Chapter 16
Over a week had passed since Mary had her wisdom teeth removed. Each day when she woke up, she expected to be in her bed in Hudson, in the dentist’s chair, or maybe in a hospital, waking up from a coma. She spent the first few minutes of every morning wondering how it was possible that she was twenty-four again and thanking her lucky stars that she had the opportunity to undo the greatest mistake of her life.
When she stepped outside onto the landing to leave for work, Brady was walking up the driveway with Frank Sinatra. She spun around and went back inside, shutting the door behind her. If she avoided him, then maybe she’d never remember what had happened between them, because she definitely didn’t want to bring those memories home to her marriage.
When she finally arrived at work, there was a message from Mitchell, summoning her to his office. As she walked down the hallway, she wondered if he’d already decided about the promotion and picked up her pace. Kimberly and Harvey, the chief meteorologist, were there standing in front of Mitchell’s desk. Mary squeezed in between them, hoping she hadn’t missed out on a good assignment by being late.
“It’s a rare summer nor’easter,” Harvey said. “Damaging winds, dangerous tides, and soaking rain.”
Mary knew what was coming—an assignment outside in driving rain and fierce winds, reporting on the storm. Mary version 1 had gotten stuck reporting in the thick of several storms. She and Carl had almost been killed during Hurricane Bob when a telephone pole came crashing down, just missing the news van. She glanced at Kimberly and stood a little taller. Her experience doing these types of stories would give her an edge over Kimberly.
“The coastal towns will get hammered. Hingham, Cohasset, Scituate, Gloucester, Marblehead,” Harvey said. His eyes were bloodshot, and a tuft of his silver hair stood at attention in the center of his head. He’d unbuttoned the sleeves of his dress shirt and pushed them back to his elbows. A red tie hung out of his left pocket and streamed down his wrinkled pant leg. One of his shoes was even untied.
He must have been up all night tracking the storm. Still, Mary didn’t feel sorry for him. At least he got to work inside the comfort of his warm, dry office. Mary and Kimberly didn’t have that luxury. From the looks of things, they’d be outside all day tomorrow in the elements.
“Thanks, Harvey.” Mitchell rubbed his hands together. “Ladies, looks like we’re in for a doozy.”
Harvey smiled at Kimberly and Mary on his way out of the room. “Don’t either of you pull a Liz Collins,” he said.
Mitchell laughed.
Kimberly scrunched her nose. “Never.”
“Did he say Liz Collins?” Mary asked, her tone uncertain.
Mitchell’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who Liz Collins is?”
America’s most trusted broadcaster. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she knew they weren’t true in this version of her life, so she swallowed them. Mitchell stared at her with his lips pressed tightly together. She had to say something. “Of course I do.”
Mitchell raised an eyebrow. “Who is she?”
Mary’s underarms felt sticky. Clearly everyone knew who Liz was. She shouldn’t have listened to Darbi. She should have googled Liz. Hoping for help, she turned to Kimberly, but she should have known better. They were on opposite teams now. Kimberly picked a piece of lint off her sleeve.
Mary fiddled with the charm on her necklace. “She used to work here?” Her voice was barely a whisper. She wasn’t even sure if that was true.
“Come on, Mitchell,” Kimberly cut in. “Everyone knows she walked off camera straight into retirement in the middle of covering a raging storm.”
Mary’s hand shot up to cover her gaping mouth. The Liz she’d known had been a strong, determined woman. She never would have let a storm wash away her career.
“Watch video of her and learn,” Mitchell said. “Until that infamous day, she was the best in the business at covering inclement weather. Tomorrow you both get your chance. Mary, you’ll go with Carl to the South Shore, and Kimberly, you’re with Matt up north.” He rubbed his hands together. “Since you’re both covering the same story, I’ll have the perfect opportunity to compare your skills. So, up your game, ladies.”
After work, Kimberly asked Mary to go to dinner. “I don’t want this competition to ruin our friendship. We need to keep things normal,” she said.
Mary felt a surge of affection for the girl. Certainly Liz had never said anything like that to her, nor had she said anything similar to Liz. Perhaps she and Kimberly could remain friends despite the competition.
