Chapter 6
Olivia
I was five when I almost died. My brother and I had been playing on the balcony at home, and I tripped, hitting my head on the guardrail. The memory is broken, just fragments that sometimes came back to me in dreams.
My brother’s voice was small, childlike: “Olivia? Olivia, wake up!” I remembered his finger prodding into the side of my arm, and the warm feeling underneath my head, where the blood had pooled.
Then my mother screaming.
After this, all I remembered was white walls, bright lights, and face masks. A woman telling me that everything is going to be just fine and a man shining a flashlight into my eye.
Next, I remembered stirring in the hospital.
I was still in the emergency department, because another child had been wheeled in with two broken ankles and was screaming curse words, most of which I had never even heard before.
The doctor was at my bedside, and so was my mother.
She was dressed the way she was usually dressed: immaculately.
She was the kind of woman who could walk into any room, and people’s heads would turn.
When she was talking to someone, they would often stutter.
That was the reaction my mother evoked from people, and it didn’t matter who they were, where they were from, or what they did: they would always respond in the same dizzy way, as though she had put some sort of spell on them.
My mother had checked her watch. “The babysitter should be here soon,” she told the doctor.
“Ms. Piroso, your daughter has a concussion and required seven stitches.”
My mother had looked at the doctor, momentarily confused, before replying, “And I’m on the air in an hour.”
Bonnie Piroso, the first female TV anchor from Everston.
I loved my mother, and I will always love my mother.
But I never liked her.
“Liv.” I looked up from my desk. Josh was standing there with a paper bag. “You eaten?”
“If that’s a tuna sandwich, I don’t want it.”
He grinned. “Meatball.”
I grimaced. “I don’t really want that either.”
He pulled another paper bag from his satchel. “Well, lucky for you, I got you turkey.”
“Extra mayo?”
“Always.”
I sighed and took the sandwich from him. “Take me with you.”
He offered a rueful smile. “You know there’s no one else I’d rather be driving all over the state with.”
“Drinks this week?” I asked.
He looked back at me, sheepish.
“You have an assignment, don’t you?”
“Denver,” he replied. “Interview with Serena Williams.”
My jaw dropped slightly. “And Cassie got that?”
Josh sighed. “You’ll be back soon; just keep trying to get back into Colin’s good graces.”
I groaned as he gave me a solemn look and left me to my sandwich.
I was not supposed to be sitting at my desk, doing baseless tasks; I was supposed to be out in the field, with Josh, our cameraman, finding and reporting on stories.
I’d been a reporter for High Country Broadcasting, or HCB, for the last ten years, and I’d had more than my share of interesting stories and assignments—scores of hiking injuries, wildlife running rampant, plane crashes, three murders (not connected), car wrecks, politics and sporting events, even a fisherman once who caught a triple-headed trout.
I’d interviewed everyone from the governor and Peyton Manning to The Lumineers and the entire cast of The Hateful Eight.
I’d mingled with everyone from A-list celebrities to social media influencers (including spending the entire day with Doug the Pug), to local business owners, schoolteachers, and the entire Everston Fire Department, and yet I still lived in the shadow of my mother.
HCB was based in Norvale, thirty minutes outside of Everston.
We were a regional TV station, and Norvale was the biggest town in the region.
This didn’t mean that HCB hadn’t had its fair share of prize-winning stories; we even topped larger networks at the NAB awards for our on-the-ground reporting during the largest wildfire Colorado had ever seen.
My boss, Colin, who was our station manager, was thrilled by this.
But perhaps the greatest legacy to HCB was having one of the first regional female anchors.
My mother, Bonnie Piroso, a woman who became a household name across the region.
Her portrait still hung in the hall, her dressing room still smelled of her—a soft, powdery scent of jasmine—and everybody who worked at this station aspired to be like her.
Even me, although I never quite understood whether it was out of adoration or spite.
And yet, my mother would never have been assigned desk duty, because Bonnie Piroso would never have been suspended from active reporting, or, as Colin had eloquently put it, “Suspended until you get a grip.”
Eight weeks ago, news had been painfully slow.
