Then the Twin Towers crumbled and there was an immediate need to fall into one another, into the metaphysical beauty of human connection, to remind ourselves the world still existed. As I watched his chiseled face, strong arms and gentle demeanor, it was love at first sight. I had met Kyle three years earlier through a friend of a friend when he'd carried my boxes into the college apartment.

We were 21, living together in Raleigh, North Carolina, shedding our adolescence during our last days of college. In 2001, the two of us were an innocent pair. In the tiny room at the back of the hospital, my known world fell apart when they told me, 'Ben didn't make it.' Everything I thought I knew about love or forgiveness was about to radically change. As much as I felt the need to save him, I also felt a repulsion for the reality that his actions had caused. Kyle had stood by me through moments I wasn't sure I'd survive, and now the tables had turned. This was the man I loved on a level that went deeper than my words. I love you,' I relayed, in disbelief of the instantaneous words falling out of my mouth. I crawled onto his lap, prying his hands off his head, where I saw veins protruding. In the tiny room at the back of the hospital, my known world fell apart when they told me, 'Ben didn't make it.' As I entered Kyle's room, I saw a vision of a soul torn asunder. As the police drove me to the hospital, I knew. Kyle found Ben in the backseat of his car after realizing in horror, when attempting to pick him up from daycare, that he had not actually dropped him off that morning. I thought we had so much time ahead of us. Had I said, 'I love you'? I will never be able to uncoil that memory from my brain. He pulled away in an independent boyish manner while I ran my hand down his chubby leg. I brushed back Ben's blond hair, which was ruffled from a lazy night's sleep. I remember Kyle blowing raspberries on Ben's stomach that morning, then bringing him on his hip into the bathroom where I stood looking into the mirror at what I thought to be the happiest family alive. A normal day ensued for Kyle while Ben lay in the back seat of his car all day, ultimately succumbing to hyperthermia. Instead of turning left at the end of our road, Kyle turned right that morning, as his habitual memory guided him to the coffee shop and then to work.

As the day unfolded, our only son, Benjamin, was gone. However, on July 7, 2014, on a sweltering hot day in Ridgefield, Connecticut, he experienced a momentary lapse of prospective memory.

Every rut in the pavement, stop sign, and tree all memorized in the routine early morning hours. Kyle, my husband of 12 years at the time, drove the same road to daycare each day.

Book after the fall ben rhodes