Best Thing Since Sliced Bread
JULES
I HAD COME HERE EVERY year for the past fifteen years.
The 9/11 Memorial Plaza was a tribute to the past and a place of hope for the future. The eight-acre park was a sanctuary where terror once reigned down. Set within the footprints of the original Twin Towers sits one of the largest manmade waterfalls in the United States.
The name of every person who perished in the attack was stencil-cut into parapets around the pools. In the evening, light shines up through the voids of each letter of a name.
It was special.
It was with purpose.
It was heart-wrenching and soul-soothing.
There was a fleeting sadness in my gaze as I looked toward the flags that were lowered at half-staff.
My eyelids hung heavy when at 8:46 the first of the bells rang. I stopped where I was and bowed my head in silence.
I would always remember. Everyone would always remember. The darkness that had come and the fight to find the light guaranteed that.
I shivered under the damp gray sky and drew my coat tighter around myself as I walked. I knew where I was going. I hadn’t passed the names of Josh and Rachael Easton on accident. I would run my fingers over their names, over and over, as I had for years, but first I wanted to find another name.
I found his name quickly and stared at it for a long while. Dr. Conrad Kissinger, a hero who died trying to save the lives of those inside. Maybe even those of my parents. I would never know this, of course.
Hot tears pricked my eyelids, and I swallowed them back. Fiercely determined to be strong, I ran my fingers over the letters of his name and said a prayer for him.
I wasn’t religious.
I didn’t pray often.
But coming here, it seemed like the right thing to do.
When the second bell rang, I knew it was time to move on. I could stand in one spot all day and contemplate the senselessness of the terrorism and the loss of all the lives, but I knew it would never bring my family back to me.
As much as I was a 9/11 kid, I had never allowed it to label me. Until Jake, I had kept my sadness inside, but now I knew it was okay to let it out.
It was okay to be sad.
That didn’t make me weak.
It might actually even make me stronger.
A few days ago I had received a call from another 9/11 kid who was putting together a documentary about the children who lost parents on that day. Up until now, I had shied away from any involvement to do with the status that was forced upon me. Yet this time, I said yes. I would participate. I would tell my story. It was time to share my grief with those who felt what I felt.
Time to help heal as best we could—together.
As Jake and I had done for each other.
I’d thought about calling him and asking him to meet me here, but in the end, I decided to honor his wishes and let him do what he had to do. I understood grief manifested itself in different ways, and he was working his out the only way he knew how. I hadn’t given up hope for the two of us, but I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to fight for him right now. I hoped someday soon I would be though.
I had to find myself first before I could show him the way.
I’d spent the days since Jake had left at my uncle’s farm. I’d also gone to see George and Ethel to tell them the truth about me. Believe it or not, Jake had gone to see them before he left and already told them everything. They weren’t angry or spiteful. They were only happy to see me.
They were good people.
Step by step, I walked slowly toward the names of my parents, and when I did, I allowed myself to remember that last morning I’d spent with them in our kitchen. The love I’d witnessed between them. The family we’d once been. The person I was then.
Everything that had happened since that day had made me who I was now. I wasn’t perfect, but I’d come to realize I wasn’t that imperfect either. How could I be when they had helped shape me? Circumstance might have ripped them from my life, but they would always be in my heart.
As I approached the only place I knew my parents to be anymore besides my heart, I spotted a single white rose laid over their names.
I blinked in surprise as a shiver danced down my spine. There were red roses all around. On names to the right, to the left, but this perfect white rose had been carefully set directly between my parents’ names. My heart started beating wildly, and I whirled around to find Jake standing so close, and yet so far.
That’s when my world stopped moving, and he became the only thing I could see. He was my prince charming. My white knight. My Tony the Tiger. My Ying. My everything.
He had another white rose in his hand, and he looked every bit the same, but at the same time so very different.
I couldn’t say exactly why, but I wanted to use the words carefree, unburdened, lighter.
It looked good on him.
Jake held out the rose for me, and my mind whirled back to that day so long ago when the boy that he had once been had given me his rose.
It was a selfless act, and so kind.
Who knows, maybe we had formed a bond then and never even knew it.
Could something good really come out of something so very bad?
Maybe we really were meant to be.
Maybe we were written in the stars, after all.
I didn’t accept the rose right away, not because I didn’t want to, but because I was trembling so much I couldn’t move. I was suddenly that lost girl from so long ago. I didn’t know what to do, which way to go, where to turn.
Mimi wanted me to show Jake the way, but it ended up that he was the one to show me the way.
He stepped forward to put the rose in my hand and then held onto me. “I love you, Juliette,” he said. “And I’m sorry I was such an idiot. I never should have left. I can’t stand being apart from you.”
“But your job?’
He shook his head. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later. But bottom line is that I realized I don’t have to follow in my father’s footsteps to be like him. I just have to be me.”
Tears welled hot in my eyes, and for once I didn’t care that they fell. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, more than anything.”
“How’d you know I’d be here?”
He kissed each of my fingers. “Because I know you. Because I feel what you feel. Because we are the same.”
I looked at him in awe. Our connection was unbreakable. That I already knew, but was it otherworldly too? “You mean like some kind of cosmic connection?”
The corners of his lips tilted in the smallest, itty-bitty way. “And . . . I might have called Finn to ask him if you were coming to the city for the memorial and where you were staying. He told me you were on your way, and that he was certain you’d be here first thing this morning, like you are every year.”
“I was late this morning.”
He nodded and those lips tilted again. “I know. I’ve been waiting for you. I would have waited all day if I had to. But now that I have you in my arms, I don’t want to wait another minute to have you in my life.”
I looked at him through teary eyes. “What are you saying?”
He pulled me closer to him. A heartbeat from his lips, and whispered, “I want to be your North Star. Will you let me?”
I closed my eyes.
He was the Ying to my crazy Yang.
He was my perfect.
He was my soulmate.
Of course, I’d let him.
Breath fast and ragged, I opened my eyes. Jake was down on one knee and holding out a box. “Juliette, I want to come back to Atlanta, and I want you to be my wife.”
With trembling fingers, I took the box and opened it. Inside was the perfect match to the necklace he had given me, but it was a ring.
A huge sparkling diamond.
“Will you marry me?”
I looked down into his bright blue eyes, which were clearer than a summer’s day. “Oh, Jake,” I cried, and went to my knees so I could throw my arms around him. “Yes, I’ll marry you. I love you so much.”
The bell rang again, and for that silent moment, we stared at each other. And then his mouth was a fever on mine. It was burning grief and spiking love. There was need and desire poured into it—his running as deep and desperate as mine.
Even on my knees, I could feel my leg kick up and toe point. The love I felt for him was like a wild surge. It crashed into me and left me unsteady. Giddy. On cloud nine. I had no idea how I was going to stand up because I felt like I was floating.
I broke away fighting for air, and Jake took my hand to bring me to my feet. His was a rock. A boulder. The steady I needed in my unsteady.
“Come on,” he said.
Blurry eyed and love swept, I looked up at him. I knew he wanted me to take him to my parents, but I couldn’t move.
Lacing his fingers through mine, he showed me the way to the names cast in bronze, and together we laid the second white rose on top of the first. Like an x between my parents’ names, it linked them to Jake and to me.
I sucked in a breath, allowing my grief to pour out and my love to wash all over it.
People around us had stopped to look on with mild curiosity, but when Jake took the velvet box from my hand and with steady hands slipped the ring on my finger, they clapped with joy.
I looked at the ring. I looked at the names. I looked at Jake.
He and I were children of 9/11.
We might have been damaged, but I knew in my heart we were not broken.
And together we would make each other whole.