I live in the village of Ridgewood,
New Jersey, a tree-lined commuter suburb in northern
New Jersey. While the final tally isn't in, we lost more than
a dozen neighbors in the recent terrorist attacks.
In our town, we are playing the most hideous game
of Six Degrees of Separation. My daughter is in second grade.
Two of her classmates alone lost fathers. Both of these men had
five children. I 
remember
meeting one of these men, a father so like me, at a six-year-old
boy's birthday party. I remember watching him coach his son in
the town soccer league. I knew others who died peripherally.
I try to recall their faces, what we said to one another during
our brief meetings. It seems important to do that. I don't know
why.
During the candlelight vigil in the town square,
people begin to call out the names of the missing. It goes on
for a long time. There must be thirty or forty names - fathers,
mothers, sons, daughters, all ages, all loved and mourned. Each
shout is a dagger. We wince in pain.
Every year, I donate a character name to a charity
that helps with Huntington's Disease. It's called being "Tuckerized."
The highest bidders gets to have his or her name used in an upcoming
novel. The winner for TELL NO ONE asked me to use the
name of her beloved husband, Farrell Lynch. I look at his name
on page 120. Farrell, too, is among the missing. So is his brother.
And so it goes.
Like I said, the awful game of Six Degrees.
Ridgewood is beautiful. When I pick up my daughter
from school, I drive past the old Victorian homes swathed in
the red, white, and blue. Every once in a while, I will see a
house - a house like every other house, a house that sheltered
dreams and held lives and 
cherished
families - and that house has too many cars parked in front.
I slow without thinking. There is a hush in the air. I know why
those cars are parked there. And my heart aches.
I try to sift through my own past to understand
what it is we are feeling. In the past, I have lost too many
family members at too young an age and so I recognize what this
is: It is grief. I find that odd. I don't think that I ever truly
grieved before for strangers or casual acquaintances . I don't
mean that to sound cold. We've all seen airplane crashes or catastrophes,
and we are grateful that it is not us. We feel terrible. We move
on. Because it is not our family, our loved ones.
This does not feel like that. It feels like grief.
The genuine article. We all know the stages of grief - denial,
anger, etcetera. There is that, but what I'm mostly feeling,
as I did when I lost loved ones, is that nothing will ever be
the same again. That's what is different here.
At the candlelight vigil, I am surprised by the
outpouring of emotion from the high school students. Those who
doubt our young generation - just as every generation has doubted
the one after it - should have seen their tears.
But my 4 and 2 year sons are there too. There are
antsy. They thought lighting candles would be cool, but it's
not. They want to hold the candles even when the wax begins to
drip. I blow out the flame so my kids won't singe someone's hair.
They pull impatiently on my pant legs. They want to go home.
I pick my 2 year old up and clutch him while my hometown tries
to keep its collective voice from
cracking as we sing God Bless America. My daughter, the one in
second grade, looks up at my face and falls silent. I am glad
they are here
.
The children of Ridgewood are riding their bikes
today. They are playing soccer. The sky is blue and sun-kissed.
We are going to visit friends now. But when we do, we will drive
by a house with too many cars parked in front of it.
Myron
Bolitar series debuted in 1995, Harlan Coben has won the Mystery
Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Paperback
Original, was nominated for another Edgar, won the Anthony Award
at the World Mystery Conference, was nominated for another Anthony
Award, won the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America,
was nominated for another Shamus, and was twice nominated for
the Dilys Award by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.
Harlan was born, raised, and lives in New Jersey with his wife
Anne and four children.