It was off-peak season, which meant there were fewer injuries related to skiing or traffic accidents, or just tourist chaos in general.
I had not had any out-of-state stories planned, nor any “wow factor” stories on the horizon, just your run-of-the-mill local news.
Lots of simple puff pieces, which so many reporters complained about but, truthfully, I enjoyed.
You never knew who you were going to connect with when doing a story on the winner of the state’s “best ice cream flavor.” The story that I was covering at the time was a neighbor dispute in Norvale.
One neighbor kept placing dog poop on the doorstep of Mr. Pritchard, who, after a previous run-in, had wound up in a neck brace and was unable to bend down to remove the feces, which were now stinking up his front porch.
I did ask Josh whether the neck brace was real, because I’d seen Mr. Pritchard bend down to grab a beer half an hour before we interviewed him, but Josh insisted this only added to the story.
Before I was due to interview him, Wendy from hair and makeup had found an old coat of my mother’s in wardrobe and was positively delighted at the prospect of me wearing it for the segment.
As I’d slipped it on, checking that it fit me, I’d dug into the pockets and found a note.
It was a note my mother had written decades prior.
Livvy,
I am writing this on your prom night, filled with joy at seeing how beautiful you have become.
I’m so proud knowing my remarkable daughter came from me.
As you step into the limelight (prom queen, I’m sure), remember all that I have taught you.
You will turn heads and capture hearts, just as I did.
You’re captain of the cheer squad and dating Jasper Delaware, just as I always wanted.
All the sacrifices I have made have been worth it to ensure you have the best of everything.
You deserve nothing less. Always know that greatness is your birthright.
All my love,
Mom
Perhaps if my relationship with my mother had been normal, this note would have filled me with fond memories and joy.
But my relationship with her was anything but.
In truth, I didn’t receive this letter on my prom night.
I called her at eleven that night because Jasper Delaware had dumped me.
I called sixteen times and got her voicemail each time.
She’d flown to New York the same night to interview Duran Duran.
For my mother, the job always came first. I read this note an hour before I was due to go on air for the segment.
I’d then found a bottle of champagne in the news truck and decided to drink the entire bottle.
No one noticed at first. I wasn’t stumbling, wasn’t slurring, just coasting on the kind of numbness that made everything feel slightly removed, like watching myself from a distance.
It turned out that Mr. Pritchard, my subject for the interview, had attempted to poison the neighbor’s dog—hence their retaliation of dog feces on his doorstep.
I didn’t have a dog. But I loved dogs. So, in the spirit of loving dogs, and in the spirit of champagne, I launched a battle against Mr. Pritchard, which included throwing the dog poop at him.
By the time the camera crew realized I had gone completely off course, it was too late, the segment was live, and chaos had already ensued.
The video went viral, naturally, because who doesn’t want to see a drunk reporter, especially one who was the daughter of a decorated regional TV anchor, flinging dog poop in righteous fury?
Colin had been apoplectic. He ranted and raved for close to forty minutes (it could have been longer, but I wasn’t sober enough to be sure).
My punishment was swift: suspension from active reporting and a one-way ticket to desk duty “until further notice” or, as Colin so delicately put it, until I could “handle my affairs.” The problem with handling such affairs is that no one really explains how you’re supposed to handle your mother abruptly dying of a brain aneurysm, particularly when you harbor both love and resentment toward her.
Complicated feelings with a capital C. Add to that the fact that everyone I’d ever known absolutely adored her.
Now, eight weeks after the incident, I sat at my desk, relegated to menial tasks and missing active reporting. Colin emerged from the broadcasting studio and approached my chair. He handed me a stack of papers.
“You know, I’m feeling super good,” I said. “And I bet New York would make me feel even better, and—”
“You’re still suspended,” Colin replied, without looking up from his phone.
“Colin, with all due respect—”
“I knew your mother for twenty-five years,” he interjected. “I miss her terribly, but I’m not out here flinging dog feces at strangers and ruining the reputation of HCB!”
“He tried to poison the dog!”
“That doesn’t give you the right to throw shit at him!”
“But I—”