Josh had lived the big city, daily newspaper life once and found it to his liking. He specialized in stories that exposed official corruption or advocated for the powerless against the bureaucracy. Atlanta had been a target-rich environment. He’d attracted some notice. And he’d connected with a young woman there, the daughter of the owner and publisher of the weekly newspaper in a small West Virginia town.
He was a reporter. Sharon Hardesty sold advertising. He was impressed that she respected journalism. She was amazed he understood the business side. They’d breeched the church-state divide between their departments with secret lunches and cocktails after work, had fallen in love and gotten married. After two years of monthly heartbreak and frustration, they rejoiced with the miracle workers at the Emory University Medical Center and welcomed Katie into their happy family.
At the paper, Josh had been promoted to the investigative reporting staff—on track for a Pulitzer, he was sure. Until the scandal. Was that the right word? Sharon’s word, “incident,” was too non-descriptive. The paper had labeled it a “mistake” but he still wasn’t prepared to accept it as such. Scandal was right. Whatever else was said about what happened, “scandal” fit.
In the middle of it all, Sharon’s father died and left her the News. Still stung by what had happened and his subsequent demotion to the night cops beat, Josh suggested that they move with baby Katie to Winston. He’d take over production of the paper.
Quitting had not been easy. He still kept two buttons stuck to a cork board behind his credenza that the Atlanta staff had given him at a beery, sometimes teary, send-off. The buttons commemorated two of his favorite newsroom sayings. One read, “Rake Muck.” The other, “Question Authority.” But when he left for Winston, Josh understood he was forsaking forever investigative reporting, the hope for a Pulitzer Prize and the chance for journalistic redemption. Just as well. He’d had about all the crusading he could stand.
An enormous task confronted him at the News. Technology and innovation had been put on hold during the late publisher’s declining years and Josh found himself deeper into computer issues than he ever hoped to be. On the other hand, the work meant there was little time to look back—except, inevitably, when Pulitzers were announced in April and he suffered until the news cycle moved on.
Socially, the adjustment was easier than he and Sharon had expected. Fueled by new jobs, Winston had started to grow after a century of stagnation. The high school that Katie would soon attend was brand new. Big brick homes owned by executives now perched on the first low ridge that swelled from the flat land. They made friends. The shopping center on the edge of town brought new businesses that proved to be new sources of advertising revenue for the paper.
They’d run the News together until Sharon got too sick. For the last three years, the job had been his alone.
With Sharon, the workload had been manageable. They’d even been able to carve out two weeks of vacation—the week in the summer after the special issue that focused on the town’s Old Fashioned River Days festival and at Christmas when the editions were combined into a special year-end review.
Without Sharon, the workload was crushing. Except for Sunday, which he reserved exclusively for Katie, there was a deadline every day. Monday, correspondents’ copy and editorials; Tuesday, news copy, ad placement and page design; Wednesday, story placement and headline writing; Thursday, proofing, printing and delivery; Friday, ad sales; Saturday, catch up on the business side—the payables and receivables, and the big question: which advertisers he could afford to carry another week before they paid and which he could not. It was an important question. Advertising was not a product like a car or a television that could be repossessed if the buyer failed to pay. On the other hand, it was tough to turn down business as long as there was hope for remuneration.
The pace was perfect for life after Sharon. It was predictable. He was good at the work. It consumed almost every conscious moment of his life that wasn’t devoted to his daughter, filling some of the emptiness, distracting him from his suffering until bedtime stabbed him in the heart again.
He looked at the two silver-framed photos on his desk. His beloved Sharon, poolside, smile brighter than the sun, hair pulled into a ponytail, when she was healthy. Katie in her red and black soccer uniform, one foot perched on a ball. When you’re a father raising a thirteen-year-old daughter by yourself, Josh reflected, it helps to have at least one place where you know what you are doing.
Despite that, he had decided it was time to move on. Weeklies like the News hadn’t yet suffered the circulation and advertising declines of daily newspapers, but who knew how long that would last? Although he wasn’t ready to inform his staff, he’d reached a handshake agreement to sell the News and its commercial printing operation, hoping to close the deal during the summer and relocate to Atlanta in time for Katie to start high school in the fall. He’d asked some of his former colleagues to alert him if they heard about a good deal on a house. He figured the proceeds from the sale of the News would tide him over until he found a job. He was thinking of something in public relations, although appearing before his former colleagues as a supplicant seeking favorable press for a client was going to be awkward.
Josh noticed with relief that the skies were starting to clear. Calls from readers who’d received wet papers were the worst. First, when they occurred, there were usually a lot of them. Second, he couldn’t do much to fix the problem. Perhaps this week, he’d dodge the wet paper bullet.
Josh headed for the pressroom. He was pleased to see workers already replacing the conference room’s threadbare carpeting, a long-neglected project he’d authorized so as not to leave a poor impression when representatives of the prospective new owners arrived for due diligence.
He entered the pressroom and tapped on the shoulder of Jimmy Mayes, a part-Indian whose jet-black ponytail and beaded leather hair tie made him unmistakable from behind.
“How’s it going?” Josh signed.
Because the ability to speak and hear was of no advantage in the roar of a newspaper pressroom, and fluency in sign language was essential, press crews often included non-hearing, non-speaking operators. The Winston News was no exception. Mayes gave him two thumbs up. Josh felt the huge Goss Community offset press crank to life. He glanced at the tall oak cabinet with the hand-wound factory floor clock that had belonged to Sharon’s father. Right on time.
He grabbed one of the first copies off the press and was waiting in front of Winston Middle School at 3:15 p.m. when its massive green front doors sprung open and a flood of blue-jeaned, backpack-laden kids cascaded down the granite steps into an ever-widening pool at the bottom.
Josh had no problem spotting Katie. Her jeans, blouse, backpack, blonde pony-tail pulled through a baseball cap—all those were within the current fashion norms that teens mysteriously established, communicated and regularly altered. But Katie stood out, literally. At age thirteen, she was five feet, ten inches—almost a head taller than most of the girls and all of the boys. His heart warmed at the sight of her.
He watched her scan the cars in the middle school pickup line until she spotted the Volvo. She sprinted to it, left arm flailing to balance the heavy pack on her right shoulder.
“Hi, Dad,” she said as she plopped into the passenger seat and slung her backpack onto the rear floorboard.
He gave her a kiss on the cheek. Katie squirmed away giggling. “Dad, you’re embarrassing me!”
Josh laughed. “That’s what dads do. Now, let’s go see Dr. Wright and find out what’s up with your leg.”
Allison Wright began making mental notes for the patient file. Well-nourished, Caucasian