Chapter 6
“Don’t let Chloe burn the salad, Mom.” Her older brother, Todd, paused by the kitchen island to steal a handful of walnuts from the stack she was chopping.
“Hey,” she said, “don’t mess with me when I’ve got a knife in my hand. I don’t see you doing any of the cooking.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” her mother said. Jan Davenport stood at the kitchen sink on Chloe’s right, carefully spooning stuffing into the turkey. “You don’t really want either of those lunkheads in the kitchen, do you?”
Her mom had a point.
Raising her eyes past the kitchen island, Chloe watched Todd saunter into the adjoining family room. From the back, he looked like the sturdy, broad-shouldered twenty-eight-year-old man most people probably saw him as. Somewhere along the line, Todd had grown up, gone to school, and opened a practice as a veterinarian. She still couldn’t wrap her head around it. If the good people of Tall Pine could only see him the way Chloe did. Moments after stepping into their parents’ house, both of her brothers reverted to adolescence.
Todd joined their younger brother, Joel—the second lunkhead in question—on the couch with their dad to watch a pregame something-or-other. Except for the size of her brothers, it looked like every Thanksgiving at home since Chloe was a kid.
It smelled the same, too.
She turned toward her mother. “The turkey’s not even in the oven, and the stuffing already smells good.”
Jan upended the turkey, lightly shaking it to allow the stuffing to settle inside the bird. “Tell me about it. I should have had a bigger breakfast before we got started.”
Chloe walked over and popped a walnut half into her mom’s mouth. “Here. Instant protein.”
Her mother accepted the walnut without question, probably remembering all the times she’d done the same thing for Chloe.
Retirement looked good on her mom. Jan’s hair was still the same ash brown it had always been, although Chloe knew she colored it. Middle age may have thickened her mother’s waist a bit, but her movements were quick and decisive, with the kind of efficiency that came after twenty-five years of being a professional nurse. A professional who, nevertheless, had always seemed content to make Thanksgiving dinner without any help from the males in the next room.
Not that there wasn’t an art to it. Which was why, each year, Chloe was a little more inclined to help out in the kitchen.
Now, Jan slanted a frown Chloe’s way. “You’re looking a little skinny yourself.”
“I’ll make up for it today. Believe me.”
She didn’t want to talk about her wonky work schedule and the resulting wonky eating habits. Not today. Chloe squeezed her mom in a one-armed hug. Jan, still holding on to the turkey with both hands, couldn’t very well hug her back, but she shrugged a shoulder against Chloe in response.
Chloe returned to the kitchen island, glancing once more at the three male heads poking over the top of the couch as she got back to chopping walnuts and celery for the Waldorf salad. Naturally, Todd hadn’t stolen any of the celery.
She scooped up a big piece of walnut and popped it into her mouth.
* * *
Once the turkey was in the oven, her mother went to change clothes before the rest of the family arrived. Chloe went out to the backyard, where her father and brothers tossed a football around in the chilly gray afternoon.
She breathed in, refreshed by the bite of cold air after the hot kitchen. She hoped they’d get their first snow soon. Tall Pine was low enough in the mountains that snow never came until late November, but anytime after Thanksgiving was fair game.
“Think fast.” Her younger brother, Joel, sent the ball spinning her way. Unprepared, Chloe still caught it in her arms with a satisfying thump.
“Is the halftime show over?” Todd asked.
“Beats me.” She lobbed the ball at Todd. She’d tried, once, to watch televised football with her dad and brothers. All the time-outs had driven her crazy. At least, in the backyard, the football moved.
Ball in hand, Todd took a step back, then another, his eyes on Chloe. Her dad stood by several yards to Todd’s left. As her brother held the ball cocked and ready to throw to her, Todd glanced over her head with a nod, and suddenly Chloe had a bad feeling about this.
The next thing she knew, Joel grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms alongside her as he picked her up off the ground and spun her around. Fast. She shrieked in protest. She should have known. She should never trust her brothers.
Joel deposited her on a big pile of leaves under the old oak. At least it was a soft landing. She grabbed for some leaves to hurl at her attacker, but that didn’t do much good as Todd rushed in. Both brothers scooped up double handfuls of leaves, raining a steady barrage down on her.
