Page 53 of A Favor Owed

Break’s over, she texts.Got to get back to work.

Be careful. Text me when you’re home.

???

I mean it, Pines. I want to see a text from you when I wake up tomorrow.

Fine.

Nice eye roll, I text.

I was actually giving you the finger.

I laugh.Good night, Pines.

Sleep tight, McDaniels.

Sleep comes easily despite the time change and my acute awareness of the shitstorm coming my way. When I wake up, it’s to the smell of coffee brewing and the sound of my sister giving my brother hell about something. The first thing I do is look at my phone. It’s blinking with a text that came in two hours earlier, one o’clock in the morning California time.

I’m home. Happy?

Ecstatic, I text back, hoping her ringer is off.

I get dressed and brush my teeth before heading downstairs for coffee. This day has its own rhythm and routine. Quick bite at home, subway to the World Trade Center, standing with the other families while the names are read, then back to the Bronx for drinking at O’Mara’s, the local firehouse bar that my mom’s family owns. It’s been the same since I was seven years old. It was always a day off from school for me, a family day like one of the big holidays—lots of drinking and reminiscing, but no presents and lots of crying. When I was little, my mom held tight to my hand the entire time, her eyes spilling over with tears as friends and family and firefighters called me a brave little man, just likehim, a hero who would never be forgotten.

His picture is in our living room, next to a picture of my grandparents. He’s holding four-year-old me on his lap, looking like a kid himself with his freckles and shiny copper hair. His firefighter gear lives in a box in my room—the extra helmet, jacket, and boots that were in his locker. When I was little, I wore his helmet to the memorial every year. My mom would carry it when it would start to feel too heavy on my head.

I find my mom alone in the kitchen and wrap my arms around her wordlessly.

“You are so much like him,” she whispers, holding me tightly. “He’d have been so proud of you. It kills me sometimes, you know? That he didn’t get to see you grow up.”

“I know.” I kiss the top of her head, and she gives me a final squeeze before stepping away and wiping her eyes.

This day has always been tough on my parents, but especially my mom. My brother and sister know to call a truce and keep quiet. My dad always seems to know when to be by mom’s side and when to give her space.

For the first few years, I didn’t leave her side on Brendan’s Day. She held my hand or rested her hand on my head, and I was never out of reach. We were a team. As I got older, I hung out with my brother and sister, keeping an eye on them while catching up with kids I got to see only on this day. Eventually I became a firefighter myself, and this day took on an added significance, something that my mom loves and hates in equal measures.

We head out into the beautiful September day. It’s warm and bright and perfect, like the day it happened. For a long time afterward, I associated sunny, mild fall days with terror and bewilderment. I looked forward to winter, when the skies would be gray and the air would be crisp and cold. It doesn’t happen as much now, but on the anniversary, when the whole point is to remember what happened that day, the memory of that feeling always comes back to me.

The September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero is already crowded with mourners when we arrive. We find his name on the parapet that surrounds the South Tower pool.Brendan Seamus McDaniels.My mom touches it and tucks her white rose into it before leaning into Dad’s embrace. He says something in her ear; she nods and clutches his jacket; he holds her tighter. It’s the same thing he says every year, that I used to overhear when he was holding me in his free arm. “I’ve got you, Dee. You’re gonna be okay. We’ll never forget him, but we’re gonna be okay.” The impressive part is that he actually made sure that happened. For the most part, we’re all more or less okay. And we remember Brendan in ways big and small.

When his name is read, we all make the sign of the cross. My parents do the same when they hear the names of other people they know who died that day. When all 2,983 names are read and the speeches and prayers and tributes are over, we head back toward the crowded subway.

I take out my phone and turn it on. There’s a text from Angie, sent at eight thirty in the morning New York time.I’m thinking of you. I’m sorry you lost someone close to you.

My heart does a weird somersault thing when I read her words.

Thanks, princess, I text. Then, impulsively, I type out another text.Wish you were here with me.I stare at my screen. I can’t send that text to her. For so many reasons, it would be wrong to send that text to her.

I go to erase it, but someone bumps into me and my thumb lands on send instead of delete. Shit.

“Who are you texting?” asks Siobhan, standing next to me, holding onto the overhead hand grip.

“No one.”

“It’s her, isn’t it?”

“Let it go, Shiv.”

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