Caught

Being a thoroughly modern woman, what happened now, Wendy had been told her entire life, would be her decision and her decision alone. With two and a half years of college left and a budding career in journalism on the way, the timing, of course, could not have been worse, but that made the answer all the more clear. She called John on the phone and said, “We need to talk.” He came over to her cramped room and she asked him to sit down. John took the beanbag chair, which looked so comical, this six-foot-five-inch hunk trying to get, if not comfortable, at least balanced. Knowing from her tone that this was something serious, John tried to keep his face solemn while holding himself steady, making him look like a little boy playing grown-up.

“I’m pregnant,” Wendy told him, beginning the speech she’d been rehearsing in her head for the past two days. “What happens now will be my decision, and I hope you will honor that.”

Wendy continued, pacing the small room, not looking at him, keeping her voice as matter-of-fact as possible. She even closed her prepared statement by thanking him for coming today and wishing him well. Then she finally risked a glance in his direction.

John Morrow just looked up at her with tears in the bluest eyes she had ever seen and said, “But I love you, Wendy.”

She had wanted to laugh and instead she started to cry and John slid off that damned beanbag chair and onto his knees and proposed, right there and then, with Wendy laughing and crying, and despite pretty much everyone’s misgivings, they got married. No one gave them a chance, but the next nine years had been bliss. John Morrow was sweet and caring and loving and gorgeous and funny and smart and attentive. He was her soul mate with all that entailed. Charlie was born during their junior year at Tufts. Two years later, John and Wendy scraped up enough money to put a down payment on a small starter house on a busy road in Kasselton. Wendy got a job at a local television station. John worked toward his Ph.D. in psychology. They were on their way.

And then, in what seemed like a finger snap, John died. Now the small starter house held just Wendy and Charlie and a great big hole to match the one in her heart.

She knocked on Vic’s door and leaned her head in. “You rang?”

“Heard you got your ass reamed in court,” her boss said.

“Support,” Wendy said. “That’s why I work here. The support I get.”

“You want support,” Vic said, “buy a bra.”

Wendy frowned. “You realize that made no sense.”

“Yeah, I know. I got your memo—check that, your many and repetitious memos—complaining about your assignments.”

“What assignments? In the past two weeks, you’ve had me cover the opening of an herbal tea store and a fashion show featuring men’s scarves. Just put me on something quasi-real again.”

“Wait.” Vic put a hand to his ear, as though straining to hear. He was a small man except for the enormous bowling-ball gut. His face might be called “ferretlike,” if the ferret was really ugly.

“What?” she said.

“Is this the part where you rail against the injustice of being a hottie in a male-dominated profession and say that I treat you like nothing more than eye candy?”

“Will railing help me get better assignments?”

“No,” he said. “But you know what might?”

“Showing more cleavage on air?”

“I like the way you’re thinking, but no, not today. Today the answer is, Dan Mercer’s conviction. You need to end up the hero who nailed a sick pedophile rather than the overreaching reporter who helped free him.”

“Helped free him?”

Vic shrugged.

“The police wouldn’t even know about Dan Mercer if it wasn’t for me.”

Vic lifted the air violin to his shoulder, closed his eyes, began to play.

“Don’t be an ass,” she said.

“Should I call in a few of your colleagues for a group hug? Maybe join hands for a rousing rendition of ‘Kumbaya’?”

“Maybe later, after your circle jerk.”

“Ouch.”

“Does anybody know where Dan Mercer is hiding?” she asked.

“Nope. No one has seen him for two weeks.”

Wendy wasn’t sure what to make of that. She knew that Dan had moved away because of death threats, but it seemed out of character not to show in court today. She was about to ask a follow-up when Vic’s intercom buzzed.

He held up a finger to quiet her and pressed the intercom: “What?”

The receptionist’s voice was low. “Marcia McWaid is here to see you.”

That silenced them. Marcia McWaid lived in Wendy’s town, less than a mile from her. Three months ago her teenage daughter Haley—a schoolmate of Charlie’s—had purportedly sneaked out of her bedroom window and never returned.

“Something new in her daughter’s case?” Wendy asked.

Vic shook his head. “Just the opposite,” he said, which, of course, was much worse. For two, maybe three weeks, Haley McWaid’s disappearance had been a huge story—teenage abduction? runaway?—complete with NEWSFLASH and scrolls-across-the-screen and bottom-feeding “experts” reconstructing what might have happened to her. But no story, even the most sensational, can survive without new food. Lord knows the networks tried. They had touched on every rumor from white slavery to devil worship, but in this business “no news” was truly “bad news.” It was pathetic, our short attention span, and you could blame the news media, but the audience dictated what stayed on the air. If people watch the story, it stays on. If they don’t, the networks go searching for the new shiny toy to catch the public’s fickle eye.

“Do you want me to talk to her?” Wendy asked.

“No, I’ll do it. It’s why I get the big bucks.”

Vic shooed her away. Wendy headed down the end of the corridor. She turned in time to see Marcia McWaid in front of Vic’s door. Wendy didn’t know Marcia, but she’d seen her in town a few times, the way you do, at the Starbucks or school car-pickup lane or local video store. It would be a cliché to say the perky mom who always seemed to have a kid in tow now looked ten years older. Marcia didn’t. She was still an attractive enough woman, still looked her age, but it was as though every movement had slowed down, as if even the muscles that controlled facial expression were coated in molasses. Marcia McWaid turned and met Wendy’s eye. Wendy nodded, tried to give a half-smile. Marcia turned away and entered Vic’s office.