Chapter 12 Sebastian
It wasn’t going to work. That was all there was to it. He was going to drive Orly and Brynn to the Bean, divert his eyes while
the citizens of Adelaide Springs unleashed their wrath on her, and then beg the most kindhearted person in sight to relieve
him of his duties. Well, the most kindhearted person who wasn’t Laila. She was too kindhearted. He couldn’t do that to her.
Spending a little time with Murrow had had the effect it always did. The very effect Murrow had been trained to deliver, in
fact. But the fact that Sebastian had been thinking of Murrow that way again—as a psychiatric service dog rather than just
a pet—was unsettling. It had been a while. He’d come too far and made too much progress to ignore the signs and triggers when
he saw them in front of him.
Brynn Cornell was nothing more to him than a five-foot-eight walking, talking trigger in impractical boots.
And now, for some strange reason, that trigger was smiling at him and waving. That was new.
“Sorry I took so long,” Sebastian offered as he climbed back into the vehicle. And he even sort of meant it.
“That’s no problem at all.” Brynn beamed at him in the rearview mirror. A different smile than before. Still strange. Still
fake, he assumed. But not quite as obviously, obnoxiously so. “Is everything okay with... Oh, I’m sorry... What did
you say your dog’s name is again?”
“Murrow. And everything’s fine. Thanks.”
“Murrow! That’s a great name. After Edward R. Murrow, I presume?” She settled into the center seat of the bench and buckled
the lap belt. A little more softly she added, “‘And that’s the way it is.’”
Seriously. The woman would have found a way to ruin journalism even if her sole responsibility was reporting on the Goofus
and Gallant comic in Highlights magazine.
Sebastian cleared his throat and then backed out of his driveway and onto the county road toward Main Street. “‘And that’s
the way it is’ was Walter Cronkite. Murrow’s sign-off was, ‘Good night, and good luck.’”
Orly had said it in unison with him, both of them adopting their best low, gravelly Murrow voice, which caused them to look
at each other in surprise and chuckle.
Brynn sighed in the back seat, and Sebastian glanced in the mirror again. What was it going to be this time? Annoyance that
they were wasting time when they should have been talking about her? Disgust that they had left her out of their little inside
joke? Or that other reaction? The one he actually sort of liked, even if that meant he was a horrible person—because when
she seemed sad, she seemed real.
“That’s right.” Her voice was quiet, but she wasn’t pouty.
Surprising. “I should have known that. I loved the George Clooney movie. And before you say something about how of course I only know Edward R. Murrow because George Clooney made a movie about him . . . Well, I can’t really deny it.
I was in college when that came out.” She stared out the window as she had so much already that morning, but this introspection took on a totally different temperament.
It seemed every bit as real, but if there was any sadness there, Sebastian couldn’t spot it.
“I was an art history major—not because I was particularly into art . . . or history. But it just seemed like a classy, respectable thing to get a degree in.”
She tilted her eyes upward at the mirror and offered Sebastian what he interpreted as a humble and self-aware smile. Again,
surprising. “Then some friends and I went to see that movie. And yes, I was only interested because I had a crush on George
Clooney, and if I’d had any idea it was such a ‘brainy movie,’ as my friend called it, I probably never would have gone. But
that ‘brainy movie’ unlocked something in me. It made me care, I guess. Not about Murrow, necessarily. No offense to your
dog.” She caught his eyes again and winked. “And not about McCarthyism, specifically. Although... yeah. But mostly just
about the power of television. The power of words , I guess, and what the right words could do when combined with a little bit of courage.”
The space in the Bronco had completely transformed under her power.
Sebastian was acutely aware of it at once, and boy oh boy, was it fascinating.
It was sort of like elephant snot, or whatever that stuff kids liked to make explode in YouTube videos was called.
You took simple ingredients—hydrogen peroxide and yeast or something.
Ingredients you thought you knew and understood and that really didn’t have any surprises left in them.
And then you added salt or canola oil. Something.
(Who could keep up with all the viral science experiments these days?) And those dull household ingredients that you thought you understood did this crazy thing and invaded the space all around them.
And sure, it made a mess. But you’d deal with the mess later.
For the moment, all you could do was enjoy being surrounded by this totally new thing that didn’t resemble peroxide, yeast, or candle wax at all.
