Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Eighteen Months Ago
Syria
About a year and a half after Elena’s father’s death, Elena was in the midst of a far bigger story than she’d ever broken—one she knew would invigorate her career and had the potential to launch her name far above Timothy’s.
There was a risk that Timothy wouldn’t be able to handle her renown above his own, but it was a chance she had to take, especially after everything she’d gone through.
She wasn’t sure if Timothy loved her anyway.
She loved him, though. Pretty desperately.
Maybe that was a sickness she had to get over.
Elena was at the office, typing her article furiously, checking and re-checking her notes and recorded interviews.
Elena had spent more than a year gathering some near-perfect witnesses and sources for this article, one that spoke of corruption at a far higher level in the Syrian government, one that spoke of an impending bombing slated for next week.
If Elena played her cards right, she could stop the bombing in its tracks—and bring about a new era of prosperity in the region.
In her greatest daydreams, she imagined that her article would end the war, that she’d ultimately save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. It was every journalist’s dream.
Maybe it wasn’t entirely logical, but Elena had to feel like her career was for the good of humanity, especially now that her mother refused to talk to her. Especially now that Timothy—and her job—were all she had.
Elena couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept more than a couple of hours at a time.
Suddenly, Elena’s phone rang with a call from one of her sources. The source had never called her this late before, but Elena was programmed to handle anything, especially at this late stage of pre-publishing.
The source’s name was Noor, and she was the wife of a high-up official.
Elena and Noor had become close friends over the past year, frequently sharing insecurities and fears.
Elena hated how much of her own relationship she saw in Noor’s marriage, how her husband belittled her in much the same way Timothy had belittled Elena.
I was supposed to be a strong woman, Elena thought now.
But I’m so much weaker than my own mother.
Noor had bad news. “I’m getting nervous,” she said. “I don’t know if I want you to use my quotes any longer.”
Elena’s heart seized with panic. She was on her feet, walking back and forth, gesticulating as though Noor could see her.
“You can’t let yourself get nervous. These quotes are essential for the entire story.
We could save people, Noor. We could break this thing wide open.
And like I said, I won’t be using your name. ”
But Noor was sure that news of her “tattling” would get back to her husband, as well as other people connected to her husband, all of whom would hurt her if they found out. “I’m pregnant,” she confessed then, her voice very small. “I haven’t told anyone yet. I need to protect my baby.”
Elena thought she was alone in the office.
She’d been alone at the office for the better part of five hours, working tirelessly in a way that reminded her of her mother at The Millbrook Gazette.
She began to speak rapidly, outlining their strategy, the importance of Noor’s quotes, and what would happen next.
“You’ll be safe,” she told her, although they both knew that Elena couldn’t promise anything like that.
“It’s going to be all right. We’ll do everything we can to protect you. ”
And then, right when Noor had to get off the phone to tend to something at home, or maybe because her husband had woken up or come back, Elena turned on her heel and found Timothy watching her.
He had his arms folded over his chest. His eyes were catlike.
Elena’s chest heaved. How long had he been watching her? How long had he been listening?
But it’s just Timothy, she thought. I can trust him. He’s a fantastic journalist. He knows how essential it is to keep things under wraps.
But she cursed herself for her sloppiness. Someone had overheard her conversation with her top secret source.
“Hey,” she said to him, her voice wavering.
“Hey there.” Timothy sounded overly confident. “How’s your night?”
Elena glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s three in the morning.”
“It certainly is,” Timothy said.
“You’re still working?” Elena asked.
Timothy shrugged. “You know it isn’t too weird for me to stay up for a story. It’s what we do, don’t we? We do everything for the rush of all this.”
“Of course.” Elena touched her hair and tried to find in his eyes proof that he knew more than he should. “Do you want to go home?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Timothy said.
Elena forced a smile and told herself this was normal, that her boyfriend loved her and wanted to make sure she got to bed safely.
She hurried to pack away her things and leave the office with Timothy by her side.
But all the while, nausea crawled through her stomach, and she felt sure that nothing would be all right again.
Ultimately, Elena’s instincts were correct.
But it took a little while for everything to break apart.
Over the next few days, Elena spoke tirelessly with Noor and her other sources, preparing to publish the story that would propel her career into the stratosphere.
But in the meantime, Timothy was acting strangely.
Elena couldn’t help but imagine what she thought was the worst. She assumed he was cheating on her, that he’d finally met someone else.
Elena guessed it was Beverly, who was a whip-smart reporter a few years younger than Elena, with copper hair and almond eyes.
She’d seen Beverly and Timothy flirting a few times, exchanging secrets in a way that made Elena think Timothy and Beverly were better suited to one another.
Elena wasn’t sure what her life would be like post-Timothy.
She couldn’t imagine going back to the United States and facing her mother.
She couldn’t imagine leaving her post as a war correspondent.
Maybe, if Timothy wanted to date Beverly, Elena could get used to seeing them out and about.
She could get used to Beverly taking her place.
But right before Elena felt brave enough to corner Timothy and ask him about his relationship with Beverly, Timothy came out with the truth.
“The story you’re about to break isn’t correct,” he said. “Not any longer.”
They were at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and reading the news.
Elena yanked her head up to look at him.
“How do you know anything about the story I’m about to break?
” The story was already with the editor and slated for publication online that afternoon.
It would be printed in all major newspapers by tomorrow morning.
By tomorrow afternoon, she suspected that her name would be on the lips of all jealous reporters.
Timothy took a long sip of coffee and gave her a beady-eyed smile. “You’d better call your editor and tell him to cancel it.”
