Alison Crowther gets premonitions, but on the evening of September 10, 2001, “anxiety came on with a force she’d never experienced” (97). The next morning, driving to work, “the premonition came to her again, this time in a sentence. You’re going to die today” (97).

That morning, Welles leaves early for work and joins 14,000 other workers who make their way up into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Welles’s co-tenant, Chuck Platz, is getting ready for work “when he heard a sound that shook the bones of the room itself, rattling the glass in the mirror, a roar that forced him to tense his upper body, as if bracing for a blow” (102). Dressing quickly, he runs outside to the street, where he can see the World Trade Center’s North Tower burning.

Jeff Crowther is about to go play golf on the morning of September 11 when he gets a call from his father, Bosley, who asks, “Hey, are you watching TV?” (98). Sandler O’Neill senior manager Jimmy Dunne also loves golf, and is practicing about an hour north of New York City for an amateur tournament when a Links official walks over and says, “You need to call your office . . . A plane hit your building” (100).