“I don’t care if your freelancer dropped the ball, that is why we pay you to stay on top of these things. It’s your job to have something to go in that slot if he falls through,” Mary says sternly into the receiver.
The man at her desk looks over at me as I make my way forward into the office. I smile at him, but it is not returned.
“Fine,” Mary yells. “We will just pull what we had saved for tomorrow’s section and run it today. Oh, and Stacey, you can forget the other half of your two week’s notice. Your final check will be waiting for you at central office tomorrow.” She harshly hangs up the phone and I jump back a little.
“So?” The man standing at her desk asks.
“She has nothing! Pull the story on the Rebels and put it on B1. Sorry, Harry, you’ll be taking on a little more work until I can get her replacement hired.”
Mary hands Harry the daily proofs and he stalks off irate. She runs her fingers through her hair momentarily before letting out a deep breath and turning to look at me. Standing up a little straighter, she smiles a weary smile before walking closer.
“Too bad you’re just here for a meeting or I might have just had the nerve to throw you into the fire.”
“Nothing to make you love being a journalist like when someone falls through on a front-page story last minute, right?” I joke. “What happened?”
“Our sports reporter is useless. I gave her freelancers and she still comes up with nothing. Oh well, say la vie. Makes us all have to pick up a little more slack, but it’s what we live for, right? The story. The chase. The deadlines.”
I smile knowingly. There is no other profession I could ever see myself doing. Gesturing towards a conference room, I glance around the newsroom as we walk toward our meeting. She grabs a folder from a nearby desk before walking into the room. I follow and take a seat across from her at the small conference table.
“So, I am not going to lie, I took the time to look you up after our meeting yesterday and before this place went to hell today. I got to say, I am very impressed, but you are still only just a reporter at a small town newspaper in Northern California?”
“Well, I had a job interview at the L.A. Times a few months ago,” I say, not really sure where to go next. “But, I turned it down.”
Her eyes grow wide. She stares at me for several moments before leaning back in her chair and looking at the folder in her hands. “Not many people in life would do something like that. There has to be a reason?” I look out across the street through the window in the conference room and see Noah with Rex, laughing and carrying on like two little school boys. “I see,” Mary says.
Glancing down at my lap a little embarrassed, I take a moment before I speak. “You know, all I ever wanted to be was a journalist ever since I could remember. I wanted to climb the ladder and land myself a job at a huge paper somewhere.” I look up and she smiles back at me like only a fellow newspaper person could. “But, life happens you know. After a few things change, pretty soon that dream doesn’t seem so important anymore.”
She taps her fingers on the folder and smiles before leaning forward. “I worked a few years at the Washington Post. It isn’t all as glamorous as you would think. Tell me, why the move to Kentucky then, or do we need to take another look out the window?”
I laugh nervously. “No, I’m good,” I say. “I don’t know. Sometimes you just got to follow your heart, right? If something feels like home, you got to go for it, and never let it go.”
“Would you be moving to Bardstown?” she asks.
I nod, not fully able to speak because I haven’t actually made up my mind if I am moving or not. But the way this conversation is going, my future looks like it is deciding itself before I even get a chance to make up my own mind.
“Well,” she says. “We are looking for an editor for this daily. You work at a daily, so I don’t need to tell you the workload. How many pages did you run in Nevada City?”
“We were sixteen Monday through Friday and twenty on Saturday and Sunday,” I say, straightening up in my seat, thankful that the subject changed to something else besides the man standing just across the street.
“Well then, we are pretty close. The way I see it, if the Times wanted a piece of you, you’re more than qualified for us.”
Sliding the folder across the table, I pick it up and glance up at her.
“This is what I can offer you,” she says. “It’s not a crazy salary, but I think it’s enough. After all, this is Kentucky, not California. The cost of living isn’t even comparable, so remember that when you are looking through the numbers. You would need to do a drug test and background check, and there would be a few forms that I would need you to sign.”
I don’t open the folder. Instead, I sit with the weight of it, and ask, “When would you want me to start?”
“As soon as you can.”
Chapter Fifty
Noah
A breeze blows through the night sky as I sit on my mother’s front porch and watch the clouds roll by. One by one, they help mask the night and open briefly for a moment to give way to the countless stars in the sky. Fireflies dance in the distance as I make out the sound of tires coming down the dirt road.
Headlights appear as Eva’s car comes to a stop in front of the house. She gets out and straightens her outfit, not knowing I’m sitting watching. Turning my way, she startles when she sees me in the shadows.
“What on earth,” she says. “Why are you sitting out here like that?’