At five thirty, they headed across the street to the Press Box, a restaurant that most of the news crew ate at from time to time. Fluffy white clouds floated in a blue sky, making it hard to believe a storm was blowing in. They sat at a high-top table outside on a deck that overlooked a highway. Cars were stacked up one behind another, trying to get home but not moving. The first time Mary had worked for Channel 77, Boston’s rush hour really had been only an hour. Over the years, though, traffic in the area had become so bad that there was only a small window of time when there wasn’t a backup on the highways.
As Mary read the menu, Kimberly fiddled with her phone. “I can’t believe you don’t know who Liz Collins is. Anyone who grew up around here remembers her dressed like the Gorton’s Fisherman, standing by the seawall in Scituate, looking like she was about to be swept out to sea.”
Under the table, Mary’s knee bounced up and down as she waited for the dizzy spell that usually came before a brain dump. It didn’t come. She needed to make up some type of excuse for not knowing who Liz was, but she couldn’t think clearly. The sounds of horns blowing and motors idling from the traffic jam below them distracted her. She could even hear a radio, a booming bass, and then she could have sworn she heard Liz’s voice, albeit a less refined version of the voice Liz used on the nightly news.
“High tide is still an hour away!” the voice that sounded like Liz’s screamed, presumably trying to be heard over what sounded like gusting wind. “The people who live here have dealt with this before.” The reporter’s enunciation wasn’t as pronounced, but it was definitely Liz.
Kimberly angled the phone so Mary could see it. Liz’s image filled the small screen. She wore black rubber boots, bright-yellow snow pants, and a matching yellow bubble coat. The tip of her runny nose glowed bright red, her lips were chapped, and her windblown hair dripped water down her forehead. She held tight to a flagpole with the hand that wasn’t holding the microphone. Behind her, the ocean raged, waves swelling higher than her head and crashing violently just before the seawall.
“The worst of the storm is still to come,” Liz said.
Off camera, someone yelled, “Watch out!”
Liz turned toward the stormy Atlantic. A wave breached the wall, swallowing her whole. For a tense few seconds, there was no sign of her on-screen. The water retreated. Liz was on her knees, the water up to her chest, seaweed hanging from her hair. As she struggled to stand, another wave rolled over her.
Mary watched, horrified. Even though fifty-four-year-old Mary was jealous of her old nemesis’s success, seeing Liz risk her life and be humiliated in the process brought Mary version 2 no joy.
Liz finally made it to her feet. The camera zoomed in on her face. Mascara streamed down her cheeks. She didn’t have a microphone, and her voice was barely audible over the wind and crashing waves. But Mary could read her lips. The entire world could have read Liz’s lips. The wind stopped, or Liz’s voice had overpowered it. “I’m done. I”—here, there was a loud bleep—“quit.” The camera followed her sopping-wet backside as she stormed away from the violent sea and toward the parking lot.
The server arrived at their table and looked down over Mary’s shoulder at Kimberly’s screen. “Whenever I think I’m having a bad day at work,” she said, “I think of that poor woman.”
The screen went black, and the anchors were back on camera, insincere looks of concern on their faces. “That’s our Liz Collins braving the elements in Scituate to report the news to you,” the male anchor said.
“Stay safe, Liz,” the female anchor said.
Kimberly reached for her phone. “There are so many great memes from that day.”
“Oh, I know,” the server said. “Some of my favorites.”
Kimberly tapped at her phone and turned the screen toward Mary and the server again. There was Liz halfway to her feet as the giant wave rolled over her, playing on an endless loop.
Mary thought of the version of Liz she had known, dignified and poised behind the CBS anchor desk, smiling and proud on the cover of People . She stared at this humiliated version of Liz on Kimberly’s phone getting ragdolled by the waves, the worst moment of her career frozen on-screen, a joke for all eternity. Mary felt as if she herself had been pummeled by the waves and was now underwater, fighting to get to the surface but not knowing which direction was up.
Why was Liz’s life so different just because she hadn’t met Mary? It made no sense.
Mary tried to remember what she knew about the butterfly effect. Something about a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world causing a tornado someplace else several weeks later. The point was that a small change somewhere could result in enormous differences in something seemingly unrelated someplace else. She’d never thought much about it before, but thinking about it right now—with America’s most trusted broadcaster frozen on a tiny screen, looking like a drowned rat for all the world to see—sent chills down Mary’s spine. She swallowed hard as she looked away from the phone and out at the brake lights below her, and she wondered what other unintended damage she’d caused by having her wisdom teeth removed and if any of the changes would carry over to her real life.