Molly
The sky through our large bay window was just beginning to brighten when I opened my eyes. Not quite morning. Not the alarm, not yet. When the noise came again, I realized it was my phone vibrating on the nightstand. Erik Schinazy glowed on the screen in the darkness.
“Is everything okay?” I answered without saying hello.
In the five months I’d been working at the tiny but respectable Ridgedale Reader, the paper’s contributing editor in chief had never once called me outside business hours. He’d had no reason to. As the Reader’s arts, lifestyle, and human-interest reporter, I covered stories that were hardly emergencies.
“Sorry to call so early.” Erik sounded tired or distracted. Or something.
I wondered for a second whether he’d been drinking. Erik was supposedly sober these days, but it was widely rumored that his drinking had gotten him fired from the Wall Street Journal. It was hard to imagine fastidious Erik, with his tall, rigid posture, swift military gait, and neat buzz cut, ever being sloppy drunk. But there had to be a better explanation for a reporter of his caliber landing at the Reader, editor in chief or not, than his wife, Nancy—a psychology professor at Ridgedale University—being tired of commuting to Ridgedale from New York City, where they’d lived when Erik was at the Journal.
Not that I was one to judge. I’d gotten the staff position at the Reader thanks to Nancy being on the faculty welcoming committee. I didn’t know how much Nancy had pressured Erik to hire me or how desperate Justin had made my situation sound, but from the exceedingly kind, almost therapeutic way Nancy regarded me, I had my suspicions. And with only a law degree and a decade of legislative public policy experience for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women on my résumé, I was fairly certain that I hadn’t been the most qualified candidate for the staff reporter position.
But Justin—now a tenured English professor, thanks to Ridgedale University—had been right to do whatever it took to get me a fresh start. And writing for the Ridgedale Reader had given me unexpected purpose. I had only recently come to accept—after much grueling therapy—that the grief, flowing from me unchecked since the baby died, would continue until I forcibly turned off the spigot.
“No, no, that’s okay, Erik,” I breathed, trying to get out of bed so I didn’t wake Justin. “Can you just hold on one second?”
It wasn’t until I tried to move that I realized Ella was in our bed, her body latched on to mine like a barnacle. I had a vague recollection of it now: her standing next to the bed—a bad dream, probably. Ella always had the most vivid night terrors, often shrieking into the darkness while dead asleep. I’d been the same as a child, but I’d assumed it was a side effect of life with my mother. More likely, the terrors were genetic, the pediatrician told me. But I could handle them better than my own mother did: earplugs, a lock on her door, her most angry shout. So Ella regularly ended the night tucked between us, something Justin had begun a gentle, but concerted, campaign to stop.
“Okay, sorry, go ahead, Erik,” I said once I’d managed to twist myself out from beneath Ella and made my way into the hallway.
“I was hoping you could help with something,” he began, his tone even more brusque than usual. Nancy was so warm by comparison. I often wondered how they’d ended up together. “I’ve had to leave town for a family emergency, and Elizabeth is on assignment in Trenton, and Richard is in the hospital, so that leaves—”
“Is he okay?” I felt a knee-jerk wave of guilt. I hadn’t wished an actual illness on Richard, but in my darker moments I’d come close.
Elizabeth and Richard, both in their late twenties, covered the actual news for the Reader, though they weren’t trying to compete with the national dailies or the twenty-four-hour online news cycle. Instead, the Ridgedale Reader prided itself on in-depth coverage with lots of local color. Occasionally, I got assignments from Erik—covering the new director of the university’s prestigious Stanton Theatre or the celebrated local spelling bee—but largely, I pitched my own stories, such as my recent profile of Community Outreach Tutoring, a program for local high school dropouts generously run by Ella’s kindergarten teacher, Rhea.
Elizabeth had been polite to me, at least, but Richard had made clear that he saw me as a washed-up mom unjustly handed a seat at the table. That his assessment was largely accurate did not make it more enjoyable.
“Is who okay?” Erik sounded confused.
“You said Richard was in the hospital?”
“Oh yeah, he’s fine,” he scoffed. “Gallbladder operation. You’d think he was having open-heart surgery from the way he’s complained, but he should be back in forty-eight hours. In the meantime, I just got a call. Someone reported a body up by the Essex Bridge.”