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“I am not hurt,” she said.

He nodded once. “I’ll be going then.”

She let him disappear before something gripped her and she rushed forward. Framing her hands on the doorway of her bedroom, she called, “Macalister?”

He stopped halfway down the first bend in the stairs. “Yes, Mrs. Whitley?”

“Thank you for caring enough to ask. If I was all right, that is.”

He held her gaze for a moment and then nodded. “I’m harvesting mandarins in the orchard tomorrow.”

She nodded. “I’ll be ready to help.”

chapter forty-five THERESA

July 1, 1960

On Friday night, Theresa watched the newsroom clock tick over to eight thirty and leapt up from her desk, grabbing her handbag. Matt was picking her up at home at nine, and she wanted a chance to change out of her light blue linen suit before he arrived.

She was halfway across the newsroom when Archer Madison intercepted her.

“What have you done wrong, Johnson?” her newsroom nemesis asked.

“What do you mean, Archer?” She did not have time for his antics.

“Packard wants to see you,” said Archer with a smirk, blowing a stream of smoke up at the nicotine-stained newsroom ceiling.

Theresa sucked in a breath and turned in the direction of Gareth Packard’s office, leaving Archer to his cigarettes and speculation.

The managing editor’s door was open, but he was focused on the papers spread out on his desk in front of him, his head bent forward so she could see the bright skin through his comb-over. She knocked on the door frame, and he looked up.

“Madison said you wanted to see me.”

“Miss Johnson, please do come in,” said Mr. Packard. A veteran of a London paper who had been wooed away by the Herald Times’s owner, he had a formality about him that set him apart from the rest of the newsroom. It wasn’t just his accent or his way of calling everyone Mr. or Miss. It was the quiet control with which he ruled from his office.

Theresa took one of the wooden chairs set in front of his desk and set her handbag on her lap before deciding it made her look like a girl waiting for the school bus. She put it down on the floor next to her chair.

“Mr. Taylor tells me that you did a good job on the freeway construction accident story a fortnight ago,” said Mr. Packard.

It warmed Theresa a little to hear that Phil had praised her work to the managing editor. “Thank you, sir.”

“Mr. Taylor also tells me that you have put yourself forward for our vacant Metro position. Informally, of course,” said Mr. Packard.

“Yes. That is, when I learned there might be some changes to the section, I wanted to be sure I expressed my interest.”

“I see,” said Mr. Packard, picking up the smoldering cigarette that balanced on the edge of a green glass ashtray next to his right hand. He took a deep draw and then replaced it precisely in the same spot. “You come to us from New York, is that right?”

“Columbia,” she said.

“And you’ve been working in Obituaries for—what is it now? A year?”

“A little over two,” she said.

Mr. Packard nodded, shuffling through a few bits of paper on his desk to check something. “I see. Miss Johnson, I will be very honest with you. While I admire your ambition and your forward thinking, I believe it is only fair that I tell you the position has been filled.”

“Oh.” Theresa looked down at her hands. “May I ask by whom?”

“We’ve managed to poach Adam Hynes from the Pasadena Sun Tribune.”