Kate interrupted her: ‘Thirty minutes or less, I know. Maybe we should have gone to McDonald’s then. But yep, I ordered for you already. Plain bagel with butter and black tea.’ She gave one last playful wave to the bagel guy and Holly rolled her eyes.
‘Thanks, sounds great.’ She peeled off her gloves and shrugged herself out of her coat.
‘So what do you want for Christmas?’ she asked her friend.
Kate ogled the guy behind the counter again.
‘Besidesa healthy relationship with a man,’ Holly added, groaning.
‘Oh, I don't know, nothing? A trip to Queens to see Eileen and her famous mince pies?’ Kate retorted.
Holly’s mother believed God had made pre-cooked food for a reason and it certainly wasn’t her place to argue over it.
Although, Holly recalled sadly, when Seamus was alive Eileen used to make Christmas pudding – an old Irish recipe that had apparently been handed down through generations. Holly still remembered how delicious it tasted, but after her father died, these family traditions had been abandoned over the years.
Holly and Danny usually went to Eileen’s for Christmas dinner, and Kate had tagged along once or twice if she wasn’t going home to her family in Minnesota.
‘You do know she buys the mince pies at ShopRite and then plates them up?’
‘No!’ Kate pretended to be shocked. ‘And the turkey? You’re saying she doesn’t raise one herself on the fire escape and butchers it in the bathtub?’
‘Well, as long as it was raised in Queens …’ Holly laughed; she always joked that her mother never left Queens.
‘That's not true,’ Eileen would protest. ‘I go to the opera, don’t I?’ Holly had to concede that yes, her mother managed to make it in on public transportation to see her beloved Wagner Circle every year. Holly and Danny would pick her up after the performance and take her to their apartment in a taxi, where she would spend the night and then travel home the next day by subway. Danny and Holly had a running joke. He would ask: ‘When is Nana coming over?’ And she would reply, ‘I don’t know; who's playing at Lincoln Center?’
It was then that Holly remembered the bracelet and yesterday’s failed attempt at tracking it down. With Carole’s permission, she’d taken it upon herself to track down the owner via any means she could, and now she pulled it out to show Kate, who was in the throes of admiration.
‘This looks a bit like Tiffany’s,’ her friend said, studying the bracelet.
‘Really?’ Although Holly was as familiar as any New Yorker with the famous jewellery store, she wasn’t familiar (or lucky) enough to be able to recognise one of its creations.
‘Well, maybe not the bracelet, but this charm is anyway,’ Kate indicated the heart-shaped key. ‘See the maker’s mark just there?’
Holly followed her gaze. ‘Good spot.’
‘A little worn, but it definitely looks like a Tiffany mark.’ Kate continued examining the various charms. ‘Oh, and look at this - a Date to Remember charm! Thirty-first of December.’
Holly reached out and pulled the bracelet back towards her. ‘I didn't notice that either. Not the date anyway.’ But Kate was right: on the other side of the disc-shapedcharm was inscribed:31December – Same Time, Same Place.
She looked away into the distance, her thoughts racing.
‘Oh no,’ Kate chuckled. ‘I know that look. It's the same look you had when you found that old couple’s photo. You dragged me all over the city to find them, remember? It took us weeks!’
Holly smiled; she did indeed remember that photo. She had found it tucked inside a book she’d borrowed from the library. It was of a middle-aged man and woman sitting at a café in what looked like an exotic part of the world, beaming at each other. It had taken a while to find the owner, but with the library’s help, Holly had managed. Turned out he had lost his wife in 9/11 in the meantime and had moved out to Brooklyn. When Holly and Kate managed to track him down and showed up at his door with the photo, he had broken down in tears. No one said a word; he just hugged her, and she hugged him back. The look on his face had been worth all the hours of searching.
‘I remember too,’ Kate sniffed, her voice filled with sudden emotion.
‘What?’ Holly looked up, startled, and then felt stupid,Of course,she thought.Justin.
Kate had been in a serious relationship with a man who had worked at Cantor Fitzgerald who had also died on 9/11. ‘I'm sorry, Kate, I forgot for a second. I'm so sorry.’
She had tried her best back then to comfort Kate, but it was hard. Watching her friend suffer was something Holly never wanted to experience again.
Justin and Kate had seemed like the perfect couple: engaged and blissfully happy. Holly had first met them both in Washington Square Park, not far from her apartment. She had been around six months pregnant with Danny at the time, and Kate's dog Lily had jumped up on her as they passed. Kate was appalled, and while Holly had insisted she was fine, Kate had in turn insisted on making her rest on a park bench and they had all got talking. Kate and Holly’s friendship grew quickly, and the first time Justin visited Holly at home, he had surveyed her tiny apartment and immediately walked over to her window facing the courtyard.
‘Wow, you are so lucky,’he’d said. ‘If I had this place, I would park myself in front of this window with a telescope all the time,Rear Windowstyle.’
Holly adored him from that moment on.
