You're Gone (Finding Solid Ground) (16 page)

A while later, the serious, somber voice of a male reporter came from somewhere off-camera and the scene changed. What he said, Charleigh couldn’t be sure. Her brain was too jumbled to focus on any one thing.

The picture on screen was no longer a far-away shot of the buildings. It seemed that a cameraman had gone into the streets. In chaos and confusion, people were running, not necessarily towards him but as far away from the towers as they could get. They were screaming and crying. Misery showed on their faces and in their eyes.

Ash fell from the sky like snow. People were covered with it. The streets. The vehicles. Anything and everything the sooty gray came in contact with became consumed by it.

The five women standing around in the living room could only stare at the set. Like the breath had been knocked out of each one of them, they remained speechless at the sight. What could they possibly say at a time like the one on hand?

Once again, the image changed. It went back to a panoramic view of New York’s skyline. The same as before, nothing had changed. The two towers looked so desolate as smoke billowed from those two huge hole and raised toward the heavens.

With no idea what to think, Charleigh sat between Olivia and Jenna on the couch, eyes glue to the set. It was just so unbelievable to see what she was seeing. A horrible, horrible
tragedy was unfolding before her eyes, and yet there was nothing she could do about it.

The faint wail of sirens could be heard from high atop the structure where the camera captured the distressing images.

From there, it looked as if tiny shadows were descending toward the ground. As the lens focused on the objects, little by little they took shape and Charleigh could make out that they weren’t shadows as she’d first perceived. They were actually people, who were jumping out of broken windows. And they were plunging rapidly toward the ground to meet their demise.

In the shock and horror of what she was seeing, Charleigh wondered what was causing these people to take such drastic measures. Was there
really no other way to escape? Didn’t they have any other choice?

A short time later, the second tower collapsed. An instant replay of the first.

Charleigh’s eyes slid closed at the horrific sight. It was difficult for her to imagine anyone possibly surviving that.

“No! No, no, no, no!
No
!” She screamed, sinking to the floor.

With her hands clasped over her ears, Charleigh rocked back in forth.
This isn’t happening. It
cannot
be real. It just can’t be possible.

“No! No, no, no, no!
No
!” She continued to scream over and over.

Although Charleigh could hear someone screaming, crying out in sorrow, it did not register in the young woman’s mind that the tortured sounds were actually coming from her own body. The cries seemed to draw the others out of their own states of shock and confusion. Bewildered they watched her, numbed by the situation, not quite certain what to do to help Charleigh or even themselves. What could one grief-stricken soul possibly do for another?

Drawing on all her inner strength, Madie went to her. She wrapped her arms around Charleigh’s trembling body and tried to talk to her. She attempted to calm Charleigh, but with the pain-filled yelps and the occasional senseless murmurs, Madie had no doubt that she wasn’t getting through.

Taking a deep breath, she slapped Charleigh hard across the face. It was harsh, Madie knew, but the only way to calm the young woman down. With a wounded look, Charleigh looked up to Madie for answers.

“Now, I want you to calm down. You have to stop this nonsense because it’s not going to do any of us any good to get upset about it. Okay?” Charleigh only nodded. “Okay. Now, we’ll help you find the phone, and you can call Jamie, but you have to stay calm.”

With everybody’s help, they were about to find the handset underneath the couch.

“His phone is still off. It went straight to voicemail,” Charleigh told them. Her voice quivered as she held her hands out in front of her. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Dad’s office,” Jenna mentioned. The teenager looked around at the others, hopeful. “Faye, his assistant, should know where Dad and Jamie are. She should be able to tell us something, you know.”

“I don’t know the number.”

“Here, it’s…” She took the phone from Charleigh and dialed. A moment later, she looked up at her grandmother. “It’s busy. I don’t understand…”

“There could be a dozen, reasons, sweetie.” Lenore tried to sound confident, though her own voice was quite shaky. “You can try again in a few minutes.”

Jenna nodded and sat the handset down on the sofa between her and Charleigh.

The television was still on, but the volume was turned all the way down. In stunned silence, Charleigh stared at the screen. Smoke filled the city’s sky, causing it to look gray and overcast.

As much as she would have liked to, Charleigh couldn’t deny that what she was seeing was real. Her heart ached with the knowledge. It raced with the fact that she was helpless to do anything. More than a thousand miles away, Charleigh could do nothing but watch. And wait for news as it came in.

Whether Jamie was hurt or unharmed didn’t matter. The main thing she needed to know was that he was alive. Because it wasn’t possible that Jamie could have perished.
Oh, God, please! He can’t be dead!
His broken, lifeless body couldn’t buried along with so many others beneath all those tons of rumble. She just had to have faith that Jamie was fine.

Any second
, Charleigh told herself. Any second the phone would ring and it would be Jamie calling. He’d tell her that he had escaped without a scratch and was coming home.
Any second now,
she thought, looking down at the telephone that laid on the couch beside her.

Second after second, they added up into minutes, and fifteen of them had passed before she knew it. Several times in that period, Charleigh picked up the phone to listen for the dial tone, just to make sure that it was working. Each and every time, she scolded herself for doing so when she was so sure Jamie was trying to call her, only he couldn’t get through because
she kept interrupting the connection.

Exasperated, her mind began to race faster. There was really nothing to worry about. Absolutely no reason to be having the irrational thoughts she was. No matter what, they were getting married on Saturday. He’d be back on Thursday night, and she’d be back in his arms.

“I can’t take this waiting, anymore,” Charleigh groaned, jumping to her feet. The others stared at her. Unclear on what caused her to stand, she sat back down.

She grabbed the phone and pressed ‘redial.’ It was still busy.

