Lanzisero was driving to work on Long Island when a DJ on the radio began screaming that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. She thought it was a joke and called Tommy to see if knew anything. He was preparing to relocate to a firehouse nearer the scene, but told her to relax. It was just after nine in the morning -- Theresa had spoken to Tommy for the last time. Later, like so many others, she would scrupulously reconstruct the last minutes of his life: He was among a small group of men helping a paraplegic down a stairwell; his radio transmission gave out on the fifth floor. What she needed to know was that he didn't die alone.

Teri Seier was at home when a friend called and told her to turn on the television. As soon as she did she called her fiancé, Billy Burke Jr., at his firehouse, but it was too late. He'd already left. She tried his cell phone and left a message asking him to give her a call as soon as possible. Then she went to the grocery store to get some water and basic provisions. In retrospect her sense of calm would seem bizarrely misplaced. "I was thinking that we should stock up if we were being attacked," she recalls. "I didn't think he was gone at all. I thought he was unbreakable, that nothing could happen to Billy."

Penos said goodbye to Jimmy that morning as usual, but would remember for a long time afterward the way he held her gaze a little longer than normal. When she asked why he was staring he smiled and said he just wanted to look at her. Then he was gone. Barely an hour later, Penos emerged from the subway to find a crowd staring at TV screens in a shop window. Thinking that the stock market had crashed she was about to move on when she saw that people were actually staring at the north tower, in flames, belching smoke. That was when she tried to call Jimmy, to find out if he was OK, to tell him the news, but he was gone. It would be another 24 hours before she'd receive confirmation that Jimmy was on the missing persons list.

The three women, along with 18 others in similiar circumstances, were brought together by Dianne Kane, a therapist with the New York Fire Department. None of the women were married (though many were engaged), and for that small distinction they represented an anomaly among the thousands of bereaved. Despite going through the same feelings of grief as the spouses of victims, says Kane, their loss was not acknowledged in the same way. Often they were left feeling they had needed to legitimize their relationship to the world, a feeling expressed by Lanzisero's wanting to take Tommy's name, or Penos' wearing Jimmy's engagement ring.

For the last year, the women have been meeting each week (one group in Manhattan on Tuesdays, another in Queens on Thursdays), to reminisce, console, reflect and rage. There is a lot of crying, but sometimes there is laughter too. What they have in common is what they have lost, and someday they may feel that it's not enough to keep them together. For now, however, it keeps many of them going. They share photos and lobby for the benefits they never received; they talk about death and grieving, and how the dead are barely in their graves before the rest of the world is urging them to forget, to move on, to find other men.

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