“And you’d better explain why you want me to do that,” Elena shot. “Unless it has everything to do with your ego and nothing to do with the truth.”
Timothy leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I spoke with some of your sources.”
Elena’s ears rang. “What are you talking about?”
“I broke into your phone.”
Elena was on her feet. So furious, her eyes were red, and she couldn’t see him. “I beg your pardon?” she demanded.
“You heard me. You’re an intelligent woman,” Timothy said. “You know what this means.”
“I know it means you’re a conniving idiot,” Elena said. “I know you know this might have put numerous lives at risk.”
Timothy shrugged and pressed his own cell phone across the table. There, on the screen, was a draft of his newly written article, which cited Noor as a source, along with a few others that Elena had spent months recruiting and nurturing. The betrayal was the worst thing she’d ever experienced.
Suddenly, Elena’s own phone buzzed with a text message from Noor.
In it, Noor said: You betrayed me. You gave someone my name and number.
How can I ever trust you again? Elena slammed through the apartment, trying and failing to reach Noor.
It was clear that Noor thought that Elena had given her up to Timothy.
And it was true that Elena had been lazy and thoughtless.
She’d allowed this to happen. But she could fix it.
But Noor didn’t answer the phone. Elena fell to her knees and began to sob. She didn’t know what would happen after this, didn’t know how her source had reacted in the wake of this betrayal. But she guessed that it wouldn’t end well.
The next twenty-four hours were the worst in Elena’s life.
First, she tried to contact her editor to tell him what happened.
She told him that her source had been compromised and that it was apparent the source no longer trusted her.
“There’s no telling what she’s said to her husband,” Elena said.
“We can’t publish the article. We don’t know whether it’s filled with lies anymore. We can’t know what will happen next.”
“I don’t understand,” her editor said. “How could your source have been compromised?”
But a few minutes later, another power outage occurred, and another generator broke down. The cell phone towers went down. And in the next three hours, on another server far from the Middle East, Elena’s article was published and sent into the wide world.
Almost immediately—or so Elena learned later—the Syrian army sounded the alarm.
Noor’s husband was angry and claimed that the quotes were inaccurate.
The war was electrified. A few of Elena’s sources came forward and contradicted everything she had claimed in her article.
Out of anger, the Kurdish army threw a few bombs on a village fifteen miles away from Elena, sending mini earthquakes through Elena’s floorboards.
Elena was up all night, so upset that she couldn’t cry.
She couldn’t breathe. She nearly fainted and vomited twice.
Timothy had done this. But she was responsible, too.
The following morning, her editor knocked and knocked on her apartment door until she opened up.
She looked ragged and worse for wear. Her editor came in, slamming the door behind him and screaming about how she’d betrayed her sources, how her sources had gone against her, how she’d created an awful name for herself within Syria and the greater war correspondent world.
“I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to trust you again,” he said meekly, breaking the bonds of a multiyear friendship.
Elena just nodded, unable to fight for herself. She knew that Timothy had betrayed her, that he’d been the reason for Noor turning on her. But if she told her editor that the reason everything fell apart was because of the greatest love she’d ever known, she’d be laughed out of Syria anyway.
He fired her, obviously. But she’d known he would.
In the papers, the next few days were articles about Elena’s failure and the loss of her job.
People said that she was the reason that more than fifty people had died in the bombings.
Elena wore the weight of this like a boulder on her shoulders.
She packed up her things and took a cab to the airport, where she wore a disguise before boarding the plane.
When she landed in New York City, she read that she’d been blacklisted and would never again work as a war correspondent.
She didn’t hear from Timothy, presumably because he was being celebrated for a recent article that “got all the facts right.”
Timothy is the gold standard when it comes to war correspondence, someone had written on social media. We shouldn’t blame him for what happened to his ex-girlfriend and ex-colleague. It’s clear that jealousy got the better of her, and she tried to leapfrog over Timothy’s career. She couldn’t do it.
During that first week in New York City, Elena half-expected that things would clear up in her favor.
She imagined that Timothy would see the light of day, call her editor, and explain what had really happened, that he’d stolen her sources out from under her and changed the game.
When that didn’t happen, Elena considered calling her mother for help.
But because Carmen read everything there was to read—and probably googled her daughter’s name regularly—she knew her mother knew about her “shamefully bad journalism.” She couldn’t face that.
She imagined her mother saying, "What would your Grandma Rosa say?" And Elena wouldn’t know how to respond. She’d never even known Grandma Rosa, and neither had her mother.
One good thing, Elena supposed, was that she’d hardly spent any money over in Syria, which meant that she had enough to live on for a little while as she considered what to do next.
She got a studio apartment in Queens and watched television all day, every day: mostly sitcoms that had plotlines that made her brain feel like sludge.
She gained weight, then forgot to eat and lost it again.
It was hard for her to fathom that she’d ever spent fifteen-plus hours a day chasing stories, interviewing sources, and writing tight little sentences that had a lot of impact on the world.
When she first met the people who ran the bodega down the street—Butros and his father and mother, all from Syria—her heart went out to them.
They reminded her of her sources, of the people Timothy and Elena had wronged, of the people who’d been bombed.
That first time, she bought more than fifty dollars' worth of supplies at the bodega, then went home and wept into her pillow.
Like that, months went by. When things got dire, she grabbed a freelance gig and made enough money to live on. She turned forty-one, then forty-two. She imagined the rest of her life might go on like that.
And then, one Thanksgiving a year and a half after her life had fallen apart, her mother collapsed at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony—and everything changed again, just like that.