On Sept. 12, 2001, firefighter Gerry Koenig and his wife, Mary, were slated to start a new life: They were to sign papers to buy a 14-acre spread upstate, and planned to build their dream home there.
But the day before, the unthinkable happened.
"My husband rushed to Ground Zero, and he basically never came home," Mary said. "He was a 9/11 survivor, but our family died.
Koenig, who began acting as a liaison for the family of his fallen buddy, John Bergin, began spending all his time with John's widow, Madeline, and her kids in Staten Island.
The Bergins and Koenigs had been friends, with Gerry helping John build the new deck on his house.
Gerry, Mary said, was fulfilling a promise he'd made a few years earlier, when - suffering from cancer that had invaded his lymph glands - he'd asked John to look after Mary if he died.
"Gerry promised John the same thing," Mary said. "One night after Sept. 11, when everything started falling apart, he confessed he'd promised John he'd never leave Madeline, and then he cried himself to sleep in my arms."
In the days following the WTC attacks, Koenig's firehouse mates noted changes in his behavior, Mary said, and alerted her and the squad's captain there might be a problem.
Despite promises to her and admonishments from his captain to spend time with his own family, Mary said, Gerry spent the bulk of his time with the Bergins, attending funerals and events for the families, even giving the eulogy at John's October memorial.
Later that month, a group of firefighter buddies and their wives helped move the Koenigs to their new, temporary home on their land in Orange County.
Friends said the Koenigs had had marital problems - they'd split up temporarily at least twice - but seemed finally to be united.
Gerry rarely came back to the house after that weekend, and rumblings around the firehouse were that he and Madeline were having an affair. His sons, now 13 and 16, saw their dad only sporadically, Mary said, twice a week, at most.
In December 2001, they were dealt a blow, when they showed up at an annual firefighters' kids' Christmas party, to find Gerry there with the Bergin kids. "It was devastating to them," she said.
Mary said her husband came clean about his real relationship with Madeline in April 2002, shortly after he and Mary had run in a 9/11 benefit race together.
Gerry Koenig, who sees his sons on Wednesdays and Saturdays, declined to comment, saying only, "My life is private - it's not anybody else's business. I didn't leave my family. I left my wife."
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