“Hey!” Chloe remembered to cover her face with both arms to keep from getting a mouthful of leaves. At least it hadn’t rained in a while, so the leaves were dry instead of mucky. She tried to reach for a foot to yank, or some other defense against the sneak attack, but she could barely see anything beyond the dry, crispy shower of brown and gold.
At last it was Joel, the accomplice who’d dumped her on the leaves to begin with, who grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out. Two years younger than Chloe, Joel was never the mastermind; ever since they were kids, he went along with Todd’s schemes and then made nice with her afterward. She whapped Joel with a quick backhand on the arm before she launched at Todd with the best nonlethal weapon she had on short notice: lowering her head, she charged at him like a goat and rammed him in the stomach.
After all, she could revert to childhood, too.
“Oof!” Todd was half laughing, but the rush of air that came out with the oof filled her with satisfaction.
Her dad’s voice came from behind Todd. “You’d think after all these years, you boys would learn to play nice.”
“She loves it.” Todd mussed the hair at the top of her head as if she were a spaniel. Leaves fell around her face.
“Yeah, right.” Chloe brushed more leaves off her sweater and tried to glare, but then Todd grabbed her in a one-armed hug. She gave in and laughed, still catching her breath. Behind her, Joel was picking leaves from the back of her hair and sweater.
Some things never changed. Then again, maybe she didn’t want them to change too fast. What would she do if she came home one holiday and Todd was respectful and polite? She wouldn’t be sure he even remembered her.
“Come on.” Todd gave her hair one last rumple as he spoke over her head to Joel. “Let’s go see if the game’s back on.”
He led Joel inside, and Chloe shook her head. Boys’ clubs. It seemed like they were everywhere these days. Granted, the one at the office was more civilized.
And that thought ended the longest amount of time she’d gone without thinking about the paper.
Her father approached her, the abandoned football in hand. “Ready?”
“Always.” Chloe ran forward and stole the ball before her dad could toss it. She kept running farther across the brown grass of the yard, then turned and threw it to him.
Yeah, he could have intervened on her behalf. But around here, you fought your own battles, especially the silly skirmishes. She wouldn’t have liked being defended like some little flower. Not since she was four, anyway.
Bill Davenport grabbed the ball out of the air and sailed it back at her. She grinned as she caught it, took a few steps farther away, and chucked it back to him.
It was nice to get a few minutes alone with her dad. And it felt good to get outside and move around, including the obligatory hazing by her brothers. She spent a lot of time stationary and indoors these days.
“So, how’s the job going?” her dad asked across the twenty feet of space between them.
Chloe made a face. “Ask me tomorrow. I’ll be there.”
“You’re working the day after Thanksgiving?”
She hadn’t planned to talk about it, but her father’s surprise gave Chloe a little sense of vindication. Even her dad thought working the holiday weekend was above and beyond.
She shrugged offhandedly. “I didn’t exactly have a choice.”
“That’s why they call it a job.”
Hey. Come back over to my side. Chloe threw the ball again, a little more forcefully. “I already crammed five days’ worth of work into a three-day week. I turned in fourteen stories.” Counting press releases.
“I’ll bet that made an impression.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” I would have thought that about the hospice piece, too.
“Are you still hoping it turns into a permanent job?”
Chloe hadn’t thought that far ahead since the week she started. She was too busy trying to keep her head above water. But if her job ended when Frank McCrea came back, she’d be high and dry. Or back at the Pine ’n’ Dine. If they had an opening for her.
“Maybe,” she said. “We’ll see when the real editor gets back. The guy who’s filling in now . . .” She searched for words to explain Bret. She settled for, “Don’t get me started.”
This was her day off. No point bringing Bret into the conversation. But the wheels in her head had already started to spin again, and she knew they’d been humming in neutral all along, just waiting for the slightest flip of a switch.
“Not easy to work for?” her dad prompted.
Chloe bit her lip. When she searched her brain for tangible grievances, she came up short. “It’s a lot of little things,” she said. “Or maybe it’s an attitude. Nothing I do seems to be good enough.”
