ONE
With each passing day, she remembered she had a secret. She’d lived in the fog of death until six months ago, when she crawled out, reaching for the first glimpse of life and light she’d encountered in five years. It came in the form of a simple telephone call. A refreshing-breeze offer.
But clearing the fog meant the memories surfaced. Ones she’d long since regarded as lost. Now they rattled around the empty corridors of her heart.
And recently, in the faintest ting or ping, like when elevator doors opened just outside her office, Corina remembered how she loved the glorious, rolling chimes of cathedral bells pealing through a crisp Cathedral City dawn.
And she ached. Deep in her soul. With a longing she couldn’t reach nor remove.
With an exhale, she slumped in her chair and closed the news video she’d been watching. Two of theBeaumont Post’s staff writers entered the bull pen with a nod toward her, a late lunch of McDonald’s swinging from their hands.
Corina’s gaze followed them as they crossed the wide, boxy room, cutting through the muted afternoon sunlight that spilled through the dirty, rain-splattered windows.
She should go to lunch herself. It was nearly two. But she was waiting for her boss, Gigi Beaumont, to return from lunch. Corina had a proposition for the founder of the online mega newspaper, theBeaumont Post. A bold move, even for her, but she felt confident in her idea.
In the meantime, she had work to do. Corina sorted through her e-mail inbox, organizing stories that came in from thePoststaff writers and stringers from around the world. Gigi’s journalism-tabloid-media fingers had a very long reach.
Opening a story that had just come in though it was due last week, Corina started reading but lost her concentration after the first sentence.
What bothered her?June. Of course. It was the third of June. Being out from under thefog,dates and days had meaning again.
Okay. Fine. It was June third. Just recognize the day had once been significant and move on. But dealing with everything she’d buried more than five years ago proved challenging.
“Corina, hey . . .” Melissa O’Brien perched on the edge of Corina’s desk, angling toward the computer screen. “What has you so engrossed? A story by Chip Allen?” She curled her lip.
“Yeah, um . . . it’s good.” Corina cleared her throat, sat up straight, and gathered herself into business mode—despite her rambling thoughts and rumbling stomach. “He’s got a great piece on Hollywood and violence.”
“Did you talk to Gigi yet?”
“Not yet.” Corina peered down the long, wide center aisle of the bull pen, which ended at Gigi’s office. Through the glass panel beside the closed door, she saw her boss pacing, cell phone to her ear. “I thought she was still at lunch.”
“Nope, she’s back in her office. With that appendage she calls a cell phone. It’s going to kill her brain cells.”
Corina laughed low. “They’d never have the nerve to die on her.”
Gigi Beaumont, who crawled her way out from the poverty of the Blue Ridge Mountains to become a pioneer in the online journalism world, was a force to be reckoned with. No death, sickness, mayhem, corporate lawyers, hostile takeovers, sloppy reporters, lazy editors—nor husbands one through five—could conquer her.
“Are you saying you don’t have the nerve?” Melissa let her purse slide from her shoulder to Corina’s desk. “We need an editorial director. You’ve been doing the job since Carly left four months ago. And you’re the new girl yet. Come on, bebrave.”
Brave? Courage wasn’t the issue. It was timing. All about the timing. “Gigi’s a mentor and friend, and I’m here because of her. But if she wants me for the job, why hasn’t she asked?”
“It’s Gigi.” Melissa shrugged with apffftt. “It’s a miracle she offered you a job at all. Usually folks have to come begging.”
“True.” Corina stood, squaring her shoulders and shoving her chair under the desk.
“She’s on her feet, ladies and gentlemen.” Melissa hissed a faux crowd noise. “I think she’s going in.”
But Corina didn’t move. When Gigi, a long-time family friend of the Del Reys and Corina’s first employer after college, called after Thanksgiving last year with a, “Come on down to Florida and work for me,” Corina began to wake up from the stupor of grief.
At twenty-nine, she’d spent the last five years in grave clothes. Alive but not living.
“Well?”
“I’m going.”
“Doesn’t look like you’re going.”
Corina moved toward Gigi’s office with beauty-pageant stride. “You see me walking, don’t you?” Her heels thumped against the tight carpet weave.
