heart of the matter

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was standing in the bathroom of my apartment outside Chicago, about to hop in the shower, when I heard the phone ring and then my husband call my name.

"It's Roger from the desk," he called, sleepily, invoking the name of the morning assignment editor at the Chicago Sun-Times where I was a reporter at the time.

I padded down the hallway in my pajamas to the living room and picked up the phone.

"How quickly can you get down here," Roger asked.

"I dunno, an hour, maybe," I said. "Why? What's up?"

"A plane hit the World Trade Center in New York," he said. "They think it's a terrorist attack."