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Only on some days can she begin planning for the future. She wants to put Greg's red Miata, still parked out front, into storage so Nicholas and Matthew will have their father's car one day. Next year she will go back to work as a speech therapist. But this future extends only so far. "There are some things I'm just not ready to think about," she says. "When Matthew's pediatrician saw me for the first time after Sept. 11, he was trying to comfort me, and he looked at me and said, 'You're so young and beautiful; one day you should date again.' Right there in his office I just broke down."
There is already a new rhythm to Nicole's days. She makes dates with girlfriends to go to movies that she and Greg talked of seeing together. The children have their first firsts without Greg. Matthew's first laugh came when Nicole nuzzled his cheek, as she's done a hundred times before; he was christened on the Sunday the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan. Nicole was a single mom on Nicholas' first day of nursery school.
When the last guest drops off a banana bread and the children go to sleep, Nicole phones Michael if he hasn't called her already. They have the same conversations with each other that they used to save only for Greg. "The two of them used to quote movie lines together, and I'd just sit and listen and not really say anything. But the other night on the phone I said one of Greg's favorite lines from Striptease, and we both just cracked up," says Nicole. And when they are too tired to laugh or cry anymore, they hang up, usually well past midnight.
Her son Nicholas calls for her at 6:30 a.m., and they perform a new ritual. She brings him a photograph of Greg, and they lie in Nicholas' bed for a moment, staring at husband and father. When he is ready to rise, Nicholas kisses good morning to the picture, the glass now smudged with the little boy's lip prints. This is one stain Nicole will not clean.