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started crying and wouldn’t stop.”
5
David Stone had been teaching American history and twentieth-century European history to
undergraduates for ten years, and knew how to organize a story so the interior logic was hard to miss.
He began this one by pointing out that their infant daughter’s marathon crying spree had ended
almost immediately after the second jetliner had struck the World Trade Center. Then he doubled
back to the dreams in which his wife had seen the American Airlines flight number on Abra’s chest
and he had seen the United Airlines number.
“In Lucy’s dream, she found Abra in an airplane bathroom. In mine, I found her in a mall that was
on fire. Draw your own conclusions about that part. Or not. To me, those flight numbers seem pretty
conclusive. But of what, I don’t know.” He laughed without much humor, raised his hands, then
dropped them again. “Maybe I’m afraid to know.”
John Dalton remembered the morning of 9/11—and Abra’s nonstop crying jag—very well. “Let me
get this straight. You believe your daughter—who was then only five months old—had a premonition
of those attacks and somehow sent word to you telepathically.”
“Yes,” Chetta said. “Put very succinctly. Bravo.”
“I know how it sounds,” David said. “Which is why Lucy and I kept it to ourselves. Except for
Chetta, that is. Lucy told her that night. Lucy tells her momo everything.” He sighed. Concetta gave
him a cool look.
“You didn’t get one of these dreams?” John asked her.
She shook her head. “I was in Boston. Out of her . . . I don’t know . . . transmitting range?”
“It’s been almost three years since 9/11,” John said. “I assume other stuff has happened since then.”
A lot of other stuff had happened, and now that he had managed to speak of the first (and most
unbelievable) thing, Dave found himself able to talk about the rest easily enough.
“The piano. That was next. You know Lucy plays?”
John shook his head.
“Well, she does. Since she was in grammar school. She’s not great or anything, but she’s pretty
good. We’ve got a Vogel that my parents gave her as a wedding present. It’s in the living room, which
is also where Abra’s playpen used to be. Well, one of the presents I gave Lucy for Christmas in 2001
was a book of Beatles tunes arranged for piano. Abra used to lie in her playpen, goofing with her toys
and listening. You could tell by the way she smiled and kicked her feet that she liked the music.”
John didn’t question this. Most babies loved music, and they had their ways of letting you know.
“The book had all the hits—‘Hey Jude,’ ‘Lady Madonna,’ ‘Let It Be’—but the one Abra liked best
was one of the minor songs, a B-side called ‘Not a Second Time.’ Do you know it?”
“Not offhand,” John said. “I might if I heard it.”
“It’s upbeat, but unlike most of the Beatles’ fast stuff, it’s built around a piano riff rather than the
usual guitar sound. It isn’t a boogie-woogie, but close. Abra loved it. She wouldn’t just kick her feet
when Lucy played that one, she’d actually bicycle them.” Dave smiled at the memory of Abra on her
back in her bright purple onesie, not yet able to walk but crib-dancing like a disco queen. “The
instrumental break is almost all piano, and it’s simple as pie. The left hand just picks out the notes.
There are only twenty-nine—I counted. A kid could play it. And our kid did.”
John raised his eyebrows until they almost met his hairline.
“It started in the spring of 2002. Lucy and I were in bed, reading. The weather report was on TV,
and that comes about halfway through the eleven p.m. newscast. Abra was in her room—fast asleep, as