Linwood Barclay - Stone Rain

“I came up with that,” she said proudly. “You know how, when someone comes into your house, a member of your family, they shout ‘I’m home!’ Well, my thinking was, we take the last part of that sentence and turn it into the name of the section. It’s the punctuation at the end, that dramatic exclamation mark, that makes it, I think. It’s what separates our home section from home sections in other papers. It’s what gives this section its punch, its vitality. I think we have the best home section anywhere, and it sure is nice you’re going to be able to work for it.”

She smiled.

I thought, If I could find a home tall enough to get the job done, I’d throw myself off the roof and kill myself.

“Of course,” said Frieda, “I understand that coming here wasn’t totally your idea-Mr. Magnuson explained that to me-but I think you’re going to find working here very fulfilling. We do a lot of important stories here, and you should know that Home! is one of the biggest revenue producers for the paper. We have advertisers lined up to get into our pages, and many weeks we have to turn them away. There simply isn’t any more space for them. The presses can’t handle a section that big. Did you know that?”

“Wow,” I said. “I did not know that.”

“I’ve had this story idea percolating for a while, and haven’t had anyone free to do it, but now that you’re here, I’d like to give it to you, because you have the kind of skills, I think, to run with it.”

I steeled myself.

“Linoleum,” Frieda said. “There are so many angles, I’m thinking along the lines of a series, not just one article. What advances are being made, scuff resistance, design choices, whether the linoleum is being made here or whether we’re going overseas to get it. Is this country hanging on to its linoleum jobs, or giving them away to Mexico?”

“So it would have a political angle,” I said.

Frieda nodded enthusiastically. “I can see you’re thinking already. That’s great. Listen, why don’t I leave you to it, if you have any questions you can ask, and don’t forget that at three, we traditionally have a little biscuit break.”

I glanced up at the clock. “Gee, six hours,” I said. “I may not be able to wait.”

Frieda smiled and touched my arm before departing. I sighed and slumped in my chair. I was more than depressed. I was tired. I’d barely slept the night before. And not just because Sarah wasn’t speaking to me. There’d been a wild electrical storm around midnight. Flashes of lightning filled our bedroom with light, just long enough to see Sarah’s back turned to me. The wind came out, and I lay awake wondering whether any of the stately old oaks that surrounded the house would come crashing through the roof. Briefly, the power went out-the wired-in smoke detector chirped once, and when I glanced at the digital clock radio, it was flashing 12:00.

According to the morning news, some parts of the city had lost power, some for several hours. A great many limbs and a few entire trees had come down, taking power lines with them. But when I looked out in the morning, all I saw were a few twigs and short branches scattered across the yard and the street.

“That was some storm,” I said in the morning, trying to make conversation while I poured Sarah her coffee. She said nothing.

“Look,” I said, “I know I’ve fucked up, big-time, but it’s not like Magnuson made it out to be. I wasn’t trying to keep that guy from doing his story, I had no intention of doing that, and I’d said to Trixie that-”

“Just what did you say to Trixie?” Sarah said. It was the first time I’d heard her voice in maybe eighteen hours. “What do the two of you talk about? When you have your little lunches, your little meetings, your rendezvous?”

“‘Rendezvous’?” I said. “Why not ‘tryst’? There’s a word we don’t hear much anymore.”

“It’s a tryst?”

“Listen, I had lunch with her the other day, she told me she had this problem, I told her I couldn’t help her out with it.”

“Is that how you weren’t helping her out with it? Going back out there to talk to that reporter, to get him to give up his camera?”

“All I did was tell him Trixie was afraid to come into the diner unless he gave up the camera. He’d been trying to sneak a pic of her and-”

Sarah, screaming: “And what do you care! So what if he does! What is that to you? Since when did you become her protector?”

Her voice echoed off the kitchen walls.

I didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “You’re right. It’s her problem. It’s not my problem.” I paused. “It’s not our problem.”

Sarah took one last glaring look at me, then turned and went back upstairs to get ready for work. The coffee I’d poured for her sat neglected on the counter.

Angie, who’d been coming down the stairs as Sarah was going up, appeared. “I don’t know what you did, Dad,” she said, “but it must have been bad, even by your standards.”

I was ready with something sarcastic, then said, “Yeah. It was.”

And as I sat in my new! desk! in! the! Home! section, I tried to sort out which was the worst of my crimes. It hadn’t been getting myself demoted to one of the paper’s soft sections, and it hadn’t been nixing Sarah’s chances at becoming foreign editor, although that one was up there.

It was the fact that I hadn’t been honest with her. I hadn’t told Sarah what Trixie had asked of me. I hadn’t told her I’d agreed to at least meet with Trixie and Martin Benson.

The way Sarah must have seen it was, if I hadn’t disclosed the details of that conversation with Trixie, what other conversations with her had I failed to fill her in on?

Once, a couple of years ago, when I’d made a joke that I was not having an affair with someone, Sarah had laughed. It was the one thing she knew she’d never have to worry about, she said. I could never pull it off, I’d have too guilty a conscience, my face would betray me when I attempted a lie.

Plus there was the part about my loving Sarah more than any other woman in the world.

But I’d crossed a line somewhere, and was over it before I’d realized it. My marriage to Sarah meant a lot more to me than my friendship with Trixie. And if that meant distancing myself from her, then that’s what I’d have to-

My phone rang.

Did the Metropolitan switchboard already know I was here, and not out in the newsroom?

“Walker,” I said, picking up.

“It’s happened,” Trixie said.

“What?”

“My picture. It’s in the paper. Fucking amazing picture too. Must have been shot with a telephoto. No camera phone shot.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Maybe you could tell me why your paper shot it?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“There’s this little line, under the picture.”

“A photo credit,” I said.

“Whatever. It says, ‘Special to the Suburban by Lesley Carroll, slash, The Metropolitan.’ She must have been parked up the street from the house, took my picture as I was going from the car to the house. I’m fucked.”

Lesley Carroll took the picture? One of our photogs? I thought about it for a moment, and it started to make sense. Magnuson tells his old buddy Blair, Hey, our Walker guy messed with your guy over a picture of this woman? Leave it with us. We’ll get you a picture. We’ll send one of our people. We’ve got shooters who’ve been to Iraq and back. Think we can’t get a shot of this, what’s her name? Trixie Snelling? We’ve got this young intern, eager to make a name for herself as a photographer. You can bet she’ll get you your picture. Consider it our way of saying we’re sorry.

That’s how it must have gone.