Peyton MacGruder and her "Tampa Times" colleagues cover the story of the crash of PanWorld Flight 848 with numbed emotions, and try to move on. Then a woman gives Peyton a plastic bag that washed up behind her house, containing a simple note: T -- I love you. All is forgiven. -- Dad.

When the unthinkable happens . . .

En route from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Tampa International, Flight 848 bursts into flames and crashes into Tampa Bay. All 261 passengers and crew are killed. For one week, newspaper columnist Peyton MacGruder and her fellow reporters cover one of the nation's worst air disasters in years with overwhelming and numbed emotions.

Then a woman Peyton's never met gives her a plastic bag that has washed up behind her house. The bag contains a note, almost certainly from the doomed flight, with a simple yet wrenching message: T- I love you. All is forgiven. -Dad

Combing through the passenger list to find the victims whose children's names begin with T, Peyton is determined to deliver the note to its proper owner. A quest which will prove as important to Peyton's own life as to the mysterious T.