No... it wasn’t candle wax.
Sebastian turned onto Main Street and slowed down to a snail’s crawl. The illustrious quarter mile that was downtown Adelaide
Springs was the most bustling few blocks for many miles around. Regardless of the weather, you could count on seeing citizens
milling around on foot and dogs being walked. Depending on the temperature outside and Maxine Brogan’s relationship with reality
on any given day, there was even a chance of seeing a bearded dragon named Prince Charlemagne on a leash. This day was no
exception. It was too cold for Prince Charlemagne, but everything else about Main Street was living up to its reputation.
And Sebastian fully expected the sight of people and places and the anticipation of the interactions to come to send the Brynn
Cornell of the last couple minutes back into her fortress.
But apparently her household components weren’t done interacting with the magnesium citrate. (He was going to have to look
up that third ingredient later or it was really going to nag at him.)
“I know that probably sounds really stupid.” She sat up straighter, and she was definitely taking in the view outside the
window. But her voice remained calm. The subdued smile stayed in place. “Choosing a career path because of a movie, I mean.”
“For me it was All the President’s Men ,” Sebastian said without thinking. He had never intended to broach the subject of his past career. Orly knew, of course,
and Brynn probably did, somewhere deep down, at least. Even with all the humility and self-deprecation he felt most of the
time, he knew that outside of small-town America and outside of his own brain, he had been a pretty famous guy. But still.
The last thing he wanted to do—with anyone —was invite in prying eyes and inquiring minds.
He waved at Clint Boyd and waited for him to back his Lincoln out of the angled parking space so he could pull into it, and he tried to think of a way to surreptitiously change the subject. But Orly—intentionally or not—took that bullet for him.
“ Rear Window .” Brynn and Sebastian both turned to look at him in confusion, and he shrugged. “It’s about a photographer.”
“It’s about a voyeur!” Laughter burst from Brynn, and Sebastian couldn’t help but chuckle with her.
“And a murderer,” Sebastian added. “Let’s not forget it’s about a murderer.”
“You’re both wrong!” Orly smiled, good-natured as always. “Well... maybe you’re not wrong . But it wasn’t really about a voyeur or a murderer to me. It was about a voyeur who used his camera to catch a murderer.
And that sparked something in me. There is tremendous power to be found in the lens of a camera. It all just comes down to
whether you use the power for good or evil.”
Sebastian put the Bronco into Park and then glanced again at the rearview mirror and was surprised to see Brynn smiling at
him. He couldn’t quite decipher it, but he suspected that if he pulled his gaze away from hers and looked into the mirror
at his own eyes, he’d find the same... what? What was it, exactly? Reverence, maybe? Awe and wonder at the medium they
loved, and maybe even a little bit of unspoken, unexpected gratitude to be caught up in an uncommon moment in which everyone
shared that reverence?
Maybe.
Or maybe her smile was the result of images of George Clooney still flitting through her head.
“Hey, Brynn?” Orly was leaning forward in his seat, turning his head to the left and then the right and then back again as
he watched the citizens of Adelaide Springs mill about.
Brynn exhaled and diverted her eyes to Orly as she unbuckled her seat belt. “Yeah?”
“I appreciate that heads-up you gave me on the plane. You know, the one about how I’d probably be the only Catholic in town.
City folk. All of that.” He expanded his view by turning around to face Brynn and, by extension, the sidewalk on the other side of Main Street.
“But I think you neglected to mention this is a town made up entirely of white folks.”
A sheepish expression overtook her face, while Sebastian laughed and elbowed Orly. “Not entirely. Mostly ,” he conceded. “But not entirely.”
Brynn leaned in and rested her elbows on each of the front seat backs. “It’s just that the town was founded by a bunch of
white settlers in the 1800s, and no one else exactly flocked here in the years since the silver mining dried up.” She turned
to Sebastian. “I mean, I guess. Any big influx I don’t know about in the last twenty years?”
Sebastian turned to her and was surprised to discover her face so close to him. He was even more surprised when she didn’t
budge upon the discovery of their proximity to each other.
“Nope. I’m pretty sure I am the sum and substance of the twenty-first-century Adelaide Springs population boom.”
It was her scent that surprised him most. If he’d been asked to make a wager, he would have put his money on her smelling