CHAPTER 26
Tessa
The article has been live for four days and I know this because my inbox tells me so.
Fourteen hundred and twelve unread emails as of this morning, a number I’ve stopped trying to reduce because every time I delete one, two more arrive to take its place.
Interview requests from the Times, the Post, NPR, three cable news networks, a podcast I’ve never heard of with eleven million subscribers.
A speaking inquiry from a journalism school in Boston.
A literary agent who found my personal email and wants to discuss a book proposal.
And two really good job offers.
The first from the New York Times, a senior investigative correspondent position that would have made twenty-six-year-old Tessa Ward sit down on the floor and put her head between her knees.
The second from Al Jazeera English—a bureau anchor role based in Doha, covering the Middle East. Benefits package, housing allowance, the kind of byline that opens doors I never thought I’d even be able to knock on.
I have both offers open in separate tabs on my computer and I’ve been looking at them on and off all morning. When I took on this story, in a million years I never thought it would bring me opportunity, but here I am with a wealth of it sitting before me.
My office is quiet while the rest of the newsroom churns around me. I manage to tune it all out—phones ringing, someone arguing with a source on speakerphone, the copier chugging in the corner. But in here it’s just me and the weak light coming through the window that faces the parking garage.
The piece ran six thousand words above the fold with a full graphic of the shell company structure that Josie helped me map. Erik Lanning’s photo, provided by his sister, ran beside the headline: The Burn Rate: How RainVest Holdings Turned Wildfires into Profit and Silenced the Man Who Knew.
It’s been called Pulitzer-worthy by three different media critics.
I keep waiting for that to land somewhere it can stick, but I’m having a hard time comprehending the accolades that continue to flow in.
A knock on my door jolts me out of my thoughts and Danny Cho leans in the doorway. He’s the photo editor and works a few offices down from mine. I haven’t seen him since before… everything.
He’s got a coffee in each hand and a gleam in his eye as if he has good news. “There she is, the woman of the hour.”
“Hey, Danny,” I say, but I’m tired of talking to people. I’m tired of being the It Girl, but I accept the proffered coffee.
“This is from the whole photo team,” he chirps.
“Appreciate it,” I say, and take a dutiful sip.
“That statement Erik Lanning’s family put out yesterday was something else, right?”
“Indeed,” I murmur. In it, they sang my praises, saying that I gave Erik a voice… gave him his name back.
Danny must read the indifference on my face, because he mercifully taps the doorframe twice. “Glad you’re back,” he says. “I’ll catch you later.”
I look at the coffee for a moment, then I look back out my window.
Erik Lanning’s family said I gave him his name back. A journalism school in Boston wants me to come talk to students about accountability reporting. The Times wants to put my byline on their front page.
I should be riding high on this victory, and yet I feel like someone scooped out the inside of my chest.
I don’t get it. I’ve been trying to locate the problem—why I feel so empty—for four days and I keep arriving at the same answer. I also keep rejecting said answer because it doesn’t fit the version of myself I’ve spent the last decade constructing.
The answer is Cole.
I’m not obsessing with the story and I refuse to mull over the danger or the kidnapping. I’ve made my peace with the cost of the work.
But when I try to figure out how to make myself feel better about the decisions I’ve made, it always circles back to Cole Mercer, the man who told me he loved me in a cabin and then walked out of my life.
I’ve been carrying this weight like a stone ever since, and frankly, it hurts worse than the first time we broke up.
Five years ago when we ended, I was angry enough that the anger did some of the work of healing. This time, there’s a cavernous void and it feels like someone turned the lights off in a room I know by heart.
The job offers don’t touch it. The Pulitzer conversation doesn’t touch it. Danny’s coffee doesn’t touch it. They should fill that emptiness. They absolutely should because I have wanted exactly this since forever.
Cole’s voice keeps finding me in the depths of my memories. “I watched you hang from a hook in a cabin in the dark and I thought I was too late. And you’re standing here telling me it was worth it.”
I’ve been angry at that sentence.
And I’ve also been unable to argue with it.
The thing I haven’t let myself look at directly, that I’ve been circling for four days, is whether I believe the words I said in that living room.
Whether I meant them when I said my identity was tied to this work, or whether I was defending a version of myself I built so long ago that I stopped checking to see whether it was still accurate.
I believe in the work. I believe in it the way I believe in breathing. Erik Lanning deserved someone who wouldn’t look away, and I was that person and I’m not interested in apologizing for it.
But the Al Jazeera offer has been open in that tab for thirty-six hours and I haven’t typed a single word of a response.
The Times offer has been open longer.
I think about Cole’s face in the hospital. The way he saved my life and never asked for anything other than to love him. I think about the first time we ended and how I told myself for six months that I was better this way, unencumbered, forward-facing, nobody’s emergency contact.
I don’t believe that anymore. I’m not sure I believed it then.
Another knock on my door and I turn to it.
“Tell me you’re not already fielding offers.
” Frank Delaney fills the doorway. He’s been at the paper for twenty-two years and serves as the executive editor.
He’s got his glasses pushed up on his head and looks frazzled.
“Promise me you won’t take one of those job offers before we’ve had a conversation or else I’m going to consider it a personal betrayal. ”
I can’t help but smile. “Good morning to you too, Frank.”
“I’m serious.” He drops into the chair across from my desk without being invited, but he’s the big boss and I’d never deny him because of that.
“You know what this piece did for this paper. You know what your name is worth right now.” He leans forward, pins me with earnest eyes.
“I’ve got three pitches I want to walk you through.
There’s a story on the Columbia River water rights situation that’s been sitting in the queue for eight months waiting for the right reporter—”
“Frank.”
“—and there’s a tech angle on port automation in Tacoma that has labor implications nobody’s touched yet, and I pulled the thread on that Spokane city council issue from last spring and I think there’s—”
“Frank,” I say again. He stares at me beseechingly, the man who gave me my first staff job, and to whom I owe so much of my career. “I need a few days before we talk about next projects.”
“But not about the job offers?” he presses.
“I’m considering everything,” I say truthfully, although part of me wants to close out those two tabs on my computer and forget about the fact that everyone wants a piece of me.
He studies me thoughtfully. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I force a bright smile. “I’m great but… I just need a few days.”
He looks at me for a long moment, as an editor who’s been in this business long enough to know the difference between a reporter who is tired and a reporter who is somewhere else entirely.
Frank rises from the chair. “Take the week. The water rights story will keep.” He pauses at the door. “And for the time being, I’m just going to assume you’re not interested in leaving us.”
He leaves before I can answer, but I’m not sure what I would have said. I think I’m having an existential crisis and there’s no good answer to make me feel better about anything.
The newsroom moves outside my glass wall, the easy midday laugh of people who are doing work they believe in who haven’t recently been hung from a ceiling hook in a cabin in the Cascades.
I look at the two tabs open on my computer, and I go with my gut instinct.
I close them both.
I lean back in my chair and vainly try to locate the version of myself who would have looked at a Times offer and said no without a second thought, who would have called it a distraction from the work, who would have needed no one and nothing but the hunt for the truth.
I can’t find her. She’s utterly lost and I think it’s because for the first time in her life, she’s questioning where she wants to go.