This was all, a lost moment on the Friday of that lifelong week, three days after the planes.

She said to her mother, “It was not possible, up from the dead, there he was in the doorway. It’s so lucky Justin was here with you. Because it would have been awful for him to see his father like that. Like gray soot head to toe, I don’t know, like smoke, standing there, with blood on his face and clothes.”

“We did a puzzle, an animal puzzle, horses in a field.”

Her mother’s apartment was not far from Fifth Avenue, with art on the walls, painstakingly spaced, and small bronze pieces on tables and bookshelves. Today the living room was in a state of happy disarray. Justin’s toys and games were scattered across the floor, subverting the timeless quality of the room, and this was nice, Lianne thought, because it was otherwise hard not to whisper in such a setting.

“I didn’t know what to do. I mean with the phones out. Finally we walked to the hospital. Walked, step by step, like walking a child.”

“Why was he there in the first place, in your apartment?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t he go straight to a hospital? Down there, downtown. Why didn’t he go to a friend’s place?”

Friend meant girlfriend, an unavoidable thrust, she had to do it, couldn’t help it.

“I don’t know.”

“You haven’t discussed this. Where is he now?”

“He’s all right. Done with doctors for a while.”

“What have you discussed?”

“No major problems, physical.”

“What have you discussed?” she said.