“How can it be
busy
?” She wasn’t asking anyone in particular.

“The phone system might be down or something,” Olivia suggested with a shrug. “Who
knows?”

Who knows?
Well, at the moment, Charleigh didn’t know much of anything. And
that
was the trouble. She didn’t know where Jamie was, or if he was okay.

The coverage on television was filled with horror and death. So far, nothing Charleigh saw suggested that the rescue personnel was working to locate survivors—
if there even were any. It was impossible, she half-heartedly understood, because the ruins were still burning. Their main priority was to extinguish the flames before anything else could be done.

Charleigh couldn’t help feeling in her gut that Jamie might be somewhere under there, holding on by a thread to life. And with every minute that passed, he was slipping f
urther and further away from her. But she couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. She’d done too much of that already.

Looking down at her watch, Charleigh realized that only an hour and a half had passed since the towers fell.

“I have to go home,” she stood up. “I have to be there in case he calls.”

It was the only logical thing she could think of.

***

The house was silent. A horrible, lonely silence.

Before leaving Madie’s, she’d been sure to get the phone number to Greg’s office, which she’d tried a hundred times. It had started ringing over half an hour before, but no one was answering. Jenna had offered to come with her, but Charleigh insisted she’d rather be alone. She promised to stay in constant contact, whether or not there was any news of Jamie and Greg. No go, so far.

On the long, lonely drive home, Charleigh had made up her mind that she was going to New York. She’d throw some things in a bag and be out on the next flight headed to New York. But come to find out when Charleigh called the airline reservation center, all air travel was grounded indefinitely. Both commercial and private. Nothing was leaving the country, and nothing was coming in. All international flights were being rerouted to Canada.

Fine.
That was just fine. She’d just find some other way. Charleigh would drive all the way there if she had to. Nothing was going to stand between her and the opportunity to find Jamie.

After a lot of thought, the idea to join the Red Cross entered her mind. But the director told Charleigh that she was better off staying put.

“We’re in definite need of volunteers,” Matilda Pearson told her after learning her circumstances, “but, in your case, you need to stay where people know to contact you.”

“I can’t just sit here
and twiddle my thumbs,” Charleigh had cried.

Ultimately, the only thing she ended up with were the phone numbers to the area hospitals in New York. She’d called all of them, hoping for even the tiniest crack of sunlight in her sky, only to come out empty handed.

So, Charleigh did the only thing she could do, feeling helpless and scared, she sat down to watch the coverage of the disaster, and she waited.

Across the room on their doggie cushions, Amos and Corey lay watching her. Because of they sensed Charleigh was uneasy, the way she seemed to fidget, the two dogs watched her intently. Their eyes twitched as they did so.

Occasionally, she changed stations to see if they had anything different to say. Different faces, different explanations. It all amounted to the same thing. And so, she continued to watch and wait.

It still felt so unreal as Charleigh sat, staring at the television in her living room. News of a third plane crashing into the Pentagon, and a fourth in a Pennsylvania field suggested early on that the events were not just mere coincidence but that of terrorism. Now, there was speculation that Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were behind it. There still weren’t any confirmed reports, as far as Charleigh could tell.

Footage flooded every channel. Charleigh watched over and over as the two structures fell and crumbled into nothingness on the ground, their absence leaving a huge void in the sky. The phone was firmly gripped in her hands. If ever it rang, she would be able to immediately answer it.

             
Chewing on one of her acrylic French tips, after hours of sitting in one spot, anxiously waiting for that one phone call that so far hadn’t come, Charleigh stood up and walked into the kitchen for something to eat. She stood with the refrigerator door open, staring at the contents. Nothing sounded very good at all. She didn’t have the appetite for food. She didn’t want anything but to hear Jamie’s voice. To know he was okay.

Shaking her head, she went back into the living room. For the first time, as she passed by the answering machine, Charleigh noticed the red LED light blinking. How could she have not heard the phone ring? It was right there, clenched in her hands. How …
It was obviously from earlier,
before
she got home. How then had she not noticed it before?

Charleigh pressed the
‘Play’ button. After a moment, there was static and then…Jamie. A feeling of hope coursed through her veins.

“Hi, honey. Guess I missed you already, huh?” He laughed.
Oh, Lord, the sound of his laugh.
It brought tears to her eyes. “I just wanted to call and tell you good morning and that I love you before I head into this meeting with the barracudas. Take it easy, okay, and don’t get too worked up over the wedding. There’s still a few days left. Spread it out. Well, I’ll call you later and tell you how it went. I love you, Char.”

I love you, Char. I love you, Char.
I love you, Char. I love you, Char.

“Oh, God,
” Charleigh cried, hearing his voice just as clearly in her mind as it had been in the message. As clear as if Jamie was right there beside her. “I love you, too.”

Blinded by tears, she hurried to push to ‘Save’ button on the machine before it was automatically erased.

              The sun went down and still no Jamie. The only light in the dark living room came from the television. Charleigh lay sleeping on the love seat, where she’d been, replaying the message over and over again just to hear Jamie’s voice. Hour after hour passed as she listened to it, and she cried hard body-shuddering sobs until finally crying herself to sleep.

She dreamed of herself sitting alone in a thatch cabana on a sandy, white beach. From there, Charleigh could see the ocean. Its color was the truest, bluest of any blues she had ever seen before in all her life. The bright, golden rays of the sun hanging high in the sky above warmed her skin and her soul. The serene sound of the waves crashing on the shore a few feet away. If she focused on that, it almost completely drowned out the
increasingly annoying sound of someone’s cell phone ringing. And it kept getting louder and louder and louder.
Answer it already,
Charleigh felt like screaming at whoever it belonged to.