“But you’ve been a journalist a long time,” James protested, fighting the urge to get up and wrap his arms around her. “You must have written about corruption. You must have faced terrible things. You’ve been brave, Elena.”
Elena scrunched her face into a tight red ball. James thought she was going to start crying, and he was on his feet, letting the chair collapse behind him.
“That’s the thing,” she said. “I’ve done more harm than good.”
“How can you say that?” James asked.
Elena’s dark eyes found his. “You’ve been honest with me, but I haven’t been honest with you.”
James gestured helplessly at the chair across from him. “I spend my life listening to people,” he said, as tenderly as he could. “Let me listen to you. Let me help you through.”
Slowly, as though it pained her to walk just as much as it pained her to think, Elena returned to the table, filled her glass with wine, and folded her hands. She began to set the stage for what had happened to her: a painful story that had nothing to do with this quaint, small-town Christmas. It was a nightmare.
Chapter Nine
Three Years Ago
Syria
That week, there were numerous blackouts across the Middle East, and Elena was cursing the ever-failing generators and writing by candlelight, by hand. Her hand cramped, and she sat back in her office chair, gazing into the pitch-black desert night. The air-conditioning was on full blast, and her sweater wasn’t saving her. Tiny hairs sprang up across her arms and legs.
Elena was on deadline, her head spinning with stories, interviews, and potential angles. Because the cell phone towers were down, she hadn’t heard from Timothy in several hours, although there was a plan for them to have dinner together and catch up. Timothy had been traveling with the army for the past several weeks, sending dispatches back to both Elena and their editor. There was buzz about his reporting back home, proof that what he was doing out here mattered. Timothy always maintained that Elena’s work was important, too, butobjectively, he knew he was the better war correspondent, which, she knew, was essential for him. He would never have dated a woman who was better than him. But nobody was better than him.
Too frustrated to work any longer, Elena packed up her things, blew out her candle, and fled the office. When she left, she heard the zing and crying scream of far-off bombs. After a few years in the Middle East, she’d grown accustomed to them. They put her to sleep at night. She no longer thought as much about how dangerous this career was. It was funny that you could really get used to anything if it happened to you for long enough.
As Elena walked the long, slender dirt road that led to Timothy’s apartment, her eyes were filled with sudden light. All around her, the apartments and housing blocks and little businesses lit up. The generator was back up and running! Her heart filled with joy. Maybe tonight she and Timothy could cuddle up and watch a movie. Perhaps they could pretend—for two hours or so—that theirs was an everyday life.
Suddenly, her phone buzzed and buzzed with countless messages. The cell towers were back, too. She pulled her cell out of her bag and stood in stunned silence as she watched message after message come in from Millbrook, of all places. Most of them were from ex-neighbors or old friends, including Maxine, her ex-best friend from high school. Only two were from her mother, Carmen.
MOM: Your father died.
And then another, two days later: I assume you won’t be here in time for his funeral, as you haven’t answered anyone’s calls or texts.
Immediately, Elena began to shake. Her knees clinked together, and her ears rang. It felt almost the way it had the first time she’d seen and heard the distant bombs going off. This time, the bomb was her heart, and it was inside her.
Through others’ text messages, she pieced together what had happened.
There had been an accident, sort of. Her father had been helping her mother hang something in the downstairs bathroom when he had a heart attack and collapsed. The ambulance had rushed to the house, where the EMT workers had tried to resuscitate him and failed. Elena’s eyes filled with tears. But here in Syria, it felt wrong to cry out on the streets like this. She ran the rest of the way to Timothy’s, her heart pounding, until she rushed through his door and fell on the kitchen floor.
Timothy was wearing an apron and cooking fajitas. He looked down at her as though she were something he didn’t want to step on, for fear it would mess up his shoes. Finally, empathy kicked in, and he knelt and put his hands on her ears.
“Tell me what’s happening,” he said.
Elena hadn’t realized she’d begun to sob again. She got up and staggered to the kitchen table. In another act of empathy (which in retrospect was bizarre), Timothy poured them both glasses of wine and sat with her. Elena let the words tumble out of her. “My father died. It was sudden. It happened during the blackout. I missed the funeral. My mother hates me. My mother hates me.” She said these last words over and over again in a kind of mantra.
Timothy finally interrupted her. “Your mother doesn’t hate you. If anything, she understands your continued working more than anyone.”
Elena made a sound in her throat. “That’s not true. Family comes first for her.”
“Isn’t this the same woman who missed your eighth birthday party because she was breaking a story?” Timothy reminded her.
Elena was surprised, too, that Timothy remembered such small stories from her youth. She realized that, for much of their relationship, she’d been waiting for him to tell her how meaningless their relationship was to him.
Was this finally proof that he really and truly loved her?
Her heart swelled, despite everything. And she hated herself for that—for finding joy in the midst of this awful sorrow. Her father was gone.
“You’ve given everything to your career,” Timothy went on. “You’ve worked tirelessly to become one of the best war correspondents in the field. You’re always gathering sources, conducting interviews, and reading about the goings-on of a situation that the average reader can’t fully comprehend. And more than that, you’ve lived in the midst of this stress, putting your body and mind at risk, all for the betterment of our society.”
