Virginia Carmichael - Season of Hope

Gavin stopped and turned to her, eyes intense on her face. He didn’t seem to notice the frigid December wind. “You’re saying the community comes first? That if you got a big story, a real shocker, you’d make sure it wouldn’t ruin anyone’s life before you ran it? If it was against your moral standards, it wouldn’t run, no matter how many copies it might sell?”

Evie could have sworn her heart dropped four inches and settled at an angle. Did he know what she’d been so many years ago? She opened her mouth to defend herself, to say how she’d only been trying to pay the bills, to get through journalism school. They’d said it would be easy. Just take some pictures. Follow the famous people and maybe expose a few liars in the process. But she didn’t say anything. There was no excuse for what she’d done.

“The Daily is the paper that runs the gossip. When I bought The Chronicle back from the bank, it was bankrupt and worthless. I wanted it to be something better, a paper that people could trust. And when I die, I don’t want to have to explain to God why I printed what I did.” Any more than she already would be. She felt her eyes burn and angrily blinked back tears. She couldn’t make up for ruining lives, exposing sins, but she was going to keep going anyway. The only other option would be to give up. And Evie wasn’t a quitter.

The chill breeze ruffled his dark blond hair, the orange glow from the streetlight casting his features into half shadow. Finally he nodded. “I see a lot of suffering on a daily basis. We need to reach the people that are falling through the cracks.”

Evie looked up at him, taking a deep breath. “I agree.” She hadn’t had to defend herself for a long time, and she felt off-kilter. Or maybe it was that steady gaze that let nothing past him.

“I can write up something tomorrow morning and bring it to you by noon. The booster shots are our best hope, especially for pregnant women, but nobody knows about it. When do you think we can run it?”

Evie did a quick mental calculation and came up with a time frame that included skipping lunch and staying hours after most of the crew had gone home. “It could run the day after tomorrow, but let’s put it in the Sunday edition. It’s the biggest. Everybody gets the Sunday paper.”

He nodded, a flicker of hope passing over his face. “Thank you. This means a lot to me.”

“What got you interested in diseases?”

Emotions flitted behind his eyes faster than she could capture them. Confusion, surprise. “My best friend died in the fourth grade from chicken pox.”

Shock made her silent for a moment. “I didn’t know it could be deadly. I thought everybody got chicken pox. Parents even try to expose their kids, to get it over with.”

His face was tight with pain. “You’re right.” He paused, gaze locked on hers. “I had it. Patrick’s mom brought him over to my house so he’d catch it and be done before Christmas break was over.”

Evie felt her mouth drop open. Gavin had given his best friend a disease that killed him...at Christmas? “I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too. I’m still sorry.” His voice had a hard edge to it. “And that’s why I work at the CDC.”

Evie wanted to reach out and hold him, to tell him it wasn’t his fault. But there wasn’t anything she could say that would make that kind of grief disappear.

He seemed to want to say something more but thought better of it. He nodded toward the parking lot. “I think it’s going to snow again. We’d better get you home.”

She walked toward her light blue Volkswagen Beetle and unlocked the door. He made a noise behind her that sounded suspiciously like a snort.

“What? You don’t like my car?” She was used to people poking fun at the powder-blue classic. She searched around on the floorboards for the ice scraper. There was a light film on the windshield, and she didn’t want to wait for it to defrost. Which would be about three hours with her outdated heating system.

“It’s great. I just figured you drove something nicer.”

She stood up, scraper in hand, and shot him a look. “Nicer?”

“Maybe I mean safer.”

“True, no airbags.”

“You can get those installed.” His lips quirked up in a smile, he held out one hand and she passed him the small plastic wedge.

“And what do you drive, Mr. CDC?”

“A Saab. I highly recommend them.” He made short work of the ice on the windows and brushed off the extra snow, handing back the scraper.

“Well, Edna and I are committed to each other. It’s till-engine-failure-do-us-part.”

He was grinning now, hands deep in his pockets, staring down at her. “Your car is named Edna.”

“That’s what she says.” Evie angled into the seat, dropped the scraper back on the floor and buckled up. “Thank you for the escort. And the window service.”

He didn’t answer, just raised a hand as she shut the door. As she pulled out of the lot, he was still standing there, looking amused.

The heater was going full blast and it was still twenty degrees in the Beetle, but Evie didn’t feel the cold. She turned toward The Chronicle offices, struggling to get her head back in the game. They had a big story shaping up and she needed to be ready to make decisions. But her mind kept returning to the man she had just left. He took a terrible tragedy and turned it into a life mission to help others. Handsome, yes. Educated, yes. Smart and purpose-driven, yes and yes. But all of those things added up to a man who wouldn’t want a woman with her sort of past. It was the kind of past that never went away, no matter how many community service articles she ran.

Chapter Four

“Did you get the message about the O’Brian’s car dealership ad? He says it’s faded and the type is hard to read.” Jolie plopped into the chair across from Evie’s enormous, battered oak desk and huffed out a breath. “Obviously somebody told him that. He was fine with the full color copy I showed him last week.”

Evie massaged her right temple and tried to smile. It was turning into the worst Friday on record. The newsroom was in chaos because the lawyers had nixed a major feature they’d planned. All they cared about was whether the paper would get sued. She would fire them, except that’s what she’d hired them to do, so she was stuck with following their advice.

“I’ll call him. Maybe he got ahold of a bad copy. Maybe it was passed around too much. What I saw looked great.”

She hated bad news, but Evie couldn’t shoot the messenger. Especially since Jolie was the best computer graphic designer she’d ever hired. No one else wanted to take a chance on a nineteen-year-old college dropout with hot pink highlights, but something about Jolie reminded Evie of herself at that age. Not the nibbled nails or the crazy punk-inspired clothes, for sure. It was more her obvious desire to prove to the world that she was more than just a girl. And the bucketfuls of attitude might be a little familiar, too.

“It was great, don’t you doubt it.” She shrugged and crossed one slim leg over the other, wiggling a foot until her polka-dot ballet flat hung by her toes. “Hey, why doesn’t your dad want to place an ad? I was looking at a Colorado Supplements brochure and the graphics were totally old-school. We could do a whole lot better than whoever he hired for that flyer.”

Evie dropped her gaze to her desktop and pretended to scroll through a few pages. Her father would never hire her. He thought she was just goofing around, playing at running a paper while Jack was the one who did the real work. But anybody who really knew the guy understood that Jack had about as much of an aptitude for business as the proverbial fish on a bicycle. “Yeah, I should ask him about that.”