those inflatable parachutes that would catch these people, that would make their landing marshmallow-soft?

No. The TV said the jumpers most likely would suffer a heart attack on the way down. They were dead on arrival. They splattered like a watermelon falling off the back of the farm truck. The jumpers had so much velocity, the TV said, that they were killing bystanders at the bottom.

At that moment, or a moment later, Reed jumped.