“Hm.” Bill Davenport threw the ball again. Chloe knew he wanted nuts and bolts. Something he could work on.
But hey, he was listening. She knew he’d always been a little at a loss for what to do with a daughter. Hanging out with her brothers was easier for him; he knew how boys worked because he’d been one himself. From the time Chloe turned twelve and got her ears pierced, he seemed to feel she was just a little bit alien to him.
Hence, the football-throwing. Away to connect that was refreshing in its simplicity.
It was physical, external, and tangible. And, she had to admit, the activity helped her think in more concrete terms.
“I didn’t even know I was working tomorrow until almost five o’clock last night.” There. That was concrete.
“What did you tell him?”
“I said ‘yes.’ Of course.”
Her father nodded. “You remember what I taught you to say to say to a police officer when he pulls you over?”
Chloe caught the ball. “You call him ‘sir.’”
“And why is that?”
“Because a lot of traffic cops are little Napoleons on a power trip?” She snapped the ball back.
“Simpler than that.” Her father threw the football a little harder this time. It landed in her arms with a thud.
“It’s his ball,” he said. “You’re playing on his field. And in this case, maybe he knows a little more about the game than you do.”
“I don’t deny that. But he—”
“So for now,” her father pressed on, “assume he’s right. If you don’t agree with him, pretend you assume he’s right. Learn to play the game his way. Then, later on, if you have other ideas, you’ve earned his respect.”
“But I’ve tried to—”
“How many times? Once?”
Once? Her tongue was practically sore from biting it.
“You’ve been there three weeks, Chloe.”
“Three and a half.” She heard her sulky tone and grinned reluctantly. Admittedly, it didn’t sound like much.
All right. She sounded childish and impatient. But it was more than the extra hours. It was slaving away without the slightest acknowledgment. It was writing the best thing she’d ever written, only to have it roundly ignored.
Chloe could foresee her father’s answer to that: What do you want, a gold star?
If she wanted to find someone to side with her a hundred percent . . . well, that was what her roommates were for.
She took a step back and set the ball sailing higher on its way to her dad, arcing across the blue sky in a smooth spiral. It was a beautiful throw, and her dad gave a nod of approval as he caught it. Chloe felt her spirits lift again.
This new job was her ball, and she needed to own it. So she’d sift through her parents’ advice, accept her friends’ sympathy, and glean what she could. Ultimately she had to find her own way to deal with a guy who could rake her over the coals one day, and hold her injured hand like a baby bird’s wing the next.
* * *
The next morning, Chloe caved in and put on makeup after all. Might as well, since she’d even worn mascara to eat turkey and throw a football in the backyard with her father.
At the newsroom, she found bagels and coffee waiting, and Bret already at his keyboard. Sitting at the desk he’d designated for writing, he looked as if he’d been there quite awhile.
Easy enough if you didn’t have a life, she supposed. But it was hard to maintain a shell of cynicism with a tempting array of bagels laid out on one of the unoccupied desks in the newsroom. There were a dozen or so. She identified plain, poppy seed, possibly onion, either egg or cheese—and was that one jalapeño? “These are for us and what army?”
Bret shrugged. “I like choices. Plus, there’ll be more people in the building later on. They won’t go to waste.”
Of course. Despite all the doors and hallways, the newsroom usually felt like an island unto itself. Chloe seldom thought about the fact that someone had to run the press and get the papers out after she went home.
She picked up a sesame seed bagel. “Thanks,” she said belatedly as she smoothed on cream cheese with a little plastic knife.
The ever-typing fingers were in motion. “No problem.”
Bagel in one hand, she scooped her coffee mug off her desk with the other and went to the coffee maker. “So, what am I doing today?”
“Well, a motorcycle gang started a reign of terror on Evergreen Lane about ten minutes ago. That’s your first priority.”
Chloe actually turned before she thought. Bret hadn’t even raised his head. Sucker. She turned back to the coffee maker, set her mug down, and poured. “Like you’d let anyone else cover that.”
“Got me there.” Bret leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. “If you could chase down the weather and touch base with the public information officers at the police and fire departments, that’d be great. Not that they’re likely to have much. Later in the day, you can get happy quotes from a couple of the stores on Evergreen Lane.”
