All the Things We Never Knew by Sheila Hamilton Page B

from the glass room where he would be taking people’s frantic phone calls.
    I spoke very slowly. “I’m Sheila Hamilton. And it is not a good morning. It is a morning you will remember for the rest of your life.”
    Thirteen hours later, I drove home to Sophie and David. As I drove, the images of people throwing themselves from the upper floors of the towers replayed in my mind, immediate, terrifying. I made it home and walked through the door to find Sophie, now four, sitting in David’s lap as he read a book out loud. I rushed to both of them for comfort.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Mommy?” Sophie sensed my grief. She had her pink pajamas on and carried Bear tucked into her chest as she balanced her book in her lap.
    I couldn’t speak. I knelt by David’s chair and listened to his voice finishing the book they must have read together a dozen times that week, the one about the greedy monster who wanted so many cookies for himself he turned a beautiful tree into a cookie factory. Sophie giggled at all the familiar parts, filling in the lines David skipped.
    I couldn’t tell her how guilty I felt. I couldn’t share with her, or David, that in the minutes before the first plane flew into the towers, killing thousands of innocent people, I’d been contemplating my own escape, from this—this doomed marriage. Somehow, the tragedy of 9/11 made that seem selfish. Myopic. And wrong.
    In the weeks that followed the attacks, I followed closely the stories of couples reconnecting, of rushed marriages and canceled divorces. Strangers reached out to one another for comfort. Wayward sons and daughters called home. I understood—just having a family to come home to suddenly made me feel that I’d won the lottery.
    I spent the Christmas after 9/11 in a rush of breaking world news and strong opinions on both sides of the political spectrum. Christmas was a blur without the traditional trip back home.
    So when the next Christmas came around, a year later, I was determined to let Sophie spend the holiday with her grandparents and cousins, where Christmas was always a huge, happy celebration and David’s disdain for the holiday would be less noticeable. We had made it through the year okay; despite the beginning of the war in Afghanistan and the lingering fear of terror attacks, David’s business was actually busier than ever. More people were remodeling their dream homes rather than buying or building. He bought two cell phones so he could be on two conversations at the same time, but he and I were as distant as ever.
    By early December, I was wrapping the last of Sophie’s Christmaspresents to send ahead to Grandma’s house. I’d tried to select things she would love, chapter books and a toy cash register, a stuffed giraffe that defied gift wrap, and a new snowsuit for snowboarding. At five, she was tearing through books just like her dad and walking around the house spelling anything that seemed relevant. “C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s,” she’d say happily. “R-u-d-o-l-f.” My brother and sister were planning on bringing their kids to Utah as well. Sophie would have playmates, the adoration of Grandma and Grandpa, and a guaranteed white Christmas.
    David sat in his favorite chair, reading the paper. “You know how I feel about Christmas.”
    â€œI’d really like you to be there with us,” I said. “You’ve missed the last two trips.”
    He looked up from the paper. “You know how I feel about Christmas,” he repeated.
    â€œYes, but you’ve got a child, David. You can learn to fake it.”
    He shrugged his shoulders. “My dad hated it, I hate it, it’s gross commercialization and . . .”
    â€œAnd it’s Christmas, David. Find something about it you can celebrate.” I pushed the gifts into a huge Ikea shopping bag and headed out the door to the post office.
    David walked toward me with his head