“Those bikers do like to spend money.”
The corners of his mouth quirked up, and she felt absurdly flattered. “Exactly.”
* * *
For a day she would have rather spent Christmas shopping, decorating, or sleeping, it wasn’t so bad.
The newsroom felt different today. Chloe had quickly learned that although it was usually quiet in here, it was also intense, with the constant silent presence of deadlines to be met. Today the atmosphere was less urgent. Bret still didn’t say much, still seemed absorbed in his work, but there was something more companionable in the silence.
Better yet, she saw that the hospice piece was scheduled, at last, to run on Sunday. Bret had never commented on it, and she concluded he probably never would. But at least her labors would see the light of day.
Late in the afternoon, Bret asked, “Could you look over a couple of Chuck’s stories for me? I’ll send them over to your in-box.”
Chloe’s fingers froze over her keyboard. “You’re asking me to edit?”
There was that faint smile again across the ten feet that separated them. “I never said there was anything wrong with your grammar skills. Give the stories a first pass, and I’ll do the final polish. It’ll save me time, believe me.”
Two minutes later, she knew what he meant.
The stories were well written, but Chuck’s punctuation was . . . hit and miss. She remembered all the times, in college, when she’d helped friends make their papers more presentable. A sharp mind could miss a lot of the subtleties of the English language.
But she couldn’t stifle a groan. “He’s got its with an apostrophe when it should be—”
Bret nodded sympathetically. “I know, I know. That’s one of his trademarks. It’s irritating, but you learn to look for it.”
Chloe forced herself not to hyperventilate and focused on fixing the mistakes. She shouldn’t be badmouthing a coworker and friend. “Chuck’s a good guy.”
“Yes, he is. If he was any more laid-back, he’d be horizontal. But he’s fast. While you and I are polishing away at a story, he’s on to the next one. Sometimes productivity is as good as art. And nobody’s perfect. That’s why we have editors.”
Chloe finished the edits and sent the stories back to Bret, eyeing the time displayed in the corner of her screen. A quarter to four. She was supposed to meet Tiffany and Kate for the town Christmas tree lighting at five. The town square was just a couple of blocks from the paper. She should be able to make it with no trouble if—
“Speaking of ‘Nobody’s perfect,’” Bret said, “could you take a look at these last two pieces of mine? I can’t see my own words anymore.”
She frowned. “Seriously?”
“Sure. You can’t catch everything in your own work.” Bret shrugged. “Don’t mess with my deathless prose or anything. Just check it over. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes makes all the difference.”
Moments later, she was scrutinizing one of Bret’s stories on her screen, not surprised to find it was a study in clean, spare writing. She wondered what sorts of flaws Bret, or Frank McCrea, would find in it.
On the second story, to her initial glee, she caught one. He’d used capital letters on p.m., one of the mistakes he’d called her on a couple of weeks ago.
And left out the periods?
Wait a minute.
She smelled a rat.
She looked over at Bret, intent on his screen. This was Mr. Meticulous. No way had he made two style mistakes on the same word.
Now on high alert, she went back to the first story and scoured it more carefully. This time she concentrated on the punctuation and words more than the meaning. She found two more. Web site instead of website. Back yard instead of backyard.
She opened her mouth to call him on it and bit her lip instead. There was always the chance—however remote—that he’d really been that mentally fatigued.
She didn’t buy it. He was planting mistakes. The day after Thanksgiving.
She stifled her aggravation, remembering her father’s words: It’s his ball. If this was some kind of test, she was determined to pass it. She bit her tongue, fixed the errors, and sent the stories back to Bret without comment.
That should do it. She still had time to get to the tree lighting.
She opened her desk drawer for her purse.
“Chloe?” Bret said. “There’s snow in the forecast for tomorrow night.”
She smiled. She’d been telling Chuck she hoped they’d have snow to kick off the Christmas season; Bret must have heard her.
In a tone as close to apologetic as she’d ever heard from him, he asked, “Could you write it up?”
She felt her smile drop.
Then she went online, checked the information, and started to write up the weather, vowing not to make any style errors.
If she left in the next fifteen minutes, she could still make it to the tree lighting on time.
* * *
Bret ran his cursor over the stories Chloe had sent back, feeling gratified.
She’d caught them all.
He wondered if it had been hard for her not to gloat. The errors had been fine-tuning things, the kind she would have made herself a couple of weeks ago. She was a quick study, no doubt about it.
And passionate about misplaced apostrophes.
She sat across from him, hammering on her keyboard as if she were breaking the rocks that would release her from San Quentin. She’d put in a good day’s work without complaining, but he could feel the impatience starting to radiate from her now. She was visibly anxious to get out of here.
Bret was in no hurry. Outside, the Christmas lights on Evergreen Lane would be coming on at any moment. Shopping, tinsel, and ’tis-the-season. He avoided it out of habit.
He still had one more day of paper to lay out, but after Chloe’s short weather piece, the editing was done. He stood and stretched.
“Well, that does it for me. Be sure to lock up on your way out.”
She glared at him. Twin gray-green daggers. Her expression provoked twin reactions in Bret. Number one, he wouldn’t want to really mess with her. Number two . . . was something he didn’t dare examine too closely. Something tantalizing. He thought of the silly cliché about women who looked pretty when they were mad. He’d never seen it until now.
Yet, for some reason, he let her glare at him for a few extra seconds.
See Number One, he reminded himself.
“Kidding,” he said. “I’ll be here a couple of hours after you.”
He thought she might smile, one of those smiles that crossed her face so quickly most of the time. Instead she bit her lip and returned her eyes to the screen.
Bret crossed the room to the coffee maker, considered making a fresh pot, and settled for the dregs instead. His eyes and back needed the break more than his body needed the coffee. At this point, any more caffeine would be redundant.
He turned back to Chloe, who, after one of her trademark pauses of contemplation, started typing again. He’d pushed her hard today, and he knew it. He didn’t want the afternoon to end on a sour note.
He lingered by the coffee maker. “You never did tell me what kind of writing you were interested in before you started here,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
He thought of the way she’d written the hospice piece, infusing it with notes of emotion that managed not to be overly sentimental. She wrote with more color than the typical journalist, but more restraint than the typical amateur.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re slumming here until you write the Great American Novel.”
Her fingers froze fractionally over the keyboard, then went back to typing.
“Nailed it, didn’t I?”
She bit her lip. “I am writing a book, yes.”
He took a guess. “Romance or children’s book?”
Her fingers froze again, then started pounding harder.
“Well?” he prompted.
Typetta. Typetta.
“Nailed it again, didn’t I?”
Typetta. Typetta.
By now, he really wanted to know. “Tell me,” he coaxed. “Which is it?”
Typetta. Typetta.
“I’m on deadline,” she reminded him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Seriously. Tell me about your book.”
The typing slowed a little. “You’re just trying to be polite.”
“When have you ever known me to be polite?”
Her typing resumed its former steady pace, minus the violent mashing of the keys. “I want to get this done,” she said. “I want to make it to the tree lighting.”
Of course. The annual Tall Pine Christmas tree lighting. Bret had covered it once or twice, but McCrea handed it off to someone else whenever he could. It hadn’t occurred to Bret that someone might actually want to go.
To Chloe, white Christmases and jingle bells were still merry.
He opened his mouth, ready to offer to step in and finish the weather, but something about the set of her profile stopped him. She was biting her lower lip again.
With a decisive keystroke, Chloe stood, somehow managing to shrug into her coat in the same motion. “Done.”
“Thanks.”
In a flash she had her purse over her shoulder, car keys in hand. He’d never seen her ready to leave so quickly.
As she started to go, she looked back over her shoulder with some reluctance. In a tone that practically froze the room with its civility, she said, “I could write up a piece on the tree lighting if you want.”
Was it his imagination, or had her eyes gone to pure, stainless steel gray?
“No, thanks,” he said, “I’ve got Ned out there already for a photo. If I’d known you were planning on going—” He stopped himself. “Never mind,” he said. “Enjoy it.”
“I will,” she said. “Good night.” And she left.
Bret wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong—which thing he’d done wrong—but one thing was abundantly clear.
Chloe Davenport had a limit, and he’d reached it.